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diff --git a/8545.txt b/8545.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..352e971 --- /dev/null +++ b/8545.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15068 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amiel's Journal, by Henri-Frederic Amiel + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Amiel's Journal + +Author: Henri-Frederic Amiel + +Commentator: Mrs. Humphrey Ward + +Translator: Mrs. Humphrey Ward + + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8545] +This file was first posted on July 21, 2003 +Last Updated: May 31, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMIEL'S JOURNAL *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Tonya Allen, +Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +AMIEL'S JOURNAL + +By Henri-Frederic Amiel + +The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic 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 "Journal +Intime," I have inserted a good many new passages, taken from the last +French edition (_Cinquieme edition, revue et augmentee_.) But I have not +translated all the fresh material to be found in that edition nor have +I omitted certain sections of the Journal which in these two recent +volumes have been omitted by their French editors. It would be of no +interest to give my reasons for these variations at length. They depend +upon certain differences between the English and the French public, +which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which I +have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective +side of the Journal, already so full--to overweight it, at any rate, for +English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate +to 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 English +are in many ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan Geneva than the +French readers to whom the original Journal primarily addresses itself, +and some of the entries I have kept have probably, by the nature of +things, more savor for us than for them. + +M. A. W. + + + + +PREFACE. + + +This translation of Amiel's "Journal Intime" is primarily addressed to +those whose knowledge of French, while it may be sufficient to carry +them with more or less complete understanding through a novel or a +newspaper, is yet not enough to allow them to understand and appreciate +a book containing subtle and complicated forms of expression. I believe +there are many such to be found among the reading public, and among +those who would naturally take a strong interest in such a life and mind +as Amiel's, were it not for the barrier of language. It is, at any rate, +in the hope that a certain number of additional readers may be thereby +attracted to the "Journal Intime" that this translation of it has been +undertaken. + +The difficulties of the translation have been sometimes considerable, +owing, first of all, to those elliptical modes of speech which a man +naturally employs when he is 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 English +equivalent, at once terse and clear, is hard to find. Another difficulty +has been his constant use of a technical philosophical language, which, +according to his French critics, is not French--even philosophical +French--but German. Very often it has been impossible to give any +other than a literal rendering of such passages, if the thought of the +original was to be preserved; but in those cases where a choice was +open to me, I have preferred the more literary to the more technical +expression; and I have been encouraged to do so by the fact that Amiel, +when he came to prepare for publication a certain number of "Pensees," +extracted from the Journal, and printed at the end of a volume of poems +published in 1853, frequently softened his phrases, so that sentences +which survive in the Journal in a more technical form are to be found in +a more literary form in the "Grains de Mil." + +In two or three cases--not more, I think--I have allowed myself to +transpose a sentence bodily, and in a few instances I have added some +explanatory words to the text, which wherever the addition was of any +importance, are indicated by square brackets. + +My warmest thanks are due to my friend and critic, M. Edmond Scherer, +from whose valuable and interesting study, prefixed to the French +Journal, as well as from certain materials in his possession which +he has very kindly allowed me to make use of, I have drawn by far the +greater part of the biographical material embodied in the Introduction. +M. Scherer has also given me help and advice through the whole process +of translation--advice which his scholarly knowledge of English has made +especially worth having. + +In the translation of the more technical philosophical passages I have +been greatly helped by another friend, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, Fellow of +University College, Oxford, the translator of Lotze, of whose care and +pains in the matter I cherish a grateful remembrance. + +But with all the help that has been so freely given me, not only by +these friends but by others, I confide the little book to the public +with many a misgiving! May it at least win a few more friends and +readers here and there for one who lived alone, and died sadly persuaded +that his life had been a barren mistake; whereas, all the while--such +is the irony of things--he had been in reality working out the mission +assigned him in the spiritual economy, and faithfully obeying the secret +mandate which had impressed itself upon his youthful consciousness: +"_Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave +behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so_." + +MARY A. WARD. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +It was in the last days of December, 1882, that the first volume of +Henri Frederic Amiel's "Journal Intime" was published at Geneva. The +book, of which the general literary world knew nothing prior to its +appearance, contained a long and remarkable Introduction from the pen of +M. Edmond Scherer, the well-known French critic, who had been for many +years one of Amiel's most valued friends, and it was prefaced also by +a little _Avertissement_, in which the "Editors"--that is to say, the +Genevese friends to whom the care and publication of the Journal had +been in the first instance entrusted--described in a few reserved and +sober words the genesis and objects of the publication. Some thousands +of sheets of Journal, covering a period of more than thirty years, had +come into the hands of Amiel's literary heirs. "They were written," said +the _Avertissement_, "with several ends in view. Amiel recorded in them +his various occupations, and the incidents of each day. He preserved in +them his psychological observations, and the impressions produced on +him by books. But his Journal was, above all, the confidant of his +most private and intimate thoughts; a means whereby the thinker became +conscious of his own inner life; a safe shelter wherein his questionings +of fate and the future, the voice of grief, of self-examination and +confession, the soul's cry for inward peace, might make themselves +freely heard. + +"... In the directions concerning his papers which he left behind him, +Amiel expressed the wish that his literary executors should publish +those parts of the Journal which might seem to them to possess either +interest as thought or value as experience. The publication of this +volume 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 were +the sovereign realities of existence." + +Thus modestly announced, the little volume made its quiet _debut_. It +contained nothing, or almost nothing, of ordinary biographical material. +M. Scherer's Introduction supplied such facts as were absolutely +necessary to the understanding of Amiel's intellectual history, but +nothing more. Everything of a local or private character that could +be excluded was excluded. The object of the editors in their choice of +passages for publication was declared to be simply "the reproduction +of the moral and intellectual physiognomy of their friend," while M. +Scherer expressly disclaimed any biographical intentions, and limited +his Introduction as far as possible to "a study of the character +and thought of Amiel." The contents of the volume, then, were +purely literary and philosophical; its prevailing tone was a tone of +introspection, and the public which can admit the claims and overlook +the inherent defects of introspective literature has always been a +small one. The writer of the Journal had been during his lifetime wholly +unknown to the general European public. In Geneva itself he had been +commonly regarded as a man who had signally disappointed the hopes and +expectations of his friends, whose reserve and indecision of character +had in many respects spoiled his life, and alienated the society around +him; while his professional lectures were generally pronounced dry and +unattractive, and the few volumes of poems which represented almost +his only contributions to literature had nowhere met with any real +cordiality of reception. Those concerned, therefore, in the publication +of the first volume of the Journal can hardly have had much expectation +of a wide success. Geneva is not a favorable starting-point for a +French book, and it may well have seemed that not even the support of M. +Scherer's name would be likely to carry the volume beyond a small local +circle. + +But "wisdom is justified of her children!" It is now nearly three years +since the first volume of the "Journal Intime" appeared; the impression +made by it was deepened and extended by the publication of the second +volume in 1884; and it is now not too much to say that this remarkable +record of a life has made its way to what promises to be a permanent +place in literature. Among those who think and read it is beginning to +be generally recognized that another book has been added to the books +which live--not to those, perhaps, which live in the public view, much +discussed, much praised, the objects of feeling and of struggle, but +to those in which a germ of permanent life has been deposited silently, +almost secretly, which compel no homage and excite no rivalry, and +which owe the place that the world half-unconsciously yields to them to +nothing but that indestructible sympathy of man with man, that eternal +answering of feeling to feeling, which is one of the great principles, +perhaps the greatest principle, at the root of literature. M. Scherer +naturally was the first among the recognized guides of opinion to +attempt the placing of his friend's Journal. "The man who, during his +lifetime, was incapable of giving us any deliberate or conscious work +worthy of his powers, has now left us, after his death, a book which +will not die. For the secret of Amiel's malady is sublime, and the +expression of it wonderful." So ran one of the last paragraphs of the +Introduction, and one may see in the sentences another instance of that +courage, that reasoned rashness, which distinguishes the good from the +mediocre critic. For it is as true now as it was in the days when La +Bruyere rated the critics of his time for their incapacity to praise, +and praise at once, that "the surest test of a man's critical power is +his judgment of contemporaries." M. Renan, I think, with that exquisite +literary sense of his, was the next among the authorities to mention +Amiel's name with the emphasis it deserved. He quoted a passage from +the Journal in his Preface to the "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse," +describing it as the saying "_d'un penseur distingue, M. Amiel de +Geneve_." Since then M. Renan has devoted two curious articles to the +completed Journal in the _Journal des Desbats_. The first object of +these reviews, no doubt, was not so much the critical appreciation of +Amiel as the development of certain paradoxes which have been haunting +various corners of M. Renan's mind for several years past, and to which +it is to be hoped he has now given expression with sufficient emphasis +and _brusquerie_ to satisfy even his passion for intellectual adventure. +Still, the rank of the book was fully recognized, and the first article +especially contained some remarkable criticisms, to which we shall find +occasion to recur. "In these two volumes of _pensees_," said M. Renan, +"without any sacrifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both the +perfect mirror of a modern mind of the best type, matured by the best +modern culture, and also a striking picture of the sufferings which +beset the sterility of genius. These two volumes may certainly be +reckoned among the most interesting philosophical writings which have +appeared of late years." + +M. Caro's article on the first volume of the Journal, in the _Revue +des Deux Mondes_ for February, 1883, may perhaps count as the first +introduction of the book to the general cultivated public. He gave a +careful analysis of the first half of the Journal--resumed eighteen +months later in the same periodical on the appearance of the second +volume--and, while protesting against what he conceived to be the +general tendency and effect of Amiel's mental story, he showed himself +fully conscious of the rare and delicate qualities of the new +writer. "_La reverie a reussi a notre auteur_," he says, a little +reluctantly--for M. Caro has his doubts as to the legitimacy of +_reverie_; "_Il en aufait une oeuvure qui restera_." The same final +judgment, accompanied by a very different series of comments, was +pronounced on the Journal a year later by M. Paul Bourget, a young and +rising writer, whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing +the kind of effect produced by Amiel's thought on minds of a type +essentially alien from his own. There is a leaven of something positive +and austere, of something which, for want of a better name, one calls +Puritanism, in Amiel, which escapes the author of "Une Cruelle Enigme." +But whether he has understood Amiel or no, M. Bourget is fully alive +to the mark which the Journal is likely to make among modern records +of mental history. He, too, insists that the book is already famous and +will remain so; in the first place, because of its inexorable realism +and sincerity; in the second, because it is the most perfect example +available of a certain variety of the modern mind. + +Among ourselves, although the Journal has attracted the attention of +all who keep a vigilant eye on the progress of foreign literature, and +although one or two appreciative articles have appeared on it in the +magazines, the book has still to become generally known. One remarkable +English testimony to it, however, must be quoted. Six months after the +publication of the first volume, the late Mark Pattison, who since then +has himself bequeathed to literature a strange and memorable fragment +of autobiography, addressed a letter to M. Scherer as the editor of the +"Journal Intime," which M. Scherer has since published, nearly a year +after the death of the writer. The words have a strong and melancholy +interest for all who knew Mark Pattison; and they certainly deserve +a place in any attempt to estimate the impression already made on +contemporary thought by the "Journal Intime." + +"I wish to convey to you, sir," writes the rector of Lincoln, "the +thanks of one at least of the public for giving the light to this +precious record of a unique experience. I say unique, but I can vouch +that there is in existence at least one other soul which has lived +through the same struggles, mental and moral, as Amiel. In your pathetic +description of the _volonte qui voudrait vouloir, mais impuissante a se +fournir a elle-meme des motifs_--of the repugnance for all action--the +soul petrified by the sentiment of the infinite, in all this I recognize +myself. _Celui qui a dechiffre le secret de la vie finie, qui en a lu +le mot, est sorti du monde des vivants, il est mort de fait_. I can feel +forcibly the truth of this, as it applies to myself! + +"It is not, however, with the view of thrusting my egotism upon you +that I have ventured upon addressing you. As I cannot suppose that so +peculiar a psychological revelation will enjoy a wide popularity, I +think it a duty to the editor to assure him that there are persons in +the world whose souls respond, in the depths of their inmost nature, +to the cry of anguish which makes itself heard in the pages of these +remarkable confessions." + +So much for the place which the Journal--the fruit of so many years of +painful thought and disappointed effort; seems to be at last securing +for its author among those contemporaries who in his lifetime knew +nothing of him. It is a natural consequence of the success of the +book that the more it penetrates, the greater desire there is to know +something more than its original editors and M. Scherer have yet told us +about the personal history of the man who wrote it--about his education, +his habits, and his friends. Perhaps some day this wish may find its +satisfaction. It is an innocent one, and the public may even be said +to have a kind of right to know as much as can be told it of the +personalities which move and stir it. At present the biographical +material available is extremely scanty, and if it were not for the +kindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed the present writer access to +certain manuscript material in his possession, even the sketch which +follows, vague and imperfect as it necessarily is, would have been +impossible. + +[Footnote: Four or five articles on the subject of Amiel's life have +been contributed to the _Revue Internationale_ by Mdlle. Berthe Vadier +during the passage of the present book through the press. My knowledge +of them, however, came too late to enable me to make use of them for the +purposes of the present introduction.] + +Henri Frederic Amiel was born at Geneva in September, 1821. He belonged +to one of the emigrant families, of which a more or less steady supply +had enriched the little republic during the three centuries following +the Reformation. Amiel's ancestors, like those of Sismondi, left +Languedoc for Geneva after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His +father must have been a youth at the time when Geneva passed into the +power of the French republic, and would seem to have married and settled +in the halcyon days following the restoration of Genevese independence +in 1814. Amiel was born when the prosperity of Geneva was at its height, +when the little state was administered by men of European reputation, +and Genevese society had power to attract distinguished visitors and +admirers from all parts. The veteran Bonstetten, who had been the friend +of Gray and the associate of Voltaire, was still talking and enjoying +life in his _appartement_ overlooking the woods of La Batie. Rossi and +Sismondi were busy lecturing to the Genevese youth, or taking part in +Genevese legislation; an active scientific group, headed by the Pictets, +De la Rive, and the botanist Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, kept the +country abreast of European thought and speculation, while the mixed +nationality of the place--the blending in it of French keenness with +Protestant enthusiasms and Protestant solidity--was beginning to find +inimitable and characteristic expression in the stories of Toepffer. +The country was governed by an aristocracy, which was not so much an +aristocracy of birth as one of merit and intellect, and the moderate +constitutional ideas which represented the Liberalism of the +post-Waterloo period were nowhere more warmly embraced or more +intelligently carried out than in Geneva. + +During the years, however, which immediately followed Amiel's birth, +some signs of decadence began to be visible in this brilliant Genevese +society. The generation which had waited for, prepared, and controlled, +the Restoration of 1814, was falling into the background, and the +younger generation, with all its respectability, wanted energy, above +all, wanted leaders. The revolutionary forces in the state, which had +made themselves violently felt during the civil turmoils of the period +preceding the assembly of the French States General, and had afterward +produced the miniature Terror which forced Sismondi into exile, had been +for awhile laid to sleep by the events of 1814. But the slumber was a +short one at Geneva as elsewhere, and when Rossi quitted the republic +for France in 1833, he did so with a mind full of misgivings as to the +political future of the little state which had given him--an exile and a +Catholic--so generous a welcome in 1819. The ideas of 1830 were shaking +the fabric and disturbing the equilibrium of the Swiss Confederation +as a whole, and of many of the cantons composing it. Geneva was still +apparently tranquil while her neighbors were disturbed, but no one +looking back on the history of the republic, and able to measure the +strength of the Radical force in Europe after the fall of Charles X., +could have felt much doubt but that a few more years would bring Geneva +also into the whirlpool of political change. + +In the same year--1833--that M. Rossi had left Geneva, Henri Frederic +Amiel, at twelve years old, was left orphaned of both his parents. They +had died comparatively young--his mother was only just over thirty, and +his father cannot have been much older. On the death of the mother +the little family was broken up, the boy passing into the care of one +relative, his two sisters into that of another. Certain notes in +M. Scherer's possession throw a little light here and there upon a +childhood and youth which must necessarily have been a little bare and +forlorn. They show us a sensitive, impressionable boy, of health rather +delicate than robust, already disposed to a more or less melancholy +and dreamy view of life, and showing a deep interest in those religious +problems and ideas in which the air of Geneva has been steeped since the +days of Calvin. The religious teaching which a Genevese lad undergoes +prior to his admission to full church membership, made a deep impression +on him, and certain mystical elements of character, which remained +strong in him to the end, showed themselves very early. At the college +or public school of Geneva, and at the academie, he would seem to have +done only moderately as far as prizes and honors were concerned. We +are told, however, that he read enormously, and that he was, generally +speaking, inclined rather to make friends with men older than himself +than with his contemporaries. He fell specially under the influence of +Adolphe Pictet, a brilliant philologist and man of letters belonging +to a well-known Genevese family, and in later life he was able, while +reviewing one of M. Pictet's books, to give grateful expression to his +sense 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 a +town in which the Beautiful had been for centuries regarded as the rival +and enemy of the True. "He who is now writing," says Amiel, "was then +among M. Pictet's youngest hearers. Since then twenty experiences of the +same kind have followed each other in his intellectual experience, yet +none has effaced the deep impression made upon him by these lectures. +Coming as they did at a favorable moment, and answering many a positive +question and many a vague aspiration of youth, they exercised a decisive +influence over his thought; they were to him an important step in that +continuous initiation which we call life, they filled him with fresh +intuitions, they brought near to him the horizons of his dreams. And, as +always happens with a first-rate man, what struck him even more than the +teaching was the teacher. So that this memory of 1840 is still dear and +precious to him, and for this double service, which is not of the kind +one forgets, the student of those days delights in expressing to the +professor of 1840 his sincere and filial gratitude." + +Amiel's first literary production, or practically his first, seems to +have been the result partly of these lectures, and partly of a visit +to Italy which began in November, 1841. In 1842, a year which was spent +entirely in Italy and Sicily, he contributed three articles on M. Rio's +book, "L'Art Chretien," to the _Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve_. +We see in them the young student conscientiously writing his first +review--writing it at inordinate length, as young reviewers are apt to +do, and treating the subject _ab ovo_ in a grave, pontifical way, which +is a little naive and inexperienced indeed, but still promising, as all +seriousness of work and purpose is promising. All that is individual in +it is first of all the strong Christian feeling which much of it shows, +and secondly, the tone of melancholy which already makes itself felt +here and there, especially in one rather remarkable passage. As to the +Christian feeling, we find M. Rio described as belonging to "that noble +school of men who are striving to rekindle the dead beliefs of France, +to rescue Frenchmen from the camp of materialistic or pantheistic ideas, +and rally them round that Christian banner which is the banner of +true progress and true civilization." The Renaissance is treated as a +disastrous but inevitable crisis, in which the idealism of the Middle +Ages was dethroned by the naturalism of modern times--"The Renaissance +perhaps robbed us of more than it gave us"--and so on. The tone of +criticism is instructive enough to the student of Amiel's mind, but the +product itself has no particular savor of its own. The occasional note +of depression and discouragement, however, is a different thing; here, +for those who know the "Journal Intime," there is already something +characteristic, something which foretells the future. For instance, +after dwelling with evident zest on the nature of the metaphysical +problems lying at the root of art in general, and Christian art in +particular, the writer goes on to set the difficulty of M. Rio's +task against its attractiveness, to insist on the intricacy of the +investigations involved, and on the impossibility of making the two +instruments on which their success depends--the imaginative and the +analytical faculty--work harmoniously and effectively together. And +supposing the goal achieved, supposing a man by insight and patience has +succeeded in forcing his way farther than any previous explorer into the +recesses of the Beautiful or the True, there still remains the +enormous, the insuperable difficulty of expression, of fit and adequate +communication from mind to mind; there still remains the question +whether, after all, "he who discovers a new world in the depths of the +invisible would not do wisely to plant on it a flag known to himself +alone, and, like Achilles, 'devour his heart in secret;' whether the +greatest problems which have ever been guessed on earth had not better +have remained buried in the brain which had found the key to them, +and whether the deepest thinkers--those whose hand has been boldest in +drawing aside the veil, and their eye keenest in fathoming the mysteries +beyond it--had not better, like the prophetess of Ilion, have kept for +heaven, and heaven only, secrets and mysteries which human tongue cannot +truly express, nor human intelligence 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 vague +sonorous phrases have pleased the writer's immature literary sense; but +there is something else too--there is a breath of that same speculative +passion which burns in the Journal, and one hears, as it were, the first +accents of a melancholy, the first expression of a mood of mind, which +became in after years the fixed characteristic of the writer. "At twenty +he was already proud, timid, and melancholy," writes an old friend; +and a little farther on, "Discouragement took possession of him _very +early_." + +However, in spite of this inbred tendency, which was probably hereditary +and inevitable, the years which followed these articles, from 1842 +to Christmas, 1848, were years of happiness and steady intellectual +expansion. They were Amiel's _Wanderjahre_, spent in a free, wandering +student 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 fresh +intellectual center--Scandinavia in 1845, Holland in 1846, Vienna, +Munich, and Tuebingen in 1848, while Paris had already attracted him in +1841, and he was to make acquaintance with London ten years later, in +1851. No circumstances could have been more favorable, one would have +thought, to the development of such a nature. With his extraordinary +power of "throwing himself into the object"--of effacing himself and +his own personality in the presence of the thing to be understood and +absorbed--he must have passed these years of travel and acquisition in +a state of continuous intellectual energy and excitement. It is in no +spirit of conceit that he says in 1857, comparing himself with Maine de +Biran, "This nature is, as it were, only one of the men which exist +in me. My horizon is vaster; I have seen much more of men, things, +countries, peoples, books; I have a greater mass of experiences." This +fact, indeed, of a wide and varied personal experience, must never be +forgotten in any critical estimate of Amiel as a man or writer. We +may so easily conceive him as a sedentary professor, with the ordinary +professorial knowledge, or rather ignorance, of men and the world, +falling into introspection under the pressure of circumstance, and for +want, as it were, of something else to think about. Not at all. The +man who has left us these microscopic analyses of his own moods and +feelings, had penetrated more or less into the social and intellectual +life of half a dozen European countries, and was familiar not only with +the books, but, to a large extent also, with the men of his generation. +The meditative and introspective gift was in him, not the product, but +the mistress of circumstance. It took from the outer world what that +world had to give, and then made the stuff so gained subservient to its +own ends. + +Of these years of travel, however, the four years spent at Berlin were +by far the most important. "It was at Heidelberg and Berlin," says M. +Scherer, "that the world of science and speculation first opened on the +dazzled eyes of the young man. He was accustomed to speak of his four +years at Berlin as 'his intellectual phase,' and one felt that he +inclined to regard them as the happiest period of his life. The spell +which Berlin laid upon him lasted long." Probably his happiness in +Germany was partly owing to a sense of reaction against Geneva. There +are signs that he had felt himself somewhat isolated at school and +college, and that in the German world his special individuality, with +its dreaminess and its melancholy, found congenial surroundings far more +readily than had been the case in the drier and harsher atmosphere of +the Protestant Rome. However this may be, it is certain that German +thought took possession of him, that he became steeped not only in +German methods of speculation, but in German modes of expression, in +German forms of sentiment, which clung to him through life, and vitally +affected both his opinions and his style. M. Renan and M. Bourget shake +their heads over the Germanisms, which, according to the latter, give a +certain "barbarous" air to many passages of the Journal. But both admit +that Amiel's individuality owes a great part of its penetrating force +to that intermingling of German with French elements, of which there +are such abundant traces in the "Journal Intime." Amiel, in fact, is +one more typical product of a movement which is certainly of enormous +importance in the history of modern thought, even though we may not be +prepared to assent to all the sweeping terms in which a writer like +M. Taine describes it. "From 1780 to 1830," says M. Taine, "Germany +produced all the ideas of our historical age, and during another +half-century, perhaps another century, _notre grande affaire sera de les +repenser_." He is inclined to compare the influence of German ideas on +the modern world to the ferment of the Renaissance. No spiritual force +"more original, more universal, more fruitful in consequences of every +sort and bearing, more capable of transforming and remaking everything +presented to it, has arisen during the last three hundred years. Like +the spirit of the Renaissance and of the classical age, it attracts into +its orbit all the great works of contemporary intelligence." Quinet, +pursuing a somewhat different line of thought, regards the worship of +German ideas inaugurated in France by Madame de Stael as the natural +result of reaction from the eighteenth century and all its ways. "German +systems, German hypotheses, beliefs, and poetry, all were eagerly +welcomed as a cure for hearts crushed by the mockery of Candide and the +materialism of the Revolution.... Under the Restoration France continued +to study German philosophy and poetry with profound veneration and +submission. We imitated, translated, compiled, and then again we +compiled, translated, imitated." The importance of the part played by +German influence in French Romanticism has indeed been much disputed, +but the debt of French metaphysics, French philology, and French +historical study, to German methods and German research during the last +half-century is beyond dispute. And the movement to-day is as strong +as ever. A modern critic like M. Darmstetter regards it as a misfortune +that the artificial stimulus given by the war to the study of German +has, to some extent, checked the study of English in France. He thinks +that the French have more to gain from our literature--taking literature +in its general and popular sense--than from German literature. But he +raises no question as to the inevitable subjection of the French to +the German mind in matters of exact thought and knowledge. "To study +philology, mythology, history, without reading German," he is as ready +to confess as any one else, "is to condemn one's self to remain in every +department twenty years behind the progress of science." + +Of this great movement, already so productive, Amiel is then a fresh and +remarkable instance. Having caught from the Germans not only their +love of exact knowledge but also their love of vast horizons, their +insatiable curiosity as to the whence and whither of all things, their +sense of mystery and immensity in the universe, he then brings those +elements in him which belong to his French inheritance--and something +individual besides, which is not French but Genevese--to bear on his +new acquisitions, and the result is of the highest literary interest and +value. Not that he succeeds altogether in the task of fusion. For +one who was to write and think in French, he was perhaps too long in +Germany; he had drunk too deeply of German thought; he had been too +much dazzled by the spectacle of Berlin and its imposing intellectual +activities. "As to his _literary_ talent," says M. Scherer, after +dwelling on the rapid growth of his intellectual powers under German +influence, "the profit which Amiel derived from his stay at Berlin is +more doubtful. Too long contact with the German mind had led to the +development in him of certain strangenesses of style which he had +afterward to get rid of, and even perhaps of some habits of thought +which he afterward felt the need of checking and correcting." This +is very true. Amiel is no doubt often guilty, as M. Caro puts it, of +attempts "to write German in French," and there are in his thought +itself veins of mysticism, elements of _Schwaermerei_, here and there, of +which a good deal must be laid to the account of his German training. + +M. Renan regrets that after Geneva and after Berlin he never came to +Paris. Paris, he thinks, would have counteracted the Hegelian influences +brought to hear upon him at Berlin, [Footnote: See a not, however, +on the subject of Amiel's philosophical relationships, printed as an +Appendix to the present volume.] would have taught him cheerfulness, and +taught him also the art of writing, not beautiful fragments, but a book. +Possibly--but how much we should have lost! Instead of the Amiel we +know, we should have had one accomplished French critic the more. +Instead of the spiritual drama of the "Journal Intime," some further +additions to French _belles lettres_; instead of something to love, +something to admire! No, there is no wishing the German element in Amiel +away. Its invading, troubling effect upon his thought and temperament +goes far to explain the interest and suggestiveness of his mental +history. The language he speaks is the language of that French criticism +which--we have Sainte-Beuve's authority for it--is best described by the +motto of Montaigne, "_Un peu de chaque chose et rien de l'ensemble, a la +francaise_," and the thought he tries to express in it is thought torn +and strained by the constant effort to reach the All, the totality of +things: "What I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek +to know is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always the +complete, the absolute, the _teres atque rotundum_." And it was this +antagonism, or rather this fusion of traditions in him, which went far +to make him original, which opened to him, that is to say, so many new +lights on old paths, and stirred in him such capacities of fresh and +individual expression. + +We have been carried forward, however, a little too far by this general +discussion of Amiel's debts to Germany. Let us take up the biographical +thread again. In 1848 his Berlin apprenticeship came to an end, and +he returned to Geneva. "How many places, how many impressions, +observations, thoughts--how many forms of men and things--have passed +before me and in me since April, 1843," he writes in the Journal, two or +three months after his return. "The last seven years have been the most +important of my life; they have been the novitiate of my intelligence, +the initiation of my being into being." The first literary evidence of +his matured powers is to be found in two extremely interesting papers on +Berlin, which he contributed to the _Bibliotheque Universelle_ in 1848, +apparently just before he left Germany. Here for the first time we have +the Amiel of the "Journal Intime." The young man who five years before +had written his painstaking review of M. Rio is now in his turn a +master. He speaks with dignity and authority, he has a graphic, vigorous +prose at command, the form of expression is condensed and epigrammatic, +and there is a mixture of enthusiasm and criticism in his description of +the powerful intellectual machine then working in the Prussian capital +which represents a permanent note of character, a lasting attitude +of mind. A great deal, of course, in the two papers is technical and +statistic, but what there is of general comment and criticism is so good +that one is tempted to make some melancholy comparisons between them and +another article in the _Bibliotheque_, that on Adolphe Pictet, written +in 1856, and from which we have already quoted. In 1848 Amiel was for +awhile master of his powers and his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yet +taken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he +writes readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. +Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control; +composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectual +life, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed what +he himself calls "a wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple." + +How few could have foreseen the failure in public and practical life +which lay before him at the moment of his reappearance at Geneva in +1848! "My first meeting with him in 1849 is still vividly present to +me," says M. Scherer. "He was twenty-eight, and he had just come from +Germany laden with science, but he wore his knowledge lightly, his looks +were attractive, his conversation animated, and no affectation spoiled +the favorable impression he made on the bystander--the whole effect, +indeed, was of something brilliant and striking. In his young alertness +Amiel seemed to be entering upon life as a conqueror; one would have +said the future was all his own." + +His return, moreover, was marked by a success which seemed to secure +him at once an important position in his native town. After a public +competition he was appointed, in 1849, professor of esthetics and French +literature at the Academy of Geneva, a post which he held for four +years, exchanging it for the professorship of moral philosophy in 1854. +Thus at twenty-eight, without any struggle to succeed, he had gained, +it would have seemed, that safe foothold in life which should be all +the philosopher or the critic wants to secure the full and fruitful +development of his gifts. Unfortunately the appointment, instead of the +foundation and support, was to be the stumbling block of his career. +Geneva at the time was in a state of social and political ferment. After +a long struggle, beginning with the revolutionary outbreak of November, +1841, the Radical party, led by James Fazy, had succeeded in ousting the +Conservatives--that is to say, the governing class, which had ruled the +republic since the Restoration--from power. And with the advent of the +democratic constitution of 1846, and the exclusion of the old Genevese +families from the administration they had so long monopolized, a number +of subsidiary changes were effected, not less important to the ultimate +success of Radicalism than the change in political machinery introduced +by the new constitution. Among them was the disappearance of almost the +whole existing staff of the academy, then and now the center of Genevese +education, and up to 1847 the stronghold of the moderate ideas of 1814, +followed by the appointment of new men less likely to hamper the Radical +order of things. + +Of these new men Amiel was one. He had been absent from Geneva during +the years of conflict which had preceded Fazy's triumph; he seems to +have had no family or party connections with the leaders of the defeated +side, and as M. Scherer points out, he could accept a non-political post +at the hands of the new government, two years after the violent +measures which had marked its accession, without breaking any pledges or +sacrificing 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 moment +succeeded in tempting Amiel to Paris, as Guizot tempted Rossi in 1833, +there can be little question that the young professor's after life would +have been happier and saner. As it was, Amiel threw himself into the +competition for the chair, was appointed professor, and then found +himself in a hopelessly false position, placed on the threshold of life, +in relations and surroundings for which he was radically unfitted, and +cut off by no fault of his own from the _milieu_ to which he rightly +belonged, and in which his sensitive individuality might have expanded +normally and freely. For the defeated upper class very naturally shut +their doors on the nominees of the new _regime_, and as this class +represented at that moment almost everything that was intellectually +distinguished in Geneva, as it was the guardian, broadly speaking, +of the scientific and literary traditions of the little state, we can +easily imagine how galling such a social ostracism must have been to the +young professor, accustomed to the stimulating atmosphere, the common +intellectual interests of Berlin, and tormented with perhaps more than +the ordinary craving of youth for sympathy and for affection. In a great +city, containing within it a number of different circles of life, Amiel +would easily have found his own circle, nor could political discords +have affected his social comfort to anything like the same extent. But +in a town not much larger than Oxford, and in which the cultured class +had hitherto formed a more or less homogeneous and united whole, it was +almost impossible for Amiel to escape from his grievance and establish a +sufficient barrier of friendly interests between himself and the society +which ignored him. There can be no doubt that he suffered, both in +mind and character, from the struggle the position involved. He had +no natural sympathy with radicalism. His taste, which was extremely +fastidious, his judgment, his passionate respect for truth, were all +offended by the noise, the narrowness, the dogmatism of the triumphant +democracy. So that there was no making up on the one side for what he +had lost on the other, and he proudly resigned himself to an isolation +and a reserve which, reinforcing, as they did, certain native weaknesses +of character, had the most unfortunate effect upon his life. + +In a passage of the Journal written nearly thirty years after his +election he allows himself a few pathetic words, half of accusation, +half of self-reproach, which make us realize how deeply this +untowardness of social circumstance had affected him. He is discussing +one of Madame de Stael's favorite words, the word _consideration_. "What +is _consideration_?" he asks. "How does a man obtain it? how does it +differ from fame, esteem, admiration?" And then he turns upon himself. +"It is curious, but the idea of consideration has been to me so little +of a motive that I have not even been conscious of such an idea. +But ought I not to have been conscious of it?" he asks himself +anxiously--"ought I not to have been more careful to win the good +opinion of others, more determined to conquer their hostility or +indifference? It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, +encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, +kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation--to +force the esteem of others--seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, +almost a degradation. A struggle with unfavorable opinion has seemed to +me beneath me, for all the while my heart has been full of sadness +and disappointment, and I have known and felt that I have been +systematically and deliberately isolated. Untimely despair and the +deepest discouragement have been my constant portion. Incapable of +taking any interest in my talents for their own sake, I let everything +slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by them had +forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found peace in +solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better satisfied +than my heart." + +Still one may no doubt easily exaggerate this loneliness of Amiel's. +His social difficulties represent rather a dull discomfort in his life, +which in course of time, and in combination with a good many other +causes, produced certain unfavorable results on his temperament and on +his public career, than anything very tragic and acute. They were real, +and he, being what he was, was specially unfitted to cope with and +conquer them. But he had his friends, his pleasures, and even to some +extent his successes, like other men. "He had an elasticity of mind," +says M. Scherer, speaking of him as he knew him in youth, "which +reacted against vexations from without, and his cheerfulness was readily +restored by conversation and the society of a few kindred spirits. We +were accustomed, two or three friends and I, to walk every Thursday to +the Saleve, Lamartine's _Saleve aux flancs azures_; we dined there, and +did not return till nightfall." They were days devoted to _debauches +platoniciennes_, to "the free exchange of ideas, the free play of +fancy and of gayety. Amiel was not one of the original members of +these Thursday parties; but whenever he joined us we regarded it as a +fete-day. In serious discussion he was a master of the unexpected, +and his energy, his _entrain_, affected us all. If his grammatical +questions, his discussions of rhymes and synonyms, astonished us at +times, how often, on the other hand, did he not give us cause to admire +the variety of his knowledge, the precision of his ideas, the charm +of his quick intelligence! We found him always, besides, kindly and +amiable, a nature one might trust and lean upon with perfect security. +He awakened in us but one regret; _we could not understand how it was a +man so richly gifted produced nothing, or only trivialities_." + +In these last words of M. Scherer's we have come across the determining +fact of Amiel's life in its relation to the outer world--that "sterility +of genius," of which he was the victim. For social ostracism and +political anxiety would have mattered to him comparatively little if he +could but have lost himself in the fruitful activities of thought, in +the struggles and the victories of composition and creation. A German +professor of Amiel's knowledge would have wanted nothing beyond his +_Fach_, and nine men out of ten in his circumstances would have made +themselves the slave of a _magnum opus_, and forgotten the vexations +of everyday life in the "_douces joies de la science_." But there +were certain characteristics in Amiel which made it impossible--which +neutralized his powers, his knowledge, his intelligence, and condemned +him, so far as his public performance was concerned, to barrenness and +failure. What were these characteristics, this element of unsoundness +and disease, which M. Caro calls "_la maladie de l'ideal_?" + +Before we can answer the question we must go back a little and try +to realize the intellectual and moral equipment of the young man of +twenty-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 back +with him from Berlin? In the first place, an omnivorous desire to +know: "Amiel," says M. Scherer, "read everything." In the second, +an extraordinary power of sustained and concentrated thought, and a +passionate, almost a religious, delight in the exercise of his power. +Knowledge, science, stirred in him no mere sense of curiosity or cold +critical instinct--"he came to his desk as to an altar." "A friend who +knew him well," says M. Scherer, "remembers having heard him speak with +deep emotion of that lofty serenity of mood which he had experienced +during his years in Germany whenever, in the early morning before dawn, +with his reading-lamp beside him, he had found himself penetrating once +more into the region of pure thought, 'conversing with ideas, enjoying +the inmost life of things.'" "Thought," he says somewhere in the +Journal, "is like opium. It can intoxicate us and yet leave us broad +awake." To this intoxication of thought he seems to have been always +specially liable, and his German experience--unbalanced, as such an +experience generally is with a young man, by family life, or by any +healthy commonplace interests and pleasures--developed the intellectual +passion in him to an abnormal degree. For four years he had devoted +himself to the alternate excitement and satisfaction of this passion. +He had read enormously, thought enormously, and in the absence of +any imperative claim on the practical side of him, the accumulative, +reflective faculties had grown out of all proportion to the rest of the +personality. Nor had any special subject the power to fix him. Had he +been in France, what Sainte-Beuve calls the French "_imagination de +detail_" would probably have attracted his pliant, responsive nature, +and he would have found happy occupation in some one of the innumerable +departments of research on which the French have been patiently spending +their analytical gift since that general widening of horizons which +accompanied and gave value to the Romantic movement. But instead he was +at Berlin, in the center of that speculative ferment which followed the +death of Hegel and the break-up of the Hegelian idea into a number of +different and conflicting sections of philosophical opinion. He was +under the spell of German synthesis, of that traditional, involuntary +effort which the German mind makes, generation after generation, to +find the unity of experience, to range its accumulations from life +and thought under a more and more perfect, a more and more exhaustive, +formula. Not this study or that study, not this detail or that, but the +whole of things, the sum of Knowledge, the Infinite, the Absolute, alone +had value or reality. In his own words: "There is no repose for the mind +except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul +except in the divine. Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy +to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that +is exclusive repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my +end is communion with Being through the whole of Being." + +It was not, indeed, that he neglected the study of detail; he had a +strong natural aptitude for it, and his knowledge was wide and real; but +detail was ultimately valuable to him, not in itself, but as food for a +speculative hunger, for which, after all, there is no real satisfaction. +All the pleasant paths which traverse the kingdom of Knowledge, in which +so many of us find shelter and life-long means of happiness, led Amiel +straight into the wilderness of abstract speculation. And the longer +he lingered in the wilderness, unchecked by any sense of intellectual +responsibility, and far from the sounds of human life, the stranger +and the weirder grew the hallucinations of thought. The Journal gives +marvelous expression to them: "I can find no words for what I feel. My +consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my +life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks +of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and +shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age." Or again: "I am +a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call +individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an +irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me--and +this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery +of the world. I am, or rather my sensible consciousness is, concentrated +upon this ideal standing-point, this invisible threshold, as it were, +whence one hears the impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming +as it flows out into the changeless ocean of eternity. After all the +bewildering distractions of life--after having drowned myself in a +multiplicity of trifles and in the caprices of this fugitive existence, +yet without ever attaining to self-intoxication or self-delusion--I come +again upon the fathomless abyss, the silent and melancholy cavern, where +dwell '_Die Muetter_,' where sleeps that which neither lives nor dies, +which has neither movement nor change, nor extension, nor form, and +which lasts when all else passes away." + +Wonderful sentences! "_Prodiges de la pensee speculative, decrits +dans une langue non moins prodigieuse_," as M. Scherer says of the +innumerable passages which describe either this intoxication of the +infinite, or the various forms and consequences of that deadening of +personality which the abstract processes of thought tend to produce. +But it is easy to understand that a man in whom experiences of this kind +become habitual is likely to lose his hold upon the normal interests +of life. What are politics or literature to such a mind but fragments +without real importance--dwarfed reflections of ideal truths for which +neither language nor institutions provide any adequate expression! How +is it possible to take seriously what is so manifestly relative and +temporary as the various existing forms of human activity? Above all, +how is it possible to take one's self seriously, to spend one's thought +on the petty interests of a petty individuality, when the beatific +vision of universal knowledge, of absolute being, has once dawned on +the dazzled beholder? The charm and the savor of everything relative and +phenomenal is gone. A man may go on talking, teaching, writing--but the +spring of personal action is broken; his actions are like the actions of +a somnambulist. + +No doubt to some extent this mood is familiar to all minds endowed with +the true speculative genius. The philosopher has always tended to become +unfit for practical life; his unfitness, indeed, is one of the comic +motives, so to speak, of literature. But a mood which, in the great +majority of thinkers, is intermittent, and is easily kept within bounds +by the practical needs, the mere physical instincts of life, was in +Amiel almost constant, and the natural impulse of the human animal +toward healthy movement and a normal play of function, never very strong +in him, was gradually weakened and destroyed by an untoward combination +of circumstances. The low health from which he suffered more or less +from his boyhood, and then the depressing influences of the social +difficulties we have described, made it more and more difficult for the +rest of the organism to react against the tyranny of the brain. And as +the normal human motives lost their force, what he calls "the Buddhist +tendency in me" gathered strength year by year, until, like some strange +misgrowth, it had absorbed the whole energies and drained the innermost +life-blood of the personality which had developed it. And the result +is another soul's tragedy, another story of conflict and failure, which +throws fresh light on the mysterious capacities of human nature, and +warns us, as the letters of Obermann in their day warned the generation +of George Sand, that with the rise of new intellectual perceptions +new spiritual dangers come into being, and that across the path of +continuous evolution which the modern mind is traversing there lies many +a _selva oscura_, many a lonely and desolate tract, in which loss and +pain await it. The story of the "Journal Intime" is a story to make us +think, to make us anxious; but at the same time, in the case of a nature +like Amiel's, there is so much high poetry thrown off from the long +process of conflict, the power of vision and of reproduction which the +intellect gains at the expense of the rest of the personality is in many +respects so real and so splendid, and produces results so stirring often +to the heart and imagination of the listener, that in the end we put +down the record not so much with a throb of pity as with an impulse of +gratitude. The individual error and suffering is almost forgotten; all +that we can realize is the enrichment of human feeling, the quickened +sense of spiritual reality bequeathed to us by the baffled and solitary +thinker whose _via dolorosa_ is before us. + +The manner in which this intellectual idiosyncrasy we have been +describing gradually affected Amiel's life supplies abundant proof of +its actuality and sincerity. It is a pitiful story. Amiel might have +been saved from despair by love and marriage, by paternity, by strenuous +and successful literary production; and this mental habit of his--this +tyranny of ideal conceptions, helped by the natural accompaniment of +such a tyranny, a critical sense of abnormal acuteness--stood between +him and everything healing and restoring. "I am afraid of an imperfect, +a faulty synthesis, and I linger in the provisional, from timidity and +from loyalty." "As soon as a thing attracts me I turn away from it; or +rather, I cannot either be content with the second-best, or discover +anything which satisfies my aspiration. The real disgusts me, and I +cannot 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 my +thoughts, of my hopes; within a common worship--toward the world outside +kindness and beneficence; education to undertake; the thousand and +one moral relations which develop round the first--all these ideas +intoxicate me sometimes." But in vain. "Reality, the present, the +irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much +imagination, conscience, and penetration and not enough character. +_The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and +immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life makes +me afraid._ I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know +myself. The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. And I abhor +useless regrets and repentance." + +It is the same, at bottom, with his professional work. He protects the +intellectual freedom, as it were, of his students with the same +jealousy as he protects his own. There shall be no oratorical device, +no persuading, no cajoling of the mind this way or that. "A professor +is the priest of his subject, and should do the honors of it gravely and +with dignity." And so the man who in his private Journal is master of an +eloquence and a poetry, capable of illuminating the most difficult and +abstract of subjects, becomes in the lecture-room a dry compendium +of universal knowledge. "Led by his passion for the whole," says M. +Scherer, "Amiel offered his hearers, not so much a series of positive +teachings, as an index of subjects, a framework--what the Germans call +a _Schematismus_. The skeleton was admirably put together, and excellent +of its kind, and lent itself admirably to a certain kind of analysis +and demonstration; but it was a skeleton--flesh, body, and life were +wanting." + +So that as a professor he made no mark. He was conscientiousness itself +in whatever he conceived to be his duty. But with all the critical and +philosophical power which, as we know from the Journal, he might have +lavished on his teaching, had the conditions been other than they were, +the study of literature, and the study of philosophy as such, owe him +nothing. But for the Journal his years of training and his years of +teaching would have left equally little record behind them. "His pupils +at Geneva," writes one who was himself among the number, [Footnote: M. +Alphonse Rivier, now Professor of International Law at the University +of Brussels.] "never learned to appreciate him at his true worth. We did +justice no doubt to a knowledge as varied as it was wide, to his vast +stores of reading, to that cosmopolitanism of the best kind which he had +brought back with him from his travels; we liked him for his indulgence, +his kindly wit. But I look back without any sense of pleasure to his +lectures." + +Many a student, however, has shrunk from the burden and risks of family +life, and has found himself incapable of teaching effectively what +he knows, and has yet redeemed all other incapacities in the field of +literary production. And here indeed we come to the strangest feature in +Amiel's career--his literary sterility. That he possessed literary +power of the highest order is abundantly proved by the "Journal Intime." +Knowledge, insight, eloquence, critical power--all were his. And +the impulse to produce, which is the natural, though by no means the +invariable, accompaniment of the literary gift, must have been fairly +strong in him also. For the "Journal Intime" runs to 17,000 folio pages +of MS., and his half dozen volumes of poems, though the actual quantity +is not large, represent an amount of labor which would have more than +carried him through some serious piece of critical or philosophical +work, and so enabled him to content the just expectations of his world. +He began to write early, as is proved by the fact that at twenty he was +a contributor to the best literary periodical which Geneva possessed. He +was a charming correspondent, and in spite of his passion for abstract +thought, his intellectual interest, at any rate, in all the activities +of the day--politics, religious organizations, literature, art--was of +the keenest kind. And yet at the time of his death all that this +fine critic and profound thinker had given to the world, after a life +entirely spent in the pursuit of letters, was, in the first place, a +few volumes of poems which had had no effect except on a small number +of sympathetic friends; a few pages of _pensees_ intermingled with the +poems, and, as we now know, extracted from the Journal; and four or five +scattered essays, the length of magazine articles, on Mme. de Stael, +Rousseau, the history of the Academy of Geneva, the literature of +French-speaking Switzerland, and so on! And more than this, the +production, such as it was, had been a production born of effort and +difficulty; and the labor squandered on poetical forms, on metrical +experiments and intricate problems of translation, as well as the +occasional affectations of the prose style, might well have convinced +the critical bystander that the mind of which these things were the +offspring could have no real importance, no profitable message, for the +world. + +The whole "Journal Intime" is in some sense Amiel's explanation of these +facts. In it he has made full and bitter confession of his weakness, his +failure; he has endeavored, with an acuteness of analysis no other hand +can rival, to make the reasons of his failure and isolation clear +both to himself and others. "To love, to dream, to feel, to learn, to +understand--all these are possible to me if only I may be dispensed from +willing--I have a sort of primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, +of hatred, of all which dissipates the soul and makes it dependent on +external things and aims. The joy of becoming once more conscious +of myself, of listening to the passage of time and the flow of the +universal life, is sometimes enough to make me forget every desire and +to quench in me both the wish to produce and the power to execute." It +is the result of what he himself calls _"l'eblouissement de l'infini_." +He no sooner makes a step toward production, toward action and the +realization of himself, than a vague sense of peril overtakes him. +The inner life, with its boundless horizons and its indescribable +exaltations, seems endangered. Is he not about to place between himself +and the forms of speculative truth some barrier of sense and matter--to +give up the real for the apparent, the substance for the shadow? One is +reminded of Clough's cry under a somewhat similar experience: + + "If this pure solace should desert my mind, + What were all else? I dare not risk the loss. + To the old paths, my soul!" + +And in close combination with the speculative sense, with the tendency +which carries a man toward the contemplative study of life and nature +as a whole, is the critical sense--the tendency which, in the realm of +action and concrete performance, carries him, as Amiel expresses it, +_"droit au defaut,"_ and makes him conscious at once of the weak point, +the germ of failure in a project or an action. It is another aspect of +the same idiosyncrasy. "The point I have reached seems to be explained +by a too restless search for perfection, by the abuse of the critical +faculty, and by an unreasonable distrust of first impulses, first +thoughts, first words. Confidence and spontaneity of life are drifting +out of my reach, and this is why I can no longer act." For abuse of the +critical faculty brings with it its natural consequences--timidity of +soul, paralysis of the will, complete self-distrust. "To know is +enough for me; expression seems to me often a profanity. What I lack +is character, will, individuality." "By what mystery," he writes to M. +Scherer, "do others expect much from me? whereas I feel myself to +be incapable of anything serious or important." _Defiance_ and +_impuissance_ are the words constantly on his lips. "My friends see what +I might have been; I see what I am." + +And yet the literary instinct remains, and must in some way be +satisfied. And so he takes refuge in what he himself calls scales, +exercises, _tours de force_ in verse-translation of the most laborious +and difficult kind, in ingenious _vers d'occasion_, in metrical +experiments and other literary trifling, as his friends think it, of the +same sort. "I am afraid of greatness. I am not afraid of ingenuity; +all my published 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 its +capacity and skill. But the work itself remains unachieved. I am always +preparing and never accomplishing, and my energy is swallowed up in a +kind of barren curiosity." + +Not that he surrenders himself to the nature which is stronger than he +all at once. His sense of duty rebels, his conscience suffers, and he +makes resolution after resolution to shake himself free from the mental +tradition which had taken such hold upon him--to write, to produce, to +satisfy his friends. In 1861, a year after M. Scherer had left Geneva, +Amiel wrote to him, describing his difficulties and his discouragements, +and asking, as one may ask an old friend of one's youth, for help and +counsel. M. Scherer, much touched by the appeal, answered it plainly and +frankly--described the feeling of those who knew him as they watched +his life slipping away unmarked by any of the achievements of which his +youth had given promise, and pointed out various literary openings in +which, if he were to put out his powers, he could not but succeed. To +begin with, he urged him to join the _Revue Germanique,_ then being +started by Charles Dollfus, Renan, Littre, and others. Amiel left the +letter for three months unanswered and then wrote a reply which M. +Scherer probably received with a sigh of impatience. For, rightly +interpreted, it meant that old habits were too strong, and that the +momentary impulse had died away. When, a little later, "Les Etrangeres," +a collection of verse-translations, came out, it was dedicated to M. +Scherer, who did not, however, pretend to give it any very cordial +reception. Amiel took his friend's coolness in very good part, calling +him his "dear Rhadamanthus." "How little I knew!" cries M. Scherer. +"What I regret is to have discovered too late by means of the Journal, +the key to a problem which seemed to me hardly serious, and which I now +feel to have been tragic. A kind of remorse seizes me that I was not +able to understand my friend better, and to soothe his suffering by a +sympathy which would have been a mixture of pity and admiration." + +Was it that all the while Amiel felt himself sure of his _revanche_ +that he knew the value of all those sheets of Journal which were slowly +accumulating under his hand? Did he say to himself sometimes: "My +friends are wrong; my gifts and my knowledge are not lost; I have given +expression to them in the only way possible to me, and when I die +it will be found that I too, like other men, have performed the task +appointed me, and contributed my quota to the human store?" It is clear +that very early he began to regard it as possible that portions of the +Journal should be published after his death, and, as we have seen, he +left certain "literary instructions," dated seven years before his last +illness, in which his executors were directed to publish such parts +of it as might seem to them to possess any general interest. But it +is clear also that the Journal was not, in any sense, written for +publication. "These pages," say the Geneva editors, "written _au courant +de la plume_--sometimes in the morning, but more often at the end of +the day, without any idea of composition or publicity--are marked by the +repetition, the _lacunae_, the carelessness, inherent in this kind of +monologue. The thoughts and sentiments expressed have no other aim than +sincerity of rendering." + +And his estimate of the value of the record thus produced was, in +general, a low one, especially during the depression and discouragement +of his later years. "This Journal of mine," he writes in 1876, +"represents the material of a good many volumes; what prodigious waste +of time, of thought, of strength! It will be useful to nobody, and even +for myself--it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practice +it." And again: "Is everything I have produced, taken together--my +correspondence, these thousands of Journal pages, my lectures, my +articles, my poems, my notes of different kinds--anything better than +withered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my name +survive me a single day, and will it ever mean anything to anybody? A +life of no account! When all is added up--nothing!" In passages like +these there is no anticipation of any posthumous triumph over the +disapproval of his friends and the criticism of his fellow-citizens. The +Journal was a relief, the means of satisfying a need of expression which +otherwise could find no outlet; "a grief-cheating device," but nothing +more. It did not still the sense of remorse for wasted gifts and +opportunities which followed poor Amiel through the painful months of +his last illness. Like Keats, he passed away, feeling that all was over, +and the great game of life lost forever. + +It still remains for us to gather up a few facts and impressions of +a different kind from those which we have been dwelling on, which may +serve to complete and correct the picture we have so far drawn of +the author of the Journal. For Amiel is full of contradictions and +surprises, which, are indeed one great source of his attractiveness. +Had he only been the thinker, the critic, the idealist we have been +describing, he would never have touched our feeling as he now does; what +makes him so interesting is that there was in him a _fond_ of heredity, +a temperament and disposition, which were perpetually reacting against +the oppression of the intellect and its accumulations. In his hours of +intellectual concentration he freed himself from all trammels of country +or society, or even, as he insists, from all sense of personality. +But at other times he was the dutiful son of a country which he loved, +taking a warm interest in everything Genevese, especially in everything +that represented the older life of the town. When it was a question of +separating the Genevese state from the church, which had been the center +of the national life during three centuries of honorable history, Amiel +the philosopher, the cosmopolitan, threw himself ardently on to the side +of the opponents of separation, and rejoiced in their victory. A large +proportion of his poems deal with national subjects. He was one of the +first members of "_L'Institut Genevois_," founded in 1853, and he took a +warm interest in the movement started by M. Eugene Rambert toward 1870, +for the improvement of secondary education throughout French-speaking +Switzerland. One of his friends dwells with emphasis on his "_sens +profond des nationalites, des langues, des villes_"--on his love for +local characteristics, for everything deep-rooted in the past, and +helping to sustain the present. He is convinced that no state can live +and thrive without a certain number of national prejudices, without _a +priori_ beliefs and traditions. It pleases him to see that there is a +force in the Genevese nationality which resists the leveling influences +of a crude radicalism; it rejoices him that Geneva "has not yet become +a mere copy of anything, and that she is still capable of deciding for +herself. Those who say to her, 'Do as they do at New York, at Paris, +at Rome, at Berlin,' are still in the minority. The _doctrinaires_ who +would 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 of +vitality." + +His love of traveling never left him. Paris attracted him, as it +attracts all who cling to letters, and he gained at one time or another +a certain amount of acquaintance with French literary men. In 1852 +we find him for a time brought into contact with Thierry, Lamennais, +Beranger, Mignet, etc., as well as with Romantics like Alfred de Vigny +and Theophile Gautier. There are poems addressed to De Vigny and Gautier +in his first published volume of 1854. He revisited Italy and his old +haunts and friends in Germany more than once, and in general kept the +current of his life fresh and vigorous by his openness to impressions +and additions from without. + +He was, as we have said, a delightful correspondent, "taking pains with +the smallest note," and within a small circle of friends much liked. +His was not a nature to be generally appreciated at its true value; +the motives which governed his life were too remote from the ordinary +motives of human conduct, and his characteristics just those which have +always excited the distrust, if not the scorn, of the more practical +and vigorous order of minds. Probably, too--especially in his +later years--there was a certain amount of self-consciousness and +artificiality in his attitude toward the outer world, which was the +result partly of the social difficulties we have described, partly of +his own sense of difference from his surroundings, and partly again of +that timidity of nature, that self-distrust, which is revealed to us in +the Journal. So that he was by no means generally popular, and the great +success of the Journal is still a mystery to the majority of those who +knew him merely as a fellow-citizen and acquaintance. But his friends +loved him and believed in him, and the reserved student, whose manners +were thought affected in general society, could and did make himself +delightful to those who understood him, or those who looked to him for +affection. "According to my remembrance of him," writes M. Scherer, "he +was bright, sociable, a charming companion. Others who knew him +better and longer than I say the same. The mobility of his disposition +counteracted his tendency to exaggerations of feeling. In spite of his +fits of melancholy, his natural turn of mind was cheerful; up to the +end he was young, a child even, amused by mere nothings; and whoever had +heard him laugh his hearty student's laugh would have found it difficult +to identify him with the author of so many somber pages." M. Rivier, +his old pupil, remembers him as "strong and active, still handsome, +delightful in conversation, ready to amuse and be amused." Indeed, if +the photographs of him are to be trusted, there must have been something +specially attractive in the sensitive, expressive face, with its lofty +brow, fine eyes, and kindly mouth. It is the face of a poet rather than +of a student, and makes one understand certain other little points which +his friends lay stress on--for instance, his love for and popularity +with children. + +In his poems, or at any rate in the earlier ones, this lighter side +finds more expression, proportionally, than in the Journal. In the +volume called "Grains de Mil," published in 1854, and containing +verse written between the ages of eighteen and thirty, there are poems +addressed, now to his sister, now to old Genevese friends, and now to +famous men of other countries whom he had seen and made friends with +in passing, which, read side by side with the "Journal Intime," bring +a certain gleam and sparkle into an otherwise somber picture. Amiel was +never a master of poetical form; his verse, compared to his prose, is +tame and fettered; it never reaches the glow and splendor of expression +which mark the finest passages of the Journal. It has ability, +thought--beauty even, of a certain kind, but no plastic power, none of +the incommunicable magic which a George Eliot seeks for in vain, while +it comes unasked, to deck with imperishable charm the commonplace +metaphysic and the simpler emotions of a Tennyson or a Burns. Still as +Amiel's work, his poetry has an interest for those who are interested in +him. Sincerity is written in every line of it. Most of the thoughts and +experiences with which one grows familiar in the Journal are repeated +in it; the same joys, the same aspirations, the same sorrows are visible +throughout it, so that in reading it one is more and more impressed +with the force and reality of the inner life which has left behind it +so definite an image of itself. And every now and then the poems add a +detail, a new impression, which seems by contrast to give fresh value +to the fine-spun speculations, the lofty despairs, of the Journal. Take +these verses, written at twenty-one, to his younger sister: + + "Treize ans! et sur ton front aucun baiser de mere + Ne viendra, pauvre enfant, invoquer le bonheur; + Treize ans! et dans ce jour mil regard de ton pere + Ne fera d'allegresse epanouir ton coeur. + + "Orpheline, c'est la le nom dont tu t'appelles, + Oiseau ne dans un nid que la foudre a brise; + De la couvee, helas! seuls, trois petits, sans ailes + Furent lances au vent, loin du reste ecrase. + + "Et, semes par l'eclair sur les monts, dans les plaines, + Un meme toit encor n'a pu les abriter, + Et du foyer natal, malgre leurs plaintes vaines + Dieu, peut-etre longtemps, voudra les ecarter. + + "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 benir." + +The last stanza is especially poor, and in none of them is there much +poetical promise. But the pathetic image of a forlorn and orphaned +childhood, "_un nid que la foudre a brise_," which it calls up, and the +tone of brotherly affection, linger in one's memory. And through much +of the volume of 1863, in the verses to "My Godson," or in the charming +poem to Loulou, the little girl who at five years old, daisy in hand, +had sworn him eternal friendship over Gretchen's game of "_Er liebt +mich--liebt mich nicht_," one hears the same tender note. + + "Merci, prophetique fleurette, + Corolle a l'oracle vainqueur, + Car voila trois ans, paquerette, + Que tu m'ouvris un petit coeur. + + "Et depuis trois hivers, ma belle, + L'enfant aux grands yeux de velours + Maintient son petit coeur fidele, + Fidele comme aux premiers jours." + +His last poetical volume, "Jour a Jour," published in 1880, is far +more uniformly melancholy and didactic in tone than the two earlier +collections from which we have been quoting. But though the dominant +note is one of pain and austerity, of philosophy touched with emotion, +and the general tone more purely introspective, there are many traces in +it of the younger Amiel, dear, for very ordinary human reasons, to his +sisters and his friends. And, in general, the pathetic interest of the +book for all whose sympathy answers to what George Sand calls "_les +tragedies que la pensee apercoit et que l'oeil ne voit point_" is very +great. Amiel published it a year before his death, and the struggle with +failing power which the Journal reveals to us in its saddest and most +intimate reality, is here expressed in more reserved and measured form. +Faith, doubt, submission, tenderness of feeling, infinite aspiration, +moral passion, that straining hope of something beyond, which is the +life of the religious soul--they are all here, and the _Dernier Mot_ +with which the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's epitaph on +himself, his conscious farewell to that more public aspect of his life +in which he had suffered much and achieved comparatively so little. + + "Nous avons a plaisir complique le bonheur, + Et par un ideal frivole et suborneur + Attache nos coeurs a la terre; + Dupes des faux dehors tenus pour l'important, + Mille choses pour nous ont du prix ... et pourtant + Une seule etait necessaire. + + "Sans fin nous prodiguons calculs, efforts, travaux; + Cependant, au milieu des succes, 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 desirs, esclave des regrets, + L'homme s'agite, et s'use, et vieillit sans progres + Sur sa toile de Penelope; + Comme un sage mourant, puissions-nous dire en paix + J'ai trop longtemps erre, cherche; je me trompais; + Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe." + +Upon the small remains of Amiel's prose outside the Journal there is +no occasion to dwell. The two essays on Madame de Stael and Rousseau +contain much fine critical remark, and might find a place perhaps as +an appendix to some future edition of the Journal; and some of the +"Pensees," published in the latter half of the volume containing the +"Grains de Mils," are worthy of preservation. But in general, whatever +he himself published was inferior to what might justly have been +expected of him, and no one was more conscious of the fact than himself. + +The story of his fatal illness, of the weary struggle for health which +filled the last seven years of his life, is abundantly told in the +Journal--we must not repeat it here. He had never been a strong man, and +at fifty-three he received, at his doctor's hands, his _arret de mort_. +We are told that what killed him was "heart disease, complicated by +disease of the larynx," and that he suffered "much and long." He was +buried in the cemetery of Clarens, not far from his great contemporary +Alexander Vinet; and the affection of a sculptor friend provided the +monument which now marks his resting-place. + +We have thus exhausted all the biographical material which is at present +available for the description of Amiel's life and relations toward the +outside world. It is to be hoped that the friends to whom the charge of +his memory has been specially committed may see their way in the +future, if not to a formal biography, which is very likely better left +unattempted, at least to a volume of Letters, which would complete the +"Journal Intime," as Joubert's "Correspondence" completes the "Pensees." +There must be ample material for it; and Amiel's letters would probably +supply us with more of that literary and critical reflection which his +mind produced so freely and so well, as long as there was no question +of publication, but which is at present somewhat overweighted in the +"Journal Intime." + +But whether biography or correspondence is ever forthcoming or not, the +Journal remains--and the Journal is the important matter. We shall read +the Letters if they appear, as we now read the Poems, for the Journal's +sake. The man himself, as poet, teacher, and _litterateur_, produced no +appreciable effect on his generation; but the posthumous record of his +inner life has stirred the hearts of readers all over Europe, and won +him a niche in the House of Fame. What are the reasons for this striking +transformation of a man's position--a transformation which, as M. +Scherer says, will rank among the curiosities of literary history? +In other words, what has given the "Journal Intime" its sudden and +unexpected success? + +In the first place, no doubt, its poetical quality, its beauty of +manner--that fine literary expression in which Amiel has been able to +clothe the subtler processes of thought, no less than the secrets of +religious feeling, or the aspects of natural scenery. Style is what +gives value and currency to thought, and Amiel, in spite of all his +Germanisms, has style of the best kind. He possesses in prose that +indispensable magic which he lacks in poetry. + +His style, indeed, is by no means always in harmony with the central +French tradition. Probably a Frenchman will be inclined to apply +Sainte-Beuve's remarks on Amiel's elder countryman, Rodolphe Toepffer, to +Amiel himself: "_C'est ainsi qu'on ecrit dans les litteratures qui n'ont +point de capitale, de quartier general classique, ou d'Academie; c'est +ainsi qu'un Allemand, qu'un Americain, ou meme un Anglais, use a son gre +de sa langue. En France au contraire, ou il y a une Academie Francaise +... on doit trouver qu'un tel style est une tres-grande nouveaute et le +succes qu'il a obtenu un evenement: il a fallu bien des circonstances +pour y preparer_." No doubt the preparatory circumstance in Amiel's case +has been just that Germanization of the French mind on which M. Taine +and M. Bourget dwell with so much emphasis. But, be this as it may, +there is no mistaking the enthusiasm with which some of the best living +writers of French have hailed these pages--instinct, as one declares, +"with a strange and marvelous poetry;" full of phrases "_d'une intense +suggestion de beaute_;" according to another. Not that the whole of the +Journal flows with the same ease, the same felicity. There are a certain +number of passages where Amiel ceases to be the writer, and becomes the +technical philosopher; there are others, though not many, into which a +certain German heaviness and diffuseness has crept, dulling the edge of +the sentences, and retarding the development of the thought. When all +deductions have been made, however, Amiel's claim is still first and +foremost, the claim of the poet and the artist; of the man whose +thought uses at will the harmonies and resources of speech, and who has +attained, in words of his own, "to the full and masterly expression of +himself." + +Then to the poetical beauty of manner which first helped the book +to penetrate, _faire sa trouee_, as the French say, we must add its +extraordinary psychological interest. Both as poet and as psychologist, +Amiel makes another link in a special tradition; he adds another name +to the list of those who have won a hearing from their fellows as +interpreters of the inner life, as the revealers of man to himself. +He is the successor of St. Augustine and Dante; he is the brother of +Obermann and Maurice de Guerin. What others have done for the spiritual +life of other generations he has done for the spiritual life of this, +and the wealth of poetical, scientific, and psychological faculty which +he has brought to the analysis of human feeling and human perceptions +places him--so far as the present century is concerned--at the head of +the small and delicately-gifted class to which he belongs. For beside +his spiritual experience Obermann's is superficial, and Maurice de +Guerin's a passing trouble, a mere quick outburst of passionate feeling. +Amiel indeed has neither the continuous romantic beauty nor the rich +descriptive wealth of Senancour. The Dent du Midi, with its untrodden +solitude, its primeval silences and its hovering eagles, the Swiss +landscape described in the "Fragment on the Ranz des Vaches," the summer +moonlight on the Lake of Neufchatel--these various pictures are the +work of one of the most finished artists in words that literature has +produced. But how true George Sand's criticism is! "_Chez Obermann la +sensibilite est active, l'intelligence est paresseuse ou insuffisante._" +He has a certain antique power of making the truisms of life splendid +and impressive. No one can write more poetical exercises than he on the +old text of _pulvis et umbra sumus_, but beyond this his philosophical +power fails him. As soon as he leaves the region of romantic description +how wearisome the pages are apt to grow! Instead of a poet, "_un +ergoteur Voltairien_;" instead of the explorer of fresh secrets of the +heart, a Parisian talking a cheap cynicism! Intellectually, the ground +gives way; there is no solidity of knowledge, no range of thought. Above +all, the scientific idea in our sense is almost absent; so that while +Amiel represents the modern mind at its keenest and best, dealing at +will with the vast additions to knowledge which the last fifty years +have brought forth, Senancour is still in the eighteenth-century stage, +talking like Rousseau of a return to primitive manners, and discussing +Christianity in the tone of the "Encyclopedie." + +Maurice de Guerin, again, is the inventor of new terms in the language +of feeling, a poet as Amiel and Senancour are. His love of nature, the +earth-passion which breathes in his letters and journal, has a strange +savor, a force and flame which is all his own. Beside his actual sense +of community with the visible world, Amiel's love of landscape has a +tame, didactic air. The Swiss thinker is too ready to make nature a mere +vehicle of moral or philosophical thought; Maurice de Guerin loves her +for herself alone, and has found words to describe her influence over +him of extraordinary individuality and power. But for the rest the story +of his inner life has but small value in the history of thought. His +difficulties do not go deep enough; his struggle is intellectually not +serious enough--we see in it only a common incident of modern experience +poetically told; it throws no light on the genesis and progress of +the great forces which are molding and renovating the thought of the +present--it tells us nothing for the future. + +No--there is much more in the "Journal Intime" than the imagination or +the poetical glow which Amiel shares with his immediate predecessors +in the art of confession-writing. His book is representative of human +experience in its more intimate and personal forms to an extent hardly +equaled since Rousseau. For his study of himself is only a means to an +end. "What interests me in myself," he declares, "is that I find in my +own case a genuine example of human nature, and therefore a specimen of +general value." It is the human consciousness of to-day, of the modern +world, in its two-fold relation--its relation toward the infinite and +the unknowable, and its relation toward the visible universe which +conditions it--which is the real subject of the "Journal Intime." There +are few elements of our present life which, in a greater or less degree, +are not made vocal in these pages. Amiel's intellectual interest is +untiring. Philosophy, science, letters, art--he has penetrated the +spirit of them all; there is nothing, or almost nothing, within the wide +range of modern activities which he has not at one time or other felt +the attraction of, and learned in some sense to understand. "Amiel," +says M. Renan, "has his defects, but he was certainly one of the +strongest speculative heads who, during the period from 1845 to 1880, +have reflected on the nature of things." And, although a certain fatal +spiritual weakness debarred him to a great extent from the world of +practical life, his sympathy with action, whether it was the action +of the politician or the social reformer, or merely that steady +half-conscious performance of its daily duty which keeps humanity +sweet and living, was unfailing. His horizon was not bounded by his own +"prison-cell," or by that dream-world which he has described with so +much subtle beauty; rather the energies which should have found their +natural expression in literary or family life, pent up within the mind +itself, excited in it a perpetual eagerness for intellectual discovery, +and new powers of sympathy with whatever crossed its field of vision. + +So that the thinker, the historian, the critic, will find himself at +home with Amiel. The power of organizing his thought, the art of writing +a book, _monumentum aere perennius_, was indeed denied him--he +laments it bitterly; but, on the other hand, he is receptivity itself, +responsive to all the great forces which move the time, catching and +reflecting on the mobile mirror of his mind whatever winds are blowing +from the hills of thought. + +And if the thinker is at home with him, so too are the religious minds, +the natures for whom God and duty are the foundation of existence. Here, +indeed, we come to the innermost secret of Amiel's charm, the fact which +probably goes farther than any other to explain his fascination for a +large and growing class of readers. For, while he represents all the +intellectual complexities of a time bewildered by the range and number +of its own acquisitions, the religious instinct in him is as strong +and tenacious as in any of the representative exponents of the life of +faith. The intellect is clear and unwavering; but the heart clings to +old traditions, and steadies itself on the rock of duty. His Calvinistic +training lingers long in him; and what detaches him from the Hegelian +school, with which he has much in common, is his own stronger sense of +personal need, his preoccupation with the idea of "sin." "He speaks," +says M. Renan contemptuously, "of sin, of salvation, of redemption, and +conversion, as if these things were realities. He asks me 'What does M. +Renan make of sin?' _Eh bien, je crois que je le supprime_." But it is +just because Amiel is profoundly sensitive to the problems of evil and +responsibility, and M. Renan dismisses them with this half-tolerant, +half-skeptical smile, that M. Renan's "Souvenirs" inform and entertain +us, while the "Journal Intime" makes a deep impression on that moral +sense which is at the root of individual and national life. + +The Journal is full, indeed, of this note of personal religion. +Religion, Amiel declares again and again, cannot be replaced by +philosophy. The redemption of the intelligence is not the redemption of +the heart. The philosopher and critic may succeed in demonstrating that +the various definite forms into which the religious thought of man has +thrown itself throughout history are not absolute truth, but only the +temporary creations of a need which gradually and surely outgrows them +all. "The Trinity, the life to come, paradise and hell, may cease to +be dogmas and spiritual realities, the form and the letter may vanish +away--the question of humanity remains: What is it which saves?" Amiel's +answer to the question will recall to a wide English circle the method +and spirit of an English teacher, whose dear memory lives to-day in many +a heart, and is guiding many an effort in the cause of good--the method +and spirit of the late Professor Green of Balliol. In many respects +there was a gulf of difference between the two men. The one had all the +will and force of personality which the other lacked. But the ultimate +creed of both, the way in which both interpret the facts of nature and +consciousness, is practically the same. In Amiel's case, we have to +gather it through all the variations and inevitable contradictions of a +Journal which is the reflection of a life, not the systematic expression +of a series of ideas, but the main results are clear enough. Man is +saved by love and duty, and by the hope which springs from duty, or +rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from +the soil. Conscience and the moral progress of the race--these are his +points of departure. Faith in the reality of the moral law is what he +clings to when his inherited creed has yielded to the pressure of the +intellect, and after all the storms of pessimism and necessitarianism +have passed over him. The reconciliation of the two certitudes, the two +methods, the scientific and the religious, "is to be sought for in that +moral law which is also a fact, and every step of which requires for its +explanation another cosmos than the cosmos of necessity." "Nature is the +virtuality of mind, the soul the fruit of life, and liberty the flower +of necessity." Consciousness is the one fixed point in this boundless +and bottomless gulf of things, and the soul's inward law, as it has been +painfully elaborated by human history, the only revelation of God. + +The only but the sufficient revelation! For this first article of a +reasonable creed is the key to all else--the clue which leads the mind +safely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal. +Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from the +belief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in "a holy will at +the root of nature and destiny"--for "if man is capable of conceiving +goodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to +man, must be good." And then the religious consciousness seizes on this +intellectual deduction, and clothes it in language of the heart, in +the tender and beautiful language of faith. "There is but one thing +needful--to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and +soul, are so many ways of approaching the Divine, so many modes of +tasting and adoring God. Religion is not a method; it is a life--a +higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its +fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which +radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows." And the +faith of his youth and his maturity bears the shock of suffering, and +supports him through his last hours. He writes a few months before the +end: "The animal expires; man surrenders his soul to the author of the +soul." ... "We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit +the last resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us from +opening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologue +becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes into +peace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recovered +liberty"--_"Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe."_ + +Nor is this all. It is not only that Amiel's inmost thought and +affections are stayed on this conception of "a holy will at the root of +nature and destiny"--in a certain very real sense he is a Christian. No +one is more sensitive than he to the contribution which Christianity has +made to the religious wealth of mankind; no one more penetrated than he +with the truth of its essential doctrine "death unto sin and a new +birth unto righteousness." "The religion of sin, of repentance and +reconciliation," he cries, "the religion of the new birth and of +eternal life, is not a religion to be ashamed of." The world has +found inspiration and guidance for eighteen centuries in the religious +consciousness of Jesus. "The gospel has modified the world and consoled +mankind," and so "we may hold aloof from the churches and yet bow +ourselves before Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy and refuse to +have anything to do with catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the Just +who came to save and not to curse." And in fact Amiel's whole life and +thought are steeped in Christianity. He is the spiritual descendant of +one of the intensest and most individual forms of Christian belief, +and traces of his religious ancestry are visible in him at every step. +Protestantism of the sincerer and nobler kind leaves an indelible +impression on the nature which has once surrounded itself to the austere +and penetrating influences flowing from the religion of sin and grace; +and so far as feeling and temperament are concerned, Amiel retained +throughout his life the marks of Calvinism and Geneva. + +And yet how clear the intellect remains, through all the anxieties +of thought, and in the face of the soul's dearest memories and most +passionate needs! Amiel, as soon as his reasoning faculty has once +reached its maturity, never deceives himself as to the special claims +of the religion which by instinct and inheritance he loves; he makes +no compromise with dogma or with miracle. Beyond the religions of the +present he sees always the essential religion which lasts when all local +forms and marvels have passed away; and as years go on, with more and +more clearness of conviction, he learns to regard all special beliefs +and systems as "prejudices, useful in practice, but still narrownesses +of the mind;" misgrowths of thought, necessary in their time and place, +but still of no absolute value, and having no final claim on the thought +of man. + +And it is just here--in this mixture of the faith which clings and +aspires, with the intellectual pliancy which allows the mind to sway +freely under the pressure of life and experience, and the deep respect +for truth, which will allow nothing to interfere between thought and +its appointed tasks--that Amiel's special claim upon us lies. It is this +balance of forces in him which makes him so widely representative of the +modern mind--of its doubts, its convictions, its hopes. He speaks for +the life of to-day as no other single voice has yet spoken for it; in +his contradictions, his fears, his despairs, and yet in the constant +straining toward the unseen and the ideal which gives a fundamental +unity to his inner life, he is the type of a generation universally +touched with doubt, and yet as sensitive to the need of faith as any +that have gone before it; more widely conscious than its predecessors +of the limitations of the human mind, and of the iron pressure of man's +physical environment; but at the same time--paradox as it may seem--more +conscious of man's greatness, more deeply thrilled by the spectacle of +the nobility and beauty interwoven with the universe. + +And he plays this part of his so modestly, with so much hesitation, +so much doubt of his thought and of himself! He is no preacher, like +Emerson and Carlyle, with whom, as poet and idealist, he has so much in +common; there is little resemblance between him and the men who +speak, as it were, from a height to the crowd beneath, sure always of +themselves and what they have to say. And here again he represents the +present and foreshadows the future. For the age of the preachers is +passing those who speak with authority on the riddles of life and nature +as the priests of this or that all-explaining dogma, are becoming less +important as knowledge spreads, and the complexity of experience is made +evident to a wider range of minds. The force of things is against _the +certain people_. Again and again truth escapes from the prisons made for +her by mortal hands, and as humanity carries on the endless pursuit she +will pay more and more respectful heed to voices like this voice of the +lonely Genevese thinker--with its pathetic alterations of hope and fear, +and the moral steadfastness which is the inmost note of it--to these +meditative lives, which, through all the ebb and flow of thought, and in +the dim ways of doubt and suffering, rich in knowledge, and yet rich in +faith, grasp in new forms, and proclaim to us in new words, + + "The mighty hopes which make us men." + + + + +AMIEL'S JOURNAL. + + + * * * * * + +[Where no other name is mentioned, Geneva is to be understood as the +author'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 external +resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modes +of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves from +all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only +to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, a +usufruct.... To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to +act: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come what +come will--even death. Only be at peace with self, live in the presence +of God, in communion with Him, and leave the guidance of existence to +those universal powers against whom thou canst do nothing! If death +gives me time, so much the better. If its summons is near, so much the +better still; if a half-death overtake me, still so much the better, +for so the path of success is closed to me only that I may find opening +before me the path of heroism, of moral greatness and resignation. Every +life has its potentiality of greatness, and as it is impossible to be +outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him. + +BERLIN, July 20, 1848.--It gives liberty and breadth to thought, +to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal +history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology +from the point of view of astronomy. When the duration of a man's life +or of a people's life appears to us as microscopic as that of a fly and +inversely, the life of a gnat as infinite as that of a celestial body, +with all its dust of nations, we feel ourselves at once very small and +very great, and we are able, as it were, to survey from the height of +the spheres our own existence, and the little whirlwinds which agitate +our little Europe. + +At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses +of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies +bring us back to this study. + +GENEVA, April 20, 1849.--It is six years [Footnote: Amiel left Geneva +for 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, how many +forms of men and things have since then passed before me and in me! The +last seven years have been the most important of my life: they have been +the novitiate of my intelligence, the initiation of my being into being. + +Three snowstorms this afternoon. Poor blossoming plum-trees and peach +trees! What a difference from six years ago, when the cherry-trees, +adorned in their green spring dress and laden with their bridal flowers, +smiled at my departure along the Vaudois fields, and the lilacs of +Burgundy threw great gusts of perfume into my face!... + +May 3, 1849.--I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or +any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in +imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential +citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, +are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague +and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable +of living. Recognize your place; let the living live; and you, gather +together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; +you will be most useful so. Renounce yourself, accept the cup given +you, with its honey and its gall, as it comes. Bring God down into your +heart. Embalm your soul in Him now, make within you a temple for the +Holy Spirit, be diligent in good works, make others happier and better. + +Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation +in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you. + +May 27, 1849.--To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is +the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and +melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it +is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have +oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it +would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also--He +above 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 hope +always, 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 fields +vague and health-giving scents. The Voirons fringed with dazzling mists, +and tints of exquisite softness over the Saleve. Work in the fields, two +delightful donkeys, one pulling greedily at a hedge of barberry. Then +three little children. I felt a boundless desire to caress and play +with them. To be able to enjoy such leisure, these peaceful fields, fine +weather, contentment; to have my two sisters with me; to rest my eyes on +balmy meadows and blossoming orchards; to listen to the life singing in +the grass and on the trees; to be so calmly happy--is it not too much? +is it deserved? O let me enjoy it with gratitude. The days of trouble +come soon enough and are many enough. I have no presentiment of +happiness. All the more let me profit by the present. Come, kind nature, +smile and enchant me! Veil from me awhile my own griefs and those of +others; let me see only the folds of thy queenly mantle, and hide all +miserable and ignoble things from me under thy bounties and splendors! + +October 1, 1849.--Yesterday, Sunday, I read through and made extracts +from the gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my belief that about +Jesus we must believe no one but Himself, and that what we have to do +is to discover the true image of the founder behind all the prismatic +reactions through which it comes to us, and which alter it more or less. +A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of Christ +has been broken into a thousand rainbow colors and carried in a thousand +directions. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume +with every succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be forever +spiritualizing more and more her understanding of the Christ and of +salvation. + +I am astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which +still exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's proclamation, +"it is the letter which killeth"--after his protest against a dead +symbolism. The new religion is so profound that it is not understood +even now, and would seem a blasphemy to the greater number of +Christians. The person of Christ is the center of it. Redemption, +eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment, +Satan, heaven and hell--all these beliefs have been so materialized and +coarsened, that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle of +things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian +boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church +which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart +timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a +relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters +into him, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise Johannes +Soheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, whose tender and +mystical verses have been popularized in England by Miss Winkworth's +translations in the _Lyra Germanica_.] I think, said, "the eye by which +I see God is the same eye by which He sees me." + +Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it. To +our pusillanimous eyes Jesus would have borne the marks of a hateful +pantheism, for he confirmed the Biblical phrase "ye are gods," and +so would St. Paul, who tells us that we are of "the race of God." +Our century wants a new theology--that is to say, a more profound +explanation of the nature of Christ and of the light which it flashes +upon heaven and upon humanity. + + * * * * * + +Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh--that is to +say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of 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 world +while at the same time detaching us from it. + + * * * * * + +December 30, 1850.--The relation of thought to action filled my mind on +waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems +to have something of the night still clinging about it: _Action is but +coarsened thought_; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. +It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and +sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, +and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the +commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper +our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries +are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the +work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is +unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent +and moral action. At bottom this is nothing more than the proposition of +Hegel: ["What is rational is real; and what is real is rational;"] but +it had never seemed to me more evident, more palpable. Everything which +is, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The human +intelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I have +formulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of +what? of mind. + +... I have just been looking through the complete works of Montesquieu, +and cannot yet make plain to myself the impression left on me by +this singular style, with its mixture of gravity and affectation, of +carelessness and precision, of strength and delicacy; so full of sly +intention for all its coldness, expressing at once inquisitiveness and +indifference, abrupt, piecemeal, like notes thrown together haphazard, +and yet deliberate. I seem to see an intelligence naturally grave and +austere donning a dress of wit for convention's sake. The author desires +to entertain as much as to teach, the thinker is also a _bel-esprit_, +the jurisconsult has a touch of the coxcomb, and a perfumed breath from +the temple of Venus has penetrated the tribunal of Minos. Here we have +austerity, as the century understood it, in philosophy or religion. In +Montesquieu, the art, if there is any, lies not in the words but in +the matter. The words run freely and lightly, but the thought is +self-conscious. + + * * * * * + +Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect +beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, +its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and +radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the +meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the +heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that +moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, +poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your +feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is +their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim +presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence +or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal. + +Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent fury +conscious of its impotence. + + * * * * * + +Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement. + + * * * * * + +To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. + + * * * * * + +In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit +is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is +nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits +is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a +tissue of habits. + + * * * * * + +February 17, 1851.--I have been reading, for six or seven hours without +stopping the _Pensees_ of Joubert. I felt at first a very strong +attraction toward the book, and a deep interest in it, but I have +already a good deal cooled down. These scattered and fragmentary +thoughts, falling upon one without a pause, like drops of light, tire, +not my head, but reasoning power. The merits of Joubert consist in the +grace of the style, the vivacity or _finesse_ of the criticisms, the +charm of the metaphors; but he starts many more problems than he solves, +he notices and records more than he explains. His philosophy is +merely literary and popular; his originality is only in detail and +in execution. Altogether, he is a writer of reflections rather than +a philosopher, a critic of remarkable gifts, endowed with exquisite +sensibility, but, as an intelligence, destitute of the capacity for +co-ordination. He wants concentration and continuity. It is not that he +has no claims to be considered a philosopher or an artist, but rather +that he is both imperfectly, for he thinks and writes marvelously, _on a +small scale_. He is an entomologist, a lapidary, a jeweler, a coiner of +sentences, of adages, of criticisms, of aphorisms, counsels, problems; +and his book, extracted from the accumulations of his journal during +fifty years of his life, is a collection of precious stones, of +butterflies, coins and engraved gems. The whole, however, is more subtle +than strong, more poetical than profound, and leaves upon the reader +rather the impression of a great wealth of small curiosities of value, +than of a great intellectual existence and a new point of view. +The place of Joubert seems to me then, below and very far from the +philosophers and the true poets, but honorable among the moralists and +the critics. He is one of those men who are superior to their works, and +who have themselves the unity which these lack. This first judgment is, +besides, indiscriminate and severe. I shall have to modify it later. + +February 20th.--I have almost finished these two volumes of _Pensees_ +and the greater part of the _Correspondance_. This last has especially +charmed me; it is remarkable for grace, delicacy, atticism, and +precision. The chapters on metaphysics and philosophy are the most +insignificant. All that has to do with large views with the whole of +things, is very little at Joubert's command; he has no philosophy of +history, no speculative intuition. He is the thinker of detail, and his +proper field is psychology and matters of taste. In this sphere of the +subtleties and delicacies of imagination and feeling, within the circle +of personal affectation and preoccupations, of social and educational +interests, he abounds in ingenuity and sagacity, in fine criticisms, +in exquisite touches. It is like a bee going from flower to flower, a +teasing, plundering, wayward zephyr, an Aeolian harp, a ray of furtive +light stealing through the leaves. Taken as a whole, there is something +impalpable and immaterial about him, which I will not venture to call +effeminate, but which is scarcely manly. He wants bone and body: timid, +dreamy, and _clairvoyant_, he hovers far above reality. He is rather a +soul, a breath, than a man. It is the mind of a woman in the character +of a child, so that we feel for him less admiration than tenderness and +gratitude. + +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 +hunger for style and beauty. I was conscious instead of an impression of +heaviness and harshness, of labored, _hammering_ emphasis, of something +violent, passionate, and obstinate, without serenity, greatness, +nobility. Both the qualities and the defects of the book produced in +me a sense of lack of good manners, a blaze of talent, but no grace, no +distinction, the accent of good company wanting. I understood how it is +that Rousseau rouses a particular kind of repugnance, the repugnance of +good taste, and I felt the danger to style involved in such a model +as well as the danger to thought arising from a truth so alloyed and +sophisticated. What there is of true and strong in Rousseau did not +escape me, and I still admired him, but his bad sides appeared to me +with a clearness relatively new. + +(_Same day._)--The _pensee_-writer is to the philosopher what the +_dilettante_ is to the artist. He plays with thought, and makes it +produce a crowd of pretty things in detail, but he is more anxious about +truths than truth, and what is essential in thought, its sequence, its +unity, escapes him. He handles his instrument agreeably, but he does +not possess it, still less does he create it. He is a gardener and not a +geologist; he cultivates the earth only so much as is necessary to make +it produce for him flowers and fruits; he does not dig deep enough into +it to understand it. In a word, the _pensee_-writer deals with what is +superficial and fragmentary. He is the literary, the oratorical, +the talking or writing philosopher; whereas the philosopher is the +scientific _pensee_-writer. The _pensee_-writers serve to stimulate or +to popularize the philosophers. They have thus a double use, besides +their charm. They are the pioneers of the army of readers, the doctors +of the crowd, the money-changers of thought, which they convert into +current coin. The writer of _pensee_ is a man of letters, though of +a serious type, and therefore he is popular. The philosopher is a +specialist, as far as the form of his science goes, though not in +substance, and therefore he can never become popular. In France, for one +philosopher (Descartes) there have been thirty writers of _pensees_; in +Germany, for ten such writers there have been twenty philosophers. + +March 25, 1851.--How many illustrious men whom I have known have been +already reaped by death, Steffens, Marheineke, Neander, Mendelssohn, +Thorwaldsen, Oelenschlaeger, Geijer, Tegner, Oersted, Stuhr, Lachmann; +and with us, Sismondi, Toepffer, de Candolle, savants, artists, poets, +musicians, historians. [Footnote: Of these Marheineke, Neander, and +Lachmann had been lecturing at Berlin during Amiel's residence there. +The Danish dramatic poet Oelenschlaeger and the Swedish writer +Tegner were among the Scandinavian men of letters with whom he made +acquaintance during his tour of Sweden and Denmark in 1845. He probably +came across the Swedish historian Geijer on the same occasion. Schelling +and Alexander von Humboldt, mentioned a little lower down, were +also still holding sway at Berlin when he was a student. There is an +interesting description in one of his articles on Berlin, published in +the _Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve_, of a university ceremonial +there in or about 1847, and of the effect produced on the student's +young imagination by the sight of half the leaders of European research +gathered into a single room. He saw Schlosser, the veteran historian, at +Heidelberg at the end of 1843.] The old generation is going. What will +the new bring us? What shall we ourselves contribute? A few great old +men--Schelling, Alexander von Humboldt, Schlosser--still link us with +the glorious past. Who is preparing to bear the weight of the future? +A shiver seizes us when the ranks grow thin around us, when age is +stealing upon us, when we approach the zenith, and when destiny says to +us: "Show what is in thee! Now is the moment, now is the hour, else fall +back into nothingness! It is thy turn! Give the world thy measure, say +thy word, reveal thy nullity or thy capacity. Come forth from the shade! +It is no longer a question of promising, thou must perform. The time of +apprenticeship is over. Servant, show us what thou hast done with thy +talent. Speak now, or be silent forever." This appeal of the conscience +is a solemn summons in the life of every man, solemn and awful as +the trumpet of the last judgment. It cries, "Art thou ready? Give an +account. Give an account of thy years, thy leisure, thy strength, thy +studies, thy talent, and thy works. Now and here is the hour of great +hearts, the hour of heroism and of genius." + +April 6, 1851.--Was there ever any one so vulnerable as I? If I were +a father how many griefs and vexations, a child might cause me. As a +husband I should have a thousand ways of suffering because my happiness +demands a thousand conditions I have a heart too easily reached, a +too restless imagination; despair is easy to me, and every sensation +reverberates again and again within me. What might be, spoils for me +what is. What ought to be consumes me with sadness. So the reality, the +present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I +have too much imagination, conscience and penetration, and not enough +character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough +elasticity and immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; +practical life makes me afraid. + +And yet, at the same time it attracts me; I have need of it. Family +life, especially, in all its delightfulness, in all its moral depth, +appeals to me almost like a duty. Sometimes I cannot escape from the +ideal of it. A companion of my life, of my work, of my thoughts, of my +hopes; within, a common worship, toward the world outside, kindness +and beneficence; educations to undertake, the thousand and one moral +relations which develop round the first, all these ideas intoxicate me +sometimes. But I put them aside because every hope is, as it were, an +egg whence a serpent may issue instead of a dove, because every joy +missed is a stab; because every seed confided to destiny contains an ear +of grief which the future may develop. + +I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know myself. +The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. Everything which +compromises the future or destroys my inner liberty, which enslaves me +to things or obliges me to be other than I could and ought to be, all +which injures my idea of the perfect man, hurts me mortally, degrades +and wounds me in mind, even beforehand. I abhor useless regrets and +repentances. The fatality of the consequences which follow upon every +human act, the leading idea of dramatic art and the most tragic element +of life, arrests me more certainly than the arm of the _Commandeur_. I +only act with regret, and almost by force. + +To be dependent is to me terrible; but to depend upon what is +irreparable, arbitrary and unforeseen, and above all to be so dependent +by my fault and through my own error, to give up liberty and hope, to +slay sleep and happiness, this would be hell! + +All that is necessary, providential, in short, _unimputable_, I could +bear, I think, with some strength of mind. But responsibility mortally +envenoms grief; and as an act is essentially voluntary, therefore I act +as little as possible. + +Last outbreak of a rebellious and deceitful self-will, craving for +repose for satisfaction, for independence! is there not some relic +of selfishness in such a disinterestedness, such a fear, such idle +susceptibility. + +I wish to fulfill my duty, but where is it, what is it? Here inclination +comes in again and interprets the oracle. And the ultimate question is +this: Does duty consist in obeying one's nature, even the best and most +spiritual? or in conquering it? + +Life, is it essentially the education of the mind and intelligence, +or that of the will? And does will show itself in strength or in +resignation? If the aim of life is to teach us renunciation, then +welcome sickness, hindrances, sufferings of every kind! But if its aim +is to produce the perfect man, then one must watch over one's integrity +of mind and body. To court trial is to tempt God. At bottom, the God of +justice veils from me the God of love. I tremble instead of trusting. + +Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed +voice, it is not yet the voice of God. Descend still deeper into +yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear and undivided voice, a +voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light +and serenity. Happy, says the apostle, are they who are at peace with +themselves, and whose heart condemneth them not in the part they take. +This inner identity, this unity of conviction, is all the more +difficult the more the mind analyzes, discriminates, and foresees. It is +difficult, indeed, for liberty to return to the frank unity of instinct. + +Alas! we must then re-climb a thousand times the peaks already scaled, +and reconquer the points of view already won, we must _fight the fight_! +The human heart, like kings, signs mere truces under a pretence of +perpetual peace. The eternal life is eternally to be re-won. Alas, yes! +peace itself is a struggle, or rather it is struggle and activity +which are the law. We only find rest in effort, as the flame only finds +existence in combustion. O Heraclitus! the symbol of happiness is after +all the same as that of grief; anxiety and hope, hell and heaven, are +equally restless. The altar of Vesta and the sacrifice of Beelzebub burn +with the same fire. Ah, yes, there you have life--life double-faced and +double-edged. The fire which enlightens is also the fire which consumes; +the element of the gods may become that of the accursed. + +April 7, 1851.--Read a part of Ruge's [Footnote: Arnold Ruge, born in +1803, died at Brighton in 1880, principal editor of the _Hallische_, +afterward the _Deutsche Jahrbuecher_ (1838-43), in which Strauss, Bruno +Bauer, and Louis Feuerbach wrote. He was a member of the parliament of +Frankfort.] volume "_Die Academie_" (1848) where the humanism of the +neo-Hegelians in politics, religion, and literature is represented by +correspondents or articles (Kuno Fischer, Kollach, etc). They recall the +_philosophist_ party of the last century, able to dissolve anything by +reason and reasoning, but unable to construct anything; for construction +rests upon feeling, instinct, and will. One finds them mistaking +philosophic consciousness for realizing power, the redemption of the +intelligence for the redemption of the heart, that is to say, the part +for the whole. These papers make me understand the radical difference +between morals and intellectualism. The writers of them wish to supplant +religion by philosophy. Man is the principle of their religion, and +intellect is the climax of man. Their religion, then, is the religion +of intellect. There you have the two worlds: Christianity brings and +preaches salvation by the conversion of the will, humanism by the +emancipation of the mind. One attacks the heart, the other the brain. +Both wish to enable man to reach his ideal. But the ideal differs, if +not by its content, at least by the disposition of its content, by the +predominance and sovereignty given to this for that inner power. For +one, the mind is the organ of the soul; for the other, the soul is +an inferior state of the mind; the one wishes to enlighten by making +better, the other to make better by enlightening. It is the difference +between Socrates and Jesus. + +_The cardinal question is that of sin._ The question of immanence or of +dualism is secondary. The trinity, the life to come, paradise and hell, +may cease to be dogmas, and spiritual realities, the form and the letter +may vanish away, the question of humanity remains: What is it which +saves? How can man be led to be truly man? Is the ultimate root of his +being responsibility, yes or no? And is doing or knowing the right, +acting or thinking, his ultimate end? If science does not produce +love it is insufficient. Now all that science gives is the _amor +intellectualis_ of Spinoza, light without warmth, a resignation which +is contemplative and grandiose, but inhuman, because it is scarcely +transmissible and remains a privilege, one of the rarest of all. Moral +love places the center of the individual in the center of being. It has +at least salvation in principle, the germ of eternal life. _To love is +virtually to know; to know is not virtually to love_; there you have the +relation of these two modes of man. The redemption wrought by science or +by intellectual love is then inferior to the redemption wrought by +will or by moral love. The first may free a man from himself, it may +enfranchise him from egotism. The second drives the _ego_ out of itself, +makes it active and fruitful. The one is critical, purifying, negative; +the other is vivifying, fertilizing, positive. Science, however +spiritual and substantial it may be in itself, is still formal +relatively to love. Moral force is then the vital point. And this force +is only produced by moral force. Like alone acts upon like. Therefore do +not amend by reasoning, but by example; approach feeling by feeling; +do not hope to excite love except by love. Be what you wish others to +become. 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 been +revolutionaries. To save from the outside to the inside--and by the +outside I understand also the intelligence relatively to the will--is an +error and danger. The negative part of the humanist's work is good; it +will strip Christianity of an outer shell, which has become superfluous; +but Ruge and Feuerbach cannot save humanity. She must have her saints +and her heroes to complete the work of her philosophers. Science is +the power of man, and love his strength; man _becomes_ man only by +the intelligence, but he _is_ man only by the heart. Knowledge, love, +power--there is the complete life. + +June 16, 1851.--This evening I walked up and down on the Pont des +Bergues, under a clear, moonless heaven delighting in the freshness of +the water, streaked with light from the two quays, and glimmering under +the twinkling stars. Meeting all these different groups of young people, +families, couples and children, who were returning to their homes, to +their garrets or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking as they went, +I felt a movement of sympathy for all these passers-by; my eyes and +ears became those of a poet or a painter; while even one's mere kindly +curiosity seems to bring with it a joy in living and in seeing others +live. + +August 15, 1851.--To know how to be ready, a great thing, a precious +gift, and one that implies calculation, grasp and decision. To be always +ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; +he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which +it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, +he must be able to simplify his duties, his business, and his life. To +know how to be ready, is to know how to start. + +It is astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered up with the +thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but which +nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter the +movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us slaves; +the confusion of to-day discounts the freedom of to-morrow. + +Confusion is the enemy of all comfort, and confusion is born of +procrastination. To know how to be ready we must be able to finish. +Nothing is done but what is finished. The things which we leave dragging +behind us will start up again later on before us and harass our path. +Let each day take thought for what concerns it, liquidate its own +affairs and respect the day which is to follow, and then we shall be +always ready. To know how to be ready is at bottom to know how to die. + +September 2, 1851.--Read the work of Tocqueville ("_De la Democratie +en Amerique_.") My impression is as yet a mixed one. A fine book, but +I feel in it a little too much imitation of Montesquieu. This abstract, +piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and +monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It +makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it +seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating +a subject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see +the details too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude of +sparks gives but a poor light. Nevertheless, the author is evidently a +ripe and penetrating intelligence, who takes a comprehensive view of +his subject, while at the same time possessing a power of acute and +exhaustive analysis. + +September 6th.--Tocqueville's book has on the whole a calming effect +upon the mind, but it leaves a certain sense of disgust behind. It +makes one realize the necessity of what is happening around us and the +inevitableness of the goal prepared for us; but it also makes it plain +that the era of _mediocrity_ in everything is beginning, and mediocrity +freezes all desire. Equality engenders uniformity, and it is by +sacrificing what is excellent, remarkable, and extraordinary that we get +rid of what is bad. The whole becomes less barbarous, and at the same +time more vulgar. + +The age of great men is going; the epoch of the ant-hill, of life in +multiplicity, is beginning. The century of individualism, if abstract +equality triumphs, runs a great risk of seeing no more true individuals. +By continual leveling and division of labor, society will become +everything and man nothing. + +As the floor of valleys is raised by the denudation and washing down +of the mountains, what is average will rise at the expense of what is +great. The exceptional will disappear. A plateau with fewer and fewer +undulations, without contrasts and without oppositions, such will be +the aspect of human society. The statistician will register a growing +progress, and the moralist a gradual decline: on the one hand, a +progress of things; on the other, a decline of souls. The useful will +take the place of the beautiful, industry of art, political economy of +religion, and arithmetic of poetry. The spleen will become the malady of +a leveling age. + +Is this indeed the fate reserved for the democratic era? May not the +general well-being be purchased too dearly at such a price? The creative +force which in the beginning we see forever tending to produce and +multiply differences, will it afterward retrace its steps and obliterate +them one by one? And equality, which in the dawn of existence is mere +inertia, torpor, and death, is it to become at last the natural form of +life? Or rather, above the economic and political equality to which the +socialist and non-socialist democracy aspires, taking it too often for +the term of its efforts, will there not arise a new kingdom of mind, a +church of refuge, a republic of souls, in which, far beyond the region +of mere right and sordid utility, beauty, devotion, holiness, heroism, +enthusiasm, the extraordinary, the infinite, shall have a worship and an +abiding city? Utilitarian materialism, barren well-being, the idolatry +of the flesh and of the "I," of the temporal and of mammon, are they to +be the goal if our efforts, the final recompense promised to the labors +of our race? I do not believe it. The ideal of humanity is something +different and higher. + +But the animal in us must be satisfied first, and we must first banish +from among us all suffering which is superfluous and has its origin in +social arrangements, before we can return to spiritual goods. + +September 7, 1851. (_Aix_).--It is ten o'clock at night. A strange +and mystic moonlight, with a fresh breeze and a sky crossed by a few +wandering clouds, makes our terrace delightful. These pale and gentle +rays shed from the zenith a subdued and penetrating peace; it is like +the calm joy or the pensive smile of experience, combined with a certain +stoic strength. The stars shine, the leaves tremble in the silver light. +Not a sound in all the landscape; great gulfs of shadow under the green +alleys and at the corners of the steps. Everything is secret, solemn, +mysterious. + +O night hours, hours of silence and solitude! with you are grace and +melancholy; you sadden and you console. You speak to us of all that +has passed away, and of all that must still die, but you say to us, +"courage!" and you promise us rest. + +November 9, 1851. (Sunday).--At the church of St. Gervais, a second +sermon from Adolphe Monod, less grandiose perhaps but almost more +original, and to me more edifying than that of last Sunday. The subject +was St. Paul or the active life, his former one having been St. John or +the inner life, of the Christian. I felt the golden spell of eloquence: +I found myself hanging on the lips of the orator, fascinated by his +boldness, his grace, his energy, and his art, his sincerity, and his +talent; and it was borne in upon me that for some men difficulties are +a source of inspiration, so that what would make others stumble is for +them the occasion of their highest triumphs. He made St. Paul _cry_ +during an hour and a half; he made an old nurse of him, he hunted up his +old cloak, his prescriptions of water and wine to Timothy, the canvas +that he mended, his friend Tychicus, in short, all that could raise a +smile; and from it he drew the most unfailing pathos, the most austere +and penetrating lessons. He made the whole St. Paul, martyr, apostle and +man, his grief, his charities, his tenderness, live again before us, +and this with a grandeur, an unction, a warmth of reality, such as I had +never 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 +an apotheosis of ardent charity in a time of coldness and indifference +toward souls, such an apotheosis of a _human_, natural, inbred +Christianity, in an age, when some put it, so to speak, above man, and +others below man! Finally, as a peroration, he dwelt upon the necessity +for a new people, for a stronger generation, if the world is to be +saved from the tempests which threaten it. "People of God, awake! Sow +in tears, that ye may reap in triumph!" What a study is such a sermon! +I felt all the extraordinary literary skill of it, while my eyes were +still dim with tears. Diction, composition, similes, all is instructive +and precious to remember. I was astonished, shaken, taken hold of. + +November 18, 1851.--The energetic subjectivity, which has faith in +itself, which does not fear to be something particular and definite +without any consciousness or shame of its subjective illusion, is +unknown to me. I am, so far as the intellectual order is concerned, +essentially objective, and my distinctive speciality, is to be able +to place myself in all points of view, to see through all eyes, to +emancipate myself, that is to say, from the individual prison. Hence +aptitude for theory and irresolution in practice; hence critical talent +and difficulty in spontaneous production. Hence, also, a continuous +uncertainty of conviction and opinion, so long as my aptitude remained +mere instinct; but now that it is conscious and possesses itself, it is +able to conclude and affirm in its turn, so that, after having brought +disquiet, it now brings peace. It says: "There is no repose for the mind +except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the +soul, except in the divine." Nothing finite is true, is interesting, or +worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and +all that is exclusive, repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the +All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being. Then, in +the light of the absolute, every idea becomes worth studying; in that of +the 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 always +turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but +leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds +may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a +place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown +God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to +tame 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 in +light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection +of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in +upon its darkness; let it take shape and grow, and not a word of your +happiness to any one! Sacred work of nature as it is, all conception +should be enwrapped by the triple veil of modesty, silence and night. + + * * * * * + +Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the first +condition of _savoir-vivre_. + + * * * * * + +He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; +he who does not advance, falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, +distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; he +who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of +the end--it is the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live, is +to achieve a perpetual triumph; it is to assert one's self against +destruction, against sickness, against the annulling and dispersion of +one's physical and moral being. It is to will without ceasing, or rather +to refresh one's will day by day. + + * * * * * + +It is not history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is the +conscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting, it is we who +correct it by the persistence of our ideal. The soul moralizes the past +in order not to be demoralized by it. Like the alchemists of the middle +ages, she finds in the crucible of experience only the gold that she +herself has poured into it. + + * * * * * + +February 1, 1852. (Sunday).--Passed the afternoon in reading the +_Monologues_ of Schleiermacher. This little book made an impression on +me almost as deep as it did twelve years ago, when I read it for the +first time. It replunged me into the inner world, to which I return with +joy whenever I may have forsaken it. I was able besides, to measure my +progress since then by the transparency of all the thoughts to me, and +by the freedom with which I entered into and judged the point of view. + +It is great, powerful, profound, but there is still pride in it, and +even selfishness. For the center of the universe is still the self, the +great _Ich_ of Fichte. The tameless liberty, the divine dignity of +the individual spirit, expanding till it admits neither any limit nor +anything foreign to itself, and conscious of a strength instinct with +creative force, such is the point of view of the _Monologues_. + +The inner life in its enfranchisement from time, in its double end, +the realization of the species and of the individuality, in its proud +dominion over all hostile circumstances, in its prophetic certainty of +the future, in its immortal youth, such is their theme. Through them we +are enabled to enter into a life of monumental interest, wholly original +and beyond the influence of anything exterior, an astonishing example +of the autonomy of the _ego_, an imposing type of character, Zeno and +Fichte in one. But still the motive power of this life is not +religious; it is rather moral and philosophic. I see in it not so much a +magnificent model to imitate as a precious subject of study. This ideal +of a liberty, absolute, indefeasible, inviolable, respecting itself +above all, disdaining the visible and the universe, and developing +itself after its own laws alone, is also the ideal of Emerson, the stoic +of a young America. According to it, man finds his joy in himself, +and, safe in the 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 is +himself, and that is enough for him. This superb triumph of life is +not far from being a sort of impiety, or at least a displacement of +adoration. By the mere fact that it does away with humility, such a +superhuman point of view becomes dangerous; it is the very temptation +to which the first man succumbed, that of becoming his own master by +becoming like unto the Elohim. Here then the heroism of the philosopher +approaches temerity, and the _Monologues_ are therefore open to three +reproaches: Ontologically, the position of man in the spiritual universe +is wrongly indicated; the individual soul, not being unique and not +springing from itself, can it be conceived without God? Psychologically, +the force of spontaneity in the _ego_ is allowed a dominion too +exclusive of any other. As a fact, it is not everything in man. Morally, +evil is scarcely named, and conflict, the condition of true 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 is rather a stroke +of good fortune. + +February 2d.--Still the _Monologues_. Critically I defended myself +enough against them yesterday; I may abandon myself now, without scruple +and without danger, to the admiration and the sympathy with which they +inspire me. This life so proudly independent, this sovereign conception +of human dignity, this actual possession of the universe and the +infinite, this perfect emancipation from all which passes, this calm +sense of strength and superiority, this invincible energy of will, this +infallible clearness of self-vision, this autocracy of the consciousness +which is its own master, all these decisive marks of a royal personality +of a nature Olympian, profound, complete, harmonious, penetrate the +mind with joy and heart with gratitude. What a life! what a man! These +glimpses into the inner regions of a great soul do one good. Contact of +this kind strengthens, restores, refreshes. Courage returns as we gaze; +when we see what has been, we doubt no more that it can be again. At the +sight of a _man_ we too say to ourselves, let us also be men. + +March 3, 1852.--Opinion has its value and even its power: to have it +against us is painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the case +of the outer world. We should neither flatter opinion nor court it; but +it is better, if we can help it, not to throw it on to a false scent. +The first error is a meanness; the second an imprudence. We should be +ashamed of the one; we may regret the other. Look to yourself; you are +much given to this last fault, and it has already done you great harm. +Be ready to bend your pride; abase yourself even so far as to show +yourself ready and clever like others. This world of skillful egotisms +and active ambitions, this world of men, in which one must deceive +by smiles, conduct, and silence as much as by actual words, a world +revolting to the proud and upright soul, it is our business to learn to +live in it! Success is required in it: succeed. Only force is recognized +there: be strong. Opinion seeks to impose her law upon all, instead of +setting her at defiance, it would be better to struggle with her and +conquer.... I understand the indignation of contempt, and the wish to +crush, roused irresistibly by all that creeps, all that is tortuous, +oblique, ignoble.... But I cannot maintain such a mood, which is a mood +of vengeance, for long. This world is a world of men, and these men +are our brothers. We must not banish from us the divine breath, we must +love. Evil must be conquered by good; and before all things one must +keep a pure conscience. Prudence may be preached from this point of +view too. "Be ye simple as the dove and prudent as the serpent," are the +words of Jesus. Be careful of your reputation, not through vanity, but +that you may not harm your life's work, and out of love for truth. There +is still something of self-seeking in the refined disinterestedness +which will not justify itself, that it may feel itself superior to +opinion. It requires ability, to make what we seem agree with what we +are, and humility, to feel that we are no great things. + +There, thanks to this journal, my excitement has passed away. I have +just read the last book of it through again, and the morning has passed +by. On the way I have been conscious of a certain amount of monotony. +It does not signify! These pages are not written to be read; they are +written for my own consolation and warning. They are landmarks in my +past; and some of the landmarks are funeral crosses, stone pyramids, +withered stalks grown green again, white pebbles, coins--all of them +helpful toward finding one's way again through the Elysian fields of the +soul. The pilgrim has marked his stages in it; he is able to trace by it +his thoughts, his tears, his joys. This is my traveling diary: if some +passages from it may be useful to others, and if sometimes even I have +communicated such passages to the public, these thousand pages as a +whole are only of value to me and to those who, after me, may take some +interest in the itinerary of an obscurely conditioned soul, far from the +world's noise and fame. These sheets will be monotonous when my life is +so; they will repeat themselves when feelings repeat themselves; truth +at any rate will be always there, and truth is their only muse, their +only pretext, their only duty. + +April 2, 1852.--What a lovely walk! Sky clear, sun rising, all the tints +bright, all the outlines sharp, save for the soft and misty infinite +of the lake. A pinch of white frost, powdered the fields, lending a +metallic relief to the hedges of green box, and to the whole landscape, +still without leaves, an air of health and vigor, of youth and +freshness. "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 and +laughing energy into veins and marrow. If every day is a repetition of +life, every dawn gives signs as it were a new contract with existence. +At dawn everything is fresh, light, simple, as it is for children. At +dawn spiritual truth, like the atmosphere, is more transparent, and our +organs, like the young leaves, drink in the light more eagerly, breathe +in more ether, and less of things earthly. If night and the starry sky +speak to the meditative soul of God, of eternity and the infinite, the +dawn is the time for projects, for resolutions, for the birth of action. +While the silence and the "sad serenity of the azure vault," incline the +soul to self-recollection, the vigor and gayety of nature spread into +the heart and make it eager for life and living. Spring is upon us. +Primroses and violets have already hailed her coming. Rash blooms are +showing on the peach trees; the swollen buds of the pear trees and +the lilacs point to the blossoming that is to be; the honeysuckles are +already green. + +April 26, 1852.--This evening a feeling of emptiness took possession +of me; and the solemn ideas of duty, the future, solitude, pressed +themselves upon me. I gave myself to meditation, a very necessary +defense against the dispersion and distraction brought about by the +day's work and its detail. Read a part of Krause's book "_Urbild der +Menschheit_" [Footnote: Christian Frederick Krause, died 1832, Hegel's +younger contemporary, and the author of a system which he called +_panentheism_--Amiel alludes to it later on.] which answered marvelously +to my thought and my need. This philosopher has always a beneficent +effect upon me; his sweet religious serenity gains upon me and invades +me. He inspires me with a sense of peace and infinity. + +Still I miss something, common worship, a positive religion, shared with +other people. Ah! when will the church to which I belong in heart rise +into being? I cannot like Scherer, content myself with being in the +right all alone. I must have a less solitary Christianity. My religious +needs are not satisfied any more than my social needs, or my needs of +affection. Generally I am able to forget them and lull them to sleep. +But at times they wake up with a sort of painful bitterness ... I waver +between languor and _ennui_, between frittering myself away on the +infinitely little, and longing after what is unknown and distant. It is +like 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 +of the soul, every place where the heart feels itself strange, +dissatisfied, restless and thirsty. Alas! well understood, this place is +the earth, this country of one's dreams is heaven, and this suffering is +the eternal homesickness, the thirst for happiness. + +"_In der Beschraenkung zeigt sich erst der Meister_," says Goethe. _Male +resignation_, this also is the motto of those who are masters of the +art of life; "manly," that is to say, courageous, active, resolute, +persevering, "resignation," that is to say, self-sacrifice, +renunciation, limitation. Energy in resignation, there lies the wisdom +of the sons of earth, the only serenity possible in this life of +struggle and of combat. In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too the +promise of triumph. + +April 28, 1852. (Lancy.) [Footnote: A village near Geneva.]--Once more I +feel the spring languor creeping over me, the spring air about me. This +morning the poetry of the scene, the song of the birds, the tranquil +sunlight, the breeze blowing over the fresh green fields, all rose into +and filled my heart. Now all is silent. O silence, thou art terrible! +terrible as that calm of the ocean which lets the eye penetrate the +fathomless abysses below. Thou showest us in ourselves depths which +make us giddy, inextinguishable needs, treasures of suffering. Welcome +tempests! at least they blur and trouble the surface of these waters +with their terrible secrets. Welcome the passion blasts which stir the +wares of the soul, and so veil from us its bottomless gulfs! In all of +us, children of dust, sons of time, eternity inspires an involuntary +anguish, and the infinite, a mysterious terror. We seem to be entering a +kingdom of the dead. Poor heart, thy craving is for life, for love, for +illusions! And thou art right after all, for life is sacred. + +In these moments of _tete-a-tete_ with the infinite, how different life +looks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenly +puerile, frivolous and vain. We seem to ourselves mere puppets, +marionettes, strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistaking +gewgaws for things of great price. At such moments, how everything +becomes transformed, how everything changes! Berkeley and Fichte seem +right, Emerson too; the world is but an allegory; the idea is more real +than the fact; fairy tales, legends, are as true as natural history, and +even more true, for they are emblems of greater transparency. The only +substance properly so called is the soul. What is all the rest? Mere +shadow, pretext, figure, symbol, or dream. Consciousness alone is +immortal, positive, perfectly real. The world is but a firework, +a sublime phantasmagoria, destined to cheer and form the soul. +Consciousness is a universe, and its sun is love.... + +Already I am falling back into the objective life of thought. It +delivers me from--shall I say? no, it deprives me of the intimate life +of feeling. Reflection solves reverie and burns her delicate wings. This +is why science does not make men, but merely entities and abstractions. +Ah, let us feel and live and beware of too much analysis! Let us put +spontaneity, _naivete_, before reflection, experience before study; let +us make life itself our study. Shall I then never have the heart of a +woman to rest upon? a son in whom to live again, a little world where I +may see flowering and blooming all that is stifled in me? I shrink and +draw back, for fear of breaking my dream. I have staked so much on this +card that I dare not play it. Let me dream again.... + +Do no violence to yourself, respect in yourself the oscillations of +feeling. They are your life and your nature; One wiser than you ordained +them. Do not abandon yourself altogether either to instinct or to +will. Instinct is a siren, will a despot. Be neither the slave of your +impulses and sensations of the moment, nor of an abstract and general +plan; be open to what life brings from within and without, and welcome +the unforeseen; but give to your life unity, and bring the unforeseen +within the lines of your plan. Let what is natural in you raise itself +to the level of the spiritual, and let the spiritual become once more +natural. Thus will your development be harmonious, and the peace of +heaven will shine upon your brow; always on condition that your peace is +made, and that you have climbed your Calvary. + +_Afternoon_--Shall I ever enjoy again those marvelous reveries of past +days, as, for instance, once, when I was still quite a youth, in the +early dawn, sitting among the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; another +time in the mountains above Lavey, under the midday sun, lying under a +tree and visited by three butterflies; and again another night on the +sandy shore of the North Sea, stretched full length upon the beach, my +eyes wandering over the Milky Way? Will they ever return to me, those +grandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to carry +the world in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite? +Divine moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought flies from world to +world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration large, +tranquil, and profound, like that of the ocean, and hovers serene and +boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the muse, Urania, who traces +around the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent nimbus +of contemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the tranquil +intoxication, if not the authority of genius, moments of irresistible +intuition in which a man feels himself great like the universe and calm +like a god! From the celestial spheres down to the shell or the moss, +the whole of creation is then submitted to our gaze, lives in our +breast, and accomplishes in us its eternal work with the regularity of +destiny and the passionate ardor of love. What hours, what memories! The +traces which remain to us of them are enough to fill us with respect and +enthusiasm, as though they had been visits of the Holy Spirit. And then, +to fall back again from these heights with their boundless horizons into +the muddy ruts of triviality! what a fall! Poor Moses! Thou too sawest +undulating in the distance the ravishing hills of the promised land, and +it was thy fate nevertheless to lay thy weary bones in a grave dug in +the desert! Which of us has not his promised land, his day of ecstasy +and his death in exile? What a pale counterfeit is real life of the life +we see in glimpses, and how these flaming lightnings of our prophetic +youth make the twilight of our dull monotonous manhood more dark and +dreary! + +April 29 (Lancy).--This morning the air was calm, the sky slightly +veiled. I went out into the garden to see what progress the spring was +making. 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 bridal +flowers, the little shrub glittered before me in all the attraction +of its opening beauty. What springlike innocence, what soft and modest +loveliness, there was in these white corollas, opening gently to the +sun, like thoughts which smile upon us at waking, and perched upon +their young leaves of virginal green like bees upon the wing! Mother of +marvels, mysterious and tender nature, why do we not live more in thee? +The poetical _flaneurs_ of Toepffer, his Charles and Jules, the friends +and passionate lovers of thy secret graces, the dazzled and ravished +beholders of thy beauties, rose up in my memory, at once a reproach and +a lesson. A modest garden and a country rectory, the narrow horizon of +a garret, contain for those who know how to look and to wait more +instruction than a library, even than that of _Mon oncle_. [Footnote: +The allusions in this passage are to Toepffer's best known books--"La +Presbytere" and "La Bibliotheque de mon Oncle," that airy chronicle of a +hundred romantic or vivacious nothings which has the young student +Jules for its center.] Yes, we are too busy, too encumbered, too much +occupied, too active! We read too much! The one thing needful is to +throw off all one's load of cares, of preoccupations, of pedantry, and +to become again young, simple, child-like, living happily and gratefully +in the present hour. We must know how to put occupation aside, which +does not mean that we must be idle. In an inaction which is meditative +and attentive the wrinkles of the soul are smoothed away, and the soul +itself spreads, unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the trodden grass +of the roadside or the bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, +becomes new, spontaneous, true, and original. Reverie, like the rain of +night, restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched and +wearied by the heat of the day. With gentle fertilizing power it awakens +within us a thousand sleeping germs, and as though in play, gathers +round us materials for the future, and images for the use of talent. +_Reverie is the Sunday of thought_; and who knows which is the more +important and fruitful for man, the laborious tension of the week, or +the life-giving repose of the Sabbath? The _flanerie_ so exquisitely +glorified and sung by Toepffer is not only delicious, but useful. It is +like a bath which gives vigor and suppleness to the whole being, to the +mind as to the body; it is the sign and festival of liberty, a joyous +and wholesome banquet, the banquet of the butterfly wandering from +flower to flower over the hills and in the fields. And remember, the +soul too is a butterfly. + +May 2, 1852. (Sunday) Lancy.--This morning read the epistle of St. +James, the exegetical volume of Cellerier [Footnote: Jacob-Elysee +Cellerier, professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva, and son of +the pastor of Satigny mentioned in Madame de Stael's "L'Allemagne."] +on this epistle, and a great deal of Pascal, after having first of all +passed more than an hour in the garden with the children. I made them +closely examine the flowers, the shrubs, the grasshoppers, the snails, +in order to practice them in observation, in wonder, in kindness. + +How enormously important are these first conversations of childhood! +I felt it this morning with a sort of religious terror. Innocence and +childhood are sacred. The sower who casts in the seed, the father or +mother casting in the fruitful word are accomplishing a pontifical act +and ought to perform it with religious awe, with prayer and gravity, for +they are laboring at the kingdom of God. All seed-sowing is a mysterious +thing, whether the seed fall into the earth or into souls. Man is a +husbandman; his whole work rightly understood is to develop life, to +sow it everywhere. Such is the mission of humanity, and of this divine +mission the great instrument is speech. We forget too often that +language is both a seed-sowing and a revelation. The influence of a word +in season, is it not incalculable? What a mystery is speech! But we are +blind to it, because we are carnal and earthy. We see the stones and the +trees by the road, the furniture of our houses, all that is palpable +and material. We have no eyes for the invisible phalanxes of ideas which +people the air and hover incessantly around each one of us. + +Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and +silent propaganda. As far as lies in its power, it tends to transform +the universe and humanity into its own image. Thus we have all a cure +of souls. Every man is the center of perpetual radiation like a luminous +body; he is, as it were, a beacon which entices a ship upon the rocks +if it does not guide it into port. Every man is a priest, even +involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever +preaching to others; but there are priests of Baal, of Moloch, and of +all the false gods. Such is the high importance of example. Thence comes +the terrible responsibility which weighs upon us all. An evil example is +a spiritual poison: it is the proclamation of a sacrilegious faith, of +an impure God. Sin would be only an evil for him who commits it, were +it not a crime toward the weak brethren, whom it corrupts. Therefore, it +has been said: "It were better for a man not to have been born than to +offend one of these little ones." + +May 6, 1852.--It is women who, like mountain flowers, mark with most +characteristic precision the gradation of social zones. The hierarchy of +classes is plainly visible among them; it is blurred in the other sex. +With women this hierarchy has the average regularity of nature; among +men we see it broken by the incalculable varieties of human freedom. The +reason is that the man on the whole, makes himself by his own activity, +and that the woman, is, on the whole, made by her situation; that +the one modifies and shapes circumstance by his own energy, while the +gentleness of the other is dominated by and reflects circumstance; +so that woman, so to speak, inclines to be species, and man to be +individual. + +Thus, which is curious, women are at once the sex which is most constant +and most variable. Most constant from the moral point of view, most +variable from the social. A confraternity in the first case, a hierarchy +in the second. All degrees of culture and all conditions of society +are clearly marked in their outward appearance, their manners and their +tastes; but the inward fraternity is traceable in their feelings, their +instincts, and their desires. The feminine sex represents at the same +time natural and historical inequality; it maintains the unity of the +species and marks off the categories of society, it brings together and +divides, it gathers and separates, it makes castes and breaks through +them, according as it interprets its twofold _role_ in the one sense or +the other. At bottom, woman's mission is essentially conservative, +but she is a conservative without discrimination. On the one side, +she maintains God's work in man, all that is lasting, noble, and truly +human, in the race, poetry, religion, virtue, tenderness. On the other, +she maintains the results of circumstance, all that is passing, local, +and artificial in society; that is to say, customs, absurdities, +prejudices, littlenesses. She surrounds with the same respectful and +tenacious faith the serious and the frivolous, the good and the bad. +Well, what then? Isolate if you can, the fire from its smoke. It is +a divine law that you are tracing, and therefore good. The woman +preserves; she is tradition as the man is progress. And if there is no +family and no humanity without the two sexes, without these two forces +there 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; +I preached the doctrine of strength, and I forgot that, tried and +afflicted like the two friends with whom I was walking, I should +probably have reasoned and felt as they did. + +Our systems, it has been said, are the expression of our character, or +the theory of our situation, that is to say, we like to think of what +has been given as having been acquired, we take our nature for our own +work, and our lot in life for our own conquest, an illusion born of +vanity and also of the craving for liberty. We are unwilling to be the +product of circumstances, or the mere expansion of an inner germ. And +yet we have received everything, and the part which is really ours, is +small indeed, for it is mostly made up of negation, resistance, faults. +We receive everything, both life and happiness; but the _manner_ in +which we receive, this is what is still ours. Let us then, receive +trustfully without shame or anxiety. Let us humbly accept from God even +our own nature, and treat it charitably, firmly, intelligently. Not that +we are called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but let +us accept _ourselves_ in spite of the evil and the disease. And let us +never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good, and what He does is well +done; resign yourself to everything, even to happiness; ask for the +spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for +the spirit of joy and gratitude, that genuine and religious optimism +which sees in God a father, and asks no pardon for His benefits. We must +dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as +the depositaries, not as the authors of our own joy. + + * * * * * + +... This evening I saw the first glow-worm of the season in the turf +beside the little winding road which descends from Lancy toward the +town. It was crawling furtively under the grass, like a timid thought or +a dawning talent. + +June 17, 1852.--Every despotism has a specially keen and hostile +instinct for whatever keeps up human dignity, and independence. And it +is curious to see scientific and realist teaching used everywhere as +a means of stifling all freedom of investigation as addressed to moral +questions under a dead weight of facts. Materialism is the auxiliary +doctrine of every tyranny, whether of the one or of the masses. To crush +what is spiritual, moral, human so to speak, in man, by specializing +him; to form mere wheels of the great social machine, instead of perfect +individuals; to make society and not conscience the center of life, to +enslave the soul to things, to de-personalize man, this is the dominant +drift of our epoch. Everywhere you may see a tendency to substitute +the laws of dead matter (number, mass) for the laws of the moral nature +(persuasion, adhesion, faith) equality, the principle of mediocrity, +becoming a dogma; unity aimed at through uniformity; numbers doing +duty for argument; negative liberty, which has no law _in itself_, and +recognizes no limit except in force, everywhere taking the place of +positive liberty, which means action guided by an inner law and curbed +by a moral authority. Socialism _versus_ individualism: this is how +Vinet put the dilemma. I should say rather that it is only the eternal +antagonism between letter and spirit, between form and matter, between +the outward and the inward, appearance and reality, which is always +present in every conception and in all ideas. + +Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything; makes everything +vulgar and every truth false. And there is a religious and political +materialism which spoils all that it touches, liberty, equality, +individuality. So that there are two ways of understanding democracy.... + +What is threatened to-day is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the +soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its +rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the +danger. What the writer, the teacher, the pastor, the philosopher, has +to do, is to defend humanity in man. Man! the true man, the ideal man! +Such should be their motto, their rallying cry. War to all that +debases, diminishes, hinders, and degrades him; protection for all +that fortifies, ennobles, and raises him. The test of every religious, +political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system +injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is +vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal. + +August 12, 1852. (Lancy.)--Each sphere of being tends toward a higher +sphere, and has already revelations and presentiments of it. The ideal +under all its forms is the anticipation and the prophetic vision of that +existence, higher than his own, toward which every being perpetually +aspires. And this higher and more dignified existence is more inward in +character, that is to say, more spiritual. Just as volcanoes reveal to +us the secrets of the interior of the globe, so enthusiasm and ecstasy +are the passing explosions of this inner world of the soul; and human +life is but the preparation and the means of approach to this spiritual +life. The degrees of initiation are innumerable. Watch, then, disciple +of life, watch and labor toward the development of the angel within +thee! For the divine Odyssey is but a series of more and more ethereal +metamorphoses, in which each form, the result of what goes before, is +the condition of those which follow. The divine life is a series of +successive deaths, in which the mind throws off its imperfections and +its symbols, and yields to the growing attraction of the ineffable +center of gravitation, the sun of intelligence and love. Created spirits +in the accomplishment of their destinies tend, so to speak, to form +constellations and milky ways within the empyrean of the divinity; +in becoming gods, they surround the throne of the sovereign with a +sparkling court. In their greatness lies their homage. The divinity with +which they are invested is the noblest glory of God. God is the father +of spirits, and the constitution of the eternal kingdom rests on the +vassalship of love. + +September 27, 1852. (Lancy.)--To-day I complete my thirty-first year.... + +The most beautiful poem there is, is life--life which discerns its own +story in the making, in which inspiration and self-consciousness go +together and help each other, life which knows itself to be the world in +little, a repetition in miniature of the divine universal poem. Yes, be +man; that is to say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of God, be what +is greatest, most beautiful, most lofty in all the spheres of being, +be infinite will and idea, a reproduction of the great whole. And be +everything while being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God enter into +thee as the air enters an empty space, reducing the _ego_ to the mere +vessel which contains the divine essence. Be humble, devout, silent, +that so thou mayest hear within the depths of thyself the subtle +and profound voice; be spiritual and pure, that so thou mayest have +communion with the pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into the +sanctuary of thy inmost consciousness; become once more point and atom, +that so thou mayest free thyself from space, time, matter, temptation, +dispersion, that thou mayest escape thy very organs themselves and thine +own life. That is to say, die often, and examine thyself in the presence +of this death, as a preparation for the last death. He who can without +shuddering confront blindness, deafness, paralysis, disease, betrayal, +poverty; he who can without terror appear before the sovereign justice, +he alone can call himself prepared for partial or total death. How +far am I from anything of the sort, how far is my heart from any such +stoicism! But at least we can try to detach ourselves from all that can +be taken away from us, to accept everything as a loan and a gift, and +to cling only to the imperishable--this at any rate we can attempt. To +believe in a good and fatherly God, who educates us, who tempers the +wind to the shorn lamb, who punishes only when he must, and takes away +only with regret; this thought, or rather this conviction, gives +courage and security. Oh, what need we have of love, of tenderness, of +affection, of kindness, and how vulnerable we are, we the sons of God, +we, immortal and sovereign beings! Strong as the universe or feeble as +the worm, according as we represent God or only ourselves, as we lean +upon infinite being, or as we stand alone. + +The point of view of religion, of a religion at once active and moral, +spiritual and profound, alone gives to life all the dignity and all +the energy of which it is capable. Religion makes invulnerable and +invincible. Earth can only be conquered in the name of heaven. All good +things are given over and above to him who desires but righteousness. +To be disinterested is to be strong, and the world is at the feet of +him whom it cannot tempt. Why? Because spirit is lord of matter, and +the world belongs to God. "Be of good cheer," saith a heavenly voice, "I +have overcome the world." + +Lord, lend thy strength to those who are weak in the flesh, but willing +in the spirit! + +October 31, 1852. (Lancy.)--Walked for half an hour in the garden. A +fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was +hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant +mountains, a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides +like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable +grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the +Shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding +schoolboys. The ground strewn with leaves, brown, yellow, and reddish; +the trees half-stripped, some more, some less, and decked in ragged +splendors of dark-red, scarlet, and yellow; the reddening shrubs and +plantations; a few flowers still lingering behind, roses, nasturtiums, +dahlias, shedding their petals round them; the bare fields, the thinned +hedges; and the fir, the only green thing left, vigorous and stoical, +like eternal youth braving decay; all these innumerable and marvelous +symbols which forms colors, plants, and living beings, the earth and the +sky, 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 touch +a phenomenon to make it render up to me its moral significance. Every +landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates +into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each +detail. True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and +seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able at most +to attain as a final result. The soul of nature is divined by the +poet; the man of science, only serves to accumulate materials for its +demonstration. + +November 6, 1852.--I am capable of all the passions, for I bear them all +within me. Like a tamer of wild beasts, I keep them caged and lassoed, +but I sometimes hear them growling. I have stifled more than one nascent +love. Why? Because with that prophetic certainty which belongs to moral +intuition, I felt it lacking in true life, and less durable than myself. +I choked it down in the name of the supreme affection to come. The loves +of sense, of imagination, of sentiment, I have seen through and rejected +them all; I sought the love which springs from the central profundities +of being. And I still believe in it. I will have none of those passions +of straw which dazzle, burn up, and wither; I invoke, I await, and I +hope for the love which is great, pure and earnest, which lives and +works in all the fibres and through all the powers of the soul. And even +if I go lonely to the end, I would rather my hope and my dream died with +me, than that my soul should content itself with any meaner union. + +November 8, 1852.--Responsibility is my invisible nightmare. To suffer +through one's own fault is a torment worthy of the lost, for so grief is +envenomed by ridicule, and the worst ridicule of all, that which springs +from shame of one's self. I have only force and energy wherewith to +meet evils coming from outside; but an irreparable evil brought about +by myself, a renunciation for life of my liberty, my peace of mind, +the very thought of it is maddening--I expiate my privilege indeed. My +privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of +the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the +secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take +my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater +on the stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb into +existence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in my +individual part, while all the time I am living in the confidence of the +poet who is playing with all these agents which seem so important, and +knows all that they are ignorant of. It is a strange position, and one +which becomes painful as soon as grief obliges me to betake myself once +more to my own little _role_, binding me closely to it, and warning me +that I am going too far in imagining myself, because of my conversations +with the poet, dispensed from taking up again my modest part of valet +in the piece. Shakespeare must have experienced this feeling often, and +Hamlet, I think, must express it somewhere. It is a _Doppelgaengerei_, +quite German in character, and which explains the disgust with reality +and the repugnance to public life, so common among the thinkers of +Germany. There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus +folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of +one's own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this +venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the +chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for +gravitation, would never return from the empyrean. + +How, then, is one to recover courage enough for action? By striving to +restore in one's self something of that unconsciousness, spontaneity, +instinct, which reconciles us to earth and makes man useful and +relatively happy. + +By believing more practically in the providence which pardons and allows +of reparation. + +By accepting our human condition in a more simple and childlike spirit, +fearing trouble less, calculating less, hoping more. For we decrease our +responsibility, if we decrease our clearness of vision, and fear lessens +with the lessening of responsibility. + +By extracting a richer experience out of our losses and lessons. + +November 9, 1852.--A few pages of the _Chrestomathie Francaise_ and +Vinet's remarkable letter at the head of the volume, have given me one +or two delightful hours. As a thinker, as a Christian, and as a man, +Vinet occupies a typical place. His philosophy, his theology, his +esthetics, in short, his work, will be, or has been already surpassed +at all points. His was a great soul and a fine talent. But neither were +well enough served by circumstances. We see in him a personality +worthy of all veneration, a man of singular goodness and a writer +of distinction, but not quite a great man, nor yet a great writer. +Profundity and purity, these are what he possesses in a high degree, but +not greatness, properly speaking. For that, he is a little too subtle +and analytical, too ingenious and fine-spun; his thought is overladen +with detail, and has not enough flow, eloquence, imagination, warmth, +and largeness. Essentially and constantly meditative, he has not +strength enough left to deal with what is outside him. The +casuistries of conscience and of language, eternal self-suspicion, and +self-examination, his talent lies in these things, and is limited by +them. Vinet wants passion, abundance, _entrainement_, and therefore +popularity. The individualism which is his title to glory is also the +cause of his weakness. + +We find in him always the solitary and the ascetic. His thought is, as +it were, perpetually at church; it is perpetually devising trials +and penances for itself. Hence the air of scruple and anxiety which +characterizes it even in its bolder flights. Moral energy, balanced by a +disquieting delicacy of fibre; a fine organization marred, so to speak, +by low health, such is the impression it makes upon us. Is it +reproach or praise to say of Vinet's mind that it seems to one a force +perpetually reacting upon itself? A warmer and more self-forgetful +manner; more muscles, as it were, around the nerves, more circles of +intellectual and historical life around the individual circle, these are +what Vinet, of all writers perhaps the one who makes us _think_ most, is +still lacking in. Less _reflexivity_ and more plasticity, the eye more +on the object, would raise the style of Vinet, so rich in substance, so +nervous, so full of ideas, and variety, into a grand style. Vinet, +to sum up, is conscience personified, as man and as writer. Happy the +literature and the society which is able to count at one time two or +three like him, if not equal to him! + +November 10, 1852.--How much have we not to learn from the Greeks, +those immortal ancestors of ours! And how much better they solved their +problem than we have solved ours. Their ideal man is not ours, but they +understood infinitely better than we how to reverence, cultivate and +ennoble the man whom they knew. In a thousand respects we are still +barbarians beside them, as Beranger said to me with a sigh in 1843: +barbarians in education, in eloquence, in public life, in poetry, in +matters of art, etc. We must have millions of men in order to produce a +few elect spirits: a thousand was enough in Greece. If the measure of a +civilization is to be the number of perfected men that it produces, we +are still far from this model people. The slaves are no longer below us, +but they are among us. Barbarism is no longer at our frontiers; it lives +side by side with us. We carry within us much greater things than +they, but we ourselves are smaller. It is a strange result. Objective +civilization produced great men while making no conscious effort +toward such a result; subjective civilization produces a miserable and +imperfect race, contrary to its mission and its earnest desire. The +world grows more majestic but man diminishes. Why is this? + +We have too much barbarian blood in our veins, and we lack measure, +harmony and grace. Christianity, in breaking man up into outer +and inner, the world into earth and heaven, hell and paradise, has +decomposed the human unity, in order, it is true, to reconstruct it more +profoundly and more truly. But Christianity has not yet digested this +powerful leaven. She has not yet conquered the true humanity; she is +still living under the antimony of sin and grace, of here below and +there above. She has not penetrated into the whole heart of Jesus. She +is still in the _narthex_ of penitence; she is not reconciled, and even +the churches still wear the livery of service, and have none of the joy +of the daughters of God, baptized of the Holy Spirit. + +Then, again, there is our excessive division of labor; our bad and +foolish education which does not develop the whole man; and the problem +of poverty. We have abolished slavery, but without having solved the +question of labor. In law there are no more slaves, in fact, there are +many. And while the majority of men are not free, the free man, in the +true sense of the term can neither be conceived nor realized. Here are +enough causes for our inferiority. + +November 12, 1852.--St. Martin's summer is still lingering, and the days +all begin in mist. I ran for a quarter of an hour round the garden to +get some warmth and suppleness. Nothing could be lovelier than the last +rosebuds, or than the delicate gaufred edges of the strawberry leaves +embroidered with hoar-frost, while above them Arachne's delicate webs +hung swaying in the green branches of the pines, little ball-rooms +for the fairies carpeted with powdered pearls and kept in place by a +thousand dewy strands hanging from above like the chains of a lamp and +supporting them from below like the anchors of a vessel. These little +airy edifices had all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world and all +the vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of the +north, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden, +Frithiof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of cold +and mist, of genius and of reverie, where warmth comes not from the sun +but from the heart where man is more noticeable than nature--that chaste +and vigorous world in which will plays a greater part than sensation and +thought has more power than instinct--in short the whole romantic cycle +of German and northern poetry, awoke little by little in my memory and +laid claim upon my sympathy. It is a poetry of bracing quality, and acts +upon one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of imagination! A twig of +pine wood and a few spider-webs are enough to make countries, epochs, +and nations live again before her. + +December 26, 1852. (Sunday.)--If I reject many portions of our theology +and of our church system, it is that I may the better reach the Christ +himself. My philosophy allows me this. It does not state the dilemma +as one of religion or philosophy, but as one of religion accepted or +experienced, understood or not understood. For me philosophy is a manner +of apprehending things, a mode of perception of reality. It does not +create nature, man or God, but it finds them and seeks to understand +them. Philosophy is consciousness taking account of itself with all +that it contains. Now consciousness may contain a new life--the facts of +regeneration and of salvation, that is to say, Christian experience. +The understanding of the Christian consciousness is an integral part +of philosophy, as the Christian consciousness is a leading form of +religious consciousness, and religious consciousness an essential form +of consciousness. + + * * * * * + +An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth +which it contains. + +Look twice, if what you want is a just conception; look once, if what +you want is a sense of beauty. + + * * * * * + +A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in +himself. + + * * * * * + +Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of +experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life. + + * * * * * + +The wealth of each mind is proportioned to the number and to the +precision 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 is +explained by its contrary--profanation. Shyness or modesty is, in +truth, the half-conscious sense of a secret of nature or of the soul too +intimately individual to be given or surrendered. It is _exchanged_. +To surrender what is most profound and mysterious in one's being and +personality at any price less than that of absolute reciprocity is +profanation. + +January 6, 1853.--Self-government with tenderness--here you have the +condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us +no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself +powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us his +natural superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness, +because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or +impatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child +only respects strength. The mother should consider herself as her +child's sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small +restless creature, quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle, +passionate, full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth, +and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness, +providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it +which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will +inculcate on her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several +discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother +and its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious +ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; their +words, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feeling +even, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship, this it +is which his instinct divines and reflects. + +The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence his +reputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he can +with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously +he passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it +while transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror. +This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and the +first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's will +is: master your own. + +February 5, 1853 (seven o'clock in the morning).--I am always astonished +at the difference between one's inward mood of the evening and that +of the morning. The passions which are dominant in the evening, in the +morning leave the field free for the contemplative part of the soul. Our +whole being, irritated and overstrung by the nervous excitement of +the day, arrives in the evening at the culminating point of its human +vitality; the same being, tranquilized by the calm of sleep, is in the +morning nearer heaven. We should weigh a resolution in the two balances, +and examine an idea under the two lights, if we wish to minimize the +chances of error by taking the average of our daily oscillations. Our +inner life describes regular curves, barometical curves, as it were, +independent of the accidental disturbances which the storms of sentiment +and passion may raise in us. Every soul has its climate, or rather, is +a climate; it has, so to speak, its own meteorology in the general +meteorology of the soul. Psychology, therefore, cannot be complete so +long as the physiology of our planet is itself incomplete--that science +to which we give nowadays the insufficient name of physics of the globe. + +I became conscious this morning that what appears to us impossible is +often an impossibility altogether subjective. Our mind, under the +action of the passions, produces by a strange mirage gigantic obstacles, +mountains or abysses, which stop us short. Breathe upon the passion and +the phantasmagoria will vanish. This power of mirage, by which we are +able to delude and fascinate ourselves, is a moral phenomenon worthy +of attentive study. We make for ourselves, in truth, our own spiritual +world monsters, chimeras, angels, we make objective what ferments in us. +All is marvelous for the poet; all is divine for the saint; all is great +for the hero; all is wretched, miserable, ugly, and bad for the base and +sordid soul. The bad man creates around him a pandemonium, the artist, +an Olympus, the elect soul, a paradise, which each of them sees for +himself alone. We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in +things. We reward ourselves and punish ourselves without knowing it, so +that all appears to change when we change. + +The soul is essentially active, and the activity of which we are +conscious is but a part of our activity, and voluntary activity is but +a part of our conscious activity. Here we have the basis of a whole +psychology and system of morals. Man reproducing the world, surrounding +himself with a nature which is the objective rendering of his spiritual +nature, rewarding and punishing himself; the universe identical with +the divine nature, and the nature of the perfect spirit only becoming +understood according to the measure of our perfection; intuition the +recompense of inward purity; science as the result of goodness; in +short, a new phenomenology more complete and more moral, in which the +total soul of things becomes spirit. This shall perhaps be my subject +for my summer lectures. How much is contained in it! the whole domain +of inner education, all that is mysterious in our life, the relation of +nature to spirit, of God and all other beings to man, the repetition +in miniature of the cosmogony, mythology, theology, and history of the +universe, the evolution of mind, in a word the problem of problems +into which I have often plunged but from which finite things, details, +minutiae, have turned me back a thousand times. I return to the brink of +the great abyss with the clear perception that here lies the problem +of science, that to sound it is a duty, that God hides Himself only +in light and love, that He calls upon us to become spirits, to possess +ourselves and to possess Him in the measure of our strength and that it +is our incredulity, our spiritual cowardice, which is our infirmity and +weakness. + +Dante, gazing into the three worlds with their divers heavens, saw under +the form of an image what I would fain seize under a purer form. But he +was a poet, and I shall only be a philosopher. The poet makes himself +understood by human generations and by the crowd; the philosopher +addresses himself only to a few rare minds. The day has broken. +It brings with it dispersion of thought in action. I feel myself +de-magnetized, pure clairvoyance gives place to study, and the ethereal +depth of the heaven of contemplation vanishes before the glitter of +finite things. Is it to be regretted? No. But it proves that the hours +most apt for philosophical thought are those which precede the dawn. + +February 10, 1853.--This afternoon I made an excursion to the Saleve +with my particular friends, Charles Heim, Edmond Scherer, Elie +Lecoultre, and Ernest Naville. The conversation was of the most +interesting kind, and prevented us from noticing the deep mud which +hindered our walking. It was especially Scherer, Naville, and I who kept +it alive. Liberty in God, the essence of Christianity, new publications +in philosophy, these were our three subjects of conversation. The +principle result for me was an excellent exercise in dialectic and in +argumentation with solid champions. If I learned nothing, many of my +ideas gained new confirmation, and I was able to penetrate more deeply +into the minds of my friends. I am much nearer to Scherer than to +Naville, but from him also I am in some degree separated. + +It is a striking fact, not unlike the changing of swords in "Hamlet," +that the abstract minds, those which move from ideas to facts, are +always fighting on behalf of concrete reality; while the concrete minds, +which move from facts to ideas, are generally the champions of abstract +notions. Each pretends to that over which he has least power; each aims +instinctively at what he himself lacks. It is an unconscious protest +against the incompleteness of each separate nature. We all tend toward +that which we possess least of, and our point of arrival is essentially +different from our point of departure. The promised land is the land +where one is not. The most intellectual of natures adopts an ethical +theory of mind; the most moral of natures has an intellectual theory +of morals. This reflection was brought home to me in the course of our +three or four hours' discussion. Nothing is more hidden from us than the +illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to +believe that we are what we think ourselves to be. + +The mathematical intelligence and the historical intelligence (the two +classes of intelligences) can never understand each other. When they +succeed in doing so as to words, they differ as to the things which the +words mean. At the bottom of every discussion of detail between them +reappears the problem of the origin of ideas. If the problem is not +present to them, there is confusion; if it is present to them, there is +separation. They only agree as to the goal--truth; but never as to the +road, the method, and the criterion. + +Heim represented the impartiality of consciousness, Naville the morality +of consciousness, Lecoultre the religion of consciousness, Scherer the +intelligence 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 mental +freedom which it awakened in me. To be able to set in motion the +greatest subjects of thought without any sense of fatigue, to be greater +than the world, to play with one's strength, this is what makes the +well-being of intelligence, the Olympic festival of thought. _Habere, +non haberi_. There is an equal happiness in the sense of reciprocal +confidence, of friendship, and esteem in the midst of conflict; like +athletes, we embrace each other before and after the combat, and the +combat is but a deploying of the forces of free and equal men. + +March 20, 1853.--I sat up alone; two or three times I paid a visit to +the children's room. It seemed to me, young mothers, that I understood +you! sleep is the mystery of life; there is a profound charm in this +darkness broken by the tranquil light of the night-lamp, and in this +silence measured by the rhythmic breathings of two young sleeping +creatures. It was brought home to me that I was looking on at a +marvelous operation of nature, and I watched it in no profane spirit. I +sat silently listening, a moved and hushed spectator of this poetry of +the cradle, this ancient and ever new benediction of the family, this +symbol of creation, sleeping under the wing of God, of our consciousness +withdrawing 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 from +life. To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the +mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul, to return into the bosom of +maternal nature, thence to re-issue, healed and strong. Sleep is a sort +of innocence and purification. Blessed be He who gave it to the poor +sons of men as the sure and faithful companion of life, our daily healer +and consoler. + +April 27, 1853.--This evening I read the treatise by Nicole so much +admired by Mme. de Sevigne: "_Des moyens de conserver la paix avec les +hommes._" Wisdom so gentle and so insinuating, so shrewd, piercing, and +yet humble, which divines so well the hidden thoughts and secrets of the +heart, and brings them all into the sacred bondage of love to God and +man, how good and delightful a thing it is! Everything in it is smooth, +even well put together, well thought out, but no display, no tinsel, +no worldly ornaments of style. The moralist forgets himself and in us +appeals only to the conscience. He becomes a confessor, a friend, a +counsellor. + +May 11, 1853.--Psychology, poetry, philosophy, history, and science, +I have swept rapidly to-day on the wings of the invisible hippogriff +through all these spheres of thought. But the general impression has +been one of tumult and anguish, temptation and disquiet. + +I love to plunge deep into the ocean of life; but it is not without +losing sometimes all sense of the axis and the pole, without losing +myself and feeling the consciousness of my own nature and vocation +growing faint and wavering. The whirlwind of the wandering Jew carries +me away, tears me from my little familiar enclosure, and makes me behold +all the empires of men. In my voluntary abandonment to the generality, +the universal, the infinite, my particular _ego_ evaporates like a drop +of water in a furnace; it only condenses itself anew at the return +of cold, after enthusiasm has died out and the sense of reality has +returned. Alternate expansion and condensation, abandonment and recovery +of self, the conquest of the world to be pursued on the one side, the +deepening of consciousness on the other--such is the play of the inner +life, the march of the microcosmic mind, the marriage of the individual +soul with the universal soul, the finite with the infinite, whence +springs the intellectual progress of man. Other betrothals unite the +soul to God, the religious consciousness with the divine; these belong +to the history of the will. And what precedes will is feeling, preceded +itself by instinct. Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but he +becomes only what he is, truth still more profound. What am I? Terrible +question! Problem of predestination, of birth, of liberty, there lies +the abyss. And yet one must plunge into it, and I have done so. The +prelude of Bach I heard this evening predisposed me to it; it paints +the soul tormented and appealing and finally seizing upon God, and +possessing itself of peace and the infinite with an all-prevailing +fervor and passion. + +May 14, 1853.--Third quartet concert. It was short. Variations for piano +and violin by Beethoven, and two quartets, not more. The quartets were +perfectly clear and easy to understand. One was by Mozart and the +other by Beethoven, so that I could compare the two masters. Their +individuality seemed to become plain to me: Mozart--grace, liberty, +certainty, freedom, and precision of style, and exquisite and +aristocratic beauty, serenity of soul, the health and talent of the +master, both on a level with his genius; Beethoven--more pathetic, more +passionate, more torn with feeling, more intricate, more profound, less +perfect, more the slave of his genius, more carried away by his fancy or +his passion, more moving, and more sublime than Mozart. Mozart refreshes +you, like the "Dialogues" of Plato; he respects you, reveals to you your +strength, gives you freedom and balance. Beethoven seizes upon you; he +is more tragic and oratorical, while Mozart is more disinterested and +poetical. Mozart is more Greek, and Beethoven more Christian. One is +serene, the other serious. The first is stronger than destiny, because +he takes life less profoundly; the second is less strong, because he +has dared to measure himself against deeper sorrows. His talent is +not always equal to his genius, and pathos is his dominant feature, +as perfection is that of Mozart. In Mozart the balance of the whole is +perfect, and art triumphs; in Beethoven feeling governs everything and +emotion troubles his art in proportion as it deepens it. + +July 26, 1853.--Why do I find it easier and more satisfactory, as a +writer of verse, to compose in the short metres than in the long and +serious ones? Why, in general, am I better fitted for what is difficult +than for what is easy? Always for the same reason. I cannot bring myself +to move freely, to show myself without a veil, to act on my own account +and act seriously, to believe in and assert myself, whereas a piece of +badinage which diverts attention from myself to the thing in hand, +from the feeling to the skill of the writer, puts me at my ease. It is +timidity which is at the bottom of it. There is another reason, too--I +am afraid of greatness, I am not afraid of ingenuity, and distrustful as +I am both of my gift and my instrument, I like to reassure myself by +an elaborate practice of execution. All my published literary essays, +therefore, are little else than studies, games, exercises for the +purpose of testing myself. I play scales, as it were; I run up and down +my instrument, I train my hand and make sure of its capacity and skill. +But the work itself remains unachieved. My effort expires, and satisfied +with the _power_ to act I never arrive at the will to act. I am always +preparing and never accomplishing, and my energy is swallowed up in a +kind of barren curiosity. Timidity, then, and curiosity--these are +the two obstacles which bar against me a literary career. Nor must +procrastination be forgotten. I am always reserving for the future what +is great, serious, and important, and meanwhile, I am eager to exhaust +what is pretty and trifling. Sure of my devotion to things that are vast +and profound, I am always lingering in their contraries lest I should +neglect them. Serious at bottom, I am frivolous in appearance. A +lover of thought, I seem to care above all, for expression; I keep the +substance for myself, and reserve the form for others. So that the net +result of my timidity is that I never treat the public seriously, +and that I only show myself to it in what is amusing, enigmatical, or +capricious; the result of my curiosity is that everything tempts me, +the shell as well as the mountain, and that I lose myself in endless +research; while the habit of procrastination keeps me forever at +preliminaries and antecedents, and production itself is never even +begun. + +But if that is the fact, the fact might be different. I understand +myself, but I do not approve myself. + +August 1, 1853.--I have just finished Pelletan's book, "Profession de +foi du dix-neuvieme Siecle." It is a fine book Only one thing is wanting +to it--the idea of evil. It is a kind of supplement to the theory of +Condorcet--indefinite perfectibility, man essentially good, _life_, +which is a physiological notion, dominating virtue, duty, and holiness, +in short, a non-ethical conception of history, liberty identified with +nature, the natural man taken for the whole man. The aspirations which +such a book represents are generous and poetical, but in the first place +dangerous, since they lead to an absolute confidence in instinct; and +in the second, credulous and unpractical, for they set before us a mere +dream man, and throw a veil over both present and past reality. The book +is at once the plea justificatory of progress, conceived as fatal and +irresistible, and an enthusiastic hymn to the triumph of humanity. It is +earnest, but morally superficial; poetical, but fanciful and untrue. It +confounds the progress of the race with the progress of the individual, +the progress of civilization with the advance of the inner life. Why? +Because its criterion is quantitative, that is to say, purely exterior +(having regard to the wealth of life), and not qualitative (the goodness +of life). Always the same tendency to take the appearance for the thing, +the form for the substance, the law for the essence, always the same +absence of moral personality, the same obtuseness of conscience, which +has never recognized sin present in the will, which places evil outside +of man, moralizes from outside, and transforms to its own liking +the whole lesson of history! What is at fault is the philosophic +superficiality of France, which she owes to her fatal notion of +religion, itself due to a life fashioned by Catholicism and by absolute +monarchy. + +Catholic thought cannot conceive of personality as supreme and conscious +of itself. Its boldness and its weakness come from one and the same +cause--from an absence of the sense of responsibility, from that vassal +state of conscience which knows only slavery or anarchy, which proclaims +but does not obey the law, because the law is outside it, not within it. +Another illusion is that of Quinet and Michelet, who imagine it possible +to come out of Catholicism without entering into any other positive form +of religion, and whose idea is to fight Catholicism by philosophy, a +philosophy which is, after all, Catholic at bottom, since it springs +from anti-Catholic reaction. The mind and the conscience, which have +been formed by Catholicism, are powerless to rise to any other form of +religion. From Catholicism, as from Epicureanism there is no return. + +October 11, 1853.--My third day at Turin, is now over. I have been able +to penetrate farther than ever before into the special genius of this +town and people. I have felt it live, have realized it little by little, +as my intuition became more distinct. That is what I care for most: to +seize the soul of things, the soul of a nation; to live the objective +life, the life outside self; to find my way into a new moral country. I +long to assume the citizenship of this unknown world, to enrich myself +with this fresh form of existence, to feel it from within, to link +myself to it, and to reproduce it sympathetically; this is the end and +the reward of my efforts. To-day the problem grew clear to me as I stood +on the terrace of the military hospital, in full view of the Alps, the +weather fresh and clear in spite of a stormy sky. Such an intuition +after all is nothing out a synthesis wrought by instinct, a synthesis +to which everything--streets, houses, landscape, accent, dialect, +physiognomies, history, and habits contribute their share. I might call +it the ideal integration of a people or its reduction to the generating +point, or an entering into its consciousness. This generating point +explains everything else, art, religion, history, politics, manners; +and without it nothing can be explained. The ancients realized +their consciousness in the national God. Modern nationalities, more +complicated and less artistic, are more difficult to decipher. What +one seeks for in them is the daemon, the fatum, the inner genius, the +mission, the primitive disposition, both what there is desire for and +what there is power for, the force in them and its limitations. + +A pure and life-giving freshness of thought and of the spiritual life +seemed to play about me, borne on the breeze descending from the Alps. +I breathed an atmosphere of spiritual freedom, and I hailed with emotion +and rapture the mountains whence was wafted to me this feeling of +strength and purity. A thousand sensations, thoughts, and analogies +crowded upon me. History, too, the history of the sub-Alpine countries, +from the Ligurians to Hannibal, from Hannibal to Charlemagne, from +Charlemagne to Napoleon, passed through my mind. All the possible +points of view, were, so to speak, piled upon each other, and one caught +glimpses of some eccentrically across others. I was enjoying and I was +learning. Sight passed into vision without a trace of hallucination, and +the landscape was my guide, my Virgil. + +All this made me very sensible of the difference between me and the +majority of travelers, all of whom have a special object, and content +themselves with one thing or with several, while I desire all or +nothing, and am forever straining toward the total, whether of all +possible objects, or of all the elements present in the reality. In +other words, what I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek +to know is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always the +complete, the absolute; the _teres atque rotundum_, sphericity, +non-resignation. + +October 27, 1853.--I thank Thee, my God, for the hour that I have just +passed in Thy presence. Thy will was clear to me; I measured my faults, +counted my griefs, and felt Thy goodness toward me. I realized my own +nothingness, Thou gavest me Thy peace. In bitterness there is sweetness; +in affliction, joy; in submission, strength; in the God who punishes, +the God who loves. To lose one's life that one may gain it, to offer it +that one may receive it, to possess nothing that one may conquer all, to +renounce self that God may give Himself to us, how impossible a problem, +and how sublime a reality! No one truly knows happiness who has not +suffered, and the redeemed are happier than the elect. + +(Same day.)--The divine miracle _par excellence_ consists surely in the +apotheosis of grief, the transfiguration of evil by good. The work of +creation finds its consummation, and the eternal will of the infinite +mercy finds its fulfillment only in the restoration of the free creature +to God and of an evil world to goodness, through love. Every soul in +which conversion has taken place is a symbol of the history of the +world. To be happy, to possess eternal life, to be in God, to be saved, +all these are the same. All alike mean the solution of the problem, +the aim of existence. And happiness is cumulative, as misery may be. +An eternal growth is an unchangeable peace, an ever profounder depth of +apprehension, a possession constantly more intense and more spiritual of +the joy of heaven--this is happiness. Happiness has no limits, because +God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but +the 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. For +moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, +and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness there is our being +itself, our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have +entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become +spontaneous and involuntary, instinctive and unconscious, are really our +life--that is to say something more than our property. So long as we +are able to distinguish any space whatever between the truth and us +we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire, the +consciousness of life, are not yet quite life. But peace and repose can +nowhere be found except in life, and in eternal life and the eternal +life is the divine life, is God. To become divine is then the aim of +life: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of +loss, 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. Liberty +has become nature; the creature is one with its creator--one through +love. It is what it ought to be; its education is finished, and its +final happiness begins. The sun of time declines and the light of +eternal blessedness arises. + +Our fleshly hearts may call this mysticism. It is the mysticism of +Jesus: "I am one with my Father; ye shall be one with me. We will be one +with you." + +Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. +From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the +infinite. + +There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of +self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably +at its purest in the last. + + * * * * * + +It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, +by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that +we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well. + + * * * * * + +February 1, 1854.--A walk. The atmosphere incredibly pure, a warm +caressing gentleness in the sunshine--joy in one's whole being. Seated +motionless upon a bench on the Tranchees, beside the slopes clothed with +moss and tapestried with green, I passed some intense delicious moments, +allowing great elastic waves of music, wafted to me from a military band +on the terrace of St. Antoine, to surge and bound through me. Every way +I was happy, as idler, as painter, as poet. Forgotten impressions of +childhood and youth came back to me--all those indescribable effects +wrought by 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 to +life and to nature, and they cradled me with an infinite gentleness. +To open one's heart in purity to this ever pure nature, to allow this +immortal life of things to penetrate into one's soul, is at the same +time to listen to the voice of God. Sensation may be a prayer, and +self-abandonment an act of devotion. + +February 18, 1854.--Everything tends to become fixed, solidified, and +crystallized in this French tongue of ours, which seeks form and not +substance, the result and not its formation, what is seen rather than +what is thought, the outside rather than the inside. + +We like the accomplished end and not the pursuit of the end, the goal +and not the road, in short, ideas ready-made and bread ready-baked, +the reverse of Lessing's principle. What we look for above all are +conclusions. This clearness of the "ready-made" is a superficial +clearness--physical, outward, solar clearness, so to speak, but in the +absence of a sense for origin and genesis it is the clearness of +the incomprehensible, the clearness of opacity, the clearness of +the obscure. We are always trifling on the surface. Our temper is +formal--that is to say, frivolous and material, or rather artistic and +not philosophical. For what it seeks is the figure, the fashion and +manner of things, not their deepest life, their soul, their secret. + +March 16, 1854. (From Veevay to Geneva.)--What message had this lake for +me, with its sad serenity, its soft and even tranquility, in which +was mirrored the cold monotonous pallor of mountains and clouds? That +disenchanted disillusioned life may still be traversed by duty, lit by a +memory of heaven. I was visited by a clear and profound intuition of the +flight of things, of the fatality of all life, of the melancholy which +is below the surface of all existence, but also of that deepest depth +which subsists forever beneath the fleeting wave. + +December 17, 1854.--When we are doing nothing in particular, it is then +that we are living through all our being; and when we cease to add to +our growth it is only that we may ripen and possess ourselves. Will is +suspended, but nature and time are always active and if our life is no +longer our work, the work goes on none the less. With us, without us, or +in spite of us, our existence travels through its appointed phases, our +invisible Psyche weaves the silk of its chrysalis, our destiny fulfills +itself, and all the hours of life work together toward that flowering +time which we call death. This activity, then, is inevitable and fatal; +sleep and idleness do not interrupt it, but it may become free and +moral, a joy instead of a terror. + +Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he +behaves toward fools. + +It costs us a great deal of trouble not to be of the same opinion as our +self-love, and not to be ready to believe in the good taste of those who +believe 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's +pretensions and ambitions, even those of conscience? True humility is +contentment. + + * * * * * + +A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in +himself. + +Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret +of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority. + + * * * * * + +March 28, 1855.--Not a blade of grass but has a story to tell, not a +heart but has its romance, not a life which does not hide a secret +which is either its thorn or its spur. Everywhere grief, hope, comedy, +tragedy; even under the petrifaction of old age, as in the twisted forms +of fossils, we may discover the agitations and tortures of youth. This +thought is the magic wand of poets and of preachers: it strips the +scales from our fleshly eyes, and gives us a clear view into human life; +it opens to the ear a world of unknown melodies, and makes us understand +the thousand languages of 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 of +climate on one's state of mind. I was Italian or Spanish. In this blue +and limpid air, and under this southern sun, the very walls smile at +you. All the chestnut trees were en fete; with their glistening buds +shining like little flames at the curved ends of the branches, they were +the candelabra of the spring decking the festival of eternal nature. How +young everything was, how kindly, how gracious! the moist freshness of +the grass, the transparent shadows in the courtyards, the strength of +the old cathedral towers, the white edges of the roads. I felt myself a +child; the sap of life mounted again into my veins as it does in plants. +How sweet a thing is a little simple enjoyment! And now, a brass +band which has stopped in the street makes my heart leap as it did at +eighteen. Thanks be to God; there have been so many weeks and months +when I thought myself an old man. Come poetry, nature, youth, and love, +knead my life again with your fairy hands; weave round me once more your +immortal spells; sing your siren melodies, make me drink of the cup +of immortality, lead me back to the Olympus of the soul. Or rather, no +paganism! God of joy and of grief, do with me what Thou wilt; grief is +good, and joy is good also. Thou art leading me now through joy. I take +it from Thy hands, and I give Thee thanks for it. + +April 17, 1855.--The weather is still incredibly brilliant, warm, and +clear. The day is full of the singing of birds, the night is full of +stars, nature has become all kindness, and it is a kindness clothed upon +with splendor. + +For nearly two hours have I been lost in the contemplation of this +magnificent spectacle. I felt myself in the temple of the infinite, in +the presence of the worlds, God's guest in this vast nature. The stars +wandering in the pale ether drew me far away from earth. What peace +beyond the power of words, what dews of life eternal, they shed on the +adoring soul! I felt the earth floating like a boat in this blue ocean. +Such deep and tranquil delight nourishes the whole man, it purifies and +ennobles. I surrendered myself, I was all gratitude and docility. + +April 21, 1855.--I have been reading a great deal: ethnography, +comparative anatomy, cosmical systems. I have traversed the universe +from the deepest depths of the empyrean to the peristaltic movements of +the atoms in the elementary cell. I have felt myself expanding in the +infinite, and enfranchised in spirit from the bounds of time and space, +able to trace back the whole boundless creation to a point without +dimensions, and seeing the vast multitude of suns, of milky ways, of +stars, and nebulae, all existent in the point. + +And on all sides stretched mysteries, marvels and prodigies, without +limit, without number, and without end. I felt the unfathomable thought +of which the universe is the symbol live and burn within me; I touched, +proved, tasted, embraced my nothingness and my immensity; I kissed the +hem of the garments of God, and gave Him thanks for being Spirit and +for being life. Such moments are glimpses of the divine. They make one +conscious of one's immortality; they bring home to one that an eternity +is not too much for the study of the thoughts and works of the eternal; +they awaken in us an adoring ecstasy and the ardent humility of love. + +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 though +it were a place of refuge. Terrible danger! For this abyss is within +us; this gulf, open like the vast jaws of an infernal serpent bent on +devouring us, is in the depth of our own being, and our liberty floats +over this void, which is always seeking to swallow it up. Our only +talisman lies in that concentration of moral force which we call +conscience, that small inextinguishable flame of which the light is duty +and the warmth love. This little flame should be the star of our life; +it alone can guide our trembling ark across the tumult of the great +waters; it alone can enable us to escape the temptations of the sea, the +storms 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 which +kindles this flame. + +How deeply I feel the profound and terrible poetry of all these +primitive terrors from which have issued the various theogonies of the +world, and how it all grows clear to me, and becomes a symbol of the +one great unchanging thought, the thought of God about the universe! How +present and sensible to my inner sense is the unity of everything! It +seems to me that I am able to pierce to the sublime motive which, in all +the infinite spheres of existence, and through all the modes of space +and time, every created form reproduces and sings within the bond of an +eternal harmony. From the infernal shades I feel myself mounting toward +the regions of light; my flight across chaos finds its rest in paradise. +Heaven, hell, the world, are within us. Man is the great abyss. + +July 27, 1855.--So life passes away, tossed like a boat by the waves +up and down, hither and thither, drenched by the spray, stained by the +foam, now thrown upon the bank, now drawn back again according to the +endless caprice of the water. Such, at least, is the life of the heart +and the passions, the life which Spinoza and the stoics reprove, and +which is the exact opposite of that serene and contemplative life, +always equable like the starlight, in which man lives at peace, and sees +everything tinder its eternal aspect; the opposite also of the life +of conscience, in which God alone speaks, and all self-will surrenders +itself to His will made manifest. + +I pass from one to another of these three existences, which are equally +known to me; but this very mobility deprives me of the advantages of +each. For my heart is worn with scruples, the soul in me cannot crush +the needs of the heart, and the conscience is troubled and no longer +knows how to distinguish, in the chaos of contradictory inclinations, +the voice of duty or the will of God. The want of simple faith, the +indecision which springs from distrust of self, tend to make all my +personal life a matter of doubt and uncertainty. I am afraid of the +subjective life, and recoil from every enterprise, demand, or promise +which may oblige me to realize myself; I feel a terror of action, and +am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective life of +thought. The reason seems to be timidity, and the timidity springs +from the excessive development of the reflective power which has almost +destroyed in me all spontaneity, impulse, and instinct, and therefore +all boldness and confidence. Whenever I am forced to act, I see cause +for error and repentance everywhere, everywhere hidden threats and +masked vexations. From a child I have been liable to the disease of +irony, and that it may not be altogether crushed by destiny, my nature +seems to have armed itself with a caution strong enough to prevail +against any of life's blandishments. It is just this strength which is +my weakness. I have a horror of being duped, above all, duped by myself, +and I would rather cut myself off from all life's joys than deceive or +be deceived. Humiliation, then, is the sorrow which I fear the most, +and therefore it would seem as if pride were the deepest rooted of my +faults. + +This may be logical, but it is not the truth: it seems to me that it is +really distrust, incurable doubt of the future, a sense of the justice +but not of the goodness of God--in short, unbelief, which is my +misfortune and my sin. Every act is a hostage delivered over to avenging +destiny--there is the instinctive belief which chills and freezes; every +act is a pledge confided to a fatherly providence, there is the belief +which calms. + +Pain seems to me a punishment and not a mercy: this is why I have a +secret horror of it. And as I feel myself vulnerable at all points, and +everywhere accessible to pain, I prefer to remain motionless, like a +timid child, who, left alone in his father's laboratory, dares not touch +anything for fear of springs; explosions, and catastrophes, which may +burst from every corner at the least movement of his inexperienced +hands. I have trust in God directly and as revealed in nature, but I +have a deep distrust of all free and evil agents. I feel or foresee +evil, moral and physical, as the consequence of every error, fault, or +sin, and I am ashamed of pain. + +At bottom, is it not a mere boundless self-love, the purism of +perfection, an incapacity to accept our human condition, a tacit protest +against the order of the world, which lies at the root of my inertia? +It means _all or nothing_, a vast ambition made inactive by disgust, a +yearning that cannot be uttered for the ideal, joined with an offended +dignity and a wounded pride which will have nothing to say to what they +consider beneath them. It springs from the ironical temper which +refuses to take either self or reality seriously, because it is forever +comparing both with the dimly-seen infinite of its dreams. It is a state +of mental reservation in which one lends one's self to circumstances for +form's sake, but refuses to recognize them in one's heart because one +cannot see the necessity or the divine order in them. I am disinterested +because I am indifferent; I have nothing to say against what is, and yet +I am never satisfied. I am too weak to conquer, and yet I will not be +Conquered--it is the isolation of the disenchanted soul, which has put +even hope away from it. + +But even this is a trial laid upon one. Its providential purpose is no +doubt to lead one to that true renunciation of which charity is the sign +and symbol. It is when one expects nothing more for one's self that one +is able to love. To do good to men because we love them, to use every +talent we have so as to please the Father from whom we hold it for +His service, there is no other way of reaching and curing this +deep discontent with life which hides itself under an appearance of +indifference. + +September 4, 1855.--In the government of the soul the parliamentary form +succeeds the monarchical. Good sense, conscience, desire, reason, the +present and the past, the old man and the new, prudence and generosity, +take up their parable in turn; the reign of argument begins; chaos +replaces order, and darkness light. Simple will represents the +autocratic _regime_, interminable discussion the deliberate regime of +the soul. The one is preferable from the theoretical point of view, the +other from the practical. Knowledge and action are their two respective +advantages. + +But the best of all would be to be able to realize three powers in the +soul. Besides the man of counsel we want the man of action and the man +of judgment. In me, reflection comes to no useful end, because it is +forever returning upon itself, disputing and debating. I am wanting in +both the general who commands and the judge who decides. + +Analysis is dangerous if it overrules the synthetic faculty; reflection +is to be feared if it destroys our power of intuition, and inquiry +is fatal if it supplants faith. Decomposition becomes deadly when it +surpasses in strength the combining and constructive energies of life, +and the _separate_ action of the powers of the soul tends to mere +disintegration and destruction as soon as it becomes impossible to bring +them to bear as _one_ undivided force. When the sovereign abdicates +anarchy begins. + +It is just here that my danger lies. Unity of life, of force, of action, +of expression, is becoming impossible to me; I am legion, division, +analysis, and reflection; the passion for dialectic, for fine +distinctions, absorbs and weakens me. The point which I have reached +seems to be explained by a too restless search for perfection, by the +abuse of the critical faculty, and by an unreasonable distrust of first +impulses, first thoughts, first words. Unity and simplicity of being, +confidence, and spontaneity of life, are drifting out of my reach, and +this is why I can no longer act. + +Give up, then, this trying to know all, to embrace all. Learn to +limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some +definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good +grace all that you are not, and to believe in your own individuality. +Self-distrust is destroying you; trust, surrender, abandon yourself; +"believe and thou shalt be healed." Unbelief is death, and depression +and self-satire are alike unbelief. + + * * * * * + +From the point of view of happiness, the problem of life is insoluble, +for it is our highest aspirations which prevent us from being happy. +From the point of view of duty, there is the same difficulty, for the +fulfillment of duty brings peace, not happiness. It is divine love, the +love of the holiest, the possession of God by faith, which solves the +difficulty; for if sacrifice has itself become a joy, a lasting, growing +and imperishable joy--the soul is then secure of an all-sufficient and +unfailing nourishment. + + * * * * * + +January 21, 1856.--Yesterday seems to me as far off as though it were +last year. My memory holds nothing more of the past than its general +plan, just as my eye perceives nothing more in the starry heaven. It +is no more possible for me to recover one of my days from the depths of +memory than if it were a glass of water poured into a lake; it is not +so much a lost thing as a thing melted and fused; the individual has +returned into the whole. The divisions of time are categories which +have no power to mold my life, and leave no more lasting impression than +lines traced by a stick in water. My life, my individuality, are fluid, +there is nothing for it but to resign one's self. + +April 9, 1856.--How true it is that our destinies are decided by +nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant +accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the +trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified. What happens +is quite different from that we planned; we planned a blessing and there +springs from it a curse. How many times the serpent of fatality, or +rather the law of life, the force of things, intertwining itself with +some very simple facts, cannot be cut away by any effort, and the logic +of situations and characters leads inevitably to a dreaded _denouement_. +It is the fatal spell of destiny, which obliges us to feed our grief +from our own hand, to prolong the existence of our vulture, to throw +into the furnace of our punishment and expiation, our powers, our +qualities, our very virtues, one by one, and so forces us to recognize +our nothingness, our dependence and the implacable majesty of law. Faith +in a providence softens punishment but does not do away with it. The +wheels of the divine chariot crush us first of all that justice may be +satisfied and an example given to men, and then a hand is stretched out +to us to raise us up, or at least to reconcile us with the love hidden +under the justice. Pardon cannot precede repentance and repentance only +begins with humility. And so long as any fault whatever appears trifling +to us, so long as we see, not so much the culpability of as the excuses +for imprudence or negligence, so long, in short, as Job murmurs and as +providence is thought to be too severe, so long as there is any inner +protestation against fate, or doubt as to the perfect justice of God, +there is not yet entire humility or true repentance. It is when we +accept the expiation that it can be spared us; it is when we submit +sincerely that grace can be granted to us. Only when grief finds its +work done can God dispense us from it. Trial then only stops when it is +useless: that is why it scarcely ever stops. Faith in the justice and +love of the Father is the best and indeed the only support under the +sufferings 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 think +ourselves wiser than providence, because to avoid fatalism we believe in +accident. Liberty in submission--what a problem! And yet that is what we +must always come back to. + +May 7, 1856.--I have been reading Rosenkrantz's "History of Poetry" +[Footnote: "Geschichte der Poesie," by Rosenkrantz, the pupil and +biographer of Hegel] all day: it touches upon all the great names of +Spain, Portugal, and France, as far as Louis XV. It is a good thing to +take these rapid surveys; the shifting point of view gives a perpetual +freshness to the subject and to the ideas presented, a literary +experience which is always pleasant and bracing. For one of my +temperament, this philosophic and morphological mode of embracing and +expounding literary history has a strong attraction. But it is the +antipodes of the French method of proceeding, which takes, as it were, +only the peaks of the subject, links them together by theoretical +figures and triangulations, and then assumes these lines to represent +the genuine face of the country. The real process of formation of a +general opinion, of a public taste, of an established _genre_, cannot be +laid bare by an abstract method, which suppresses the period of growth +in favor of the final fruit, which prefers clearness of outline to +fullness of statement, and sacrifices the preparation to the result, the +multitude to the chosen type. This French method, however, is eminently +characteristic, and it is linked by invisible ties to their respect for +custom and fashion, to the Catholic and dualist instinct which admits +two truths, two contradictory worlds, and accepts quite naturally +what is magical, incomprehensible, and arbitrary in God, the king, +or language. It is the philosophy of accident become habit, 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, care +nothing for the philosophy of it; while the Germans, who know very +little about the practice of life, are masters of its theory. Every +living being seeks instinctively to complete itself; this is the secret +law according to which that nation whose sense of life is fullest and +keenest, drifts most readily toward a mathematical rigidity of theory. +Matter and form are the eternal oppositions, and the mathematical +intellects are often attracted by the facts of life, just as the +sensuous minds are often drawn toward the study of abstract law. Thus +strangely enough, what we think we are is just what we are not: what we +desire to be is what suits us least; our theories condemn us, and our +practice gives the lie to our theories. And the contradiction is an +advantage, for it is the source of conflict, of movement, and therefore +a condition of progress. Every life is an inward struggle, every +struggle supposes two contrary forces; nothing real is simple, +and whatever thinks itself simple is in reality the farthest from +simplicity. Therefore it would seem that every state is a moment in +a series; every being a compromise between contraries. In concrete +dialectic we have the key which opens to us the understanding of beings +in the series of beings, of states in the series of moments; and it is +in dynamics that we have the explanation of equilibrium. Every situation +is an _equilibrium_ of forces; every life is a _struggle_ between +opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium. + +These two principles have been often clear to me, but I have never +applied them widely or rigorously enough. + +July 1, 1856.--A man and still more a woman, always betrays something +of his or her nationality. The women of Russia, for instance, like the +lakes and rivers of their native country, seem to be subject to +sudden and prolonged fits of torpor. In their movement, undulating and +caressing like that of water, there is always a threat of unforeseen +frost. The high latitude, the difficulty of life, the inflexibility of +their autocratic _regime_, the heavy and mournful sky, the inexorable +climate, all these harsh fatalities have left their mark upon the +Muscovite race. A certain somber obstinacy, a kind of primitive +ferocity, a foundation of savage harshness which, under the influence of +circumstances, might become implacable and pitiless; a cold strength, an +indomitable power of resolution which would rather wreck the whole +world than yield, the indestructible instinct of the barbarian tribe, +perceptible in the half-civilized nation, all these traits are visible +to an attentive eye, even in the harmless extravagances and caprices +of a young woman of this powerful race. Even in their _badinage_ they +betray something of that fierce and rigid nationality which burns its +own towns and [as Napoleon said] keeps battalions of dead soldiers on +their feet. + +What terrible rulers the Russians would be if ever they should spread +the night of their rule over the countries of the south! They would +bring us a polar despotism, tyranny such as the world has never known, +silent as darkness, rigid as ice, insensible as bronze, decked with +an outer amiability and glittering with the cold brilliancy of snow, +a slavery without compensation or relief. Probably, however, they will +gradually lose both the virtues and the defects of their semi-barbarism. +The centuries as they pass will ripen these sons of the north, and they +will enter into the concert of peoples in some other capacity than as a +menace or a dissonance. They have only to transform their hardiness into +strength, their cunning into grace, their Muscovitism into humanity, to +win love instead of inspiring aversion or fear. + +July 3, 1856.--The German admires form, but he has no genius for it. He +is the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and +desire, but no serene command of beauty. The south, more artistic, more +self-satisfied, more capable of execution, rests idly in the sense of +its own power to achieve. On one side you have ideas, on the other side, +talent. The realm of Germany is beyond the clouds; that of the southern +peoples is on this earth. The Germanic race thinks and feels; the +southerners feel and express; the Anglo-Saxons will and do. To know, to +feel, to act, there you have the trio of Germany, Italy, England. France +formulates, speaks, decides, and laughs. Thought, talent, will, speech; +or, in other words science, art, action, proselytism. So the parts of +the quartet are assigned. + +July 21, 1856.--_Mit sack und pack_ here I am back again in my town +rooms. I have said good-bye to my friends and my country joys, to +verdure, flowers, and happiness. Why did I leave them after all? The +reason I gave myself was that I was anxious about my poor uncle, who is +ill. But at bottom are there not other reasons? Yes, several. There is +the fear of making myself a burden upon the two or three families of +friends 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 faith +with myself. But all that would be nothing, I think, without another +instinct, the instinct of the wandering Jew, which snatches from me the +cup I have but just raised to my lips, which forbids me any prolonged +enjoyment, and cries "go forward! Let there be no falling asleep, no +stopping, no attaching yourself to this or that!" This restless feeling +is not the need of change. It is rather the fear of what I love, the +mistrust of what charms me, the unrest of happiness. What a _bizarre_ +tendency, and what a strange nature! not to be able to enjoy anything +simply, naively, without scruple, to feel a force upon one impelling +one to leave the table, for fear the meal should come to an end. +Contradiction and mystery! not to use, for fear of abusing; to think +one's self obliged to go, not because one has had enough, but because +one has stayed awhile. I am indeed always the same; the being who +wanders when he need not, the voluntary exile, the eternal traveler, +the man incapable of repose, who, driven on by an inward voice, builds +nowhere, buys and labors nowhere, but passes, looks, camps, and goes. +And is there not another reason for all this restlessness, in a certain +sense of void? of incessant pursuit of something wanting? of longing +for a 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 always +waiting for the woman and the work which shall be capable of taking +entire possession of my soul, and of becoming my end and aim. + + "Promenant par tout sejour + Le deuil que tu celes, + Psyche-papillon, un jour + Puisses-tu trouver l'amour + Et perdre tes ailes!" + +I have not given away my heart: hence this restlessness of spirit. I +will not let it be taken captive by that which cannot fill and satisfy +it; hence this instinct of pitiless detachment from all that charms +me without permanently binding me; so that it seems as if my love +of movement, which looks so like inconstancy, was at bottom only a +perpetual search, a hope, a desire, and a care, the malady of the ideal. + +... Life indeed must always be a compromise between common sense and the +ideal, the one abating nothing of its demands, the other accommodating +itself to what is practicable and real. But marriage by common sense! +arrived at by a bargain! Can it be anything but a profanation? On +the other, hand, is that not a vicious ideal which hinders life from +completing itself, and destroys the family in germ? Is there not too +much of pride in my ideal, pride which will not accept the common +destiny?... + +Noon.--I have been dreaming--my head in my hand. About what? About +happiness. 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 playing +from a point behind the Jura. Drunk with poetry, and overwhelmed by +sensation 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 soul +with whom to share it all--for emotion and enthusiasm overflowed like +water from a full cup. The Milky Way, the great black poplars, the +ripple of the waves, the shooting stars, distant songs, the lamp-lit +town, all spoke to me in the language of poetry. I felt myself almost +a poet. The wrinkles of science disappeared under the magic breath of +admiration; the old elasticity of soul, trustful, free, and living was +mine once more. I was once more young, capable of self-abandonment +and of love. All my barrenness had disappeared; the heavenly dew had +fertilized the dead and gnarled stick; it began to be green and flower +again. My God, how wretched should we be without beauty! But with it, +everything is born afresh in us; the senses, the heart, imagination, +reason, will, come together like the dead bones of the prophet, and +become one single and self-same energy. What is happiness if it is not +this plentitude of existence, this close union with the universal +and divine life? I have been happy a whole half day, and I have been +brooding over my joy, steeping myself in it to the very depths of +consciousness. + +October 22, 1856.--We must learn to look upon life as an apprenticeship +to a progressive renunciation, a perpetual diminution in our +pretensions, our hopes, our powers, and our liberty. The circle grows +narrower and narrower; we began with being eager to learn everything, to +see everything, to tame and conquer everything, and in all directions we +reach our limit--_non plus ultra_. Fortune, glory, love, power, health, +happiness, long life, all these blessings which have been possessed by +other men seem at first promised and accessible to us, and then we have +to put the dream away from us, to withdraw one personal claim after +another to make ourselves small and humble, to submit to feel ourselves +limited, feeble, dependent, ignorant and poor, and to throw ourselves +upon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have no +right to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover something +of life--the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignation +comes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the true greatness. + +October 27, 1856.--In all the chief matters of life we are alone, and +our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part +of the drama is a monologue, rather an intimate debate between God, our +conscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions, disappointments, +irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, +deliberations, all these belong to our secret, and are almost all +incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, +and even when we write them down. What is most precious in us never +shows itself, never finds an issue even in the closest intimacy. Only +a part of it reaches our consciousness, it scarcely enters into action +except in prayer, and is perhaps only perceived by God, for our past +rapidly becomes strange to us. Our monad may be influenced by other +monads, but none the less does it remain impenetrable to them in its +essence; and we ourselves, when all is said, remain outside our own +mystery. The center of our consciousness is unconscious, as the kernel +of the sun is dark. All that we are, desire, do, and know, is more or +less superficial, and below the rays and lightnings of our periphery +there remains the darkness of unfathomable substance. + +I was then well-advised when, in my theory of the inner man, I placed +at the foundation of the self, after the seven spheres which the self +contains had been successively disengaged, a lowest depth of darkness, +the abyss of the un-revealed, the virtual pledge of an infinite future, +the obscure self, the pure subjectivity which is incapable of realizing +itself in mind, conscience, or reason, in the soul, the heart, the +imagination, or the life of the senses, and which makes for itself +attributes and conditions out of all these forms of its own life. + +But the obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the +opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself +fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, +of liberty, and the spirit. For it represents _resistance_--that is to +say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and +its triumph. + +December 17, 1856.--This evening was the second quartet concert. It +stirred me much more than the first; the music chosen was loftier and +stronger. It was the quartet in D minor of Mozart, and the quartet in C +major of Beethoven, separated by a Spohr concerto. This last, vivid, and +brilliant as a whole, has fire in the allegro, feeling in the adagio, +and elegance in the _finale_, but it is the product of one fine gift in +a mediocre personality. With the two others you are at once in contact +with genius; you are admitted to the secrets of two great souls. Mozart +stands for inward liberty, Beethoven for the power of enthusiasm. The +one sets us free, the other ravishes us out of ourselves. I do not think +I ever felt more distinctly than to-day, or with more intensity, the +difference between these two masters. Their two personalities became +transparent to me, and I seemed to read them to their depths. + +The work of Mozart, penetrated as it is with mind and thought, +represents a solved problem, a balance struck between aspiration and +executive capacity, the sovereignty of a grace which is always mistress +of itself, marvelous harmony and perfect unity. His quartet describes a +day in one of those Attic souls who pre-figure on earth the serenity +of Elysium. The first scene is a pleasant conversation, like that of +Socrates on the banks of the Ilissus; its chief mark is an exquisite +urbanity. The second scene is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in the +blue of this Greek heaven. A storm, such as life inevitably brings with +it, even in the case of great souls who love and esteem each other, +has come to trouble the original harmony. What is the cause of it--a +misunderstanding, apiece of neglect? Impossible to say, but it breaks +out 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 and +grows graver, but remains affectionate and dignified. Then, the storm +has passed, the sun has come back, the explanation has taken place, +peace is re-established. The third scene paints the brightness of +reconciliation. Love, in its restored confidence, and as though in +sly self-testing, permits itself even gentle mocking and friendly +_badinage_. And the _finale_ brings us back to that tempered gaiety and +happy serenity, that supreme freedom, flower of the inner life, which is +the leading motive of the whole composition. + +In Beethoven's on the other hand, a spirit of tragic irony paints +for you the mad tumult of existence as it dances forever above the +threatening abyss of the infinite. No more unity, no more satisfaction, +no more serenity! We are spectators of the eternal duel between the +great forces, that of the abyss which absorbs all finite things, and +that of life which defends and asserts itself, expands, and enjoys. The +first bars break the seals and open the caverns of the great deep. The +struggle begins. It is long. Life is born, and disports itself gay and +careless as the butterfly which flutters above a precipice. Then it +expands the realm of its conquests, and chants its successes. It founds +a kingdom, it constructs a system of nature. But the typhon rises from +the yawning gulf, and the Titans beat upon the gates of the new empire. +A battle of giants begins. You hear the tumultuous efforts of the powers +of chaos. Life triumphs at last, but the victory is not final, and +through all the intoxication of it there is a certain note of terror and +bewilderment. The soul of Beethoven was a tormented soul. The passion +and the awe of the infinite seemed to toss it to and fro from heaven +to hell, Hence its vastness. Which is the greater, Mozart or Beethoven? +Idle question! The one is more perfect, the other more colossal. The +first gives you the peace of perfect art, beauty, at first sight. The +second gives you sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second impression. +The one gives that for which the other rouses a desire. Mozart has +the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic +grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the +soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of +Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed +be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us +good. Our love is due to both. + + * * * * * + +To judge is to see clearly, to care for what is just and therefore to be +impartial, more exactly, to be disinterested, more exactly still, to be +impersonal. + + * * * * * + +To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do +what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. + + * * * * * + +Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to +our powers. + + * * * * * + +If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion. + + * * * * * + +Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only +begins for man with self-surrender. + + * * * * * + +The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he +decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret. + + * * * * * + +Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the +flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its +spark. + +February 3, 1857.--The phantasmagoria of the soul cradles and soothes +me as though I were an Indian yoghi, and everything, even my own life, +becomes to me smoke, shadow, vapor, and illusion. I hold so lightly +to all phenomena that they end by passing over me like gleams over a +landscape, and are gone without leaving any impression. Thought is a +kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can +make transparent the mountains and everything that exists. It is by love +only that one keeps hold upon reality, that one recovers one's proper +self, that one becomes again will, force, and individuality. Love +could do everything with me; by myself and for myself I prefer to be +nothing.... + +I have the imagination of regret and not that of hope. My +clear-sightedness is retrospective, and the result with me of +disinterestedness and prudence is that I attach myself to what I have no +chance of obtaining.... + +May 27, 1857. (Vandoeuvres. [Footnote: Also a village in the +neighborhood of Geneva.])--We are going down to Geneva to hear the +"Tannhaeuser" of Richard Wagner performed at the theater by the German +troup now passing through. Wagner's is a powerful mind endowed with +strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than +musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of +melody, is with him a systematic _parti pris_. No more duos or trios; +monologue and the _aria_ are alike done away with. There remains only +declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the +conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention--that of +not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and +for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings. So that +his works are rather symphonic dramas than operas. The voice is brought +down to the rank of an instrument, put on a level with the violins, the +hautboys, and the drums, and treated instrumentally. Man is deposed from +his superior position, and the center of gravity of the work passes into +the baton of the conductor. It is music depersonalized, neo-Hegelian +music--music multiple instead of individual. If this is so, it is indeed +the music of the future, the music of the socialist democracy replacing +the art which is aristocratic, heroic, or subjective. + +The overture pleased me even less than at the first hearing: it is +like nature before man appeared. Everything in it is enormous, savage, +elementary, like the murmur of forests and the roar of animals. It is +forbidding and obscure, because man, that is to say, mind, the key of +the enigma, personality, the spectator, is wanting to it. + +The idea of the piece is grand. It is nothing less than the struggle of +passion and pure love, of flesh and spirit, of the animal and the angel +in man. The music is always expressive, the choruses very beautiful, the +orchestration skillful, but the whole is fatiguing and excessive, +too full, too laborious. When all is said, it lacks gayety, ease, +naturalness and vivacity--it has no smile, no wings. Poetically one is +fascinated, but one's musical enjoyment is hesitating, often doubtful, +and one recalls nothing but the general impression--Wagner's music +represents the abdication of the self, and the emancipation of all the +forces once under its rule. It is a falling back into Spinozism--the +triumph of fatality. This music has its root and its fulcrum in two +tendencies of the epoch, materialism and socialism--each of them +ignoring the true value of the human personality, and drowning it in the +totality of nature or of society. + +June 17, 1857. (Vandoeuvres).--I have just followed Maine de Biran from +his twenty-eighth to his forty-eighth year by means of his journal, +and a crowd of thoughts have besieged me. Let me disengage those which +concern myself. In this eternal self-chronicler and observer I seem to +see myself reflected with all my faults, indecision, discouragement, +over-dependence on sympathy, difficulty of finishing, with my habit of +watching myself feel and live, with my growing incapacity for practical +action, with my aptitude for psychological study. But I have also +discovered some differences which cheer and console me. This nature +is, as it were, only one of the men which exist in me. It is one of my +departments. It is not the whole of my territory, the whole of my inner +kingdom. Intellectually, I am more objective and more constructive; +my horizon is vaster; I have seen much more of men, things, countries, +peoples and books; I have a greater mass of experiences--in a word, I +feel that I have more culture, greater wealth, range, and freedom of +mind, in spite of my wants, my limits, and my weaknesses. Why does Maine +de Biran make _will_ the whole of man? Perhaps because he had too little +will. A man esteems most highly what he himself lacks, and exaggerates +what he longs to possess. Another incapable of thought, and meditation, +would have made self-consciousness the supreme thing. Only the totality +of things has an objective value. As soon as one isolates a part from +the whole, as soon as one chooses, the choice is involuntarily and +instinctively dictated by subjective inclinations which obey one or +other of the two opposing laws, the attraction of similars or the +affinity of contraries. + +Five o'clock.--The morning has passed like a dream. I went on with the +journal of Maine de Biran down to the end of 1817. After dinner I passed +my time with the birds in the open air, wandering in the shady walks +which wind along under Pressy. The sun was brilliant and the air clear. +The midday orchestra of nature was at its best. Against the humming +background made by a thousand invisible insects there rose the delicate +caprices and improvisations of the nightingale singing from the +ash-trees, or of the hedge-sparrows and the chaffinches in their nests. +The hedges are hung with wild roses, the scent of the acacia still +perfumes the paths; the light down of the poplar seeds floated in the +air like a kind of warm, fair-weather snow. I felt myself as gay as +a butterfly. On coming in I read the three first books of that poem +"Corinne," which I have not seen since I was a youth. Now as I read it +again, I look at it across interposing memories; the romantic interest +of it seems to me to have vanished, but not the poetical, pathetic, or +moral interest. + +June 18th.--I have just been spending three hours in the orchard under +the shade of the hedge, combining the spectacle of a beautiful morning +with reading and taking a turn between each chapter. Now the sky is +again covered with its white veil of cloud, and I have come up with +Biran, whose "Pensee" I have just finished, and Corinne, whom I have +followed with Oswald in their excursions among the monuments of the +eternal city. Nothing is so melancholy and wearisome as this journal of +Maine de Biran. This unchanging monotony of perpetual reflection has an +enervating and depressing effect upon one. Here, then, is the life of +a distinguished man seen in its most intimate aspects! It is one +long repetition, in which the only change is an almost imperceptible +displacement of center in the writer's manner of viewing himself. This +thinker takes thirty years to move from the Epicurean quietude to the +quietism of Fenelon, and this only speculatively, for his practical +life remains the same, and all his anthropological discovery consists +in returning to the theory of the three lives, lower, human, and higher, +which is in Pascal and in Aristotle. And this is what they call a +philosopher in France! Beside the great philosophers, how poor and +narrow seems such an intellectual life! It is the journey of an ant, +bounded by the limits of a field; of a mole, who spends his days in the +construction of a mole-hill. How narrow and stifling the swallow who +flies across the whole Old World, and whose sphere of life embraces +Africa and Europe, would find the circle with which the mole and the ant +are content! This volume of Biran produces in me a sort of asphyxia; +as I assimilate it, it seems to paralyze me; I am chained to it by some +spell of secret sympathy. I pity, and I am afraid of my pity, for I feel +how near I am to the same evils and the same faults.... + +Ernest Naville's introductory essay is full of interest, written in +a serious and noble style; but it is almost as sad as it is ripe and +mature. What displeases me in it a little is its exaggeration of the +merits of Biran. For the rest, the small critical impatience which the +volume has stirred in me will be gone by to-morrow. Maine de Biran is an +important link in the French literary tradition. It is from him that +our Swiss critics descend, Naville father and son, Secretan. He is the +source of our best contemporary psychology, for Stapfer, Royer-Collard, +and Cousin called him their master, and Ampere, his junior by nine +years, was his friend. + +July 25, 1857. (Vandoeuvres).--At ten o'clock this evening, under a +starlit sky, a group of rustics under the windows of the salon employed +themselves in shouting disagreeable songs. Why is it that this tuneless +shrieking of false notes and scoffing words delights these people? Why +is it that this ostentatious parade of ugliness, this jarring vulgarity +and grimacing is their way of finding expression and expansion in the +great solitary and tranquil night? + +Why? Because of a sad and secret instinct. Because of the need they +have of realizing themselves as individuals, of asserting themselves +exclusively, egotistically, idolatrously--opposing the self in them +to everything else, placing it in harsh contrast with the nature which +enwraps us, with the poetry which raises us above ourselves, with the +harmony which binds us to others, with the adoration which carries +us toward God. No, no, no! Myself only, and that is enough! Myself by +negation, by ugliness, by grimace and irony! Myself, in my caprice, in +my independence, in my irresponsible sovereignty; myself, set free by +laughter, free as the demons are, and exulting in my freedom; I, master +of myself, invincible and self-sufficient, living for this one time +yet by and for myself! This is what seems to me at the bottom of this +merry-making. One hears in it an echo of Satan, the temptation to make +self the center of all things, to be like an Elohim, the worst and last +revolt of man. It means also, perhaps, some rapid perception of what +is absolute in personality, some rough exaltation of the subject, the +individual, who thus claims, by abasing them, the rights of subjective +existence. 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 its +repulsive vulgarity, still reveals to us, without knowing it, something +of the majesty of life and the sovereign power of the soul. + +September 15, 1857.--I have just finished Sismondi's journal and +correspondence. Sismondi is essentially the honest man, conscientious, +upright, respectable, the friend of the public good and the devoted +upholder of a great cause, the amelioration of the common lot of men. +Character and heart are the dominant elements in his individuality, and +cordiality is the salient feature of his nature. Sismondi's is a most +encouraging example. With average faculties, very little imagination, +not much taste, not much talent, without subtlety of feeling, without +great elevation or width or profundity of mind, he yet succeeded in +achieving a career which was almost illustrious, and he has left behind +him some sixty volumes, well-known and well spoken of. How was this? His +love for men on the one side, and his passion for work on the other, +are the two factors in his fame. In political economy, in literary +or political history, in personal action, Sismondi showed no +genius--scarcely talent; but in all he did there was solidity, loyalty, +good sense and integrity. The poetical, artistic and philosophic sense +is deficient in him, but he attracts and interests us by his moral +sense. We see in him the sincere writer, a man of excellent heart, a +good citizen and warm friend, worthy and honest in the widest sense +of terms, not brilliant, but inspiring trust and confidence by his +character, his principles and his virtues. More than this, he is the +best type of good Genevese liberalism, republican but not democratic, +Protestant but not Calvinist, human but not socialist, progressive but +without any sympathy with violence. He was a conservative without either +egotism or hypocrisy, a patriot without narrowness. In his theories +he was governed by experience and observation, and in his practice by +general ideas. A laborious philanthropist, the past and the present were +to him but fields of study, from which useful lessons might be gleaned. +Positive and reasonable in temper, his mind was set upon a high average +well-being for human society, and his efforts were directed toward +founding such a social science as might most readily promote it. + +September 24, 1857.--In the course of much thought yesterday about +"Atala" and "Rene," Chateaubriand became clear to me. I saw in him a +great artist but not a great man, immense talent but a still vaster +pride--a nature at once devoured with ambition and unable to find +anything to love or admire in the world except itself--indefatigable in +labor and capable of everything except of true devotion, self-sacrifice +and faith. Jealous of all success, he was always on the opposition side, +that he might be the better able to disavow all services received, and +to hold aloof from any other glory but his own. Legitimist under the +empire, a parliamentarian tinder the legitimist _regime_, republican +under the constitutional monarchy, defending Christianity when France +was philosophical, and taking a distaste for religion as soon as +it became once more a serious power, the secret of these endless +contradictions in him was simply the desire to reign alone like the +sun--a devouring thirst for applause, an incurable and insatiable +vanity, which, with the true, fierce instinct of tyranny, would endure +no brother near the throne. A man of magnificent imagination but of poor +character, of indisputable power, but cursed with a cold egotism and +an incurable barrenness of feeling, which made it impossible for him to +tolerate about him anybody but slaves or adorers. A tormented soul and +miserable life, when all is said, under its aureole of glory and its +crown of laurels! + +Essentially jealous and choleric, Chateaubriand from the beginning was +inspired by mistrust, by the passion for contradicting, for crushing and +conquering. This motive may always be traced in him. Rousseau seems to +me his point of departure, the man who suggested to him by contrast +and opposition all his replies and attacks, Rousseau is revolutionary: +Chateaubriand therefore writes his "Essay on Revolutions." Rousseau is +republican and Protestant; Chateaubriand will be royalist and Catholic. +Rousseau is _bourgeois_; Chateaubriand will glorify nothing but noble +birth, honor, chivalry and deeds of arms. Rousseau conquered nature for +French letters, above all the nature of the mountains and of the +Swiss and Savoy, and lakes. He pleaded for her against civilization. +Chateaubriand will take possession of a new and colossal nature, of the +ocean, of America; but he will make his savages speak the language of +Louis XIV., he will bow Atala before a Catholic missionary, and sanctify +passions born on the banks of the Mississippi by the solemnities +of Catholic ceremonial. Rousseau was the apologist of reverie; +Chateaubriand will build the monument of it in order to break it in +Rene. Rousseau preaches Deism with all his eloquence in the "Vicaire +Savoyard;" Chateaubriand surrounds the Roman creed with all the garlands +of his poetry in the "Genie du Christianisme." Rousseau appeals to +natural law and pleads for the future of nations; Chateaubriand will +only sing the glories of the past, the ashes of history and the +noble ruins of empires. Always a role to be filled, cleverness to be +displayed, a _parti-pris_ to be upheld and fame to be won--his theme, +one of imagination, his faith one to order, but sincerity, loyalty, +candor, seldom or never! Always a real indifference simulating a passion +for truth; always an imperious thirst for glory instead of devotion to +the good; always the ambitious artist, never the citizen, the believer, +the man. Chateaubriand posed all his life as the wearied Colossus, +smiling pitifully upon a pygmy world, and contemptuously affecting +to desire nothing from it, though at the same time wishing it to be +believed that he could if he pleased possess himself of everything by +mere force of genius. He is the type of an untoward race, and the father +of a disagreeable lineage. + +But to return to the two episodes. "Rene" seems to me very superior to +"Atala.'" Both the stories show a talent of the first rank, but of the +two the beauty of "Atala" is of the more transitory kind. The attempt to +render in the style of Versailles the loves of a Natchez and a Seminole, +and to describe the manners of the adorers of the Manitous in the tone +of Catholic sentiment, was an attempt too violent to succeed. But the +work is a _tour de force_ of style, and it was only by the polished +classicism of the form, that the romantic matter of the sentiments and +the descriptions could have been imported into the colorless literature +of the empire. "Atala" is already old-fashioned and theatrical in +all the parts which are not descriptive or European--that is to say, +throughout all the sentimental savagery. + +"Rene" is infinitely more durable. Its theme, which is the malady of a +whole generation--distaste for life brought about by idle reverie and +the ravages of a vague and unmeasured ambition--is true to reality. +Without knowing or wishing it, Chateaubriand has been sincere, for Rene +is himself. This little sketch is in every respect a masterpiece. It +is not, like "Atala," spoilt artistically by intentions alien to the +subject, by being made the means of expression of a particular tendency. +Instead of taking a passion for Rene, indeed, future generations will +scorn and wonder at him; instead of a hero they will see in him a +pathological case; but the work itself, like the Sphinx, will endure. A +work of art will bear all kinds of interpretations; each in turn finds +a basis in it, while the work itself, because it represents an idea, and +therefore partakes of the richness and complexity which belong to ideas, +suffices for all and survives all. A portrait proves whatever one asks +of it. Even in its forms of style, in the disdainful generality of the +terms in which the story is told, in the terseness of the sentences, +in the sequence of the images and of the pictures, traced with classic +purity and marvelous vigor, "Rene" maintains its monumental character. +Carved, as it were, in material of the present century, with the tools +of classical art, "Rene" is the immortal cameo of Chateaubriand. + +We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented +with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and +our heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside it, in order that +it may deafen the clamor within. + + * * * * * + +The faculty of intellectual metamorphosis is the first and indispensable +faculty of the critic; without it he is not apt at understanding other +minds, and ought, therefore, if he love truth, to hold his peace. +The conscientious critic must first criticise himself; what we do not +understand we have not the right to judge. + + * * * * * + +June 14, 1858.--Sadness and anxiety seem to be increasing upon me. Like +cattle in a burning stable, I cling to what consumes me, to the solitary +life which does me so much harm. I let myself be devoured by inward +suffering.... + +Yesterday, however, I struggled against this fatal tendency. I went out +into the country, and the children's caresses restored to me something +of serenity and calm. After we had dined out of doors all three sang +some songs and school hymns, which were delightful to listen to. The +spring fairy had been scattering flowers over the fields with lavish +hands; it was a little glimpse of paradise. It is true, indeed, that the +serpent too was not far off. Yesterday there was a robbery close by the +house, and death had visited another neighbor. Sin and death lurk +around every Eden, and sometimes within it. Hence the tragic beauty, +the melancholy poetry of human destiny. Flowers, shade, a fine view, a +sunset sky, joy, grace, feeling, abundance and serenity, tenderness and +song--here you have the element of beauty: the dangers of the present +and the treacheries of the future, here is the element of pathos. +The fashion of this world passeth away. Unless we have laid hold upon +eternity, unless we take the religious view of life, these bright, +fleeting days can only be a subject for terror. Happiness should be +a prayer--and grief also. Faith in the moral order, in the protecting +fatherhood 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_ of +happiness and by the appeals of memory. My old self, the dreams which +used to haunt me in Germany, passionate impulses, high aspirations, all +revived in me at once with unexpected force. The dread lest I should +have missed my destiny and stifled my true nature, lest I should have +buried myself alive, passed through me like a shudder. Thirst for the +unknown, passionate love of life, the yearning for the blue vaults +of the infinite and the strange worlds of the ineffable, and that sad +ecstasy which the ideal wakens in its beholders--all these carried me +away 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 of +rebellion on the part of a nature which is unsatisfied?--the last agony +of happiness and of a hope that will not die? + +What raised all this storm? Nothing but a book--the first number of the +"_Revue Germanique_." The articles of Dollfus, Renan, Littre, Montegut, +Taillandier, by recalling to me some old and favorite subjects, made me +forget ten wasted years, and carried me back to my university life. I +was tempted to throw off my Genevese garb and to set off, stick in hand, +for any country that might offer--stripped and poor, but still young, +enthusiastic, and alive, full of ardor and of faith. + +... I have been dreaming alone since ten o'clock at the window, while +the stars twinkled among the clouds, and the lights of the neighbors +disappeared one by one in the houses round. Dreaming of what? Of the +meaning of this tragic comedy which we call life. Alas! alas! I was as +melancholy as the preacher. A hundred years seemed to me a dream, life +a breath, and everything a nothing. What tortures of mind and soul, and +all that we may die in a few minutes! What should interest us, and why? + + "Le temps n'est rien pour l'ame, 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 +and more impossible and amazing. At twenty I was the embodiment of +curiosity, elasticity and spiritual ubiquity; at thirty-seven I have not +a will, a desire, or a talent left; the fireworks of my youth have left +nothing but a handful of ashes behind them. + +December 13, 1858.--Consider yourself a refractory pupil for whom you +are responsible as mentor and tutor. To sanctify sinful nature, by +bringing it gradually under the control of the angel within us, by the +help of a holy God, is really the whole of Christian pedagogy and of +religious morals. Our work--my work--consists in taming, subduing, +evangelizing and _angelizing_ the evil self; and in restoring harmony +with the good self. Salvation lies in abandoning the evil self in +principle and in taking refuge with the other, the divine self, in +accepting with courage and prayer the task of living with one's own +demon, and 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 +it is to be converted, and this conversion must be repeated day by day. +Abel only redeems and touches Cain by exercising him constantly in good +works. To do right is in one sense an act of violence; it is suffering, +expiation, a cross, for it means the conquest and enslavement of self. +In another sense it is the apprenticeship to heavenly things, sweet +and secret joy, contentment and peace. Sanctification implies perpetual +martyrdom, but it is a martyrdom which glorifies. A crown of thorns is +the sad eternal symbol of the life of the saints. The best measure of +the profundity of any religious doctrine is given by its conception of +sin and the cure of sin. + +A duty is no sooner divined than from that very moment it becomes +binding upon us. + + * * * * * + +Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to +come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing. + +July 14, 1859.--I have just read "Faust" again. Alas, every year I am +fascinated afresh by this somber figure, this restless life. It is +the type of suffering toward which I myself gravitate, and I am always +finding in the poem words which strike straight to my heart. Immortal, +malign, accursed type! Specter of my own conscience, ghost of my own +torment, image of the ceaseless struggle of the soul which has not yet +found its true aliment, its peace, its faith--art thou not the typical +example of a life which feeds upon itself, because it has not found +its God, and which, in its wandering flight across the worlds, carries +within it, like a comet, an inextinguishable flame of desire, and an +agony of incurable disillusion? I also am reduced to nothingness, and +I shiver on the brink of the great empty abysses of my inner being, +stifled by longing for the unknown, consumed with the thirst for the +infinite, prostrate before the ineffable. I also am torn sometimes by +this blind passion for life, these desperate struggles for happiness, +though more often I am a prey to complete exhaustion and taciturn +despair. What is the reason of it all? Doubt--doubt of one's self, of +thought, of men, and of life--doubt which enervates the will and +weakens all our powers, which makes us forget God and neglect prayer and +duty--that restless and corrosive doubt which makes existence impossible +and meets all hope with satire. + +July 17, 1859.--Always and everywhere salvation is torture, deliverance +means death, and peace lies in sacrifice. If we would win our pardon, +we must kiss the fiery crucifix. Life is a series of agonies, a +Calvary, which we can only climb on bruised and aching knees. We seek +distractions; we wander away; we deafen and stupefy ourselves that we +may escape the test; we turn away oar eyes from the _via dolorosa_; and +yet there is no help for it--we must come back to it in the end. What +we have to recognize is that each of us carries within himself his own +executioner--his demon, his hell, in his sin; that his sin is his idol, +and that this idol, which seduces the desire of his heart, is his curse. + +_Die unto sin!_ This great saying of Christianity remains still the +highest theoretical solution of the inner life. Only in it is there any +peace of conscience; and without this peace there is no peace.... + +I have just read seven chapters of the gospel. Nothing calms me so much. +To do one's duty in love and obedience, to do what is right--these are +the ideas which remain with one. To live in God and to do his work--this +is religion, salvation, life eternal; this is both the effect and the +sign of love and of the Holy Spirit; this is the new man announced by +Jesus, and the new life into which we enter by the second birth. To be +born again is to renounce the old life, sin, and the natural man, and +to take to one's self another principle of life. It is to exist for God +with 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 soon +covers him like a shroud. This rapid and inexorable expansion of the +universal life, which covers, overflows, and swallows up all individual +being, which effaces our existence and annuls all memory of us, fills me +with unbearable melancholy. To be born, to struggle, to disappear--there +is the whole ephemeral drama of human life. Except in a few hearts, and +not even always in one, our memory passes like a ripple on the water, or +a breeze in the air. If nothing in us is immortal, what a small thing is +life. Like a dream which trembles and dies at the first glimmer of +dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve in me, and fall away from my +consciousness at the moment when it returns upon itself. I feel myself +then stripped and empty, like a convalescent who remembers nothing. My +travels, my reading, my studies, my projects, my hopes, have faded from +my mind. It is a singular state. All my faculties drop away from me like +a cloak that one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a larva. I +feel myself returning into a more elementary form. I behold my own +unclothing; I forget, still more than I am forgotten; I pass gently into +the grave while still living, and I feel, as it were, the indescribable +peace of annihilation, and the dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am conscious +of the river of time passing before and in me, of the impalpable shadows +of life gliding past me, but nothing breaks the cateleptic tranquillity +which enwraps me. + +I come to understand the Buddhist trance of the Soufis, the kief of the +Turk, the "ecstasy" of the orientals, and yet I am conscious all the +time that the pleasure of it is deadly, that, like the use of opium or +of hasheesh, it is a kind of slow suicide, inferior in all respects +to the joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of +enthusiasm, to the sacred 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 the +Academy of Geneva in 1844, lost his post after the revolution of +1846, and, except for a short interval in 1860, has since then held no +official position. His courses of theological lectures, delivered at +intervals from 1859 onward, were an extraordinary success. They were +at first confined to men only, and an audience of two thousand persons +sometimes assembled to hear them. To literature he is mainly known as +the editor of Maine de Biran's Journal.] on "The Eternal Life." It was +admirably sure in touch, true, clear, and noble throughout. He proved +that, whether we would or no, we were bound to face the question +of another life. Beauty of character, force of expression, depth of +thought, were all equally visible in this extemporized address, which +was as closely reasoned as a book, and can scarcely be disentangled from +the quotations of which it was full. The great room of the Casino was +full to the doors, and one saw a fairly large number of white heads. + +December 13, 1859.--Fifth lecture on "The Eternal Life" ("The Proof of +the Gospel by the Supernatural.") The same talent and great eloquence; +but the orator does not understand that the supernatural must either +be historically proved, or, supposing it cannot be proved, that it must +renounce all pretensions to overstep the domain of faith and to encroach +upon that of history and science. He quotes Strauss, Renan, Scherer, but +he touches only the letter of them, not the spirit. Everywhere one sees +the Cartesian dualism and a striking want of the genetic, historical, +and critical sense. The idea of a living evolution has not penetrated +into the consciousness of the orator. With every intention of dealing +with things as they are, he remains, in spite of himself, subjective and +oratorical. There is the inconvenience of handling a matter polemically +instead of in the spirit of the student. Naville's moral sense is too +strong for his discernment and prevents him from seeing what he does not +wish to see. In his metaphysic, will is placed above intelligence, and +in his personality the character is superior to the understanding, as +one might logically expect. And the consequence is, that he may prop up +what is tottering, but he makes no conquests; he may help to preserve +existing truths and beliefs, but he is destitute of initiative or +vivifying power. He is a moralizing but not a suggestive or stimulating +influence. A popularizer, apologist and orator of the greatest merit, he +is a schoolman at bottom; his arguments are of the same type as those +of the twelfth century, and he defends Protestantism in the same way +in which Catholicism has been commonly defended. The best way of +demonstrating the insufficiency of this point of view is to show by +history how incompletely it has been superseded. The chimera of a simple +and absolute truth is wholly Catholic and anti-historic. The mind of +Naville is mathematical and his objects moral. His strength lies +in _mathematicizing_ morals. As soon as it becomes a question of +development, metamorphosis, organization--as soon as he is brought +into contact with the mobile world of actual life, especially of the +spiritual life, he has no longer anything serviceable to say. Language +is for him a system of fixed signs; a man, a people, a book, are so many +geometrical figures of which we have only to discover the properties. + +December 15th.--Naville's sixth lecture, an admirable one, because it +did nothing more than expound the Christian doctrine of eternal life. As +an extempore performance--marvelously exact, finished, clear and noble, +marked by a strong and disciplined eloquence. There was not a single +reservation to make in the name of criticism, history or philosophy. It +was all beautiful, noble, true and pure. It seems to me that Naville has +improved in the art of speech during these latter years. He has always +had a kind of dignified and didactic beauty, but he has now added to +it the contagious cordiality and warmth of feeling which complete +the orator; he moves the whole man, beginning with the intellect +but finishing with the heart. He is now very near to the true virile +eloquence, and possesses one species of it indeed very nearly in +perfection. He has arrived at the complete command of the resources of +his own nature, at an adequate and masterly expression of himself. Such +expression is the joy and glory of the oratorical artist as of every +other. Naville is rapidly becoming a model in the art of premeditated +and self-controlled eloquence. + +There is another kind of eloquence--that which seems inspired, which +finds, discovers, and illuminates by bounds and flashes, which is born +in the sight of the audience and transports it. Such is not Naville's +kind. Is it better worth having? I do not know. + + * * * * * + +Every real need is stilled, and every vice is stimulated by +satisfaction. + + * * * * * + +Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. +It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of +self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience. + +It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses +the worth of a man, but what he is. + + * * * * * + +What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in _order_--material +order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going +and what one wishes--this is order; to keep one's word and one's +engagements--again order; to have everything ready under one's hand, to +be able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means of +whatever kind under command--still order; to discipline one's habits, +one's effort, one's wishes; to organize one's life, to distribute +one's time, to take the measure of one's duties and make one's rights +respected; to employ one's capital and resources, one's talent and one's +chances profitably--all this belongs to and is included in the word +_order_. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command +over one's self; order is power. Aesthetic and moral beauty consist, the +first 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 is +man's greatest need and his true well-being. + +April 17, 1860.--The cloud has lifted; I am better. I have been able +to take my usual walk on the Treille; all the buds were opening and +the young shoots were green on all the branches. The rippling of clear +water, the merriment of birds, the young freshness of plants, and the +noisy play of children, produce a strange effect upon an invalid. Or +rather it was strange to me to be looking at such things with the eyes +of a sick and dying man; it was my first introduction to a new phase of +experience. There is a deep sadness in it. One feels one's self cut off +from nature--outside her communion as it were. She is strength and joy +and eternal health. "Room for the living," she cries to us; "do not come +to darken my blue sky with your miseries; each has his turn: begone!" +But to strengthen our own courage, we must say to ourselves, No; it is +good for the world to see suffering and weakness; the sight adds zest +to the joy of the happy and the careless, and is rich in warning for +all who think. Life has been lent to us, and we owe it to our traveling +companions to let them see what use we make of it to the end. We must +show our brethren both how to live and how to die. These first summonses +of illness have besides a divine value; they give us glimpses behind +the scenes of life; they teach us something of its awful reality and its +inevitable end. They teach us sympathy. They warn us to redeem the time +while it is yet day. They awaken in us gratitude for the blessings which +are still ours, and humility for the gifts which are in us. So that, +evils though they seem, they are really an appeal to us from on high, a +touch of God's fatherly scourge. + +How frail a thing is health, and what a thin envelope protects our life +against being swallowed up from without, or disorganized from within! A +breath, and the boat springs a leak or founders; a nothing, and all +is endangered; a passing cloud, and all is darkness! Life is indeed a +flower which a morning withers and the beat of a passing wing breaks +down; it is the widow's lamp, which the slightest blast of air +extinguishes. In order to realize the poetry which clings to morning +roses, one needs to have just escaped from the claws of that vulture +which we call illness. The foundation and the heightening of all things +is the graveyard. The only certainty in this world of vain agitations +and endless anxieties, is the certainty of death, and that which is the +foretaste and small change of death--pain. + +As long as we turn our eyes away from this implacable reality, the +tragedy of life remains hidden from us. As soon as we look at it face to +face, the true proportions of everything reappear, and existence becomes +solemn again. It is made clear to us that we have been frivolous and +petulant, intractable and forgetful, and that we have been wrong. + +We must die and give an account of our life: here in all its simplicity +is the 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 of +reason. + +May 3, 1860.--Edgar Quinet has attempted everything: he has aimed +at nothing but the greatest things; he is rich in ideas, a master of +splendid imagery, serious, enthusiastic, courageous, a noble writer. How +is it, then, that he has not more reputation? Because he is too pure; +because he is too uniformly ecstatic, fantastic, inspired--a mood +which soon palls on Frenchmen. Because he is too single-minded, candid, +theoretical, and speculative, too ready to believe in the power of words +and of ideas, too expansive and confiding; while at the same time he is +lacking in the qualities which amuse clever people--in sarcasm, irony, +cunning and _finesse_. He is an idealist reveling in color: a Platonist +brandishing the _thyrsus_ of the Menads. At bottom his is a mind of no +particular country. It is in vain that he satirizes Germany and abuses +England; he does not make himself any more of a Frenchman by doing so. +It is a northern intellect wedded to a southern imagination, but +the marriage has not been a happy one. He has the disease of chronic +magniloquence, of inveterate sublimity; abstractions for him become +personified and colossal beings, which act or speak in colossal fashion; +he is intoxicated with the infinite. But one feels all the time that +his creations are only individual monologues; he cannot escape from +the bounds of a subjective lyrism. Ideas, passions, anger, hopes, +complaints--he himself is present in them all. We never have the delight +of escaping from his magic circle, of seeing truth as it is, of entering +into relation with the phenomena and the beings of whom he speaks, +with the reality of things. This imprisonment of the author within his +personality looks like conceit. But on the contrary, it is because the +heart is generous that the mind is egotistical. It is because Quinet +thinks himself so much of a Frenchman that he is it so little. These +ironical compensations of destiny are very familiar to me: I have often +observed them. Man is nothing but contradiction: the less he knows it +the more dupe he is. In consequence of his small capacity for seeing +things as they are, Quinet has neither much accuracy nor much balance +of mind. He recalls Victor Hugo, with much less artistic power but more +historical sense. His principal gift is a great command of imagery and +symbolism. He seems to me a Goerres [Footnote: Joseph Goerres, a German +mystic and disciple of Schelling. He published, among other works, +"Mythengeschichte der Asiatischen Welt," and "Christliche Mystik."] +transplanted to Franche Comte, a sort of supernumerary prophet, with +whom his nation hardly knows what to do, seeing that she loves neither +enigmas nor ecstasy nor inflation of language, and that the intoxication +of the tripod bores her. + +The real excellence of Quinet seems to me to lie in his historical works +("Marnix," "L'Italie," "Les Roumains"), and especially in his studies of +nationalities. He was born, to understand these souls, at once more vast +and more sublime than individual souls. + +(_Later_).--I have been translating into verse that page of Goethe's +"Faust" in which is contained his pantheistic confession of faith. The +translation is not bad, I think. But what a difference between the two +languages in the matter of precision! It is like the difference between +stump and graving-tool--the one showing the effort, the other noting the +result of the act; the one making you feel all that is merely dreamed or +vague, formless or vacant, the other determining, fixing, giving shape +even to the indefinite; the one representing the cause, the force, the +limbo whence things issue, the other the things themselves. German has +the obscure depth of the infinite, French the clear brightness of the +finite. + +May 5, 1860.--To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to +renounce a good once and for all, costs less than to renew the sacrifice +day by day and in detail. To bear with one's own decay, to accept one's +own lessening capacity, is a harder and rarer virtue than to face death. + + * * * * * + +There is a halo round tragic and premature death; there is but a long +sadness in declining strength. But look closer: so studied, a resigned +and religious old age will often move us more than the heroic ardor +of young years. The maturity of the soul is worth more than the first +brilliance of its faculties, or the plentitude of its strength, and the +eternal in us can but profit from all the ravages made by time. There is +comfort in this thought. + +May 22, 1860.--There is in me a secret incapacity for expressing my +true feeling, for saying what pleases others, for bearing witness to the +present--a reserve which I have often noticed in myself with vexation. +My heart never dares to speak seriously, either because it is ashamed of +being thought to flatter, or afraid lest it should not find exactly the +right expression. I am always trifling with the present moment. Feeling +in me is retrospective. My refractory nature is slow to recognize the +solemnity of the hour in which I actually stand. An ironical instinct, +born of timidity, makes me pass lightly over what I have on pretence of +waiting for some other thing at some other time. Fear of being carried +away, and distrust of myself pursue me even in moments of emotion; by +a sort of invincible pride, I can never persuade myself to say to any +particular instant: "Stay! decide for me; be a supreme moment! stand out +from the monotonous depths of eternity and mark a unique experience in +my life!" I trifle, even with happiness, out of distrust of the future. + +May 27, 1860. (Sunday).--I heard this morning a sermon on the Holy +Spirit--good but insufficient. Why was I not edified? Because there was +no unction. Why was there no unction? Because Christianity from this +rationalistic point of view is a Christianity of _dignity_, not of +humility. Penitence, the struggles of weakness, austerity, find no +place in it. The law is effaced, holiness and mysticism evaporate; the +specifically Christian accent is wanting. My impression is always the +same--faith is made a dull poor thing by these attempts to reduce it +to simple moral psychology. I am oppressed by a feeling of +inappropriateness and _malaise_ at the sight of philosophy in the +pulpit. "They have taken away my Saviour, and I know not where they have +laid him;" so the simple folk have a right to say, and I repeat it with +them. Thus, while some shock me by their sacerdotal dogmatism, others +repel me by their rationalizing laicism. It seems to me that good +preaching ought to combine, as Schleiermacher did, perfect moral +humility with energetic independence of thought, a profound sense of sin +with respect for criticism and a passion for truth. + + * * * * * + +The free being who abandons the conduct of himself, yields himself to +Satan; in the moral world there is no ground without a master, and the +waste lands belong to the Evil One. + +The poetry of childhood consists in simulating and forestalling the +future, just as the poetry of mature life consists often in going +backward to some golden age. Poetry is always in the distance. The whole +art of moral government lies in gaining a directing and shaping hold +over the poetical ideals of an age. + +January 9, 1861.--I have just come from the inaugural lecture of Victor +Cherbuliez in a state of bewildered admiration. As a lecture it was +exquisite: if it was a recitation of prepared matter, it was admirable; +if an extempore performance, it was amazing. In the face of superiority +and perfection, says Schiller, we have but one resource--to love them, +which is what I have done. I had the pleasure, mingled with a little +surprise, of feeling in myself no sort of jealousy toward this young +conqueror. + +March 15th.--This last lecture in Victor Cherbuliez's course on +"Chivalry," which is just over, showed the same magical power over his +subject as that with which he began the series two months ago. It was +a triumph and a harvest of laurels. Cervantes, Ignatius Loyola, and the +heritage of chivalry--that is to say, individualism, honor, the +poetry of the present and the poetry of contrasts, modern liberty and +progress--have been the subjects of this lecture. + +The general impression left upon me all along has been one of admiration +for the union in him of extraordinary skill in execution with admirable +cultivation of mind. With what freedom of spirit he uses and wields his +vast erudition, and what capacity for close attention he must have to be +able to carry the weight of a whole improvised speech with the same ease +as though it were a single sentence! I do not know if I am partial, but +I find no occasion for anything but praise in this young wizard and his +lectures. The fact is, that in my opinion we have now one more first +rate mind, one more master of language among us. This course, with the +"Causeries Atheniennes," seems to me to establish Victor Cherbuliez's +position at Geneva. + +March 17, 1861.--This afternoon a homicidal languor seized hold upon +me--disgust, weariness of life, mortal sadness. I wandered out into the +churchyard, hoping to find quiet and peace there, and so to reconcile +myself with duty. Vain dream! The place of rest itself had become +inhospitable. Workmen were stripping and carrying away the turf, the +trees were dry, the wind cold, the sky gray--something arid, irreverent, +and prosaic dishonored the resting-place of the dead. I was struck with +something wanting in our national feeling--respect for the dead, the +poetry of the tomb, the piety of memory. Our churches are too little +open; our churchyards too much. The result in both cases is the same. +The tortured and trembling heart which seeks, outside the scene of its +daily miseries, to find some place where it may pray in peace, or pour +out its grief before God, or meditate in the presence of eternal things, +with us has nowhere to go. Our church ignores these wants of the +soul instead of divining and meeting them. She shows very little +compassionate care for her children, very little wise consideration for +the more delicate griefs, and no intuition of the deeper mysteries of +tenderness, no religious suavity. Under a pretext of spirituality we are +always 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 in +religion, 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 +its nature, the incidents of sleep, so the soul converts into psychical +phenomena the ill-defined impressions of the organism. An uncomfortable +attitude becomes nightmare; an atmosphere charged with storm becomes +moral torment. Not mechanically and by direct causality; but imagination +and conscience engender, according to their own nature, analogous +effects; they translate into their own language, and cast into their own +mold, whatever reaches them from outside. Thus dreams may be helpful to +medicine and to divination, and states of weather may stir up and +set free within the soul vague and hidden evils. The suggestions and +solicitations which act upon life come from outside, but life produces +nothing but itself after all. Originality consists in rapid and clear +reaction against these outside influences, in giving to them our +individual stamp. To think is to withdraw, as it were, into one's +impression--to make it clear to one's self, and then to put it forth +in the shape of a personal judgment. In this also consists +self-deliverance, self-enfranchisement, self-conquest. All that comes +from outside is a question to which we owe an answer--a pressure to be +met by counter-pressure, if we are to remain free and living agents. The +development of our unconscious nature follows the astronomical laws +of Ptolemy; everything in it is change--cycle, epi-cycle, and +metamorphosis. + +Every man then possesses in himself the analogies and rudiments of all +things, of all beings, and of all forms of life. He who knows how to +divine the small beginnings, the germs and symptoms of things, can +retrace in himself the universal mechanism, and divine by intuition the +series which he himself will not finish, such as vegetable and animal +existences, human passions and crises, the diseases of the soul and +those of the body. The mind which is subtle and powerful may penetrate +all these potentialities, and make every point flash out the world which +it 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 itself +in things, is contradicted by a heart which yearns to live in human +beings. The uniting link of the two contradictions is the tendency +toward self-abandonment, toward ceasing to will and exist for +one's self, toward laying down one's own personality, and +losing--dissolving--one's self in love and contemplation. What I lack +above all things is character, will, individuality. But, as always +happens, the appearance is exactly the contrary of the reality, and +my outward life the reverse of my true and deepest aspiration. I whose +whole being--heart and intellect--thirsts to absorb itself in reality, +in its neighbor man, in nature and in God, I, whom solitude devours +and destroys, I shut myself up in solitude and seem to delight only +in myself and to be sufficient for myself. Pride and delicacy of soul, +timidity of heart, have made me thus do violence to all my instincts and +invert the natural order of my life. It is not astonishing that I +should be unintelligible to others. In fact I have always avoided what +attracted me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I desired +to be. + + "Deux instincts sont en moi: vertige et deraison; + J'ai l'effroi du bonheur et la soif du poison." + +It is the Nemesis which dogs the steps of life, the secret instinct and +power of death in us, which labors continually for the destruction of +all that seeks to be, to take form, to exist; it is the passion for +destruction, the tendency toward suicide, identifying itself with the +instinct of self-preservation. This antipathy toward all that does one +good, all that nourishes and heals, is it not a mere variation of the +antipathy to moral light and regenerative truth? Does not sin also +create a thirst for death, a growing passion for what does harm? +Discouragement has been my sin. Discouragement is an act of unbelief. +Growing weakness has been the consequence of it; the principle of death +in me and the influence of the Prince of Darkness have waxed stronger +together. My will in abdicating has yielded up the scepter to instinct; +and as the corruption of the best results in what is worst, love of +the ideal, tenderness, unworldliness, have led me to a state in which I +shrink from hope and crave for annihilation. Action is my cross. + +October 11, 1861. (_Heidelberg_).--After eleven days journey, here I am +under the roof of my friends, in their hospitable house on the banks of +the Neckar, with its garden climbing up the side of the Heiligenberg.... +Blazing sun; my room is flooded with light and warmth. Sitting opposite +the Geisberg, I write to the murmur of the Neckar, which rolls its green +waves, flecked with silver, exactly beneath the balcony on which my room +opens. A great barge coming from Heilbron passes silently under my eyes, +while the wheels of a cart which I cannot see are dimly heard on the +road which skirts the river. Distant voices of children, of cocks, of +chirping sparrows, the clock of the Church of the Holy Spirit, which +chimes the hour, serve to gauge, without troubling, the general +tranquility of the scene. One feels the hours gently slipping by, and +time, instead of flying, seems to hover. A peace beyond words steals +into my heart, an impression of morning grace, of fresh country poetry +which brings back the sense of youth, and has the true German savor.... +Two decked barges carrying red flags, each with a train of flat boats +filled with coal, are going up the river and making their way under the +arch of the great stone bridge. I stand at the window and see a whole +perspective of boats sailing in both directions; the Neckar is as +animated as the street of some great capital; and already on the slope +of the wooded mountain, streaked by the smoke-wreaths of the town, the +castle throws its shadow like a vast drapery, and traces the outlines of +its battlements and turrets. Higher up, in front of me, rises the dark +profile of the Molkenkur; higher still, in relief against the dazzling +east, I can distinguish the misty forms of the two towers of the +Kaiserstuhl and the Trutzheinrich. + +But enough of landscape. My host, Dr. George Weber, tells me that his +manual of history is translated into Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, +and French, and that of his great "Universal History"--three volumes +are already published. What astonishing power of work, what prodigious +tenacity, what solidity! _O deutscher Fleiss_! + +November 25, 1861.--To understand a drama requires the same mental +operation as to understand an existence, a biography, a man. It is a +putting back of the bird into the egg, of the plant into its seed, a +reconstitution of the whole genesis of the being in question. Art is +simply the bringing into relief of the obscure thought of nature; a +simplification of the lines, a falling into place of groups otherwise +invisible. The fire of inspiration brings out, as it were, designs +traced beforehand in sympathetic ink. The mysterious grows clear, the +confused plain; what is complicated becomes simple--what is accidental, +necessary. + +In short, art reveals nature by interpreting its intentions and +formulating its desires. Every ideal is the key of a long enigma. The +great artist is the simplifier. + +Every man is a tamer of wild beasts, and these wild beasts are his +passions. To draw their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame them, to +turn them into servants and domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, but +submissive--in this consists personal education. + +February 3, 1862.--Self-criticism is the corrosive of all oratorical +or literary spontaneity. The thirst to know turned upon the self is +punished, like the curiosity of Psyche, by the flight of the thing +desired. Force should remain a mystery to itself; as soon as it tries to +penetrate its own secret it vanishes away. The hen with the golden eggs +becomes unfruitful as soon as she tries to find out why her eggs are +golden. The consciousness of consciousness is the term and end of +analysis. True, but analysis pushed to extremity devours itself, like +the Egyptian serpent. We must give it some external matter to crush +and dissolve if we wish to prevent its destruction by its action upon +itself. "We are, and ought to be, obscure to ourselves," said Goethe, +"turned outward, and working upon the world which surrounds us." Outward +radiation constitutes health; a too continuous concentration upon what +is within brings us back to vacuity and blank. It is better that life +should dilate and extend itself in ever-widening circles, than that it +should be perpetually diminished and compressed by solitary contraction. +Warmth tends to make a globe out of an atom; cold, to reduce a globe +to the dimensions of an atom. Analysis has been to me self-annulling, +self-destroying. + +April 23, 1862. (_Mornex sur Saleve_).--I was awakened by the twittering +of the birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I threw open my windows, +the yellowing crescent of the moon looking in upon me, while the east +was just faintly whitening. An hour later it was delicious out of doors. +The anemones were still closed, the apple-trees in full flower: + + "Ces beaux pommiers, coverts de leurs fleurs etoileens, + Neige odorante du printemps." + +The view was exquisite, and nature, in full festival, spread freshness +and joy around her. I breakfasted, read the paper, and here I am. The +ladies of the _pension_ are still under the horizon. I pity them for the +loss of two or three delightful hours. + +Eleven o'clock.--Preludes, scales, piano-exercises going on under my +feet. In the garden children's voices. I have just finished Rosenkrantz +on "Hegel's Logic," and have run through a few articles in the +Reviews.... The limitation of the French mind consists in the +insufficiency of its spiritual alphabet, which does not allow it to +translate the Greek, German, or Spanish mind without changing the +accent. The hospitality of French manners is not completed by a +real hospitality of thought.... My nature is just the opposite. I am +individual in the presence of men, objective in the presence of things. +I attach myself to the object, and absorb myself in it; I detach myself +from subjects [_i.e._. persons], and hold myself on my guard against +them. I feel myself different from the mass of men, and akin to the +great whole of nature. My way of asserting myself is in cherishing this +sense of sympathetic unity with life, which I yearn to understand, and +in repudiating the tyranny of commonplace. All that is imitative and +artificial inspires me with a secret repulsion, while the smallest true +and spontaneous existence (plant, animal, child) draws and attracts me. +I feel myself in community of spirit with the Goethes, the Hegels, the +Schleiermachers, the Leibnitzes, opposed as they are among themselves; +while the French mathematicians, philosophers, or rhetoricians, in spite +of their high qualities, leave me cold, because there is in them no +sense of the whole, the sum of things [Footnote: The following passage +from Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a kind of answer by anticipation to +this accusation, which Amiel brings more than once in the course of the +Journal: + +"Toute nation livree a elle-meme et a son propre genie se fait une +critique litteraire qui y est conforme. La France en son beau temps a eu +la sienne, qui ne ressemble ni a celle de l'Allemagne ni a celle de ses +autres voisins--un peu plus superficielle, dira-t-on--je ne le crois +pas: mais plus vive, moins chargee d'erudition, moins theorique et +systematique, plus confiante au sentiment immediat du gout. _Un peu +de chaque chose et rien de l'ensemble, a la Francaise_: telle etait +la devise de Montaigne et telle est aussi la devise de la critique +francaise. Nous ne sommes pas _synthetiques_, comme diraient les +Allemands; le mot meme n'est pas francaise. L'imagination de detail nous +suffit. Montaigne, La Fontaine Madame de Sevigne, sont volontiers nos +livres de chevet." + +The French critic then goes on to give a rapid sketch of the authors +and the books, "qui ont peu a peu forme comme notre rhetorique." French +criticism of the old characteristic kind rests ultimately upon the +minute and delicate knowledge of a few Greek and Latin classics. +Arnauld, Boileau, Fenelon, Rollin, Racine _fils_, Voltaire, La Harpe, +Marmontel, Delille, Fontanes, and Chateaubriand in one aspect, are the +typical names of this tradition, the creators and maintainers of this +common literary _fonds_, this "sorte de circulation courante a l'usage +des gens instruits. J'avoue ma faiblesse: nous sommes devenus bien plus +forts dans la dissertation erudite, mais j'aurais un eternel regret +pour cette moyenne et plus libre habitude litteraire qui laissait a +l'imagination tout son espace et a l'esprit tout son jeu; qui formait +une atmosphere saine et facile ou le talent respirait et se mouvait +a son gre: cette atmosphere-la, je ne la trouve plus, et je la +regrette."--(_Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litteraire_, vol. i. p. 311.) + +The following _pensee_ of La Bruyere applies to the second half of +Amiel's criticism of the French mind: "If you wish to travel in the +Inferno or the Paradiso you must take other guides," etc. + +"Un homme ne Chretien et Francois se trouve contraint dans la satyre; +les grands sujets lui sont defendus, il les entame quelquefois, et se +detourne ensuite sur de petites choses qu'il releve par la beaute de +son genie et de son style."--_Les Caracteres_, etc., "_Des Ouvrages +del'Esprit_."]--because they have no _grasp_ of reality in its fullness, +and therefore either cramp and limit me or awaken my distrust. The +French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things +is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, very little +penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in is the +construction of special sciences; the art of writing a book, style, +courtesy, grace, literary models, perfection and urbanity; the spirit of +order, the art of teaching, discipline, elegance, truth of detail, +power of arrangement; the desire and the gift for proselytism, the vigor +necessary for practical conclusions. But if you wish to travel in the +"Inferno" or the "Paradiso" you must take other guides. Their home is +on the earth, in the region of the finite, the changing, the historical, +and the diverse. Their logic never goes beyond the category of mechanism +nor their metaphysic beyond dualism. When they undertake anything else +they are doing violence to themselves. + +April 24th. (_Noon_).--All around me profound peace, the silence of the +mountains in spite of a full house and a neighboring village. No sound +is to be heard but the murmur of the flies. There is something very +striking in this calm. The middle of the day is like the middle of the +night. Life seems suspended just when it is most intense. These are the +moments in which one hears the infinite and perceives the ineffable. +Victor Hugo, in his "Contemplations," has been carrying me from world +to world, and since then his contradictions have reminded me of the +convinced Christian with whom I was talking yesterday in a house near +by.... The same sunlight floods both the book and nature, the doubting +poet and the believing preacher, as well as the mobile dreamer, who, in +the midst of all these various existences, allows himself to be swayed +by every passing breath, and delights, stretched along the car of his +balloon, in floating aimlessly through all the sounds and shallows +of the ether, and in realizing within himself all the harmonies and +dissonances of the soul, of feeling, and of thought. Idleness and +contemplation! Slumber of the will, lapses of the vital force, indolence +of the whole being--how well I know you! To love, to dream, to feel, +to learn, to understand--all these are possible to me if only I may be +relieved from willing. It is my tendency, my 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 external +things and aims. The joy of becoming once more conscious of myself, of +listening to the passage of time and the flow of the universal life, +is sometimes enough to make me forget every desire, and to quench in +me both the wish to produce and the power to execute. Intellectual +Epicureanism is always threatening to overpower me. I can only combat it +by the idea of duty; it is as the poet has said: + + "Ceux qui vivent, ce sont ceux qui luttent; ce sont + Ceux dont un dessein ferme emplit l'ame et le front, + Ceux qui d'un haut destin gravissent l'apre cime, + Ceux qui marchent pensifs, epris 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 talk +upon the terrace. Some amount of familiarity and friendliness begins +to show itself in our relations to each other. I read over again with +emotion some passages of "Jocelyn." How admirable it is! + + "Il se fit de sa vie une plus male idee: + Sa douleur d'un seul trait ne l'avait pas videe; + Mais, adorant de Dieu le severe dessein, + Il sut la porter pleine et pure dans son sein, + Et ne se hatant pas de la repandre toute, + Sa resignation l'epancha goutte a 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, of +hope and sacrifice, and awakens the sense of the infinite. "Jocelyn" +always stirs in me impulses of tenderness which it would be hateful +to me to see profaned by satire. As a tragedy of feeling, it has no +parallel in French, for purity, except "Paul et Virginie," and I think +that I prefer "Jocelyn." To be just, one ought to read them side by +side. + +_Six o'clock._--One more day is drawing to its close. With the exception +of Mont Blanc, all the mountains have already lost their color. The +evening chill succeeds the heat of the afternoon. The sense of the +implacable 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 what +days, after all, would we keep and hold? Not only the happy days, but +the lost days! The first have left at least a memory behind them, the +others nothing but a regret which is almost a remorse.... + +_Eleven o'clock._--A gust of wind. A few clouds in the sky. The +nightingale is silent. On the other hand, the cricket and the river are +still singing. + +August 9, 1862.--Life, which seeks its own continuance, tends to repair +itself without our help. It mends its spider's webs when they have been +torn; it re-establishes in us the conditions of health, and itself heals +the injuries inflicted upon it; it binds the bandage again upon our +eyes, brings back hope into our hearts, breathes health once more into +our organs, and regilds the dream of our imagination. But for this, +experience would have hopelessly withered and faded us long before the +time, and the youth would be older than the centenarian. The wise part +of us, then, is that which is unconscious of itself; and what is +most reasonable in man are those elements in him which do not reason. +Instinct, nature, a divine, an impersonal activity, heal in us the +wounds made by our own follies; the invisible _genius_ of our life is +never tired of providing material for the prodigalities of the self. +The essential, maternal basis of our conscious life, is therefore that +unconscious life which we perceive no more than the outer hemisphere +of the moon perceives the earth, while all the time indissolubly and +eternally bound to it. It is our [Greek: antichoon], to speak with +Pythagoras. + +November 7, 1862.--How malign, infectious, and unwholesome is the +eternal smile of that indifferent criticism, that attitude of ironical +contemplation, which corrodes and demolishes everything, that mocking +pitiless temper, which holds itself aloof from every personal duty +and every vulnerable affection, and cares only to understand without +committing itself to action! Criticism become a habit, a fashion, and +a system, means the destruction of moral energy, of faith, and of all +spiritual force. One of my tendencies leads me in this direction, but I +recoil before its results when I come across more emphatic types of +it than myself. And at least I cannot reproach myself with having ever +attempted to destroy the moral force of others; my reverence for life +forbade it, and my self-distrust has taken from me even the temptation +to it. + +This kind of temper is very dangerous among us, for it flatters all +the worst instincts of men--indiscipline, irreverence, selfish +individualism--and it ends in social atomism. Minds inclined to mere +negation are only harmless in great political organisms, which go +without them and in spite of them. The multiplication of them among +ourselves will bring about the ruin of our little countries, for small +states only live by faith and will. Woe to the society where negation +rules, for life is an affirmation; and a society, a country, a nation, +is a living whole capable of death. No nationality is possible without +prejudices, for public spirit and national tradition are but webs woven +out of innumerable beliefs which have been acquired, admitted, and +continued without formal proof and without discussion. To act, we must +believe; to believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, decide, and +in reality prejudge the question. He who will only act upon a full +scientific certitude is unfit for practical life. But we are made +for action, and we cannot escape from duty. Let us not, then, condemn +prejudice so long as we have nothing but doubt to put in its place, or +laugh at those whom we should be incapable of consoling! This, at least, +is my point of view. + + * * * * * + +Beyond the element which is common to all men there is an element +which separates them. This element may be religion, country, language, +education. But all these being supposed common, there still remains +something which serves as a line of demarcation--namely, the ideal. To +have an ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or that--this is what +digs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same family +circle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with the +same love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you are to +escape solitude. + +Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it +means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we +share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire +to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of +solicitude. + +How many times we become hypocrites simply by remaining the same +outwardly and toward others, when we know that inwardly and to ourselves +we are different. It is not hypocrisy in the strict sense, for we borrow +no other personality than our own; still, it is a kind of deception. The +deception humiliates us, and the humiliation is a chastisement which the +mask inflicts upon the face, which our past inflicts upon our present. +Such humiliation is good for us; for it produces shame, and shame gives +birth to repentance. Thus in an upright soul good springs out of evil, +and it falls only to rise again. + + * * * * * + +January 8, 1863.--This evening I read through the "Cid" and "Rodogune." +My impression is still a mixed and confused one. There is much +disenchantment in my admiration, and a good deal of reserve in my +enthusiasm. What displeases me in this dramatic art, is the mechanical +abstraction of the characters, and the scolding, shrewish tone of +the interlocutors. I had a vague impression of listening to gigantic +marionettes, perorating through a trumpet, with the emphasis of +Spaniards. There is power in it, but we have before us heroic idols +rather than human beings. The element of artificiality, of strained +pomposity and affectation, which is the plague of classical tragedy, is +everywhere apparent, and one hears, as it were, the cords and pulleys of +these majestic _colossi_ creaking and groaning. I much prefer Racine and +Shakespeare; the one from the point of view of aesthetic sensation, the +other from that of psychological sensation. The southern theater can +never free itself from masks. Comic masks are bearable, but in the case +of tragic heroes, the abstract type, the mask, make one impatient. I can +laugh with personages of tin and pasteboard: I can only weep with the +living, or what resembles them. Abstraction turns easily to caricature; +it is apt to engender mere shadows on the wall, mere ghosts and puppets. +It is psychology of the first degree--elementary psychology--just as the +colored pictures of Germany are elementary painting. And yet with all +this, you have a double-distilled and often sophistical refinement: just +as savages are by no means simple. The fine side of it all is the manly +vigor, the bold frankness of ideas, words, and sentiments. Why is it +that we find so large an element of factitious grandeur, mingled with +true grandeur, in this drama of 1640, from which the whole dramatic +development of monarchical France was to spring? Genius is there, but it +is hemmed round by a conventional 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 "La +Morte de Pompee." Whatever one's objections may be, there is something +grandiose in the style of Corneille which reconciles you at last even to +his stiff, emphatic manner, and his over-ingenious rhetoric. But it is +the dramatic _genre_ which is false. His heroes are roles rather than +men. They pose as magnanimity, virtue, glory, instead of realizing +them before us. They are always _en scene_, studied by others, or by +themselves. With them glory--that is to say, the life of ceremony and of +affairs, and the opinion of the public--replaces nature--becomes nature. +They never speak except _ore rotundo_, in _cothurnus_, or sometimes on +stilts. And what consummate advocates they all are! The French drama is +an oratorical tournament, a long suit between opposing parties, on a day +which is to end with the death of somebody, and where all the personages +represented are in haste to speak before the hour of silence strikes. +Elsewhere, speech serves to make action intelligible; in French tragedy +action is but a decent motive for speech. It is the procedure calculated +to extract the finest possible speeches from the persons who are +engaged in the action, and who represent different perceptions of it at +different moments and from different points of view. Love and nature, +duty and desire, and a dozen other moral antitheses, are the limbs moved +by the wire of the dramatist, who makes them fall into all the tragic +attitudes. What is really curious and amusing is that the people of +all others the most vivacious, gay, and intelligent, should have always +understood the grand style in this pompous, pedantic fashion. But it was +inevitable. + +April 8, 1863.--I have been turning over the 3,500 pages of "Les +Miserables," trying to understand the guiding idea of this vast +composition. The fundamental idea of "Les Miserables" seems to be this. +Society engenders certain frightful evils--prostitution, vagabondage, +rogues, thieves, convicts, war, revolutionary clubs and barricades. She +ought to impress this fact on her mind, and not treat all those who +come in contact with her law as mere monsters. The task before us is to +humanize law and opinion, to raise the fallen as well as the vanquished, +to create a social redemption. How is this to be done? By enlightening +vice and lawlessness, and so diminishing the sum of them, and by +bringing to bear upon the guilty the healing influence of pardon. +At bottom is it not a Christianization of society, this extension of +charity from the sinner to the condemned criminal, this application to +our present life of what the church applies more readily to the other? +Struggle to restore a human soul to order and to righteousness by +patience and by love, instead of crushing it by your inflexible +vindictiveness, your savage justice! Such is the cry of the book. It +is great and noble, but it is a little optimistic and Rousseau-like. +According to it the individual is always innocent and society always +responsible, and the ideal before us for the twentieth century is a sort +of democratic age of gold, a universal republic from which war, capital +punishment, and pauperism will have disappeared. It is the religion and +the city of progress; in a word, the Utopia of the eighteenth century +revived on a great scale. There is a great deal of generosity in it, +mixed with not a little fanciful extravagance. The fancifulness consists +chiefly in a superficial notion of evil. The author ignores or pretends +to forget the instinct of perversity, the love of evil for evil's sake, +which is contained in the human heart. + +The great and salutary idea of the book, is that honesty before the law +is a cruel hypocrisy, in so far as it arrogates to itself the right +of dividing society according to its own standard into elect and +reprobates, and thus confounds the relative with the absolute. The +leading passage is that in which Javert, thrown off the rails, upsets +the whole moral system of the strict Javert, half spy, half priest--of +the irreproachable police-officer. In this chapter the writer shows us +social charity illuminating and transforming a harsh and unrighteous +justice. Suppression of the social hell, that is to say, of all +irreparable stains, of all social outlawries for which there is neither +end nor hope--it is an essentially religious idea. + +The erudition, the talent, the brilliancy of execution, shown in the +book are astonishing, bewildering almost. Its faults are to be found in +the enormous length allowed to digressions and episodical dissertations, +in the exaggeration of all the combinations and all the theses, and, +finally, in something strained, spasmodic, and violent in the style, +which is very different from the style of natural eloquence or of +essential truth. Effect is the misfortune of Victor Hugo, because he +makes it the center of his aesthetic system; and hence exaggeration, +monotony of emphasis, theatricality of manner, a tendency to force and +over-drive. A powerful artist, but one with whom you never forget the +artist; and a dangerous model, for the master himself is already grazing +the rock of burlesque, and passes from the sublime to the repulsive, +from lack of power to produce one harmonious impression of beauty. It is +natural enough that he should detest Racine. + +But what astonishing philological and literary power has Victor Hugo! He +is master of all the dialects contained in our language, dialects of +the courts of law, of the stock-exchange, of war, and of the sea, +of philosophy and the convict-gang, the dialects of trade and of +archaeology, of the antiquarian and the scavenger. All the bric-a-brac +of history and of manners, so to speak, all the curiosities of soil, +and subsoil, are known and familiar to him. He seems to have turned +his Paris over and over, and to know it body and soul as one knows the +contents of one's pocket. What a prodigious memory and what a lurid +imagination! He is at once a visionary and yet master of his dreams; +he summons up and handles at will the hallucinations of opium or of +hasheesh, without ever becoming their dupe; he makes of madness one +of his tame animals, and bestrides, with equal coolness, Pegasus or +Nightmare, the Hippogriff or the Chimera. As a psychological phenomenon +he is of the deepest interest. Victor Hugo draws in sulphuric acid, +he lights his pictures with electric light. He deafens, blinds, and +bewilders his reader rather than he charms or persuades him. Strength +carried to such a point as this is a fascination; without seeming to +take you captive, it makes you its prisoner; it does not enchant +you, but it holds you spellbound. His ideal is the extraordinary, the +gigantic, the overwhelming, the incommensurable. His most characteristic +words are _immense, colossal, enormous, huge, monstrous_. He finds a +way of making even child-nature extravagant and bizarre. The only thing +which seems impossible to him is to be natural. In short, his passion +is grandeur, his fault is excess; his distinguishing mark is a kind of +Titanic power with strange dissonances of puerility in its magnificence. +Where he is weakest is, in measure, taste, and sense of humor: he +fails in _esprit_, in the subtlest sense of the word. Victor Hugo is a +gallicized Spaniard, or rather he unites all the extremes of south and +north, the Scandinavian and the African. Gaul has less part in him than +any other country. And yet, by a caprice of destiny, he is one of the +literary geniuses of France in the nineteenth century! His resources are +inexhaustible, and age seems to have no power over him. What an infinite +store of words, forms, and ideas he carries about with him, and what a +pile of works he has left behind him to mark his passage! His eruptions +are like those of a volcano; and, fabulous workman that he is, he goes +on forever raising, destroying, crushing, and rebuilding a world of his +own creation, and a world rather Hindoo than Hellenic. + +He amazes me: and yet I prefer those men of genius who awaken in me the +sense of truth, and who increase the sum of one's inner liberty. In +Hugo one feels the effort of the laboring Cyclops; give me rather the +sonorous bow of Apollo, and the tranquil brow of the Olympian Jove. +His type is that of the Satyr in the "Legende des Siecles," who +crushes Olympus, a type midway between the ugliness of the faun and the +overpowering sublimity of the great Pan. + +May 23, 1863.--Dull, cloudy, misty weather; it rained in the night +and yet the air is heavy. This somber reverie of earth and sky has +a sacredness of its own, but it fills the spectator with a vague and +stupefying _ennui_. Light brings life: darkness may bring thought, but +a dull daylight, the uncertain glimmer of a leaden sky, merely make one +restless and weary. These indecisive and chaotic states of nature are +ugly, like all amorphous things, like smeared colors, or bats, or the +viscous polyps of the sea. The source of all attractiveness is to be +found in character, in sharpness of outline, in individualization. All +that is confused and indistinct, without form, or sex, or accent, is +antagonistic to beauty; for the mind's first need is light; light means +order, and order means, in the first place, the distinction of the +parts, in the second, their regular action. Beauty is based on reason. + +August 7, 1863.--A walk after supper, a sky sparkling with stars, the +Milky Way magnificent. Alas! all the same my heart is heavy. At bottom +I am always brought up against an incurable distrust of myself and of +life, which toward my neighbor has become indulgence, but for myself +has led to a _regime_ of absolute abstention. All or nothing! This is +my inborn disposition, my primitive stuff, my "old man." And yet if some +one will but give me a little love, will but penetrate a little into my +inner feeling, I am happy and ask for scarcely anything else. A child's +caresses, a friend's talk, are enough to make me gay and expansive. +So then I aspire to the infinite, and yet a very little contents me; +everything disturbs me and the least thing calms me. I have often +surprised in my self the wish for death, and yet my ambitions for +happiness scarcely go beyond those of the bird: wings! sun! a nest! I +persist in solitude because of a taste for it, so people think. No, it +is from distaste, disgust, from shame at my own need of others, shame at +confessing it, a fear of passing into bondage if I do confess it. + +September 2, 1863.--How shall I find a name for that subtle feeling +which seized hold upon me this morning in the twilight of waking? It was +a reminiscence, charming indeed, but nameless, vague, and featureless, +like the figure of a woman seen for an instant by a sick man in the +uncertainty of delirium, and across the shadows of his darkened room. I +had a distinct sense of a form which I had seen somewhere, and which had +moved and charmed me once, and then had fallen back with time into the +catacombs of oblivion. But all the rest was confused: place, occasion, +and the figure itself, for I saw neither the face nor its expression. +The whole was like a fluttering veil under which the enigma--the secret +of happiness--might have been hidden. And I was awake enough to be sure +that it was not a dream. + +In impressions like these we recognize the last trace of things which +are sinking out of sight and call within us, of memories which are +perishing. It is like a shimmering marsh-light falling upon some vague +outline of which one scarcely knows whether it represents a pain or a +pleasure--a gleam upon a grave. How strange! One might almost call +such things the ghosts of the soul, reflections of past happiness, the +_manes_ of our dead emotions. If, as the Talmud, I think, says, every +feeling of love gives birth involuntarily to an invisible genius or +spirit which yearns to complete its existence, and these glimmering +phantoms, which have never taken to themselves form and reality, are +still wandering in the limbo of the soul, what is there to astonish us +in the strange apparitions which sometimes come to visit our pillow? At +any rate, the fact remains that I was not able to force the phantom +to tell me its name, nor to give any shape or distinctness to my +reminiscence. + +What a melancholy aspect life may wear to us when we are floating down +the current of such dreamy thoughts as these! It seems like some vast +nocturnal shipwreck in which a hundred loving voices are clamoring for +help, while the pitiless mounting wave is silencing all the cries one +by one, before we have been able, in this darkness of death, to press a +hand or give the farewell kiss. Prom such a point of view destiny looks +harsh, savage, and cruel, and the tragedy of life rises like a rock in +the midst of the dull waters of daily triviality. It is impossible not +to be serious under the weight of indefinable anxiety produced in us by +such a spectacle. The surface of things may be smiling or commonplace, +but the depths below are austere and terrible. As soon as we touch upon +eternal things, upon the destiny of the soul, upon truth or duty, upon +the secrets of life and death, we become grave whether we will or no. + +Love at its highest point--love sublime, unique, invincible--leads us +straight to the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks to us directly +of the infinite and of eternity. It is eminently religious; it may even +become religion. When all around a man is wavering and changing, when +everything is growing dark and featureless to him in the far distance of +an unknown future, when the world seems but a fiction or a fairy tale, +and the universe a chimera, when the whole edifice of ideas vanishes in +smoke, and all realities are penetrated with doubt, what is the fixed +point which may still be his? The faithful heart of a woman! There he +may rest his head; there he will find strength to live, strength to +believe, and, if need be, strength to die in peace with a benediction on +his lips. Who knows if love and its beatitude, clear manifestation as it +is of the universal harmony of things, is not the best demonstration +of a fatherly and understanding God, just as it is the shortest road by +which to reach him? Love is a faith, and one faith leads to another. And +this faith is happiness, light and force. Only by it does a man enter +into the series of the living, the awakened, the happy, the redeemed--of +those true men who know the value of existence and who labor for +the glory of God and of the truth. Till then we are but babblers and +chatterers, spendthrifts of our time, our faculties and our gifts, +without aim, without real joy--weak, infirm, and useless beings, of no +account in the scheme of things. Perhaps it is through love that I shall +find my way back to faith, to religion, to energy, to concentration. It +seems to me, at least, that if I could but find my work-fellow and my +destined companion, all the rest would be added unto me, as though to +confound my unbelief and make me blush for my despair. Believe, then, in +a fatherly Providence, and dare to love! + +November 25, 1863.--Prayer is the essential weapon of all religions. +He who can no longer pray because he doubts whether there is a being +to whom prayer ascends and from whom blessing descends, he indeed is +cruelly solitary and prodigiously impoverished. And you, what do you +believe about it? At this moment I should find it very difficult to +say. All my positive beliefs are in the crucible ready for any kind of +metamorphosis. Truth above all, even when it upsets and overwhelms +us! But what I believe is that the highest idea we can conceive of the +principle of things will be the truest, and that the truest truth +is that which makes man the most wholly good, wisest, greatest, and +happiest. + +My creed is in transition. Yet I still believe in God, and the +immortality of the soul. I believe in holiness, truth, beauty; I believe +in the redemption of the soul by faith in forgiveness. I believe in +love, devotion, honor. I believe in duty and the moral conscience. I +believe even in prayer. I believe in the fundamental intuitions of the +human race, and in the great affirmations of the inspired of all ages. I +believe that our higher nature is our truer nature. + +Can one get a theology and a theodicy out of this? Probably, but just +now I do not see it distinctly. It is so long since I have ceased to +think about my own metaphysic, and since I have lived in the thoughts of +others, that I am ready even to ask myself whether the crystallization +of my beliefs is necessary. Yes, for preaching and acting; less for +studying, contemplating and learning. + +December 4, 1863.--The whole secret of remaining young in spite of +years, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in one's self +by poetry, by contemplation, by charity--that is, in fewer words, by +the maintenance of harmony in the soul. When everything is in its right +place within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work of +God. Deep and grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and the +eternal order, reason touched with emotion and a serene tenderness of +heart--these surely are the foundations of wisdom. + +Wisdom! how inexhaustible a theme! A sort of peaceful aureole surrounds +and illumines this thought, in which are summed up all the treasures of +moral experience, and which is the ripest fruit of a well-spent life. +Wisdom never grows old, for she is the expression of order itself--that +is, of the Eternal. Only the wise man draws from life, and from every +stage of it, its true savor, because only he feels the beauty, the +dignity, and the value of life. The flowers of youth may fade, but the +summer, the autumn, and even the winter of human existence, have their +majestic grandeur, which the wise man recognizes and glorifies. To see +all 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 the +humility which kneels, and the charity which gives, you have the whole +wisdom of the children of God, the immortal joy which is the heritage of +the true Christian. But what a false Christianity is that which slanders +wisdom and seeks to do without it! In such a case I am on the side of +wisdom, which is, as it were, justice done to God, even in this life. +The relegation of life to some distant future, and the separation of +the holy man from the virtuous man, are the signs of a false religious +conception. This error is, in some degree, that of the whole Middle +Age, and belongs, perhaps, to the essence of Catholicism. But the true +Christianity must purge itself from so disastrous a mistake. The eternal +life is not the future life; it is life in harmony with the true order +of things--life in God. We must learn to look upon time as a movement of +eternity, as an undulation in the ocean of being. To live, so as to keep +this consciousness of ours in perpetual relation with the eternal, is +to be wise; to live, so as to personify and embody the eternal, is to be +religious. + +The modern leveler, after having done away with conventional +inequalities, with arbitrary privilege and historical injustice, goes +still farther, and rebels against the inequalities of merit, capacity, +and virtue. Beginning with a just principle, he develops it into an +unjust one. Inequality may be as true and as just as equality: it +depends upon what you mean by it. But this is precisely what nobody +cares to find out. All passions dread the light, and the modern zeal for +equality is a disguised hatred which tries to pass itself off as love. + +Liberty, equality--bad principles! The only true principle for humanity +is justice, and justice toward the feeble becomes necessarily protection +or kindness. + +April 2, 1864.--To-day April has been displaying her showery caprices. +We have had floods of sunshine followed by deluges of rain, alternate +tears and smiles from the petulant sky, gusts of wind and storms. The +weather is like a spoiled child whose wishes and expression change +twenty times in an hour. It is a blessing for the plants, and means +an influx of life through all the veins of the spring. The circle of +mountains which bounds the valley is covered with white from top to toe, +but two hours of sunshine would melt the snow away. The snow itself is +but a new caprice, a simple stage decoration ready to disappear at the +signal of the scene-shifter. + +How sensible I am to the restless change which rules the world. To +appear, and to vanish--there is the biography of all individuals, +whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they +describe, and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is +the shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyph +traced for an instant in the sand, and effaced a moment afterward by a +breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of +the great river of being--an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this +nothing is, however, the symbol of the universal being, and this passing +bubble is the epitome of the history of the world. + +The man who has, however imperceptibly, helped in the work of the +universe, has lived; the man who has been conscious, in however small a +degree, of the cosmical movement, has lived also. The plain man serves +the world by his action and as a wheel in the machine; the thinker +serves it by his intellect, and as a light upon its path. The man of +meditative soul, who raises and comforts and sustains his traveling +companions, mortal and fugitive like himself, plays a nobler part still, +for he unites the other two utilities. Action, thought, speech, are the +three modes of human life. The artisan, the savant, and the orator, +are all three God's workmen. To do, to discover, to teach--these three +things are 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 yet +prolong our perishable being in the memory of men, or at least in the +contexture of after events. Everything disappears, but nothing is lost, +and the 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 of +moral being, just as our calcareous mountains are made of the debris +of myriads of nameless creatures who have lived under the forms of +microscopic 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, +and talent, and what an irreproachable finish of style--so limpid, and +yet so profound! It is not heartfelt and it is not spontaneous, but all +other kinds of merit, culture, and cleverness the author possesses. +It would be impossible to be more penetrating, more subtle, and less +fettered in mind, than this wizard of language, with his irony and his +chameleon-like variety. Victor Cherbuliez, like the sphinx, is able to +play all lyres, and takes his profit from them all, with a Goethe-like +serenity. It seems as if passion, grief, and error had no hold on this +impassive soul. The key of his thought is to be looked for in Hegel's +"Phenomenology of Mind," remolded by Greek and French influences. + +His faith, if he has one, is that of Strauss-Humanism. But he is +perfectly master of himself and of his utterances, and will take good +care never to preach anything prematurely. + +What is there quite at the bottom of this deep spring? + +In any case a mind as free as any can possibly be from stupidity and +prejudice. One might almost say that Cherbuliez knows all that he +wishes to know, without the trouble of learning it. He is a calm +Mephistopheles, with perfect manners, grace, variety, and an exquisite +urbanity; and Mephisto is a clever jeweler; and this jeweler is a subtle +musician; and this fine singer and storyteller, with his amber-like +delicacy and brilliancy, is making mock of us all the while. He takes a +malicious pleasure in withdrawing his own personality from scrutiny and +divination, while he himself divines everything, and he likes to make us +feel that although he holds in his hand the secret of the universe, +he will only unfold his prize at his own time, and if it pleases him. +Victor Cherbuliez is a little like Proudhon and plays with paradoxes, to +shock the _bourgeois_. Thus he amuses himself with running down Luther +and the Reformation in favor of the Renaissance. Of the troubles of +conscience he seems to know nothing. His supreme tribunal is reason. +At bottom he is Hegelian and intellectualist. But it is a splendid +organization. Only sometimes he must be antipathetic to those men of +duty who make renunciation, sacrifice, and humility the measure of +individual worth. + +July, 1864.--Among the Alps I become a child again, with all the +follies and _naivete_ of childhood. Shaking off the weight of years, the +trappings of office, and all the tiresome and ridiculous caution with +which one lives, I plunge into the full tide of pleasure, and amuse +myself sans facon, as it comes. In this careless light-hearted mood, my +ordinary formulas and habits fall away from me so completely that I feel +myself no longer either townsman, or professor, or savant, or bachelor, +and I remember no more of my past than if it were a dream. It is like a +bath in Lethe. + +It makes me really believe that the smallest illness would destroy my +memory, and wipe out all my previous existence, when I see with what +ease I become a stranger to myself, and fall back once more into +the condition of a blank sheet, a _tabula rasa_. Life wears such a +dream-aspect to me that I can throw myself without any difficulty into +the situation of the dying, before whose eyes all this tumult of images +and forms fades into nothingness. I have the inconsistency of a fluid, +a vapor, a cloud, and all is easily unmade or transformed in me; +everything passes and is effaced like the waves which follow each other +on the sea. When I say all, I mean all that is arbitrary, indifferent, +partial, or intellectual in the combinations of one's life. For I feel +that the things of the soul, our immortal aspirations, our deepest +affections, are not drawn into this chaotic whirlwind of impressions. It +is the finite things which are mortal and fugitive. Every man feels it +OH his deathbed. I feel it during the whole of life; that is the only +difference between me and others. Excepting only love, thought, and +liberty, almost everything is now a matter of indifference to me, and +those objects which excite the desires of most men, rouse in me +little more 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 noble +soul--with Eugenie de Guerin, the pious heroine of fraternal love. How +many thoughts, feelings, griefs, in this journal of six years! How +it makes one dream, think and live! It produces a certain homesick +impression on me, a little like that of certain forgotten melodies +whereof the accent touches the heart, one knows not why. It is as though +far-off paths came back to me, glimpses of youth, a confused murmur +of voices, echoes from my past. Purity, melancholy, piety, a thousand +memories of a past existence, forms fantastic and intangible, like +the fleeting shadows of a dream at waking, began to circle round the +astonished reader. + +September 20, 1864.--Read Eugenie de Guerin's volume again right and +left with a growing sense of attraction. Everything is heart, force, +impulse, in these pages which have the power of sincerity and a +brilliance of suffused poetry. A great and strong soul, a clear mind, +distinction, elevation, the freedom of unconscious talent, reserve and +depth--nothing is wanting for this Sevigne of the fields, who has to +hold herself in with both hands lest she should write verse, so strong +in her is the artistic impulse. + +October 16, 1864.--I have just read a part of Eugenie de Guerin's +journal over again. It charmed me a little less than the first time. The +nature seemed to me as beautiful, but the life of Eugenie was too empty, +and the circle of ideas which occupied her, too narrow. + +It is touching and wonderful to see how little space is enough for +thought to spread its wings in, but this perpetual motion within the +four walls of a cell ends none the less by becoming wearisome to minds +which are accustomed to embrace more objects in their field of vision. +Instead of a garden, the world; instead of a library, the whole of +literature; instead of three or four faces, a whole people and all +history--this is what the virile, the philosophic temper demands. Men +must have more air, more room, mere horizon, more positive knowledge, +and they end by suffocating in this little cage where Eugenie lives and +moves, though the breath of heaven blows into it and the radiance of the +stars shines down upon it. + +October 27, 1864. (_Promenade de la Treille_).--The air this morning was +so perfectly clear and lucid that one might have distinguished a figure +on the Vouache. [Footnote: The Vouache is the hill which bounds the +horizon of Geneva to the south-west.] This level and brilliant sun had +set 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 boughs +or had already fallen beneath the trees. It was delicious. The martial +step of our two battalions going out to their drilling-ground, the +sparkle of the guns, the song of the bugles, the sharp distinctness of +the house outlines, still moist with the morning dew, the transparent +coolness of all the shadows--every detail in the scene was instinct with +a keen and wholesome gayety. + +There are two forms of autumn: there is the misty and dreamy autumn, +there is the vivid and brilliant autumn: almost the difference between +the two sexes. The very word autumn is both masculine and feminine. Has +not every season, in some fashion, its two sexes? Has it not its minor +and its major key, its two sides of light and shadow, gentleness +and force? Perhaps. All that is perfect is double; each face has two +profiles, each coin two sides. The scarlet autumn stands for vigorous +activity: the gray autumn for meditative feeling. The one is expansive +and overflowing; the other still and withdrawn. Yesterday our thoughts +were with the dead. To-day we are celebrating the vintage. + +November 16, 1864.--Heard of the death of--. Will and intelligence +lasted till there was an effusion on the brain which stopped everything. + +A bubble of air in the blood, a drop of water in the brain, and a man +is out of gear, his machine falls to pieces, his thought vanishes, the +world disappears from him like a dream at morning. On what a spider +thread is hung our individual existence! Fragility, appearance, +nothingness. If it were for our powers of self-detraction and +forgetfulness, all the fairy world which surrounds and draws us would +seem to us but a broken spectre in the darkness, an empty appearance, +a fleeting hallucination. Appeared--disappeared--there is the whole +history of a man, or of a world, or of an infusoria. + +Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we +decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively +what is simultaneous in idea. The eye does not see a sphere all at once +although the sphere exists all at once. Either the sphere must turn +before the eye which is looking at it, or the eye must go round the +sphere. In the first case it is the world which unrolls, or seems to +unroll in time; in the second case it is our thought which successively +analyzes and recomposes. For the supreme intelligence there is no time; +what will be, is. Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the +use of finite creatures. God permits them, that he may not be alone. +They are the mode under which creatures are possible and conceivable. +Let us add that they are also the Jacob's ladder of innumerable steps +by which the creation reascends to its Creator, participates in being, +tastes of life, perceives the absolute, and can adore the fathomless +mystery of the infinite divinity. That is the other side of the +question. Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A +breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating +far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal. +To escape by the ecstasy of inward vision from the whirlwind of time, +to see one's self _sub specie eterni_ is the word of command of all the +great religions of the higher races; and this psychological possibility +is the foundation of all great hopes. The soul may be immortal because +she is fitted to rise toward that which is neither born nor dies, toward +that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say +toward God. + +To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we +must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the +childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the +key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song. + +The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals +as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves. +Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and +courage. + +Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all +rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, +where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the +secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or +less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the +universe. + +A man takes to "piety" from a thousand different reasons--from imitation +or from eccentricity, from bravado or from reverence, from shame of the +past or from terror of the future, from weakness and from pride, for +pleasure'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 live +above the lowlands of vulgarity. Manufacturing Americanism and Caesarian +democracy tend equally to the multiplying of crowds, governed by +appetite, applauding charlatanism, vowed to the worship of mammon and +of pleasure, and adoring no other God than force. What poor samples of +mankind they are who make up this growing majority! Oh, let us +remain faithful to the altars of the ideal! It is possible that the +spiritualists may become the stoics of a new epoch of Caesarian rule. +Materialistic naturalism has the wind in its sails, and a general moral +deterioration is preparing. NO matter, so long as the salt does not lose +its savor, and so long as the friends of the higher life maintain the +fire of Vesta. The wood itself may choke the flame, but if the flame +persists, the fire will only be the more splendid in the end. The great +democratic deluge will not after all be able to effect what the invasion +of the barbarians was powerless to bring about; it will not drown +altogether the results of the higher culture; but we must resign +ourselves to the fact that it tends in the beginning to deform and +vulgarize everything. It is clear that aesthetic delicacy, elegance, +distinction, and nobleness--that atticism, urbanity, whatever is suave +and exquisite, fine and subtle--all that makes the charm of the +higher kinds of literature and of aristocratic cultivation--vanishes +simultaneously with the society which corresponds to it. If, as Pascal, +[Footnote: The saying of Pascal's alluded to is in the _Pensees_, Art. +xi. No. 10: "A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit on trouve qu'il y a plus +d'hommes originaux. Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference +entre les hommes."] I think, says, the more one develops, the more +difference one observes between man and man, then we cannot say that the +democratic instinct tends to mental development, since it tends to make +a man believe that the pretensions have only to be the same to make the +merits equal also. + +March 20, 1865.--I have just heard of fresh cases of insubordination +among the students. Our youth become less and less docile, and seem to +take for their motto, "Our master is our enemy." The boy insists upon +having the privileges of the young man, and the young man tries to keep +those of the _gamin_. At bottom all this is the natural consequence of +our system of leveling democracy. As soon as difference of quality +is, in politics, officially equal to zero, the authority of age, of +knowledge, and of function disappears. + +The only counterpoise of pure equality is military discipline. In +military uniform, in the police court, in prison, or on the execution +ground, there is no reply possible. But is it not curious that the +_regime_ of individual right should lead to nothing but respect for +brute strength? Jacobinism brings with it Caesarism; the rule of the +tongue leads to the rule of the sword. Democracy and liberty are not one +but two. A republic supposes a high state of morals, but no such state +of morals is possible without the habit of respect; and there is no +respect without humility. Now the pretension that every man has the +necessary qualities of a citizen, simply because he was born twenty-one +years ago, is as much as to say that labor, merit, virtue, character, +and experience are to count for nothing; and we destroy humility when +we proclaim that a man becomes the equal of all other men, by the +mere mechanical and vegetative process of natural growth. Such a claim +annihilates even the respect for age; for as the elector of twenty-one +is worth as much as the elector of fifty, the boy of nineteen has no +serious reason to believe himself in any way the inferior of his elder +by one or two years. Thus the fiction on which the political order of +democracy is based ends in something altogether opposed to that which +democracy desires: its aim was to increase the whole sum of liberty; but +the 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 many +hollow and worn-out entities; nothing remains to create movement but the +action of molecular force and of dead weight. In such a theory liberty +is identified with caprice, and the collective reason and age-long +tradition of an old society are nothing more than soap-bubbles which the +smallest urchin may shiver with a snap of the fingers. + +Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction +for fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its +promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all +democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a +state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such a +postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily +composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; the +state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it always +ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions which +have been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to live +upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be a +prophet to foresee such a result. + +"[Greek: Aridton men udor]," said Pindar; the best thing in the world +is wisdom, and, in default of wisdom, science. States, churches, society +itself, may fall to pieces; science alone has nothing to fear--until at +least society once more falls a prey to barbarism. Unfortunately this +triumph of barbarism is not impossible. The victory of the socialist +Utopia, or the horrors of a religious war, reserve for us perhaps even +this lamentable experience. + +April 3, 1865.--What doctor possesses such curative resources as those +latent in a spark of happiness or a single ray of hope? The mainspring +of life is in the heart. Joy is the vital air of the soul, and grief is +a kind of asthma complicated by atony. Our dependence upon surrounding +circumstances increases with our own physical weakness, and on the other +hand, in health there is liberty. Health is the first of all liberties, +and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health. To +make any one happy, then, is strictly to augment his store of being, to +double the intensity of his life, to reveal him to himself, to ennoble +him and transfigure him. Happiness does away with ugliness, and even +makes the beauty of beauty. The man who doubts it, can never have +watched the first gleams of tenderness dawning in the clear eyes of +one who loves; sunrise itself is a lesser marvel. In paradise, then, +everybody will be beautiful. For, as the righteous soul is naturally +beautiful, as the spiritual body is but the _visibility_ of the soul, +its impalpable and angelic form, and as happiness beautifies all that +it penetrates or even touches, ugliness will have no more place in the +universe, and will disappear with grief, sin, and death. + +To the materialist philosopher the beautiful is a mere accident, and +therefore rare. To the spiritualist philosopher the beautiful is the +rule, the law, the universal foundation of things, to which every form +returns 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 force +to make its envelope transparent and shine through upon all around +it. Beauty is, then, a phenomenon belonging to the spiritualization of +matter. It is a momentary transfiguration of the privileged object or +being--a token fallen from heaven to earth in order to remind us of +the ideal world. To study it, is to Platonize almost inevitably. As a +powerful electric current can render metals luminous, and reveal their +essence by the color of their flame, so intense life and supreme joy +can make the most simple mortal dazzlingly beautiful. Man, therefore, is +never more truly man than in these divine states. + +The ideal, after all, is truer than the real: for the ideal is the +eternal element in perishable things: it is their type, their sum, their +_raison d'etre_, their formula in the book of the Creator, and therefore +at once the most exact and the most condensed expression of them. + +April 11, 1865.--I have been measuring and making a trial of the new +gray plaid which is to take the place of my old mountain shawl. The old +servant which has been my companion for ten years, and which recalls to +me so many poetical and delightful memories, pleases me better than its +brilliant successor, even though this last has been a present from a +friendly hand. But can anything take the place of the past, and have +not even the inanimate witnesses of our life voice and language for us? +Glion, Villars, Albisbrunnen, the Righi, the Chamossaire, and a hundred +other places, have left something of themselves behind them in the +meshes of this woolen stuff which makes a part of my most intimate +history. The shawl, besides, is the only _chivalrous_ article of dress +which is still left to the modern traveler, the only thing about him +which may be useful to others than himself, and by means of which he may +still do his _devoir_ to fair women! How many times mine has served them +for a cushion, a cloak, a shelter, on the damp grass of the Alps, on +seats of hard rock, or in the sudden cool of the pinewood, during the +walks, the rests, the readings, and the chats of mountain life! How many +kindly smiles it has won for me! Even its blemishes are dear to me, for +each darn and tear has its story, each scar is an armorial bearing. This +tear was made by a hazel tree under Jaman--that by the buckle of a strap +on the Frohnalp--that, again, by a bramble at Charnex; and each time +fairy needles have repaired the injury. + + "Mon vieux manteau, que je vous remercie + Car c'est a vous que je dois ces plaisirs!" + +And has it not been to me a friend in suffering, a companion in good and +evil fortune? It reminds me of that centaur's tunic which could not be +torn off without carrying away the flesh and blood of its wearer. I am +unwilling to give it up; whatever gratitude for the past, and whatever +piety toward my vanished youth is in me, seem to forbid it. The warp +of this rag is woven out of Alpine joys, and its woof out of human +affections. It also says to me in its own way: + + "Pauvre bouquet, fleurs aujourd'hui fanees!" + +And the appeal is one of those which move the heart, although profane +ears neither hear it nor understand it. + +What a stab there is in those words, _thou hast been_! when the sense +of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinking +gradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our +illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never +become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of +youth, 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 have +neither the crown of completed manhood nor of fatherhood! How sad it +is to feel the mind declining before it has done its work, and the body +growing weaker before it has seen itself renewed in those who might +close our eyes and honor our name! The tragic solemnity of existence +strikes us with terrible force, on that morning when we wake to find +the mournful word _too late_ ringing in our ears! "Too late, the sand is +turned, the hour is past! Thy harvest is unreaped--too late! Thou +hast been dreaming, forgetting, sleeping--so much the worse! Every +man rewards or punishes himself. To whom or of whom wouldst thou +complain?"--Alas! + +April 21, 1865. (_Mornex_).--A morning of intoxicating beauty, fresh +as the feelings of sixteen, and crowned with flowers like a bride. The +poetry of youth, of innocence, and of love, overflowed my soul. Even +to the light mist hovering over the bosom of the plain--image of that +tender modesty which veils the features and shrouds in mystery the +inmost thoughts of the maiden--everything that I saw delighted my eyes +and spoke to my imagination. It was a sacred, a nuptial day! and the +matin bells ringing in some distant village harmonized marvelously with +the hymn of nature. "Pray," they said, "and love! Adore a fatherly and +beneficent God." They recalled to me the accent of Haydn; there was in +them and in the landscape a childlike joyousness, a naive gratitude, +a radiant heavenly joy innocent of pain and sin, like the sacred, +simple-hearted ravishment of Eve on the first day of her awakening in +the new world. How good a thing is feeling, admiration! It is the bread +of angels, the eternal food of cherubim and seraphim. + +I have not yet felt the air so pure, so life-giving, so ethereal, during +the five days that I have been here. To breathe is a beatitude. One +understands the delights of a bird's existence--that emancipation from +all encumbering weight--that luminous and empyrean life, floating in +blue space, and passing from one horizon to another with a stroke of +the wing. One must have a great deal of air below one before one can +be conscious of such inner freedom as this, such lightness of the whole +being. Every element has its poetry, but the poetry of air is liberty. +Enough; to your work, dreamer! + +May 30, 1865.--All snakes fascinate their prey, and pure wickedness +seems to inherit the power of fascination granted to the serpent. +It stupefies and bewilders the simple heart, which sees it without +understanding 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. Every +diminutive of Beelzebub is an abyss, each demoniacal act is a gulf +of darkness. Natural cruelty, inborn perfidy and falseness, even in +animals, cast lurid gleams, as it were, into that fathomless pit of +Satanic perversity which is a moral reality. + +Nevertheless behind this thought there rises another which tells me that +sophistry is at the bottom of human wickedness, that the majority of +monsters like to justify themselves in their own eyes, and that the +first attribute of the Evil One is to be the father of lies. Before +crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who +succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this. It +is all very well to say that hatred is murder; the man who hates is +determined to see nothing in it but an act of moral hygiene. It is to +do himself good that he does evil, just as a mad dog bites to get rid of +his thirst. + +To injure others while at the same time knowingly injuring one's self is +a step farther; evil then becomes a frenzy, which, in its turn, sharpens +into 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 he +must seem to the angels a madman--a lunatic, who kindles his own Gehenna +that he may consume the world in it, or as much of it as his devilish +desires can lay hold upon. Wickedness is forever beginning a new spiral +which penetrates deeper still into the abysses of abomination, for the +circles of hell have this property--that they have no end. It seems as +though divine perfection were an infinite of the first degree, but as +though diabolical perfection were an infinite of unknown power. But +no; for if so, evil would be the true God, and hell would swallow up +creation. According to the Persian and the Christian faiths, good is +to conquer evil, and perhaps even Satan himself will be restored +to grace--which is as much as to say that the divine order will be +everywhere re-established. Love will be more potent than hatred; God +will save his glory, and his glory is in his goodness. But it is very +true that all gratuitous wickedness troubles the soul, because it seems +to make the great lines of the moral order tremble within us by the +sudden withdrawal of the curtain which hides from us the action of those +dark corrosive forces which have ranged themselves in battle against the +divine plan. + +June 26, 1865.--One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet +find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical +_resume_ of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so +many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious +elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a +single aroma. Sometimes it is the mere overflow of the soul, the running +over of the cup of reverie. All that one cannot or will not say, all +that one refuses to confess even to one's self--confused desires, secret +trouble, suppressed grief, smothered conflict, voiceless regret, the +emotions we have struggled against, the pain we have sought to hide, our +superstitious fears, our vague sufferings, our restless presentiments, +our unrealized dreams, the wounds inflicted upon our ideal, the +dissatisfied languor, the vain hopes, the multitude of small +indiscernible ills which accumulate slowly in a corner of the heart +like water dropping noiselessly from the roof of a cavern--all these +mysterious movements of the inner life end in an instant of emotion, and +the emotion concentrates itself in a tear just visible on the edge of +the eyelid. + +For the rest, tears express joy as well as sadness. They are the symbol +of the powerlessness of the soul to restrain its emotion and to remain +mistress of itself. Speech implies analysis; when we are overcome by +sensation or by feeling analysis ceases, and with it speech and +liberty. Our only resource, after silence and stupor, is the language of +action--pantomime. Any oppressive weight of thought carries us back to +a stage anterior to humanity, to a gesture, a cry, a sob, and at last +to swooning and collapse; that is to say, incapable of bearing the +excessive strain of sensation as men, we fall back successively to the +stage of mere animate being, and then to that of the vegetable. Dante +swoons at every turn in his journey through hell, and nothing paints +better the violence of his emotions and the ardor of his piety. + +... And intense joy? It also withdraws into itself and is silent. To +speak is to disperse and scatter. Words isolate and localize life in a +single point; they touch only the circumference of being; they analyze, +they treat one thing at a time. Thus they decentralize emotion, and +chill it in doing so. The heart would fain brood over its feeling, +cherishing and protecting it. Its happiness is silent and meditative; it +listens to its own beating and feeds religiously upon itself. + +August 8, 1865. (_Gryon sur Bex_).--Splendid moonlight without a cloud. +The night is solemn and majestic. The regiment of giants sleeps while +the stars keep sentinel. In the vast shadow of the valley glimmer a few +scattered roofs, while the torrent, organ-like, swells its eternal note +in the depths of this mountain cathedral which has the heavens for roof. + +A last look at this blue night and boundless landscape. Jupiter is just +setting on the counterscarp of the Dent du Midi. Prom the starry vault +descends 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 +and to the happy. Rest and refreshment, renewal and hope; a day is +dead--_vive le lendemain!_ Midnight is striking. Another step made +toward 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 +I felt for it--was it ten or twelve years ago? This emphasis, this +precision, which never tires of itself, tires the reader in the long +run. The intensity of the style produces on one the impression of a +treatise on mathematics. One feels the need of relaxation after it in +something easy, natural, and gay. The language of Rousseau demands an +amount of labor which makes one long for recreation and relief. + +But how many writers and how many books descend from our Rousseau! On +my way I noticed the points of departure of Chateaubriand, Lamennais, +Proudhon. Proudhon, for instance, modeled the plan of his great work, +"De la Justice dang l'Eglise et dans la Revolution," upon the letter of +Rousseau to Beaumont; his three volumes are a string of letters to an +archbishop; eloquence, daring, and elocution are all fused in a kind of +_persiflage_, which is the foundation of the whole. + +How many men we may find in one man, how many styles in a great writer! +Rousseau, for instance, has created a number of different _genres_. +Imagination transforms him, and he is able to play the most varied +parts with credit, among them even that of the pure logician. But as the +imagination is his intellectual axis--his master faculty--he is, as it +were, in all his works only half sincere, only half in earnest. We feel +that his talent has laid him the wager of Carneades; it will lose no +cause, however bad, as soon as the point of honor Is engaged. It is +indeed the temptation of all talent to subordinate things to itself and +not itself to things; to conquer for the sake of conquest, and to put +self-love in the place of conscience. Talent is glad enough, no doubt, +to triumph in a good cause; but it easily becomes a free lance, content, +whatever the cause, so long as victory follows its banner. I do not know +even whether success in a weak and bad cause is not the most flattering +for talent, which then divides the honors of its triumph with nothing +and no one. + +Paradox is the delight of clever people and the joy of talent. It is +so pleasant to pit one's self against the world, and to overbear mere +commonplace good sense and vulgar platitudes! Talent and love of truth +are then not identical; their tendencies and their paths are different. +In order to make talent obey when its instinct is rather to command, +a vigilant moral sense and great energy of character are needed. The +Greeks--those artists of the spoken or written word--were artificial +by the time of Ulysses, sophists by the time of Pericles, cunning, +rhetorical, and versed in all the arts of the courtier down to the end +of the lower empire. From the talent of the nation sprang its vices. + +For a man to make his mark, like Rousseau by polemics, is to condemn +himself to perpetual exaggeration and conflict. Such a man expiates his +celebrity by a double bitterness; he is never altogether true, and he +is never able to recover the free disposal of himself. To pick a quarrel +with the world is attractive, but dangerous. + +J. J. Rousseau is an ancestor in all things. It was he who founded +traveling on foot before Toepffer, reverie before "Rene," literary botany +before George Sand, the worship of nature before Bernardin de S. +Pierre, the democratic theory before the Revolution of 1789, political +discussion and theological discussion before Mirabeau and Renan, the +science of teaching before Pestalozzi, and Alpine description before +De Saussure. He made music the fashion, and created the taste for +confessions to the public. He formed a new French style--the close, +chastened, passionate, interwoven style we know so well. Nothing indeed +of Rousseau has been lost, and nobody has had more influence than he +upon the French Revolution, for he was the demigod of it, and stands +between Neckar and Napoleon. Nobody, again, has had more than he upon +the nineteenth century, for Byron, Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and +George Sand all descend from him. + +And yet, with these extraordinary talents, he was an extremely unhappy +man--why? Because he always allowed himself to be mastered by his +imagination and his sensations; because he had no judgment in deciding, +no self-control in acting. Regret indeed on this score would be hardly +reasonable, for a calm, judicious, orderly Rousseau would never have +made so great an impression. He came into collision with his time: hence +his eloquence and his misfortunes. His naive confidence in life and +himself ended in jealous misanthropy and hypochondria. + +What a contrast to Goethe or Voltaire, and how differently they +understood the practical wisdom of life and the management of literary +gifts! They were the able men--Rousseau is a visionary. They knew +mankind as it is--he always represented it to himself either whiter or +blacker than it is; and having begun by taking life the wrong way, he +ended in madness. In the talent of Rousseau there is always something +unwholesome, uncertain, stormy, and sophistical, which destroys the +confidence of the reader; and the reason is no doubt that we feel +passion to have been the governing force in him as a writer: passion +stirred his imagination, and ruled supreme over his reason. + + * * * * * + +Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for +our faults--a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our +favorite sin. + + * * * * * + +The unfinished is nothing. + + * * * * * + +Great men are the true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They +are not extraordinary--they are in the true order. It is the other +species of men who are not what they ought to be. + +January 7, 1866.--Our life is but a soap-bubble hanging from a reed; it +is formed, expands to its full size, clothes itself with the loveliest +colors of the prism, and even escapes at moments from the law of +gravitation; but soon the black speck appears in it, and the globe of +emerald and gold vanishes into space, leaving behind it nothing but a +simple drop of turbid water. All the poets have made this comparison, +it is so striking and so true. To appear, to shine, to disappear; to +be born, to suffer, and to die; is it not the whole sum of life, for a +butterfly, for a nation, for a star? + +Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought +has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an +idea almost at the same moment. The thought of a planet can only be +worked out by nature with labor and effort, but supreme intelligence +sums up the whole in an instant. Time is then the successive dispersion +of being, just as speech is the successive analysis of an intuition or +of an act of will. In itself it is relative and negative, and disappears +within the absolute being. God is outside time because he thinks all +thought at once; Nature is within time, because she is only speech--the +discursive unfolding of each thought contained within the infinite +thought. But nature exhausts herself in this impossible task, for the +analysis of the infinite is a contradiction. With limitless duration, +boundless space, and number without end, Nature does at least what she +can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. +By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the +effort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternal +thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind. For as soon as +this mind goes out of itself and seeks to explain itself, the effort at +utterance heaps universe upon universe, during myriads of centuries, and +still it is not expressed, and the great harangue must go on for ever +and ever. + +The East prefers immobility as the form of the Infinite: the West, +movement. It is because the West is infected by the passion for details, +and sets proud store by individual worth. Like a child upon whom a +hundred thousand francs have been bestowed, he thinks she is multiplying +her fortune by counting it out in pieces of twenty sous, or five +centimes. Her passion for progress is in great part the product of an +infatuation, which consists in forgetting the goal to be aimed at, and +absorbing herself in the pride and delight of each tiny step, one after +the other. Child that she is, she is even capable of confounding change +with improvement--beginning over again, with growth in perfectness. + +At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for +self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all +which makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, +perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approve +himself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns away +from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own +nothingness. This is what makes the real pettiness of so many of +our great minds, and accounts for the lack of personal dignity among +us--civilized parrots that we are--as compared with the Arab of the +desert; or explains the growing frivolity of our masses, more and more +educated, no doubt, but also more and more superficial in all their +conceptions of happiness. + +Here, then, is the service which Christianity--the oriental element in +our culture--renders to us Westerns. It checks and counterbalances our +natural tendency toward the passing, the finite, and the changeable, +by fixing the mind upon the contemplation of eternal things, and by +Platonizing our affections, which otherwise would have too little +outlook upon the ideal world. Christianity leads us back from dispersion +to concentration, from worldliness to self-recollection. It restores to +our souls, fevered with a thousand sordid desires, nobleness, gravity, +and calm. Just as sleep is a bath of refreshing for our actual life, so +religion is a bath of refreshing for our immortal being. What is sacred +has a purifying virtue; religious emotion crowns the brow with an +aureole, and thrills the heart with an ineffable joy. + +I think that the adversaries of religion as such deceive themselves as +to the needs of the western man, and that the modern world will lose its +balance as soon as it has passed over altogether to the crude doctrine +of progress. We have always need of the infinite, the eternal, the +absolute; and since science contents itself with what is relative, +it necessarily leaves a void, which it is good for man to fill with +contemplation, worship, and adoration. "Religion," said Bacon, "is +the spice which is meant to keep life from corruption," and this is +especially true to-day of religion taken in the Platonist and oriental +sense. A capacity for self-recollection--for withdrawal from the +outward to the inward--is in fact the condition of all noble and useful +activity. + +This return, indeed, to what is serious, divine, and sacred, is becoming +more and more difficult, because of the growth of critical anxiety +within the church itself, the increasing worldliness of religious +preaching, and the universal agitation and disquiet of society. But such +a return is more and more necessary. Without it there is no inner life, +and the inner life is the only means whereby we may oppose a profitable +resistance to circumstance. If the sailor did not carry with him his +own temperature he could not go from the pole to the equator, and remain +himself in spite of all. The man who has no refuge in himself, who +lives, so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind of things +and 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, a +taxpayer, an elector, an anonymity, but not a man. He helps to make up +the mass--to fill up the number of human consumers or producers; but he +interests nobody but the economist and the statistician, who take the +heap of sand as a whole into consideration, without troubling themselves +about the uninteresting uniformity of the individual grains. The crowd +counts only as a massive elementary force--why? because its constituent +parts are individually insignificant: they are all like each other, and +we add them up like the molecules of water in a river, gauging them by +the fathom instead of appreciating them as individuals. Such men are +reckoned and weighed merely as so many bodies: they have never been +individualized by conscience, after the manner of souls. + +He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according +to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions--such a man is +a mere article of the world's furniture--a thing moved, instead of a +living and moving being--an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner +life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient +servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of +the air in motion. + +January 21, 1866.--This evening after supper I did not know whither +to betake 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_: +mother and daughter sat down to the piano and sang a duet by Boieldieu. +The ivory keys of the old grand piano, which the mother had played on +before her marriage, and which has followed and translated into music +the varying fortunes of the family, were a little loose and jingling; +but the poetry of the past sang in this faithful old servant, which +had been a friend in trouble, a companion in vigils, and the echo of a +lifetime of duty, affection, piety and virtue. I was more moved than I +can say. It was like a scene of Dickens, and I felt a rush of sympathy, +untouched either by egotism or by melancholy. + +Twenty-five years! It seems to me a dream as far as I am concerned, and +I can scarcely believe my eyes, or this inanimate witness to so many +lustres passed away. How strange a thing _to have lived_, and to feel +myself so far from a past which yet is so present to me! One does not +know whether one is sleeping or waking. Time is but the space between +our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has +disappeared. The whole life of an old man may appear to him no longer +than an hour, or less still; and as soon as time is but a moment to us, +we have entered upon eternity. Life is but the dream of a shadow; I felt +it anew this evening with strange intensity. + +January 29, 1866. (_Nine o'clock in the morning_).--The gray curtain of +mist has spread itself again over the town; everything is dark and +dull. The bells are ringing in the distance for some festival; with this +exception everything is calm and silent. Except for the crackling of the +fire, no noise disturbs my solitude in this modest home, the shelter of +my thoughts and of my work, where the man of middle age carries on the +life of his student-youth without the zest of youth, and the sedentary +professor repeats day by day the habits which he formed as a traveler. + +What is it which makes the charm of this existence outwardly so barren +and empty? Liberty! What does the absence of comfort and of all +else that is wanting to these rooms matter to me? These things are +indifferent to me. I find under this roof light, quiet, shelter. I am +near to a sister and her children, whom I love; my material life is +assured--that ought to be enough for a bachelor.... Am I not, besides, +a creature of habit? more attached to the _ennuis_ I know, than in love +with pleasures unknown to me. I am, then, free and not unhappy. Then I +am well off here, and I should be ungrateful to complain. Nor do I. It +is only the heart which sighs and seeks for something more and better. +The heart is an insatiable glutton, as we all know--and for the rest, +who is without yearnings? It is our destiny here below. Only some go +through torments and troubles in order to satisfy themselves, and all +without success; others foresee the inevitable result, and by a timely +resignation save themselves a barren and fruitless effort. Since we +cannot be happy, why give ourselves so much trouble? It is best to limit +one'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 anything +but peace of conscience and a sense of duty done. + +It is true that this itself is no small ambition, and that it only lands +us in another impossibility. No--the simplest course is to submit +one's self wholly and altogether to God. Everything else, as saith the +preacher, is but vanity and vexation of spirit. + +It is a long while now since this has been plain to me, and since this +religious renunciation has been sweet and familiar to me. It is the +outward distractions of life, the examples of the world, and the +irresistible influence exerted upon us by the current of things which +make us forget the wisdom we have acquired and the principles we have +adopted. That is why life is such weariness! This eternal beginning over +again is tedious, even to repulsion. It would be so good to go to sleep +when we have gathered the fruit of experience, when we are no longer +in opposition to the supreme will, when we have broken loose from self, +when we are at peace with all men. Instead of this, the old round of +temptations, disputes, _ennuis_, and forgettings, has to be faced again +and again, and we fall back into prose, into commonness, into vulgarity. +How melancholy, how humiliating! The poets are wise in withdrawing their +heroes more quickly from the strife, and in not dragging them after +victory along the common rut of barren days. "Whom the gods love die +young," said the proverb of antiquity. + +Yes, but it is our secret self-love which is set upon this favor from on +high; such may be our desire, but such is not the will of God. We are +to be exercised, humbled, tried, and tormented to the end. It is our +patience which is the touchstone of our virtue. To bear with life even +when illusion and hope are gone; to accept this position of perpetual +war, while at the same time loving only peace; to stay patiently in the +world, even when it repels us as a place of low company, and seems to +us a mere arena of bad passions; to remain faithful to one's own faith +without breaking with the followers of the false gods; to make no +attempt to escape from the human hospital, long-suffering and patient as +Job upon his dung hill--this is duty. When life ceases to be a promise +it 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 spread +over everything. The asphalt gallery which runs along the _salon_ is +a sheet of quivering water starred incessantly by the hurrying drops +falling from the sky. It seems as if one could touch the horizon with +one's hand, and the miles of country which were yesterday visible are +all hidden under a thick gray curtain. + +This imprisonment transports me to Shetland, to Spitzbergen, to Norway, +to the Ossianic countries of mist, where man, thrown back upon himself, +feels his heart beat more quickly and his thought expand more freely--so +long, at least, as he is not frozen and congealed by cold. Fog has +certainly a poetry of its own--a grace, a dreamy charm. It does for +the daylight what a lamp does for us at night; it turns the mind toward +meditation; it throws the soul back on itself. The sun, as it were, +sheds us abroad in nature, scatters and disperses us; mist draws us +together and concentrates us--it is cordial, homely, charged with +feeling. The poetry of the sun has something of the epic in it; that of +fog and mist is elegaic and religious. Pantheism is the child of light; +mist engenders faith in near protectors. When the great world is shut +off from us, the house becomes itself a small universe. Shrouded in +perpetual mist, men love each other better; for the only reality then is +the family, and, within the family, the heart; and the greatest thoughts +come from the heart--so says the moralist. + +April 6, 1866.--The novel by Miss Mulock, "John Halifax, Gentleman," +is a bolder book than it seems, for it attacks in the English way the +social problem of equality. And the solution reached is that every one +may become a gentleman, even though he may be born in the gutter. In +its way the story protests against conventional superiorities, and shows +that true nobility consists in character, in personal merit, in moral +distinction, in elevation of feeling and of language, in dignity of +life, and in self-respect. This is better than Jacobinism, and the +opposite of the mere brutal passion for equality. Instead of dragging +everybody down, the author simply proclaims the right of every one to +rise. A man may be born rich and noble--he is not born a gentleman. This +word is the Shibboleth of England; it divides her into two halves, and +civilized society into two castes. Among gentlemen--courtesy, equality, +and politeness; toward those below--contempt, disdain, coldness and +indifference. It is the old separation between the _ingenui_ and all +others; between the [Greek: eleutheroi] and the [Greek: banauphoi], +the continuation of the feudal division between the gentry and the +_roturiers_. + +What, then, is a gentleman? Apparently he is the free man, the man who +is stronger than things, and believes in personality as superior to +all the accessory attributes of fortune, such as rank and power, and as +constituting what is essential, real, and intrinsically valuable in +the individual. Tell me what you are, and I will tell you what you are +worth. "God and my Right;" there is the only motto he believes in. +Such an ideal is happily opposed to that vulgar ideal which is equally +English, the ideal of wealth, with its formula, "_How much_ is he +worth?" In a country where poverty is a crime, it is good to be able to +say that a nabob need not as such be a gentleman. The mercantile ideal +and the chivalrous ideal counterbalance each other; and if the one +produces the ugliness of English society and its brutal side, the other +serves as a compensation. + +The gentleman, then, is the man who is master of himself, who respects +himself, and makes others respect him. The essence of gentlemanliness +is self-rule, the sovereignty of the soul. It means a character which +possesses itself, a force which governs itself, a liberty which affirms +and regulates itself, according to the type of true dignity. Such an +ideal is closely akin to the Roman type of _dignitas cum auctoritate_. +It is more moral than intellectual, and is particularly suited +to England, which is pre-eminently the country of will. But from +self-respect a thousand other things are derived--such as the care of +a man's person, of his language, of his manners; watchfulness over his +body and over his soul; dominion over his instincts and his passions; +the effort to be self-sufficient; the pride which will accept no favor; +carefulness not to expose himself to any humiliation or mortification, +and to maintain himself independent of any human caprice; the constant +protection of his honor and of his self-respect. Such a condition of +sovereignty, insomuch as it is only easy to the man who is well-born, +well-bred, and rich, was naturally long identified with birth, rank, +and above all with property. The idea "gentleman" is, then, derived from +feudality; it is, as it were, a milder version of the seigneur. + +In order to lay himself open to no reproach, a gentleman will keep +himself irreproachable; in order to be treated with consideration, +he will always be careful himself to observe distances, to apportion +respect, and to observe all the gradations of conventional politeness, +according to rank, age, and situation. Hence it follows that he will +be imperturbably cautious in the presence of a stranger, whose name and +worth are unknown to him, and to whom he might perhaps show too much or +too little courtesy. He ignores and avoids him; if he is approached, he +turns away, if he is addressed, he answers shortly and with _hauteur_. +His politeness is not human and general, but individual and relative to +persons. This is why every Englishman contains two different men--one +turned toward the world, and another. The first, the outer man, is +a citadel, a cold and angular wall; the other, the inner man, is a +sensible, affectionate, cordial, and loving creature. Such a type is +only formed in a moral climate full of icicles, where, in the face of an +indifferent world, the hearth alone is hospitable. + +So that an analysis of the national type of gentlemen reveals to us the +nature and the history of the nation, as the fruit reveals the tree. + +April 7, 1866.--If philosophy is the art of understanding, it is evident +that it must begin by saturating itself with facts and realities, +and that premature abstraction kills it, just as the abuse of fasting +destroys the body at the age of growth. Besides, we only understand +that which is already within us. To understand is to possess the thing +understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. Instead, then, +of first dismembering and dissecting the object to be conceived, +we should begin by laying hold of it in its _ensemble_, then in its +formation, last of all in its parts. The procedure is the same, whether +we study a watch or a plant, a work of art or a character. We must +study, respect, and question what we want to know, instead of massacring +it. We must assimilate ourselves to things and surrender ourselves to +them; we must open our minds with docility to their influence, and steep +ourselves in their spirit and their distinctive form, before we offer +violence to them by dissecting them. + +April 14, 1866.--Panic, confusion, _sauve qui peut_ on the Bourse at +Paris. In our epoch of individualism, and of "each man for himself +and God for all," the movements of the public funds are all that +now represent to us the beat of the common heart. The solidarity of +interests which they imply counterbalances the separateness of modern +affections, and the obligatory sympathy they impose upon us recalls to +one a little the patriotism which bore the forced taxes of old days. We +feel ourselves bound up with and compromised in all the world's affairs, +and we must interest ourselves whether we will or no in the terrible +machine whose wheels may crush us at any moment. Credit produces +a restless society, trembling perpetually for the security of its +artificial basis. Sometimes society may forget for awhile that it is +dancing upon a volcano, but the least rumor of war recalls the fact to +it inexorably. Card-houses are easily ruined. + +All this anxiety is intolerable to those humble little investors who, +having no wish to be rich, ask only to be able to go about their work +in peace. But no; tyrant that it is, the world cries to us, "Peace, +peace--there is no peace: whether you will or no you shall suffer and +tremble with me!" To accept humanity, as one does nature, and to resign +one's self to the will of an individual, as one does to destiny, is not +easy. We bow to the government of God, but we turn against the despot. +No man likes to share in the shipwreck of a vessel in which he has been +embarked by violence, and which has been steered contrary to his wish +and his opinion. And yet such is perpetually the case in life. We all of +us pay for the faults of the few. + +Human solidarity is a fact more evident and more certain than personal +responsibility, and even than individual liberty. Our dependence has it +over our independence; for we are only independent in will and desire, +while we are dependent upon our health, upon nature and society; in +short, upon everything in us and without us. Our liberty is confined to +one single point. We may protest against all these oppressive and fatal +powers; we may say, Crush me--you will never win my consent! We may, by +an exercise of will, throw ourselves into opposition to necessity, and +refuse it homage and obedience. In that consists our moral liberty. But +except for that, we belong, body and goods, to the world. We are its +playthings, as the dust is the plaything of the wind, or the dead leaf +of the floods. God at least respects our dignity, but the world rolls us +contemptuously along in its merciless waves, in order to make it plain +that we are its thing and its chattel. + +All theories of the nullity of the individual, all pantheistic and +materialist conceptions, are now but so much forcing of an open door, +so much slaying of the slain. As soon as we cease to glorify this +imperceptible point of conscience, and to uphold the value of it, the +individual becomes naturally a mere atom in the human mass, which is but +an atom in the planetary mass, which is a mere nothing in the universe. +The individual is then but a nothing of the third power, with a capacity +for measuring its nothingness! Thought leads to resignation. Self-doubt +leads to passivity, and passivity to servitude. From this a voluntary +submission is the only escape, that is to say, a state of dependence +religiously accepted, a vindication of ourselves as free beings, bowed +before duty only. Duty thus becomes our principle of action, our source +of energy, the guarantee of our partial independence of the world, +the condition of our dignity, the sign of our nobility. The world can +neither make me will nor make me will my duty; here I am my own and only +master, and treat with it as sovereign with sovereign. It holds my body +in its clutches; but my soul escapes and braves it. My thought and my +love, my faith and my hope, are beyond its reach. My true being, the +essence of my nature, myself, remain inviolate and inaccessible to the +world's attacks. In this respect we are greater than the universe, which +has mass and not will; we become once more independent even in relation +to the human mass, which also can destroy nothing more than our +happiness, just as the mass of the universe can destroy nothing more +than our body. Submission, then, is not defeat; on the contrary, it is +strength. + +April 28, 1866.--I have just read the _proces-verbal_ of the Conference +of Pastors held on the 15th and 16th of April at Paris. The question +of the supernatural has split the church of France in two. The liberals +insist upon individual right; the orthodox upon the notion of a church. +And it is true indeed that a church is an affirmation, that it subsists +by the positive element in it, by definite belief; the pure critical +element dissolves it. Protestantism is a combination of two factors--the +authority of the Scriptures and free inquiry; as soon as one of these +factors is threatened or disappears, Protestantism disappears; a new +form of Christianity succeeds it, as, for example, the church of the +Brothers of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian Theism. As far as I am +concerned, I see nothing objectionable in such a result, but I think the +friends of the Protestant church are logical in their refusal to abandon +the apostle's creed, and the individualists are illogical in imagining +that they can keep Protestantism and do away with authority. + +It is a question of method which separates the two camps. I am +fundamentally separated from both. As I understand it, Christianity +is above all religions, and religion is not a method, it is a life, a +higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its +fruits, a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which +radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows. Religion, in +short, is a state of the soul. These quarrels as to method have their +value, but it is a secondary value; they will never console a heart +or edify a conscience. This is why I feel so little interest in these +ecclesiastical struggles. Whether the one party or the other gain the +majority and the victory, what is essential is in no way profited, for +dogma, criticism, the church, are not religion; and it is religion, the +sense of a divine life, which matters. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God +and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." +The most holy is the most Christian; this will always be the criterion +which is least deceptive. "By this ye shall know my disciples, if they +have love one to another." + +As is the worth of the individual, so is the worth of his religion. +Popular instinct and philosophic reason are at one on this point. Be +good and pious, patient and heroic, faithful and devoted, humble and +charitable; the catechism which has taught you these things is beyond +the reach of blame. By religion we live in God; but all these quarrels +lead to nothing but life with men or with cassocks. There is therefore +no equivalence between the two points of view. + +Perfection as an end--a noble example for sustenance on the way--the +divine proved by its own excellence, is not this the whole of +Christianity? God manifest in all men, is not this its true goal and +consummation? + +September 20, 1866.--My old friends are, I am afraid, disappointed +in me; they think that I do nothing, that I have deceived their +expectations and their hopes. I, too, am disappointed. All that would +restore my self-respect and give me a right to be proud of myself, seems +to me unattainable and impossible, and I fall back upon trivialities, +gay talk, distractions. I am always equally lacking in hope, in faith, +in resolution. The only difference is that my weakness takes sometimes +the form of despairing melancholy and sometimes that of a cheerful +quietism. And yet I read, I talk, I teach, I write, but to no effect; +it is as though I were walking in my sleep. The Buddhist tendency in +me blunts the faculty of free self-government and weakens the power of +action; self-distrust kills all desire, and reduces me again and again +to a fundamental skepticism. I care for nothing but the serious and the +real, and I can take neither myself nor my circumstances seriously. +I hold my own personality, my own aptitudes, my own aspirations, too +cheap. I am forever making light of myself in the name of all that +is beautiful and admirable. In a word, I bear within me a perpetual +self-detractor, and this is what takes all spring out of my life. I have +been passing the evening with Charles Heim, who, in his sincerity, has +never paid me any literary compliment. As I love and respect him, he is +forgiven. Self-love has nothing to do with it--and yet it would be sweet +to be praised by so upright a friend! It is depressing to feel one's +self silently disapproved of; I will try to satisfy him, and to think of +a book which may please both him and Scherer. + +October 6, 1866.--I have just picked up on the stairs a little yellowish +cat, ugly and pitiable. Now, curled up in a chair at my side, he seems +perfectly happy, and as if he wanted nothing more. Far from being wild, +nothing will induce him to leave me, and he has followed me from room +to room all day. I have nothing at all that is eatable in the house, but +what I have I give him--that is to say, a look and a caress--and that +seems to be enough for him, at least for the moment. Small animals, +small children, young lives--they are all the same as far as the need of +protection and of gentleness is concerned.... People have sometimes said +to me that weak and feeble creatures are happy with me. Perhaps such a +fact has to do with some special gift or beneficent force which flows +from one when one is in the sympathetic state. I have often a direct +perception of such a force; but I am no ways proud of it, nor do I look +upon it as anything belonging to me, but simply as a natural gift. It +seems to me sometimes as though I could woo the birds to build in my +beard as they do in the headgear of some cathedral saint! After all, +this is the natural state and the true relation of man toward all +inferior creatures. If man was what he ought to be he would be adored +by the animals, of whom he is too often the capricious and sanguinary +tyrant. The legend of Saint Francis of Assisi is not so legendary as we +think; and it is not so certain that it was the wild beasts who attacked +man first.... But to exaggerate nothing, let us leave on one side +the beasts of prey, the carnivora, and those that live by rapine and +slaughter. How many other species are there, by thousands and tens of +thousands, who ask peace from us and with whom we persist in waging a +brutal war? Our race is by far the most destructive, the most hurtful, +and the most formidable, of all the species of the planet. It has even +invented for its own use the right of the strongest--a divine right +which quiets its conscience in the face of the conquered and the +oppressed; we have outlawed all that lives except ourselves. Revolting +and manifest abuse; notorious and contemptible breach of the law of +justice! The bad faith and hypocrisy of it are renewed on a small scale +by all successful usurpers. We are always making God our accomplice, +that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre +is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting +in benedictions for any victorious enormity. So that what, in the +beginning, was the relation of man to the animal becomes that of people +to people and man to man. + +If so, we have before us an expiation too seldom noticed but altogether +just. All crime must be expiated, and slavery is the repetition among +men of the sufferings brutally imposed by man upon other living beings; +it is the theory bearing its fruits. The right of man over the animal +seems to me to cease with the need of defense and of subsistence. So +that all unnecessary murder and torture are cowardice and even crime. +The animal renders a service of utility; man in return owes it a need of +protection and of kindness. In a word, the animal has claims on man, and +the man has duties to the animal. Buddhism, no doubt, exaggerates this +truth, but the Westerns leave it out of count altogether. A day will +come, however, when our standard will be higher, our humanity more +exacting, than it is to-day. _Homo homini lupus_, said Hobbes: the time +will come when man will be humane even for the wolf--_homo lupo homo_. + +December 30, 1866.--Skepticism pure and simple as the only safeguard of +intellectual independence--such is the point of view of almost all our +young men of talent. Absolute freedom from credulity seems to them +the glory of man. My impression has always been that this excessive +detachment of the individual from all received prejudices and opinions +in reality does the work of tyranny. This evening, in listening to +the conversation of some of our most cultivated men, I thought of the +Renaissance, of the Ptolemies, of the reign of Louis XV., of all those +times in which the exultant anarchy of the intellect has had despotic +government for its correlative, and, on the other hand, of England, of +Holland, of the United States, countries in which political liberty is +bought at the price of necessary prejudices and _a priori_ opinions. + +That society may hold together at all, we must have a principle of +cohesion--that is to say, a common belief, principles recognized and +undisputed, a series of practical axioms and institutions which are not +at the mercy of every caprice of public opinion. By treating everything +as if it were an open question, we endanger everything. + +Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny. "If a people will not believe it +must obey," said Tocqueville. All liberty implies dependence, and has +its conditions; this is what negative and quarrelsome minds are apt to +forget. They think they can do away with religion; they do not know that +religion is indestructible, and that the question is simply, Which will +you have? Voltaire plays the game of Loyola, and _vice versa_. Between +these two there is no peace, nor can there be any for the society which +has once thrown itself into the dilemma. The only solution lies in a +free religion, a religion of free choice and free adhesion. + +December 23, 1866.--It is raining over the whole sky--as far at least as +I can see from my high point of observation. All is gray from the Saleve +to the Jura, and from the pavement to the clouds; everything that one +sees or touches is gray; color, life, and gayety are dead--each living +thing seems to lie hidden in its own particular shell. What are the +birds doing in such weather as this? We who have food and shelter, fire +on the hearth, books around us, portfolios of engravings close at hand, +a nestful of dreams in the heart, and a whirlwind of thoughts ready to +rise from the ink-bottle--we find nature ugly and _triste_, and turn +away our eyes from it; but you, poor sparrows, what can you be doing? +Bearing and hoping and waiting? After all, is not this the task of each +one of us? + +I have just been reading over a volume of this Journal, and feel a +little ashamed of the languid complaining tone of so much of it. These +pages reproduce me very imperfectly, and there are many things in me +of which I find no trace in them. I suppose it is because, in the first +place, sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy; and in the next, +because I depend so much upon surrounding circumstances. When there is +no call upon me, and nothing to put me to the test, I fall back into +melancholy; and so the practical man, the cheerful man, the literary +man, does not appear in these pages. The portrait is lacking in +proportion and breadth; it is one-sided, and wants a center; it has, as +it were, been painted from too near. + +The true reason why we know ourselves so little lies in the difficulty +we find in standing at a proper distance from ourselves, in taking up +the right point of view, so that the details may help rather than hide +the general effect. We must learn to look at ourselves socially and +historically if we wish to have an exact idea of our relative worth, and +to look at our life as a whole, or at least as one complete period of +life, if we wish to know what we are and what we are not. The ant which +crawls to and fro over a face, the fly perched upon the forehead of a +maiden, touch them indeed, but do not see them, for they never embrace +the whole at a glance. + +Is it wonderful that misunderstandings should play so great a part +in the world, when one sees how difficult it is to produce a faithful +portrait of a person whom one has been studying for more than twenty +years? Still, the effort has not been altogether lost; its reward has +been the sharpening of one's perceptions of the outer world. If I have +any special power of appreciating different shades of mind, I owe it no +doubt to the analysis I have so perpetually and unsuccessfully practiced +on myself. In fact, I have always regarded myself as matter for study, +and what has interested me most in myself has been the pleasure of +having under my hand a man, a person, in whom, as an authentic specimen +of human nature, I could follow, without importunity or indiscretion, +all the metamorphoses, the secret thoughts, the heart-beats, and +the temptations of humanity. My attention has been drawn to myself +impersonally and philosophically. One uses what one has, and one must +shape one's arrow out of one's own wood. + +To arrive at a faithful portrait, succession must be converted into +simultaneousness, plurality into unity, and all the changing phenomena +must be traced back to their essence. There are ten men in me, according +to time, place, surrounding, and occasion; and in their restless +diversity I am forever escaping myself. Therefore, whatever I may reveal +of my past, of my Journal, or of myself, is of no use to him who is +without the poetic intuition, and cannot recompose me as a whole, with +or in spite of the elements which I confide to him. + +I feel myself a chameleon, a kaleidoscope, a Proteus; changeable in +every way, open to every kind of polarization; fluid, virtual, and +therefore latent--latent even in manifestation, and absent even in +presentation. I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind +which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant +metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on +within me. I am sensible of the flight, the revival, the modification, +of all the atoms of my being, all the particles of my river, all the +radiations of my special force. + +This phenomenology of myself serves both as the magic lantern of my own +destiny, and as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. I am, +or rather, my sensible consciousness is concentrated upon this ideal +standing-point, this invisible threshold, as it were, whence one hears +the impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming as it flows out into +the changeless ocean of eternity. After all the bewildering distractions +of life, after having drowned myself in a multiplicity of trifles and in +the caprices of this fugitive existence, yet without ever attaining to +self-intoxication or self-delusion, I come again upon the fathomless +abyss, the silent and melancholy cavern where dwell "_Die Muetter_," +[Footnote: "_Die Muetter_"--an allusion to a strange and enigmatical, +but very effective conception in "Faust" (Part II. Act I. Scene v.) _Die +Muetter_ are the prototypes, the abstract forms, the generative ideas, +of things. "Sie sehn dich nicht, denn Schemen sehn sie nur." Goethe +borrowed the term from a passage of Plutarch's, but he has made the idea +half Platonic, half legendary. Amiel, however, seems rather to have in +his mind Faust's speech in Scene vii. than the speech of Mephistopheles +in Scene v: + + "In eurem Namen, Muetter, die ihr thront + Im Graenzenlosen, 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 neither +movement, nor change, nor extension, nor form, and which lasts when all +else passes away. + + "Dans l'eternel azur de l'insondable espace + S'enveloppe de paix notre globe agitee: + Homme, enveloppe ainsi tes jours, reve qui passe, + Du calme firmament de ton eternite." + +(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 the +devouring abyss of eternity. I feel my days flying before the pursuit of +death. All that remains to me of weeks, or months, or years, in which +I may drink in the light of the sun, seems to me no more than a single +night, a summer night, which scarcely counts, because it will so soon be +at an end. + +Death! Silence! Eternity! What mysteries, what names of terror to the +being who longs for happiness, immortality, perfection! Where shall I be +to-morrow--in a little while--when the breath of life has forsaken me? +Where will those be whom I love? Whither are we all going? The eternal +problems rise before us in their implacable solemnity. Mystery on all +sides! And faith the only star in this darkness and uncertainty! + +No matter!--so long as the world is the work of eternal goodness, and +so long as conscience has not deceived us. To give happiness and to do +good, there is our only law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon light, +our reason for existing. All religions may crumble away; so long as this +survives we have still an ideal, and life is worth living. + +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 Maechte, + Zum Zelt des Tages, zum Gewoelb' der Naechte. + +so long as the religion of love, of unselfishness and devotion endures; +and none can destroy the altars of this faith for us so long as we feel +ourselves still capable of love. + +April 15,1867--(_Seven_ A. M.).--Rain storms in the night--the weather +is showing its April caprice. From the window one sees a gray and +melancholy sky, and roofs glistering with rain. The spring is at its +work. Yes, and the implacable flight of time is driving us toward the +grave. Well--each has his turn! + + "Allez, allez, o jeunes filles, + Cueillir des bleuets dans les bles!" + +I am overpowered with melancholy, languor, lassitude. A longing for the +last great sleep has taken possession of me, combated, however, by a +thirst for sacrifice--sacrifice heroic and long-sustained. Are not both +simply ways of escape from one's self? "Sleep, or self-surrender, that I +may 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 of +courage. By nature I am so easily disgusted with life, I fall a prey so +readily to despair and pessimism. + +"The happy man, as this century is able to produce him," according to +Madame ----, is a _Weltmuede_, one who keeps a brave face before the +world, and distracts himself as best he can from dwelling upon the +thought which is hidden at his heart--a thought which has in it the +sadness of death--the thought of the irreparable. The outward peace of +such a man is but despair well masked; his gayety is the carelessness of +a heart which has lost all its illusions, and has learned to acquiesce +in an indefinite putting off of happiness. His wisdom is really +acclimatization to sacrifice, his gentleness should be taken to mean +privation patiently borne rather than resignation. In a word, he submits +to an existence in which he feels no joy, and he cannot hide from +himself that all the alleviations with which it is strewn cannot satisfy +the soul. The thirst for the infinite is never appeased. God is wanting. + +To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, and +sustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at the +point where God would have him be--in order with God and the universe. +This faith gives strength and calm. I have not got it. All that is, +seems to me arbitrary and fortuitous. It may as well not be, as be. +Nothing in my own circumstances seems to me providential. All appears to +me left to my own responsibility, and it is this thought which disgusts +me with the government of my own life. I longed to give myself up wholly +to some great love, some noble end; I would willingly have lived and +died for the ideal--that is to say, for a holy cause. But once the +impossibility of this made clear to me, I have never since taken a +serious interest in anything, and have, as it were, but amused myself +with a destiny of which I was no longer the dupe. + +Sybarite and dreamer, will you go on like this to the end--forever +tossed backward and forward between duty and happiness, incapable of +choice, of action? Is not life the test of our moral force, and all +these inward waverings, are they not temptations of the soul? + +September 6, 1867, _Weissenstein_. [Footnote: Weissenstein is a high +point in the Jura, above Soleure.] (_Ten o'clock in the morning_).--A +marvelous view of blinding and bewildering beauty. Above a milky sea +of cloud, flooded with morning light, the rolling waves of which are +beating up against the base of the wooded steeps of the Weissenstein, +the vast circle of the Alps soars to a sublime height. The eastern side +of the horizon is drowned in the splendors of the rising mists; but from +the Toedi westward, the whole chain floats pure and clear between the +milky plain and the pale blue sky. The giant assembly is sitting in +council above the valleys and the lakes still submerged in vapor. The +Clariden, the Spannoerter, the Titlis, then the Bernese _colossi_ from +the Wetterhorn to the Diablerets, then the peaks of Vaud, Valais, and +Fribourg, and beyond these high chains the two kings of the Alps, Mont +Blanc, of a pale pink, and the bluish point of Monte Rosa, peering out +through a cleft in the Doldenhorn--such is the composition of the great +snowy 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 and +sharpens itself in a thousand ways, but always so as to maintain an +angular and serrated line. Only the inferior and secondary groups of +mountains show any large curves or sweeping undulations of form. The +Alps are more than an upheaval; they are a tearing and gashing of +the earth's surface. Their granite peaks bite into the sky instead +of caressing it. The Jura, on the contrary, spreads its broad back +complacently under the blue dome of air. + +_Eleven o'clock_.--The sea of vapor has risen and attacked the +mountains, 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. Then +rolling back upon itself, it made a more successful onslaught upon the +Jura, and now we are enveloped in its moving waves. The milky sea +has become one vast cloud, which has swallowed up the plain and the +mountains, observatory and observer. Within this cloud one may hear the +sheep-bells ringing, and see the sunlight darting hither and thither. +Strange and fanciful sight! + +The Hanoverian pianist has gone; the family from Colmar has gone; a +young girl and her brother have arrived. The girl is very pretty, and +particularly dainty and elegant in all her ways; she seems to touch +things only with the tips of her fingers; one compares her to an ermine, +a gazelle. But at the same time she has no interests, does not know +how to admire, and thinks of herself more than of anything else. This +perhaps is a drawback inseparable from a beauty and a figure which +attract all eyes. She is, besides, a townswoman to the core, and feels +herself out of place in this great nature, which probably seems to her +barbarous and ill-bred. At any rate she does not let it interfere with +her in any way, and parades herself on the mountains with her little +bonnet and her scarcely perceptible sunshade, as though she were on the +boulevard. She belongs to that class of tourists so amusingly drawn by +Toepffer. Character: _naive_ conceit. Country: France. Standard of life: +fashion. Some cleverness but no sense of reality, no understanding of +nature, no consciousness of the manifold diversities of the world and +of the right of life to be what it is, and to follow its own way and not +ours. + +This ridiculous element in her is connected with the same national +prejudice which holds France to be the center point of the world, and +leads Frenchmen to neglect geography and languages. The ordinary French +townsman is really deliciously stupid in spite of all his natural +cleverness, for he understands nothing but himself. His pole, his axis, +his center, his all is Paris--or even less--Parisian manners, the +taste of the day, fashion. Thanks to this organized fetishism, we have +millions of copies of one single original pattern; a whole people moving +together like bobbins in the same machine, or the legs of a single +_corps d'armee_. The result is wonderful but wearisome; wonderful +in point of material strength, wearisome psychologically. A hundred +thousand sheep are not more instructive than one sheep, but they furnish +a hundred thousand times more wool, meat, and manure. This is all, you +may say, that the shepherd--that is, the master--requires. Very +well, but one can only maintain breeding-farms or monarchies on these +principles. For a republic you must have men: it cannot get on without +individualities. + +_Noon_.--An exquisite effect. A great herd of cattle are running across +the meadows under my window, which is just illuminated by a furtive ray +of sunshine. The picture has a ghostly suddenness and brilliancy; +it pierces the mists which close upon it, like the slide of a magic +lantern. + +What a pity I must leave this place now that everything is so bright! + + * * * * * + +The calm sea says more to the thoughtful soul than the same sea in storm +and tumult. But we need the understanding of eternal things and the +sentiment of the infinite to be able to feel this. The divine state _par +excellence_ is that of silence and repose, because all speech and all +action are in themselves limited and fugitive. Napoleon with his arms +crossed over his breast is more expressive than the furious Hercules +beating the air with his athlete's fists. People of passionate +temperament never understand this. They are only sensitive to the energy +of succession; they know nothing of the energy of condensation. They can +only be impressed by acts and effects, by noise and effort. They have no +instinct of contemplation, no sense of the pure cause, the fixed source +of 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 own +wealth, nor to throw itself into violent motion to be certain of its own +power. The art of passion is sure to please, but it is not the highest +art; it is true, indeed, that under the rule of democracy, the serener +and calmer forms of art become more and more difficult; the turbulent +herd no longer knows the gods. + + * * * * * + +Minds accustomed to analysis never allow objections more than a +half-value, because they appreciate the variable and relative elements +which enter in. + + * * * * * + +A well-governed mind learns in time to find pleasure in nothing but the +true and the just. + +January 10, 1868. (_Eleven_ P. M.).--We have had a philosophical meeting +at the house of Edouard Claparede. [Footnote: Edouard Claparede, a +Genevese naturalist, born 1832, died 1871.] The question on the order +of the day was the nature of sensation. Claparede pronounced for the +absolute subjectivity of all experience--in other words, for pure +idealism--which is amusing, from a naturalist. According to him the +_ego_ alone exists, and the universe is but a projection of the _ego_, +a phantasmagoria which we ourselves create without suspecting it, +believing all the time that we are lookers-on. It is our nouemenon which +objectifies itself as phenomenon. The _ego_, according to him, is a +radiating force which, modified without knowing what it is that modifies +it, imagines it, by virtue of the principle of causality--that is to +say, produces the great illusion of the objective world in order so +to explain itself. Our waking life, therefore, is but a more connected +dream. The self is an unknown which gives birth to an infinite number +of unknowns, by a fatality of its nature. Science is summed up in the +consciousness that nothing exists but consciousness. In other words, the +intelligent issues from the unintelligible in order to return to it, or +rather the ego explains itself by the hypothesis of the _non-ego_, +while in reality it is but a dream, dreaming itself. We might say with +Scarron: + + "Et je vis l'ombre d'un esprit + Qui tracait l'ombre d'um systeme + Avec l'ombre de l'ombre meme." + +This abolition of nature by natural science is logical, and it was, in +fact, Schelling's starting-point. From the standpoint of physiology, +nature is but a necessary illusion, a constitutional hallucination. We +only escape from this bewitchment by the moral activity of the +_ego_, which feels itself a cause and a free cause, and which by its +responsibility breaks the spell and issues from the enchanted circle of +Maia. + +Maia! Is she indeed the true goddess? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded +the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is +the individual dream of each individual _ego_? Every fool would then be +a cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome +of the infinite. But why then give ourselves such gratuitous trouble to +learn? In our dreams, at least, nightmare excepted, we endow ourselves +with complete ubiquity, liberty and omniscience. Are we then less +ingenious and inventive awake than asleep? + +January 25, 1868.--It is when the outer man begins to decay that it +becomes vitally important to us to believe in immortality, and to feel +with the apostle that the inner man is renewed from day to day. But for +those who doubt it and have no hope of it? For them the remainder of +life can only be the compulsory dismemberment of their small empire, the +gradual dismantling of their being by inexorable destiny. How hard it is +to bear--this long-drawn death, of which the stages are melancholy +and the end inevitable! It is easy to see why it was that stoicism +maintained the right of suicide. What is my real faith? Has the +universal, or at any rate the very general and common doubt of science, +invaded me in my turn? I have defended the cause of the immortality of +the soul against those who questioned it, and yet when I have reduced +them to silence, I have scarcely known whether at bottom I was not after +all on their side. I try to do without hope; but it is possible that I +have no longer the strength for it, and that, like other men, I must +be sustained and consoled by a belief, by the belief in pardon and +immortality--that is to say, by religious belief of the Christian type. +Reason and thought grow tired, like muscles and nerves. They must +have their sleep, and this sleep is the relapse into the tradition of +childhood, into the common hope. It takes so much effort to maintain +one's self in an exceptional point of view, that one falls back into +prejudice by pure exhaustion, just as the man who stands indefinitely +always ends by sinking to the ground and reassuming the horizontal +position. + +What is to become of us when everything leaves us--health, joy, +affections, the freshness of sensation, memory, capacity for work--when +the sun seems to us to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of all +its charm? What is to become of us without hope? Must we either harden +or forget? There is but one answer--keep close to duty. Never mind +the future, if only you have peace of conscience, if you feel yourself +reconciled, and in harmony with the order of things. Be what you ought +to be; the rest is God's affair. It is for him to know what is best, to +take care of his own glory, to ensure the happiness of what depends +on him, whether by another life or by annihilation. And supposing that +there were no good and holy God, nothing but universal being, the law of +the all, an ideal without hypostasis or reality, duty would still be the +key of the enigma, the pole-star of a wandering humanity. + + "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra." + +January 26, 1868.--Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of +heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness. These eighty thousand +daily births, of which statistics tell us, represent as it were an +effusion of innocence and freshness, struggling not only against the +death of the race, but against human corruption, and the universal +gangrene of sin. All the good and wholesome feeling which is intertwined +with childhood and the cradle is one of the secrets of the providential +government of the world. Suppress this life-giving dew, and human +society would be scorched and devastated by selfish passion. Supposing +that humanity had been composed of a thousand millions of immortal +beings, whose number could neither increase nor diminish, where should +we be, and what should we be! A thousand times more learned, no +doubt, but a thousand times more evil. There would have been a vast +accumulation of science, but all the virtues engendered by suffering +and devotion--that is to say, by the family and society--would have no +existence. And for this there would be no compensation. + +Blessed be childhood for the good that it does, and for the good which +it brings about carelessly and unconsciously by simply making us love +it and letting itself be loved. What little of paradise we see still +on earth is due to its presence among us. Without fatherhood, without +motherhood, I think that love itself would not be enough to prevent men +from devouring each other--men, that is to say, such as human +passions have made them. The angels have no need of birth and death as +foundations for their life, because their life is heavenly. + +February 16, 1868.--I have been finishing About's "Mainfroy (Les +Mariages de Province)." What subtlety, what cleverness, what _verve_, +what _aplomb_! About is a master of epithet, of quick, light-winged +satire. For all his cavalier freedom of manner, his work is conceived at +bottom in a spirit of the subtlest irony, and his detachment of mind is +so great that he is able to make sport of everything, to mock at others +and himself, while all the time amusing himself extremely with his own +ideas and inventions. This is indeed the characteristic mark, the common +signature, so to speak, of _esprit_ like his. + +Irrepressible mischief, indefatigable elasticity, a power of luminous +mockery, delight in the perpetual discharge of innumerable arrows +from an inexhaustible quiver, the unquenchable laughter of some +little earth-born demon, perpetual gayety, and a radiant force of +epigram--there are all these in the true humorist. _Stulti sunt +innumerabiles_, said Erasmus, the patron of all these dainty +mockers. Folly, conceit, foppery, silliness, affectation, hypocrisy, +attitudinizing and pedantry of all shades, and in all forms, everything +that poses, prances, bridles, struts, bedizens, and plumes itself, +everything that takes itself seriously and tries to impose itself on +mankind--all this is the natural prey of the satirist, so many targets +ready for his arrows, so many victims offered to his attack. And we all +know how rich the world is in prey of this kind! An alderman's feast of +folly is served up to him in perpetuity; the spectacle of society offers +him an endless _noce de Gamache_. [Footnote: _Noce de Gamache_--"repas +tres somptueux."--Littre. The allusion, of course, is to Don Quixote, +Part II. chap. xx.--"Donde se cuentan las bodas de Bamacho el rico, con +el suceso de Basilio el pobre."] With what glee he raids through his +domains, and what signs of destruction and massacre mark the path of the +sportsman! His hand is infallible like his glance. The spirit of +sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls +are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations +and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical +nothing. + +Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every +authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every +convention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in +their eyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purely +natural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man +of talent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in the +individual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much as +feeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man is +not _mockable_, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, nor +esteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others to +respect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is +the result of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. +Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing. + +March 8, 1868.--Madame----kept me to have tea with three young friends +of hers--three sisters, I think. The two youngest are extremely pretty, +the dark one as pretty as the blonde. Their fresh faces, radiant with +the bloom of youth, were a perpetual delight to the eye. This electric +force of beauty has a beneficent effect upon the man of letters; it acts +as a real restorative. Sensitive, impressionable, absorbent as I am, +the neighborhood of health, of beauty, of intelligence and of goodness, +exercises a powerful influence upon my whole being; and in the same way +I am troubled and affected just as easily by the presence near me of +troubled lives or diseased souls. Madame ---- said of me that I must be +"superlatively feminine" in all my perceptions. This ready sympathy +and sensitiveness is the reason of it. If I had but desired it ever so +little, I should have had the magical clairvoyance of the somnambulist, +and could have reproduced in myself a number of strange phenomena. I +know it, but I have always been on my guard against it, whether from +indifference or from prudence. When I think of the intuitions of every +kind which have come to me since my youth, it seems to me that I have +lived a multitude of lives. Every characteristic individuality shapes +itself ideally in me, or rather molds me for the moment into its own +image; and I have only to turn my attention upon myself at such a time +to be able to understand a new mode of being, a new phase of human +nature. In this way I have been, turn by turn, mathematician, musician, +_savant_, monk, child, or mother. In these states of universal sympathy +I have even seemed to myself sometimes to enter into the condition of +the animal or the plant, and even of an individual animal, of a given +plant. This faculty of ascending and descending metamorphosis, this +power of simplifying or of adding to one's individuality, has sometimes +astounded my friends, even the most subtle of them. It has to do +no doubt with the extreme facility which I have for impersonal and +objective thought, and this again accounts for the difficulty which I +feel in realizing my own individuality, in being simply one man having +his proper number and ticket. To withdraw within my own individual +limits has always seemed to me a strange, arbitrary, and conventional +process. I seem to myself to be a mere conjuror's apparatus, an +instrument of vision and perception, a person without personality, a +subject without any determined individuality--an instance, to speak +technically, of pure "determinability" and "formability," and therefore +I can only resign myself with difficulty to play the purely arbitrary +part of a private citizen, inscribed upon the roll of a particular town +or a particular country. In action I feel myself out of place; my true +_milieu_ is contemplation. Pure virtuality and perfect equilibrium--in +these I am most at home. There I feel myself free, disinterested, and +sovereign. Is it a call or a temptation? + +It represents perhaps the oscillation between the two geniuses, the +Greek and the Roman, the eastern and the western, the ancient and the +Christian, or the struggle between the two ideals, that of liberty and +that of holiness. Liberty raises us to the gods; holiness prostrates us +on the ground. Action limits us; whereas in the state of contemplation +we are endlessly expansive. Will 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, and +its aspiration is to the absolute, which is only to be reached through +a succession of contraries. It has taken me a great deal of time to +understand myself, and I frequently find myself beginning over again the +study of the oft-solved problem, so difficult is it for us to maintain +any fixed point within us. I love everything, and detest one thing +only--the hopeless imprisonment of my being within a single arbitrary +form, even were it chosen by myself. Liberty for the inner man is then +the strongest of my passions--perhaps my only passion. Is such a passion +lawful? It has been my habit to think so, but intermittently, by fits +and 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, or +intelligent, but because they are themselves. All analysis seems to them +to imply a loss of consideration, a subordination of their personality +to something which dominates and measures it. They will have none of +it; and their instinct is just. As soon as we can give a reason for a +feeling we are no longer under the spell of it; we appreciate, we +weigh, we are free, at least in principle. Love must always remain a +fascination, a witchery, if the empire of woman is to endure. Once +the mystery gone, the power goes with it. Love must always seem to us +indivisible, insoluble, superior to all analysis, if it is to preserve +that appearance of infinity, of something supernatural and miraculous, +which makes its chief beauty. The majority of beings despise what they +understand, and bow only before the inexplicable. The feminine triumph +_par excellence_ is to convict of obscurity that virile intelligence +which makes so much pretense to enlightenment. And when a woman inspires +love, it is then especially that she enjoys this proud triumph. I +admit that her exultation has its grounds. Still, it seems to me that +love--true and profound love--should be a source of light and calm, a +religion and a revelation, in which there is no place left for the lower +victories of vanity. Great souls care only for what is great, and to the +spirit which hovers in the sight of the Infinite, any sort of artifice +seems a disgraceful puerility. + +March 19, 1868.--What we call little things are merely the causes of +great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point +of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an +existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of +a storm, of a revolution. From one insignificant misunderstanding hatred +and separation may finally issue. An enormous avalanche begins by the +displacement of one atom, and the conflagration of a town by the fall of +a match. Almost everything comes from almost nothing, one might think. +It is only the first crystallization which is the affair of mind; the +ultimate aggregation is the affair of mass, of attraction, of acquired +momentum, of mechanical acceleration. History, like nature, illustrates +for us the application of the law of inertia and agglomeration which is +put lightly in the proverb, "Nothing succeeds like success." Find the +right point at starting; strike straight, begin well; everything depends +on it. Or more simply still, provide yourself with good luck--for +accident plays a vast part in human affairs. Those who have succeeded +most in this world (Napoleon or Bismarck) confess it; calculation is not +without its uses, but chance makes mock of calculation, and the result +of a planned combination is in no wise proportional to its merit. From +the supernatural point of view people say: "This chance, as you call +it, is, in reality, the action of providence. Man may give himself what +trouble he will--God leads him all the same." Only, unfortunately, +this supposed intervention as often as not ends in the defeat of +zeal, virtue, and devotion, and the success of crime, stupidity, and +selfishness. Poor, sorely-tried Faith! She has but one way out of the +difficulty--the word Mystery! It is in the origins of things that the +great secret of destiny lies hidden, although the breathless sequence of +after events has often many surprises for us too. So that at first sight +history seems to us accident and confusion; looked at for the second +time, it seems to us logical and necessary; looked at for the third +time, it appears to us a mixture of necessity and liberty; on the fourth +examination we scarcely know what to think of it, for if force is the +source of right, and chance the origin of force, we come back to our +first explanation, only with a heavier heart than when we began. + +Is Democritus right after all? Is chance the foundation of everything, +all laws being but the imaginations of our reason, which, itself born +of accident, has a certain power of self-deception and of inventing laws +which it believes to be real and objective, just as a man who dreams +of a meal thinks that he is eating, while in reality there is neither +table, nor food, nor guest nor nourishment? Everything goes on as if +there were order and reason and logic in the world, while in reality +everything is fortuitous, accidental, and apparent. The universe is but +the kaleidoscope which turns within the mind of the so-called thinking +being, who is himself a curiosity without a cause, an accident conscious +of the great accident around him, and who amuses himself with it so +long as the phenomenon of his vision lasts. Science is a lucid madness +occupied in tabulating its own necessary hallucinations. The philosopher +laughs, for he alone escapes being duped, while he sees other men the +victims of persistent illusion. He is like some mischievous spectator of +a ball who has cleverly taken all the strings from the violins, and yet +sees musicians and dancers moving and pirouetting before him as though +the music were still going on. Such an experience would delight him +as proving that the universal St. Vitus' dance is also nothing but an +aberration of the inner consciousness, and that the philosopher is in +the right of it as against the general credulity. Is it not even enough +simply to shut one's ears in a ballroom, to believe one's self in a +madhouse? + +The multitude of religions on the earth must have very much the same +effect upon the man who has killed the religious idea in himself. But +it is a dangerous attempt, this repudiation of the common law of the +race--this claim to be in the right, as against all the world. + +It is not often that the philosophic scoffers forget themselves +for others. Why should they? Self-devotion is a serious thing, and +seriousness would be inconsistent with their role of mockery. To be +unselfish we must love; to love we must believe in the reality of what +we love; we must know how to suffer, how to forget ourselves, how to +yield ourselves up--in a word, how to be serious. A spirit of incessant +mockery means absolute isolation; it is the sign of a thoroughgoing +egotism. If we wish to do good to men we must pity and not despise them. +We must learn to say of them, not "What fools!" but "What unfortunates!" +The pessimist or the nihilist seems to me less cold and icy than the +mocking atheist. He reminds me of the somber words of "Ahasverus:" + + "Vous qui manquez de charite, + Tremblez a mon supplice etrange: + Ce n'est point sa divinite, + C'est l'humanite que Dieu venge!" + +[Footnote: The quotation is from Quinet's "Ahasverus" (first published +1833), that strange _Welt-gedicht_, which the author himself described +as "l'histoire du monde, de Dieu dans le monde, et enfin du doute dans +le monde," and which, with Faust, probably suggested the unfinished +but in many ways brilliant performance of the young Spaniard, +Espronceda--_El Diablo Mundo_.] + +It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone; and it is a wrong to +one's kind to wish to be wise without making others share our wisdom. It +is, besides, an illusion to suppose that such a privilege is possible, +when everything proves the solidarity of individuals, and when no +one can think at all except by means of the general store of thought, +accumulated and refined by centuries of cultivation and experience. +Absolute individualism is an absurdity. A man may be isolated in his +own particular and temporary _milieu_, but every one of our thoughts or +feelings finds, has found, and will find, its echo in humanity. Such an +echo is immense and far-resounding in the case of those representative +men who have been adopted by great fractions of humanity as guides, +revealers, and reformers; but it exists for everybody. Every sincere +utterance of the soul, every testimony faithfully borne to a personal +conviction, is of use to some one and some thing, even when you know it +not, and when your mouth is stopped by violence, or the noose tightens +round your neck. A word spoken to some one preserves an indestructible +influence, just as any movement whatever may be metamorphosed, but not +undone. 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 the +true 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, +but the attraction wanes, and by the end I was very tired of it. Why? +Because the noise of a mill-wheel sends one to sleep, and these pages +without paragraphs, these interminable chapters, and this incessant, +dialectical clatter, affect me as though I were listening to a +word-mill. I end by yawning like any simple non-philosophical mortal +in the face of all this heaviness and pedantry. Erudition, and even +thought, are not everything. An occasional touch of esprit, a little +sharpness of phrase, a little vivacity, imagination, and grace, would +spoil neither. Do these pedantic books leave a single image or formula, +a single new or striking fact behind them in the memory, when one puts +them down? No; nothing but 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 a +thousand of these heavy German pages, stuffed to the brim, and showing +rather the work itself than its results. The Germans gather fuel for the +pile: it is the French who kindle it. For heaven's sake, spare me your +lucubrations; give me facts or ideas. Keep your vats, your must, your +dregs, in the background. What I ask is wine--wine which will sparkle in +the glass, and stimulate intelligence instead of weighing it down. + +April 11, 1868. (_Mornex sur Saleve_).--I left town in a great storm of +wind, which was raising clouds of dust along the suburban roads, and two +hours later I found myself safely installed among the mountains, just +like last year. I think of staying a week here.... The sounds of the +village are wafted to my open window, barkings of distant dogs, voices +of women at the fountain, the songs of birds in the lower orchards. The +green carpet of the plain is dappled by passing shadows thrown upon it +by the clouds; the landscape has the charm of delicate tint and a sort +of languid grace. Already I am full of a sense of well-being, I am +tasting the joys of that contemplative state in which the soul, issuing +from 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 more +resistance, negation, blame; everything is affirmative; I feel myself in +harmony with nature and with surroundings, of which I seem to myself the +expression. The heart opens to the immensity of things. This is what +I love! _Nam mihires, non me rebus submittere conor_. April 12, 1868. +(_Easter Day_), _Mornex Eight_ A. M.--The day has opened solemnly and +religiously. There is a tinkling of bells from the valley: even the +fields seem to be breathing forth a canticle of praise. Humanity must +have a worship, and, all things considered, is not the Christian worship +the best among those which have existed on a large scale? The religion +of sin, of repentance, and reconciliation--the religion of the new birth +and of eternal life--is not a religion to be ashamed of. In spite of all +the aberrations of fanaticism, all the superstitions of formalism, all +the ugly superstructures of hypocrisy, all the fantastic puerilities +of theology, the gospel has modified the world and consoled mankind. +Christian humanity is not much better than pagan humanity, but it would +be much worse without a religion, and without this religion. Every +religion 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 +Holy and the Just, who came to save and not to curse. Jesus will always +supply us with the best criticism of Christianity, and when Christianity +has 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 Cezargues, +Eseri, and the Yves woods, returning by the Pont du Loup. The weather +was cold and gray. A great popular merrymaking of some sort, with +its multitude of blouses, and its drums and fifes, has been going on +riotously for an hour under my window. The crowd has sung a number of +songs, drinking songs, ballads, romances, but all more or less heavy and +ugly. The muse has never touched our country people, and the Swiss race +is not graceful even in its gayety. A bear in high spirits--this is what +one thinks of. The poetry it produces, too, is desperately vulgar and +commonplace. Why? In the first place, because, in spite of the pretenses +of our democratic philosophies, the classes whose backs are bent with +manual labor are aesthetically inferior to the others. In the next +place, because our old rustic peasant poetry is dead, and the peasant, +when he tries to share the music or the poetry of the cultivated +classes, 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 can +no longer without offense judge men according to a certain recognized +order, we can only compare them to the best that exists, and then +they naturally seem to us more mediocre, more ugly, more deformed than +before. If the passion for equality potentially raises the average, it +_really_ degrades nineteen-twentieths of individuals below their former +place. There is a progress in the domain of law and a falling back in +the domain of art. And meanwhile the artists see multiplying before them +their _bete-noire_, the _bourgeois_, the Philistine, the presumptuous +ignoramus, the quack who plays at science, and the feather-brain who +thinks himself the equal of the intelligent. + +"Commonness will prevail," as De Candolle said in speaking of +the graminaceous plants. The era of equality means the triumph of +mediocrity. It is disappointing, but inevitable; for it is one of time's +revenges. Humanity, after having organized itself on the basis of the +dissimilarity of individuals, is now organizing itself on the basis of +their similarity, and the one exclusive principle is about as true +as the other. Art no doubt will lose, but justice will gain. Is not +universal leveling-down the law of nature, and when all has been leveled +will not all have been destroyed? So that the world is striving with all +its force for the destruction of what it has itself brought forth. +Life is the blind pursuit of its own negation; as has been said of the +wicked, nature also works for her own disappointment, she labors at what +she hates, she weaves her own shroud, and piles up the stones of her own +tomb. 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 but +simply of constant metamorphosis, so it is not impossible that the sum +of good is in reality always the same, and that therefore all progress +on one side is compensated inversely on another side. If this were so we +ought never to say that period or a people is absolutely and as a whole +superior to another time or another people, but only that there is +superiority in certain points. The great difference between man and man +would, on these principles, consist in the art of transforming vitality +into spirituality, and latent power into useful energy. The same +difference would hold good between nation and nation, so that the object +of the simultaneous or successive competition of mankind in history +would be the extraction of the maximum of humanity from a given amount +of animality. Education, morals, and politics would be only variations +of the same art, the art of living--that is to say, of disengaging the +pure form and subtlest essence of our individual being. + +April 26, 1868. (_Sunday, Mid-day_).--A gloomy morning. On all sides a +depressing outlook, and within, disgust with self. + +_Ten_ P.M.--Visits and a walk. I have spent the evening alone. Many +things to-day have taught me lessons of wisdom. I have seen the +hawthorns covering themselves with blossom, and the whole valley +springing up afresh under the breath of the spring. I have been the +spectator of faults of conduct on the part of old men who will not grow +old, and whose heart is in rebellion against the natural law. I have +watched the working of marriage in its frivolous and commonplace forms, +and listened to trivial preaching. I have been a witness of griefs +without hope, of loneliness that claimed one's pity. I have listened to +pleasantries on the subject of madness, and to the merry songs of the +birds. And everything has had the same message for me: "Place yourself +once 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 once +serious and cheerful; know how to repeat with the apostle, 'I have +learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.'" + +August 26, 1868.--After all the storms of feeling within and the organic +disturbances without, which during these latter months have pinned me so +closely to my own individual existence, shall I ever be able to +reascend into the region of pure intelligence, to enter again upon the +disinterested and impersonal life, to recover my old indifference toward +subjective miseries, and regain a purely scientific and contemplative +state of mind? Shall I ever succeed in forgetting all the needs which +bind 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 +see infirmity and weakness close upon me, I feel I cannot do without +affection, and I know that I have no ambition, and that my faculties are +declining. I remember that I am forty-seven years old, and that all my +brood of youthful hopes has flown away. So that there is no deceiving +myself as to the fate which awaits me: increasing loneliness, +mortification of spirit, long-continued regret, melancholy neither to be +consoled nor confessed, a mournful old age, a slow decay, a death in the +desert! + +Terrible dilemma! Whatever is still possible to me has lost its savor, +while all that I could still desire escapes me, and will always escape +me. Every impulse ends in weariness and disappointment. Discouragement, +depression, weakness, apathy; there is the dismal series which must be +forever begun and re-begun, while we are still rolling up the Sisyphean +rock of life. Is it not simpler and shorter to plunge head-foremost into +the gulf? + +No, rebel as we may, there is but one solution--to submit to the general +order, to accept, to resign ourselves, and to do still what we can. It +is our self-will, our aspirations, our dreams, that must be sacrificed. +We must give up the hope of happiness once for all! Immolation of the +self--death to self--this is the only suicide which is either useful +or permitted. 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 is +implied in it. Absolute disinterestedness is only reached in that +perfect humility which tramples the self under foot for the glory of +God. + +I have no more strength left, I wish for nothing; but that is not what +is wanted. I must wish what God wishes; I must pass from indifference +to sacrifice, and from sacrifice to self-devotion. The cup which I would +fain put away from me is the misery of living, the shame of existing and +suffering as a common creature who has missed his vocation; it is the +bitter and increasing humiliation of declining power, of growing old +under the weight of one's own disapproval, and the disappointment of +one's friends! "Wilt thou be healed?" was the text of last Sunday's +sermon. "Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will +give you rest." "And if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our +heart." + +August 27, 1868.--To-day I took up the "Penseroso" [Footnote: "II +Penseroso," poesies-maximes par H. F. Amiel: Geneve, 1858. This little +book, which contains one hundred and thirty-three maxims, several +of which are quoted in the _Journal Intime_, is prefaced by a motto +translated from Shelley--"Ce n'est pas la science qui nous manque, a +nous modernes; nous l'avons surabondamment.... Mais ce que nous avons +absorbe nous absorbe.... Ce qui nous manque c'est la poesie 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 true +spirit of the inner life. Whenever I wish to revive my consciousness of +my own tradition, it is pleasant to me to read over this little gnomic +collection which has had such scant justice done to it, and which, were +it another's, I should often quote. I like to feel that in it I have +attained to that relative truth which may be defined as consistency +with self, the harmony of appearance with reality, of thought with +expression--in other words, sincerity, ingenuousness, inwardness. It is +personal experience in the strictest sense of the word. + +September 21, 1868. (_Villars_).--A lovely autumn effect. Everything was +veiled in gloom this morning, and a gray mist of rain floated between us +and the whole circle of mountains. Now the strip of blue sky which made +its appearance at first behind the distant peaks has grown larger, has +mounted to the zenith, and the dome of heaven, swept almost clear of +cloud, 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; that +the graces of spring and the splendors of summer are irrevocably gone, +but that autumn too has its beauties. The autumn weather is often +darkened by rain, cloud, and mist, but the air is still soft, and +the sun still delights the eyes, and touches the yellowing leaves +caressingly; it is the time for fruit, for harvest, for the vintage, the +moment for making provision for the winter. Here the herds of milch-cows +have already come down to the level of the _chalet_, and next week they +will be lower than we are. This living barometer is a warning to us that +the time has come to say farewell to the mountains. There is nothing to +gain, and everything to lose, by despising the example of nature, and +making arbitrary rules of life for one's self. Our liberty, wisely +understood, 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 Secretan +[Footnote: Charles Secretan, a Lausanne professor, the friend of +Vinet, born 1819. He published "Lecons sur la Philosophie de Leibnitz," +"Philosophie de la Liberte," "La Raison et le Christianisme," etc.] +"Recherches sur la Methode," 1857; "Precis elementaire de Philosophie," +1868. The philosophy of Secretan is the philosophy of Christianity, +considered as the one true religion. Subordination of nature to +intelligence, of intelligence to will, and of will to dogmatic +faith--such is its general framework. Unfortunately there are no signs +of critical, or comparative, or historical study in it, and as an +apologetic--in which satire is curiously mingled with glorification of +the religion of love--it leaves upon one an impression of _parti +pris_. A philosophy of religion, apart from the comparative science of +religions, and apart also from a disinterested and general philosophy +of history, must always be more or less arbitrary and factitious. It +is only pseudo-scientific, this reduction of human life to three +spheres--industry, law, and religion. The author seems to me to possess +a vigorous and profound mind, rather than a free mind. Not only is he +dogmatic, but he dogmatizes in favor of a given religion, to which his +whole allegiance is pledged. Besides, Christianity being an X which each +church defines in its own way, the author takes the same liberty, and +defines the X in his way; so that he is at once too free and not free +enough; too free in respect to historical Christianity, not free enough +in respect to Christianity as a particular church. He does not satisfy +the believing Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed Churchman, or Catholic; +and he does not satisfy the freethinker. This Schellingian type +of speculation, which consists in logically deducing a particular +religion--that is to say, in making philosophy the servant of Christian +theology--is a legacy from the Middle Ages. + +After belief comes judgment; but a believer is not a judge. A fish lives +in the ocean, but it cannot see all around it; it cannot take a view +of the whole; therefore it cannot judge what the ocean is. In order to +understand Christianity we must put it in its historical place, in +its proper framework; we must regard it as a part of the religious +development of humanity, and so judge it, not from a Christian point of +view, 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 my +poor kind friend, Charles Heim.... Since the 30th of November I have had +no 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 have +realized that strong craving which many feel for the last words, the +last looks, of those they love! Such words and looks are a kind of +testament. They have a solemn and sacred character which is not merely +an effect of our imagination. For that which is on the brink of death +already participates to some extent in eternity. A dying man seems to +speak to us from beyond the tomb; what he says has the effect upon us +of a sentence, an oracle, an injunction; we look upon him as one endowed +with second sight. Serious and solemn words come naturally to the man +who feels life escaping him, and the grave opening before him. The +depths of his nature are then revealed; the divine within him need no +longer hide itself. Oh, do not let us wait to be just or pitiful or +demonstrative toward those we love until they or we are struck down by +illness or threatened with death! Life is short and we have never too +much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark +journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind! + +December 26, 1868.--My dear friend died this morning at Hyeres. A +beautiful soul has returned to heaven. So he has ceased to suffer! Is he +happy now? + + * * * * * + +If men are always more or less deceived on the subject of women, it is +because they forget that they and women do not speak altogether the same +language, and that words have not the same weight or the same meaning +for them, especially in questions of feeling. Whether from shyness or +precaution or artifice, a woman never speaks out her whole thought, and +moreover what she herself knows of it is but a part of what it really +is. Complete frankness seems to be impossible to her, and complete +self-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a sphinx to us, it +is because she is a riddle of doubtful meaning even to herself. She +has no need of perfidy, for she is mystery itself. A woman is something +fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. +A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal +of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about +innumerable evils without knowing It. Capable of all kinds of devotion, +and of all kinds of treason, "_monstre incomprehensible_," raised to the +second 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 for +each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection. + + * * * * * + +He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being +magnanimous. + + * * * * * + +Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything. The +final result of all deceptions and disappointments is atheism, which +may not always yield up its name and secret, but which lurks, a masked +specter, 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, +by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human +experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into +pardon. And the transformation ought to become so easy and habitual that +the lookers-on may think it spontaneous, and nobody give us credit for +it. + +January 27, 1869.--What, then, is the service rendered to the world by +Christianity? The proclamation of "good news." And what is this "good +news?" The pardon of sin. The God of holiness loving the world and +reconciling it to himself by Jesus, in order to establish the kingdom of +God, the city of souls, the life of heaven upon earth--here you have +the whole of it; but in this is a revolution. "Love ye one another, as +I have loved you;" "Be ye one with me, as I am one with the Father:" for +this is life eternal, here is perfection, salvation, joy. Faith in the +fatherly love of God, who punishes and pardons for our good, and +who desires not the death of the sinner, but his conversion and his +life--here is the motive power of the redeemed. + +What we call Christianity is a vast ocean, into which flow a number of +spiritual 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 +its morality, as they have been historically developed, are new or +spontaneous. What is essential and original in it is the practical +demonstration that the human and the divine nature may co-exist, may +become fused into one sublime flame; that holiness and pity, justice +and mercy, may meet together and become one, in man and in God. What is +specific in Christianity is Jesus--the religious consciousness of Jesus. +The sacred sense of his absolute union with God through perfect love and +self-surrender, this profound, invincible, and tranquil faith of his, +has become a religion; the faith of Jesus has become the faith of +millions and millions of men. From this torch has sprung a vast +conflagration. And such has been the brilliancy and the radiance both +of revealer and revelation, that the astonished world has forgotten its +justice in its admiration, and has referred to one single benefactor the +whole of those benefits which are its heritage from the past. + +The conversion of ecclesiastical and confessional Christianity into +historical Christianity is the work of biblical science. The conversion +of historical Christianity into philosophical Christianity is an attempt +which is to some extent an illusion, since faith cannot be entirely +resolved into science. The transference, however, of Christianity from +the region of history to the region of psychology is the great craving +of our time. What we are trying to arrive at is the _eternal_ gospel. +But before we can reach it, the comparative history and philosophy of +religions must assign to Christianity its true place, and must judge it. +The religion, too, which Jesus professed must be disentangled from the +religion which has taken Jesus for its object. And when at last we are +able to point out the state of consciousness which is the primitive +cell, the principle of the eternal gospel, we shall have reached our +goal, for in it is the _punctum saliens_ of pure religion. + +Perhaps the extraordinary will take the place of the supernatural, +and the great geniuses of the world will come to be regarded as the +messengers of God in history, as the providential revealers through whom +the spirit of God works upon the human mass. What is perishing is +not the admirable and the adorable; it is simply the arbitrary, the +accidental, the miraculous. Just as the poor illuminations of a village +_fete_, or the tapers of a procession, are put out by the great marvel +of the sun, so the small local miracles, with their meanness and +doubtfulness, will sink into insignificance beside the law of the world +of spirits, the incomparable spectacle of human history, led by that +all-powerful Dramaturgus whom we call God. _Utinam!_ + +March 1, 1869.--Impartiality and objectivity are as rare as justice, of +which they are but two special forms. Self-interest is an inexhaustible +source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see +truly is extraordinarily small. What governs men is the fear of +truth, unless truth is useful to them, which is as much as to say that +self-interest is the principle of the common philosophy or that truth +is made for us but not we for truth. As this fact is humiliating, the +majority of people will neither recognize nor admit it. And thus a +prejudice of self-love protects all the prejudices of the understanding, +which are themselves the result of a stratagem of the _ego_. Humanity +has always slain or persecuted those who have disturbed this selfish +repose of hers. She only improves in spite of herself. The only progress +which she desires is an increase of enjoyments. All advances in justice, +in morality, in holiness, have been imposed upon or forced from her by +some noble violence. Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has +never been the law of societies. It is too often by employing one vice +against another--for example, vanity against cupidity, greed against +idleness--that the great agitators have broken through routine. In a +word, 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, has +but rarely succeeded in raising it into generous expansion. + +From the point of view of the ideal, humanity is _triste_ and ugly. But +if we compare it with its probable origins, we see that the human race +has not altogether wasted its time. Hence there are three possible views +of history: the view of the pessimist, who starts from the ideal; the +view of the optimist, who compares the past with the present; and the +view of the hero-worshiper, who sees that all progress whatever has cost +oceans of blood and tears. + +European hypocrisy veils its face before the voluntary suicide of those +Indian fanatics who throw themselves under the wheels of their goddess' +triumphal car. And yet these sacrifices are but the symbol of what goes +on in Europe as elsewhere, of that offering of their life which is made +by the martyrs of all great causes. We may even say that the fierce and +sanguinary goddess is humanity itself, which is only spurred to progress +by remorse, and repents only when the measure of its crimes runs over. +The fanatics who sacrifice themselves are an eternal protest against +the universal selfishness. We have only overthrown those idols which are +tangible and visible, but perpetual sacrifice still exists everywhere, +and everywhere the _elite_ of each generation suffers for the salvation +of the multitude. It is the austere, bitter, and mysterious law of +solidarity. Perdition and redemption in and through each other is the +destiny of men. + +March 18, 1869 (_Thursday_).--Whenever I come back from a walk outside +the town I am disgusted and repelled by this cell of mine. Out of doors, +sunshine, birds, spring, beauty, and life; in here, ugliness, piles of +paper, melancholy, and death. And yet my walk was one of the saddest +possible. I wandered along the Rhone and the Arve, and all the memories +of the past, all the disappointments of the present and all the +anxieties of the future laid siege to my heart like a whirlwind of +phantoms. I took account of my faults, and they ranged themselves in +battle against me. The vulture of regret gnawed at my heart, and the +sense 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 life +was failing me. Ah! how terrible spring is to the lonely! All the needs +which had been lulled to sleep start into life again, all the sorrows +which had disappeared are reborn, and the old man which had been gagged +and conquered rises once more and makes his groans heard. It is as +though all the old wounds opened and bewailed themselves afresh. Just +when one had ceased to think, when one had succeeded in deadening +feeling by work or by amusement, all of a sudden the heart, solitary +captive that it is, sends a cry from its prison depths, a cry which +shakes 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--that +of Time. I have succeeded in avoiding all other servitudes, but I had +reckoned without the last--the servitude of age. Age comes, and its +weight 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 flowing +past them some ten or twenty thousand years, or at the trees forming +the avenue of the cemetery, which, for two centuries, have been the +witnesses of so many funeral processions; as I recognized the walls, +the dykes, the paths, which saw me playing as a child, and watched other +children running over that grassy plain of Plain Palais which bore my +own childish steps--I had the sharpest sense of the emptiness of life +and the flight of things. I felt the shadow of the upas tree darkening +over me. I gazed into the great implacable abyss in which are swallowed +up all those phantoms which call themselves living beings. I saw that +the living are but apparitions hovering for a moment over the earth, +made out of the ashes of the dead, and swiftly re-absorbed by eternal +night, as the will-o'-the-wisp sinks into the marsh. The nothingness +of our joys, the emptiness of our existence, and the futility of our +ambitions, filled me with a quiet disgust. From regret to disenchantment +I floated on to Buddhism, to universal weariness. Ah, the hope of a +blessed 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 this +psychological metamorphosis. Another thing, too, astonishes them; it +is the universal conspiracy which exists for hiding the sadness of +the world, for making men forget suffering, sickness, and death, for +smothering the wails and sobs which issue from every house, for painting +and beautifying the hideous face of reality. Is it out of tenderness for +childhood and youth, or is it simply from fear, that we are thus careful +to veil the sinister truth? Or is it from a sense of equity? and does +life contain as much good as evil--perhaps more? However it may be, men +feed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth. Each one unwinds +his own special reel of hope, and as soon as he has come to the end of +it he sits him down to die, and lets his sons and his grandsons begin +the same experience over again. We all pursue happiness, and happiness +escapes the pursuit of all. + +The only _viaticum_ which can help us in the journey of life is +that furnished by a great duty and some serious affections. And even +affections 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 alone +lasts as long as we. + +This maxim exorcises the spirits of revolt, of anger, discouragement, +vengeance, indignation, and ambition, which rise one after another to +tempt and trouble the heart, swelling with the sap of the spring. O all +ye saints of the East, of antiquity, of Christianity, phalanx of heroes! +Ye too drank deep of weariness and agony of soul, but ye triumphed over +both. Ye who have come forth victors from the strife, shelter us under +your palms, fortify us by your example! + +April 6, 1869.--Magnificent weather. The Alps are dazzling under their +silver haze. Sensations of all kinds have been crowding upon me; the +delights 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, +to feel, to express, stirred the depths of my heart. It was a sudden +re-awakening of youth, a flash of poetry, a renewing of the soul, a +fresh growth of the wings of desire--I was overpowered by a host of +conquering, vagabond, adventurous aspirations. I forgot my age, my +obligations, my duties, my vexations, and youth leaped within me as +though life were beginning again. It was as though something explosive +had caught fire, and one's soul were scattered to the four winds; +in such a mood one would fain devour the whole world, experience +everything, see everything. Faust's ambition enters into one, universal +desire--a horror of one's own prison cell. One throws off one's hair +shirt, and one would fain gather the whole of nature into one's arms and +heart. 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 snowy +crown with one single gust of flaming breath. It is the spring which +brings about these sudden and improbable resurrections, the spring +which, sending a thrill and tumult of life through all that lives, +is the parent of impetuous desires, of overpowering inclinations, of +unforeseen and inextinguishable outbursts of passion. It breaks +through the rigid bark of the trees, and rends the mask on the face of +asceticism; it makes the monk tremble in the shadow of his convent, the +maiden behind the curtains of her room, the child sitting on his school +bench, the old man bowed under his rheumatism. + + "O Hymen, Hymenae!" + +April 24, 1869.--Is Nemesis indeed more real than Providence, the +jealous God more true than the good God? grief more certain than joy? +darkness more secure of victory than light? Is it pessimism or optimism +which is nearest the truth, and which--Leibnitz or Schopenhauer--has +best understood the universe? Is it the healthy man or the sick man who +sees best to the bottom of things? which is in the right? + +Ah! the problem of grief and evil is and will be always the greatest +enigma of being, only second to the existence of being itself. The +common faith of humanity has assumed the victory of good over evil. But +if good consists not in the result of victory, but in victory itself, +then good implies an incessant and infinite contest, interminable +struggle, and a success forever threatened. And if this is life, is not +Buddha right in regarding life as synonymous with evil since it means +perpetual restlessness and endless war? Repose according to the Buddhist +is only to be found in annihilation. The art of self-annihilation, of +escaping the world's vast machinery of suffering, and the misery of +renewed existence--the art of reaching Nirvana, is to him the supreme +art, the only means of deliverance. The Christian says to God: Deliver +us from evil. The Buddhist adds: And to that end deliver us from finite +existence, give us back to nothingness! The first believes that when he +is enfranchised from the body he will enter upon eternal happiness; the +second believes that individuality is the obstacle to all repose, and he +longs for the dissolution of the soul itself. The dread of the first is +the paradise of the second. + +One thing only is necessary--the committal of the soul to God. Look that +thou thyself art in order, and leave to God the task of unraveling the +skein of the world and of destiny. What do annihilation or immortality +matter? 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 passage +through life. Only he must have taken sides with Socrates, Plato, +Aristotle, and Zeno, against materialism, against the religion of +accident and pessimism. Perhaps also he must make up his mind +against the Buddhist nihilism, because a man's system of conduct is +diametrically opposite according as he labors to increase his life or +to lessen it, according as he aims at cultivating his faculties or at +systematically deadening them. + +To employ one's individual efforts for the increase of good in the +world--this modest ideal is enough for us. To help forward the victory +of 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: Etienne +Vacherot, a French philosophical writer, who owed his first successes in +life to the friendship of Cousin, and was later brought very much into +notice by his controversy with the Abbe Gratry, by the prosecution +brought against him in consequence of his book, "La Democratie" (1859), +and by his rejection at the hands of the Academy of Moral and Political +Sciences in 1865, for the same kind of reasons which had brought about +the exclusion of Littre in the preceding year. In 1868, however, he +became a member of the Institute in succession to Cousin. A Liberal of +the old school, he has separated himself from the republicans since the +war, and has made himself felt as a severe critic of republican blunders +in the _Revue des deux Mondes_. _La Religion_, which discusses the +psychological origins of the religious sense, was published in 1868.] +book "La Religion," 1869, and it has set me thinking. I have a feeling +that his notion of religion is not rigorous and exact, and that +therefore his logic is subject to correction. If religion is a +psychological stage, anterior to that of reason, it is clear that it +will disappear in man, but if, on the contrary, it is a mode of the +inner life, it may and must last, as long as the need of feeling, and +alongside the need of thinking. The question is between theism and +non-theism. If God is only the category of the ideal, religion will +vanish, of course, like the illusions of youth. But if Universal Being +can be felt and loved at the same time as conceived, the philosopher may +be 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. I +myself incline to this solution. To me religion is life before God and +in God. + +And even if God were defined as the universal life, so long as this life +is positive and not negative, the soul penetrated with the sense of the +infinite is in the religious state. Religion differs from philosophy +as the simple and spontaneous self differs from the reflecting self, as +synthetic intuition differs from intellectual analysis. We are initiated +into the religious state by a sense of voluntary dependence on, and +joyful submission to the principle of order and of goodness. Religious +emotion makes man conscious of himself; he finds his own place within +the 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 a +bright sun throws flickering and uncertain rays. Storms, smiles, whims, +anger, tears--it is May, and nature is in its feminine phase! She +pleases our fancy, stirs our heart, and wears out our reason by the +endless succession of her caprices and the unexpected violence of her +whims. + +This recalls to me the 213th verse of the second book of the Laws of +Manou. "It is in the nature of the feminine sex to seek here below to +corrupt men, and therefore wise men never abandon themselves to the +seductions of women." The same code, however, says: "Wherever women are +honored the gods are satisfied." And again: "In every family where +the husband takes pleasure in his wife, and the wife in her husband, +happiness is ensured." And again: "One mother is more venerable than a +thousand fathers." But knowing what stormy and irrational elements there +are in this fragile and delightful creature, Manou concludes: "At no age +ought a woman to be allowed to govern herself as she pleases." + +Up to the present day, in several contemporary and neighboring codes, +a woman is a minor all her life. Why? Because of her dependence upon +nature, and of her subjection to passions which are the diminutives +of madness; in other words, because the soul of a woman has something +obscure and mysterious in it, which lends itself to all superstitions +and 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, and +personal 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 +a woman quits the state of subordination in which her merits have free +play, we see a rapid increase in her natural defects. Complete equality +with man makes her quarrelsome; a position of supremacy makes her +tyrannical. To honor her and to govern her will be for a long time yet +the best solution. When education has formed strong, noble, and serious +women in whom conscience and reason hold sway over the effervescence of +fancy 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 she +will be truly an equal, a work-fellow, a companion. At present she is so +only in theory. The moderns are at work upon the problem, and have not +solved it yet. + +June 15, 1869.--The great defect of liberal Christianity [Footnote: +At this period the controversy between the orthodox party and "Liberal +Christianity" was at its height, both in Geneva and throughout +Switzerland.] is that its conception of holiness is a frivolous one, +or, what comes to the same thing, its conception of sin is a superficial +one. The defects of the baser sort of political liberalism recur in +liberal Christianity; it is only half serious, and its theology is too +much mixed with worldliness. The sincerely pious folk look upon the +liberals as persons whose talk is rather profane, and who offend +religious feelings by making sacred subjects a theme for rhetorical +display. They shock the _convenances_ of sentiment, and affront the +delicacy of conscience by the indiscreet familiarities they take with +the great mysteries of the inner life. They seem to be mere clever +special pleaders, religious rhetoricians like the Greek sophists, rather +than guides in the narrow road which leads to salvation. + +It is not to the clever folk, nor even to the scientific folk, that +the empire over souls belongs, but to those who impress us as having +conquered nature by grace, passed through the burning bush, and as +speaking, 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, which +moves and persuades. + +What all religious, poetical, pure, and tender souls are least able to +pardon is the diminution or degradation of their ideal. We must never +rouse an ideal against us; our business is to point men to another +ideal, purer, higher, more spiritual than the old, and so to raise +behind a lofty summit one more lofty still. In this way no one is +despoiled; we gain men's confidence, while at the same time forcing +them to think, and enabling those minds which are already tending toward +change to perceive new objects and goals for thought. Only that which is +replaced is destroyed, and an ideal is only replaced by satisfying the +conditions of the old with some advantages over. + +Let the liberal Protestants offer us a spectacle of Christian virtue of +a holier, intenser, and more intimate kind than before; let us see +it active in their persons and in their influence, and they will have +furnished the proof demanded by the Master; the tree will be judged by +its fruits. + + * * * * * + +June 22, 1869 (_Nine_ A. M).--Gray and lowering weather. A fly lies dead +of cold on the page of my book, in full summer! What is life? I said to +myself, as I looked at the tiny dead creature. It is a loan, as movement +is. The universal life is a sum total, of which the units are visible +here, there, and everywhere, just as an electric wheel throws off sparks +along 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 corresponding +member of the Academy of Sciences in 1867. The book of his to which +Amiel refers is no doubt _Consequences philosophiques at metaphysiques +de la thermodynamique, Analyse elementaire de l'univers_ (1869).] the +atom, the force, the soul; the force which acts upon atoms, the soul +which acts upon force. Probably he distinguishes between anonymous souls +and personal souls. Then my fly would be an anonymous soul. + +(_Same day_).--The national churches are all up in arms against +so-called Liberal Christianity; Basle and Zurich began the fight, and +now Geneva has entered the lists too. Gradually it is becoming plain +that historical Protestantism has no longer a _raison d'etre_ between +pure 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 +a written revelation, and of a book divinely inspired, and therefore +authoritative. When once this thesis has been relegated to the rank of +a fiction Protestantism crumbles away. There is nothing for it but +to retire up on natural religion, or the religion of the moral +consciousness. M.M. Reville, Conquerel, Fontanes, Buisson, [Footnote: +The name of M. Albert Reville, the French Protestant theologian, is +more or less familiar in England, especially since his delivery of the +Hibbert lectures in 1884. Athanase Coquerel, born 1820, died 1876, the +well-known champion of liberal ideas in the French Protestant Church, +was suspended from his pastoral functions by the Consistory of Paris, +on account of his review of M. Renan's "Vie de Jesus" in 1864. +Ferdinand-Edouard Buisson, a liberal Protestant, originally a professor +at Lausanne, was raised to the important function of Director of Primary +Instruction by M. Ferry in 1879. He was denounced by Bishop Dupanloup, +in the National Assembly of 1871, as the author of certain liberal +pamphlets 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 Protestantism +and the laggards of free thought. + +Their mistake is not seeing that all institutions rest upon a legal +fiction, and that every living thing involves a logical absurdity. It +may be logical to demand a church based on free examination and absolute +sincerity; but to realize it is a different matter. A church lives +by what is positive, and this positive element necessarily limits +investigation. People confound the right of the individual, which is +to be 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 +of the church, which is a mistake. They will not see that religion is +different from philosophy, and that the one seeks union by faith, while +the other upholds the solitary independence of thought. That the bread +should 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 +this method could not possibly found a church, for they might differ +completely as to the results of the method. Suppose a newspaper the +writers of which were of all possible parties--it would no doubt be a +curiosity in journalism, but it would have no opinions, no faith, no +creed. A drawing-room filled with refined people, carrying on polite +discussion, is not a church, and a dispute, however courteous, is not +worship. It is a mere confusion of kinds. + +July 13, 1869.--Lamennais, Heine--the one the victim of a mistaken +vocation, the other of a tormenting craving to astonish and mystify his +kind. The first was wanting in common sense; the second was wanting +in seriousness. The Frenchman was violent, arbitrary, domineering; the +German was a jesting Mephistopheles, with a horror of Philistinism. +The Breton was all passion and melancholy; the Hamburger all fancy and +satire. Neither developed freely nor normally. Both of them, because of +an initial mistake, threw themselves into an endless quarrel with the +world. Both were revolutionists. They were not fighting for the good +cause, for impersonal truth; both were rather the champions of their +own pride. Both suffered greatly, and died isolated, repudiated, and +reviled. Men of magnificent talents, both of them, but men of small +wisdom, who did more harm than good to themselves and to others! It is +a lamentable existence which wears itself out in maintaining a first +antagonism, 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 life +badly. + +July 20, 1869.--I have been reading over again five or six chapters, +here and there, of Renan's "St. Paul." Analyzed to the bottom, the +writer is a freethinker, but a free thinker whose flexible imagination +still allows him the delicate epicurism of religious emotion. In his +eyes the man who will not lend himself to these graceful fancies is +vulgar, and the man who takes them seriously is prejudiced. He is +entertained by the variations of conscience, but he is too clever to +laugh at them. The true critic neither concludes nor excludes; his +pleasure is to understand without believing, and to profit by +the results of enthusiasm, while still maintaining a free mind, +unembarrassed by illusion. Such a mode of proceeding has a look of +dishonesty; it is nothing, however, but the good-tempered irony of a +highly-cultivated mind, which will neither be ignorant of anything nor +duped by anything. It is the dilettantism of the Renaissance in its +perfection. At the same time what innumerable proofs of insight and of +exultant scientific power! + +August 14, 1869.--In the name of heaven, who art thou? what wilt +thou--wavering inconstant creature? What future lies before thee? What +duty or what hope appeals to thee? + +My longing, my search is for love, for peace, for something to fill my +heart; an idea to defend; a work to which I might devote the rest of my +strength; an affection which might quench this inner thirst; a cause for +which I might die with joy. But shall I ever find them? I long for +all that is impossible and inaccessible: for true religion, serious +sympathy, the ideal life; for paradise, immortality, holiness, faith, +inspiration, and I know not what besides! What I really want is to die +and to be born again, transformed myself, and in a different world. +And I can neither stifle these aspirations nor deceive myself as to the +possibility of satisfying them. I seem condemned to roll forever the +rock of Sisyphus, and to feel that slow wearing away of the mind which +befalls the man whose vocation and destiny are in perpetual conflict. +"A Christian heart and a pagan head," like Jacobi; tenderness and +pride; width of mind and feebleness of will; the two men of St. Paul; +a seething chaos of contrasts, antinomies, and contradictions; humility +and pride; childish simplicity and boundless mistrust; analysis and +intuition; patience and irritability; kindness and dryness of heart; +carelessness and anxiety; enthusiasm and languor; indifference and +passion; altogether a being incomprehensible and intolerable to myself +and 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 and +disfigurement. All ideas, principles, acquirements, and habits are +effaced in me like the ripples on a wave, like the convolutions of a +cloud. My personality has the least possible admixture of individuality. +I am to the great majority of men what the circle is to rectilinear +figures; I am everywhere at home, because I have no particular and +nominative 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; perhaps +rather more _man_. There is less of the individual, but more of the +species, in me. My nature, which is absolutely unsuited for practical +life, shows great aptitude for psychological study. It prevents me from +taking sides, but it allows me to understand all sides. It is not only +indolence which prevents me from drawing conclusions; it is a sort of +a secret aversion to all _intellectual proscription_. I have a feeling +that something of everything is wanted to make a world, that all +citizens have a right in the state, and that if every opinion is equally +insignificant in itself, all opinions have some hold upon truth. To live +and let live, think and let think, are maxims which are equally dear to +me. My tendency is always to the whole, to the totality, to the general +balance of things. What is difficult to me is to exclude, to condemn, +to say no; except, indeed, in the presence of the exclusive. I am always +fighting for the absent, for the defeated cause, for that portion of +truth which seems to me neglected; my aim is to complete every thesis, +to see round every problem, to study a thing from all its possible +sides. Is this skepticism? Yes, in its result, but not in its purpose. +It is rather the sense of the absolute and the infinite reducing to +their proper value and relegating to their proper place the finite and +the relative. But here, in the same way, my ambition is greater than my +power; my philosophical perception is superior to my speculative gift. +I have not the energy of my opinions; I have far greater width than +inventiveness of thought, and, from timidity, I have allowed the +critical intelligence in me to swallow up the creative genius. Is it +indeed from timidity? + +Alas! with a little more ambition, or a little more good luck, a +different man might have been made out of me, and such as my youth gave +promise of. + +August 16, 1869.--I have been thinking over Schopenhauer. It has struck +me and almost terrified me to see how well I represent Schopenhauer's +typical man, for whom "happiness is a chimera and suffering a reality," +for whom "the negation of will and of desire is the only road to +deliverance," and "the individual life is a misfortune from which +impersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement," etc. But the +principle that life is an evil and annihilation a good lies at the root +of the system, and this axiom I have never dared to enunciate in any +general way, although I have admitted it here and there in individual +cases. What I still like in the misanthrope of Frankfort, is his +antipathy to current prejudice, to European hobbies, to western +hypocrisies, to the successes of the day. Schopenhauer is a man of +powerful mind, who has put away from him all illusions, who professes +Buddhism in the full flow of modern Germany, and absolute detachment +of mind In the very midst of the nineteenth-century orgie. His great +defects are barrenness of soul, a proud and perfect selfishness, an +adoration of genius which is combined with complete indifference to +the rest of the world, in spite of all his teaching of resignation +and sacrifice. He has no sympathy, no humanity, no love. And here I +recognize the unlikeness between us. Pure intelligence and solitary +labor might easily lead me to his point of view; but once appeal to the +heart, and I feel the contemplative attitude untenable. Pity, goodness, +charity, and devotion reclaim their rights, and insist even upon the +first place. + +August 29, 1869.--Schopenhauer preaches impersonality, objectivity, pure +contemplation, the negation of will, calmness, and disinterestedness, an +aesthetic study of the world, detachment from life, the renunciation of +all desire, solitary meditation, disdain of the crowd, and indifference +to all that the vulgar covet. He approves all my defects, my +childishness, my aversion to practical life, my antipathy to the +utilitarians, my distrust of all desire. In a word, he flatters all my +instincts; he caresses and justifies them. + +This pre-established harmony between the theory of Schopenhauer and my +own natural man causes me pleasure mingled with terror. I might indulge +myself in the pleasure, but that I fear to delude and stifle conscience. +Besides, I feel that goodness has no tolerance for this contemplative +indifference, and that virtue consists in self-conquest. + +August 30, 1869.--Still some chapters of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer +believes in the unchangeableness of innate tendencies in the individual, +and in the invariability of the primitive disposition. He refuses to +believe in the new man, in any real progress toward perfection, or in +any positive improvement in a human being. Only the appearances are +refined; there is no change below the surface. Perhaps he confuses +temperament, character, and individuality? I incline to think that +individuality is fatal and primitive, that temperament reaches far back, +but is alternable, and that character is more recent and susceptible +of voluntary or involuntary modifications. Individuality is a matter of +psychology, temperament, a matter of sensation or aesthetics; character +alone is a matter of morals. Liberty and the use of it count for nothing +in the first two elements of our being; character is a historical fruit, +and the result of a man's biography. For Schopenhauer, character is +identified with temperament just as will with passion. In short, he +simplifies too much, and looks at man from that more elementary point +of view which is only sufficient in the case of the animal. That +spontaneity which is vital or merely chemical he already calls will. +Analogy is not equation; a comparison is not reason; similes and +parables are not exact language. Many of Schopenhauer's originalities +evaporate when we come to translate them into a more close and precise +terminology. + +_Later_.--One has merely to turn over the "Lichtstrahlem" of Herder to +feel the difference between him and Schopenhauer. The latter is full of +marked features and of observations which stand out from the page and +leave a clear and vivid impression. Herder is much less of a writer; his +ideas are entangled in his style, and he has no brilliant condensations, +no jewels, no crystals. While he proceeds by streams and sheets of +thought which have no definite or individual outline, Schopenhauer +breaks the current of his speculation with islands, striking, original, +and picturesque, which engrave themselves in the memory. It is the same +difference as there is between Nicole and Pascal, between Bayle and +Satin-Simon. + +What is the faculty which gives relief, brilliancy, and incisiveness +to thought? Imagination. Under its influence expression becomes +concentrated, colored, and strengthened, and by the power it has of +individualizing all it touches, it gives life and permanence to the +material on which it works. A writer of genius changes sand into glass +and glass into crystal, ore into iron and iron into steel; he marks +with his own stamp every idea he gets hold of. He borrows much from +the common stock, and gives back nothing; but even his robberies are +willingly 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 a +tumult of opposing systems--Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity. +Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, why +am I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, why +return to it, after having judged and conquered it? + +Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepest +reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life +seems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternal +dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by +hope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of +Schopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me even in my moments of +religious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Maia; and I look at her, as +it 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 hope +that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being +of mine there is a child hidden--a frank, sad, simple creature, +who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly +superstitions. A whole millennium of idylls sleeps in my heart; I am a +pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer. + + "Borne dans sa nature, infini dans ses voeux, + L'homme est un dieu tombe qui se souvient des cieux." + +October 14, 1869.--Yesterday, Wednesday, death of Sainte-Beuve. What a +loss! + +October 16, 1869.--_Laboremus_ seems to have been the motto of +Sainte-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 the +sufferings of the body by the energy of the mind. To-day, at this very +moment, they are laying him in the bosom of mother earth. He refused the +sacraments of the church; he never belonged to any confession; he was +one of the "great diocese"--that of the independent seekers of truth, +and he allowed himself no final moment of hypocrisy. He would have +nothing to do with any one except God only--or rather the mysterious +Isis beyond the veil. Being unmarried, he died in the arms of his +secretary. He was sixty-five years old. His power of work and of memory +was immense and intact. What is Scherer thinking about this life and +this death? + +October 19, 1869.--An admirable article by Edmond Scherer on +Sainte-Beuve in the _Temps_. He makes him the prince of French critics +and the last representative of the epoch of literary taste, the future +belonging to the bookmakers and the chatterers, to mediocrity and to +violence. The article breathes a certain manly melancholy, befitting a +funeral oration over one who was a master in the things of the mind. The +fact is, that Sainte-Beuve leaves a greater void behind him than either +Beranger or Lamartine; their greatness was already distant, historical; +he was still helping us to think. The true critic acts as a fulcrum for +all the world. He represents the public judgment, that is to say the +public reason, the touchstone, the scales, the refining rod, which tests +the value of every one and the merit of every work. Infallibility of +judgment is perhaps rarer than anything else, so fine a balance of +qualities does it demand--qualities both natural and acquired, qualities +of mind and heart. What years of labor, what study and comparison, are +needed to bring the critical judgment to maturity! Like Plato's sage, +it is only at fifty that the critic rises to the true height of his +literary priesthood, or, to put it less pompously, of his social +function. By then only can he hope for insight into all the modes of +being, and for mastery of all possible shades of appreciation. And +Sainte-Beuve joined to this infinitely refined culture a prodigious +memory, and an incredible multitude of facts and anecdotes stored up for +the service of his thought. + +December 8, 1869.--Everything has chilled me this morning; the cold of +the season, the physical immobility around me, but, above all, Hartman's +"Philosophy of the Unconscious." This book lays down the terrible thesis +that creation is a mistake; being, such as it is, is not as good as +non-being, and death is better than life. + +I felt the same mournful impression that Obermann left upon me in my +youth. The black melancholy of Buddhism encompassed and overshadowed +me. If, in fact, it is only illusion which hides from us the horror of +existence and makes life tolerable to us, then existence is a snare and +life an evil. Like the Greek Annikeris, we ought to counsel suicide, or +rather with Buddha and Schopenhauer we ought to labor for the radical +extirpation 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 +we have to aim at. Personal consciousness being the root of all our +troubles, we ought to avoid the temptation to it and the possibility +of it as diabolical and abominable. What blasphemy! And yet it is all +logical; it is the philosophy of happiness carried to its farthest +point. Epicurism must end in despair. The philosophy of duty is +less depressing. But salvation lies in the conciliation of duty and +happiness, in the union of the individual will with the divine will, and +in the faith that this supreme will is directed by love. + + * * * * * + +It is as true that real happiness is good, as that the good become +better under the purification of trial. Those who have not suffered +are still wanting in depth; but a man who has not got happiness cannot +impart it. We can only give what we have. Happiness, grief, gayety, +sadness, are by nature contagious. Bring your health and your strength +to 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 our +thirst and our hunger, but our bread and our gourd. + +The benefactors of humanity are those who have thought great thoughts +about her; but her masters and her idols are those who have flattered +and despised her, those who have muzzled and massacred her, inflamed her +with fanaticism or used her for selfish purposes. Her benefactors are +the poets, the artists, the inventors, the apostles and all pure hearts. +Her masters are the Caesars, the Constantines, the Gregory VII.'s, the +Innocent III.'s, the Borgias, the Napoleons. + + * * * * * + +Every civilization is, as it were, a dream of a thousand years, in +which heaven and earth, nature and history, appear to men illumined +by fantastic light and representing a drama which is nothing but a +projection of the soul itself, influenced by some intoxication--I was +going to say hallucination--or other. Those who are widest awake still +see 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: the +light is our religion. Everything changes with it. It is religion which +gives to our kaleidoscope, if not the material of the figures, at least +their color, their light and shade, and general aspect. Every religion +makes men see the world and humanity under a special light; it is a mode +of apperception, which can only be scientifically handled when we have +cast it aside, and can only be judged when we have replaced it by a +better. + + * * * * * + +February 23, 1870.--There is in man an instinct of revolt, an enemy of +all 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--_das +radicale Boese_ of Kant. The independence which is the condition +of individuality is at the same time the eternal temptation of the +individual. That which makes us beings makes us also sinners. + +Sin is, then, in our very marrow. It circulates in us like the blood in +our veins, it is mingled with all our substance, [Footnote: This is +one of the passages which rouses M. Renan's wonder: "Voila la grande +difference," he writes, "entre l'education catholique et l'education +protestante. Ceux qui comme moi ont recu une education catholique en ont +garde de profonds vestiges. Mais ces vestiges ne sont pas des dogmes, ce +sont des reves. Une fois ce grand rideau de drap d'or, bariole de soie, +d'indienne et de calicot, par lequel le catholicisme nous masque la vue +du monde, une fois, dis-je ce rideau dechire, on voit l'univers en +sa splendeur infinie, la nature en sa haute et pleine majeste. Le +protestant le plus libre garde souvent quelque chose de triste, un fond +d'austerite intellectuelle analogue au pessimisme slave."--(_Journal des +Debats_, September 30, 1884). + +One is reminded of Mr. Morley's criticism of Emerson. Emerson, he points +out, has almost nothing to say of death, and "little to say of that +horrid burden and impediment on the soul which the churches call sin, +and which, by whatever name we call it, is a very real catastrophe +in the moral nature of man--the courses of nature, and the prodigious +injustices of mail in society affect him with neither horror nor awe. He +will see no monster if he can help it." + +Here, then, we have the eternal difference between the two orders of +temperament--the men whose overflowing energy forbids them to +realize the ever-recurring defeat of the human spirit at the hands of +circumstance, like Renan and Emerson, and the men for whom "horror and +awe" are interwoven with experience, like Amiel.] Or rather I am wrong: +temptation is our natural state, but sin is not necessary. Sin consists +in the voluntary confusion of the independence which is good with the +independence which is bad; it is caused by the half-indulgence granted +to a first sophism. We shut our eyes to the beginnings of evil because +they are small, and in this weakness is contained the germ of our +defeat. _Principiis obsta_--this maxim dutifully followed would preserve +us from almost all our catastrophes. + +We will have no other master but our caprice--that is to say, our evil +self will have no God, and the foundation of our nature is seditious, +impious, insolent, refractory, opposed to, and contemptuous of all that +tries to rule it, and therefore contrary to order, ungovernable and +negative. It is this foundation which Christianity calls the natural +man. But the savage which is within us, and constitutes the primitive +stuff of us, must be disciplined and civilized in order to produce a +man. And the man must be patiently cultivated to produce a wise man, and +the wise man must be tested and tried if he is to become righteous. +And the righteous man must have substituted the will of God for his +individual will, if he is to become a saint. And this new man, this +regenerate being, is the spiritual man, the heavenly man, of which +the Vedas speak as well as the gospel, and the Magi as well as the +Neo-Platonists. + +March 17, 1870.--This morning the music of a brass band which had +stopped under my windows moved me almost to tears. It exercised an +indefinable, nostalgic power over me; it set me dreaming of another +world, of infinite passion and supreme happiness. Such impressions are +the echoes of paradise in the soul; memories of ideal spheres, whose +sad sweetness ravishes and intoxicates the heart. O Plato! O Pythagoras! +ages ago you heard these harmonies--surprised these moments of inward +ecstacy--knew these divine transports! If music thus carries us +to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, +perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven. This world of quarrels +and bitterness, of selfishness, ugliness, and misery, makes us long +involuntarily for the eternal peace, for the adoration which has no +limits, and the love which has no end. It is not so much the infinite +as the beautiful that we yearn for. It is not being, or the limits of +being, which weigh upon us; it is evil, in us and without us. It is not +all necessary to be great, so long as we are in harmony with the order +of the universe. Moral ambition has no pride; it only desires to fill +its place, and make its note duly heard in the universal concert of the +God of love. + +March 30, 1870.--Certainly, nature is unjust and shameless, without +probity, and without faith. Her only alternatives are gratuitous favor +or mad aversion, and her only way of redressing an injustice is to +commit another. The happiness of the few is expiated by the misery of +the greater number. It is useless to accuse a blind force. + +The human conscience, however, revolts against this law of nature, and +to satisfy its own instinct of justice it has imagined two hypotheses, +out of which it has made for itself a religion--the idea of an +individual providence, and the hypothesis of another life. + +In these we have a protest against nature, which is thus declared +immoral and scandalous to the moral sense. Man believes in good, and +that he may ground himself on justice he maintains that the injustice +all around him is but an appearance, a mystery, a cheat, and that +justice _will_ be done. _Fiat justitia, pereal mundus!_ + +It is a great act of faith. And since humanity has not made itself, +this protest has some chance of expressing a truth. If there is conflict +between the natural world and the moral world, between reality and +conscience, conscience must be right. + +It is by no means necessary that the universe should exist, but it is +necessary that justice should be done, and atheism is bound to explain +the fixed obstinacy of conscience on this point. Nature is not just; we +are the products of nature: why are we always claiming and prophesying +justice? why does the effect rise up against its cause? It is a singular +phenomenon. Does the protest come from any puerile blindness of human +vanity? No, it is the deepest cry of our being, and it is for the honor +of 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 the +human race. Nature will be conquered by spirit; the eternal will triumph +over time. + +April 1, 1870.--I am inclined to believe that for a woman love is the +supreme authority--that which judges the rest and decides what is good +or 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 criterion +of excellence. It would seem, then, that a woman places her ideal in the +perfection of love, and a man in the perfection of justice. It was in +this sense that St. Paul was able to say, "The woman is the glory of +the man, and the man is the glory of God." Thus the woman who absorbs +herself in the object of her love is, so to speak, in the line of +nature; she is truly woman, she realizes her fundamental type. On the +contrary, the man who should make life consist in conjugal adoration, +and who should imagine that he has lived sufficiently when he has made +himself the priest of a beloved woman, such a one is but half a man; +he is despised by the world, and perhaps secretly disdained by +women themselves. The woman who loves truly seeks to merge her own +individuality in that of the man she loves. She desires that her love +should make him greater, stronger, more masculine, and more active. Thus +each sex plays its appointed part: the woman is first destined for man, +and man is destined for society. Woman owes herself to one, man owes +himself to all; and each obtains peace and happiness only when he or she +has recognized this law and accepted this balance of things. The same +thing may be a good in the woman and an evil in the man, may be strength +in 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 is +evangelical and sexless, there is a virtue of sex. And this virtue of +sex is the occasion of mutual teaching, for each of the two incarnations +of virtue makes it its business to convert the other, the first +preaching love in the ears of justice, the second justice in the ears +of love. And so there is produced an oscillation and an average which +represent a social state, an epoch, sometimes a whole civilization. + +Such at least is our European idea of the harmony of the sexes in a +graduated order of functions. America is on the road to revolutionize +this ideal by the introduction of the democratic principle of the +equality of individuals in a general equality of functions. Only, when +there is nothing left but a multitude of equal individualities, +neither young nor old, neither men nor women, neither benefited nor +benefactors--all social difference will turn upon money. The whole +hierarchy will rest upon the dollar, and the most brutal, the most +hideous, the most inhuman of inequalities will be the fruit of the +passion for equality. What a result! Plutolatry--the worship of wealth, +the madness of gold--to it will be confided the task of chastising a +false principle and its followers. And plutocracy will be in its turn +executed by equality. It would be a strange end for it, if Anglo-Saxon +individualism were ultimately swallowed up in Latin socialism. + +It is my prayer that the discovery of an equilibrium between the two +principles may be made in time, before the social war, with all its +terror and ruin, overtakes us. But it is scarcely likely. The masses +are always ignorant and limited, and only advance by a succession of +contrary errors. They reach good only by the exhaustion of evil. They +discover the way out, only after having run their heads against all +other possible issues. + +April 15, 1870.--_Crucifixion!_ That is the word we have to meditate +to-day. Is it not Good Friday? + +To curse grief is easier than to bless it, but to do so is to fall back +into the point of view of the earthly, the carnal, the natural man. +By what has Christianity subdued the world if not by the apotheosis of +grief, by its marvelous transmutation of suffering into triumph, of the +crown of thorns into the crown of glory, and of a gibbet into a symbol +of salvation? What does the apotheosis of the Cross mean, if not the +death of death, the defeat of sin, the beatification of martyrdom, the +raising to the skies of voluntary sacrifice, the defiance of pain? +"O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" By long +brooding over this theme--the agony of the just, peace in the midst +of agony, and the heavenly beauty of such peace--humanity came to +understand that a new religion was born--a new mode, that is to say, of +explaining life and of understanding suffering. + +Suffering was a curse from which man fled; now it becomes a purification +of the soul, a sacred trial sent by eternal love, a divine dispensation +meant to sanctify and ennoble us, an acceptable aid to faith, a strange +initiation into happiness. O power of belief! All remains the same, and +yet all is changed. A new certitude arises to deny the apparent and +the tangible; it pierces through the mystery of things, it places an +invisible Father behind visible nature, it shows us joy shining through +tears, and makes of pain the beginning of joy. + +And so, for those who have believed, the tomb becomes heaven, and on +the funeral pyre of life they sing the hosanna of immortality; a sacred +madness has renewed the face of the world for them, and when they wish +to explain what they feel, their ecstasy makes them incomprehensible; +they speak with tongues. A wild intoxication of self-sacrifice, contempt +for death, the thirst for eternity, the delirium of love--these are +what the unalterable gentleness of the Crucified has had power to bring +forth. By his pardon of his executioners, and by that unconquerable +sense in him of an indissoluble union with God, Jesus, on his cross, +kindled an inextinguishable fire and revolutionized the world. He +proclaimed and realized salvation by faith in the infinite mercy, and in +the pardon granted to simple repentance. By his saying, "There is more +joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine +just persons who need no repentance," he made humility the gate of +entrance into paradise. + +Crucify the rebellious self, mortify yourself wholly, give up all to +God, and the peace which is not of this world will descend upon you. +For eighteen centuries no grander word has been spoken; and although +humanity is forever seeking after a more exact and complete application +of justice, yet her secret faith is not in justice but in pardon, for +pardon alone conciliates the spotless purity of perfection with the +infinite pity due to weakness--that is to say, it alone preserves and +defends the Idea of holiness, while it allows full scope to that of +love. The gospel proclaims the ineffable consolation, the good +news, which disarms all earthly griefs, and robs even death of its +terrors--the news of irrevocable pardon, that is to say, of eternal +life. 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 all +innovation is a retarding and conservative force; but it is the property +of all religion to serve as a curb to our lawless passion for freedom, +and to steady and quiet our restlessness of temper. Curiosity is the +expansive force, which, if it were allowed an unchecked action upon +us, would disperse and volatilize us; belief represents the force of +gravitation and cohesion which makes separate bodies and individuals of +us. Society lives by faith, develops by science. Its basis then is the +mysterious, the unknown, the intangible--religion--while the fermenting +principle in it is the desire of knowledge. Its permanent substance is +the uncomprehended or the divine; its changing form is the result of its +intellectual labor. The unconscious adhesions, the confused intuitions, +the obscure presentiments, which decide the first faith of a people, are +then of capital importance in its history. All history moves between the +religion which is the genial instinctive and fundamental philosophy of +a race, and the philosophy which is the ultimate religion--the clear +perception, that is to say, of those principles which have engendered +the whole spiritual development of humanity. + +It is always the same thing which is, which was, and which will be; but +this thing--the absolute--betrays with more or less transparency and +profundity the law of its life and of its metamorphoses. In its fixed +aspect it is called God; in its mobile aspect the world or nature. God +is 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 for +transcendence taken alone. + +May 9, 1870.--Disraeli, in his new novel, "Lothair," shows that the two +great forces of the present are Revolution and Catholicism, and that +the free nations are lost if either of these two forces triumphs. It is +exactly my own idea. Only, while in France, in Belgium, in Italy, and +in all Catholic societies, it is only by checking one of these forces +by the other that the state and civilization can be maintained, the +Protestant countries are better off; in them there is a third force, +a middle faith between the two other idolatries, which enables them to +regard liberty not as a neutralization of two contraries, but as a moral +reality, self-subsistent, and possessing its own center of gravity and +motive force. In the Catholic world religion and liberty exclude each +other. In the Protestant world they accept each other, so that in the +second case there is a smaller waste of force. + +Liberty is the lay, the philosophical principle. It expresses the +juridical and social aspiration of the race. But as there is no society +possible without regulation, without control, without limitations on +individual liberty, above all without moral limitations, the +peoples which are legally the freest do well to take their religious +consciousness for check and ballast. In mixed states, Catholic or +free-thinking, the limit of action, being a merely penal one, invites +incessant contravention. + +The puerility of the freethinkers consists in believing that a free +society can maintain itself and keep itself together without a common +faith, without a religious prejudice of some kind. Where lies the will +of God? Is it the common reason which expresses it, or rather, are a +clergy or a church the depositories of it? So long as the response +is ambiguous and equivocal in the eyes of half or the majority of +consciences--and this is the case in all Catholic states--public peace +is impossible, and public law is insecure. If there is a God, we must +have him on our side, and if there is not a God, it would be necessary +first of all to convert everybody to the same idea of the lawful and the +useful, to reconstitute, that is to say, a lay religion, before anything +politically solid could be built. + +Liberalism is merely feeding upon abstractions, when it persuades itself +that liberty is possible without free individuals, and when it will not +recognize that liberty in the individual is the fruit of a foregoing +education, a moral education, which presupposes a liberating religion. +To preach liberalism to a population jesuitized by education, is to +press the pleasures of dancing upon a man who has lost a leg. How is +it possible for a child who has never been out of swaddling clothes +to walk? How can the abdication of individual conscience lead to the +government of individual conscience? To be free, is to guide one's self, +to have attained one's majority, to be emancipated, master of one's +actions, and judge of good and evil; but ultramontane Catholicism never +emancipates its disciples, who are bound to admit, to believe, and to +obey, as they are told, because they are minors in perpetuity, and the +clergy alone possess the law of right, the secret of justice, and the +measure of truth. This is what men are landed in by the idea of an +exterior 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 +wholly incompatible with an anti-liberal religion, and almost equally +incompatible with the absence of religion. They confound accidental +conquests and precarious progress with lasting results. + +There is some probability that all this noise which is made nowadays +about liberty may end in the suppression of liberty; it is plain that +the internationals, the irreconcilables, and the ultramontanes, are, all +three of them, aiming at absolutism, at dictatorial omnipotence. Happily +they are not one but many, and it will not be difficult to turn them +against each other. + +If liberty is to be saved, it will not be by the doubters, the men of +science, or the materialists; it will be by religious conviction, by the +faith of individuals who believe that God wills man to be free but also +pure; it will be by the seekers after holiness, by those old-fashioned +pious persons who speak of immortality and eternal life, and prefer the +soul to the whole world; it will be by the enfranchised children of the +ancient faith of the human race. + +June 5, 1870.--The efficacy of religion lies precisely in that which +is not rational, philosophic, nor external; its efficacy lies in the +unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts +more devotion in proportion as it demands more faith--that is to say, as +it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires +to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It is +mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and +pursues; it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the +power of proselytism. When the cross became the "foolishness" of the +cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who +wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize +faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against +poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance +of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, +and is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its own repeated +extravagances. + +It is the forgetfulness of this psychological law which stultifies +the so-called liberal Christianity. It is the realization of it which +constitutes the strength of Catholicism. + +Apparently no positive religion can survive the supernatural element +which is the reason for its existence. Natural religion seems to be the +tomb of all historic cults. All concrete religions die eventually in the +pure air of philosophy. So long then as the life of nations is in need +of religion as a motive and sanction of morality, as food for faith, +hope, and charity, so long will the masses turn away from pure reason +and naked truth, so long will they adore mystery, so long--and rightly +so--will they rest in faith, the only region where the ideal presents +itself to them in an attractive form. + +June 9, 1870.--At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or +absence of one single element in the soul--hope. All the activity of +man, all his efforts and all his enterprises, presuppose a hope in +him of attaining an end. Once kill this hope and his movements become +senseless, spasmodic, and convulsive, like those of some one falling +from a height. To struggle with the inevitable has something childish +in it. To implore the law of gravitation to suspend its action would no +doubt be a grotesque prayer. Very well! but when a man loses faith in +the efficacy of his efforts, when he says to himself, "You are incapable +of realizing your ideal; happiness is a chimera, progress is an +illusion, the passion for perfection is a snare; and supposing all your +ambitions were gratified, everything would still be vanity," then he +comes to see that a little blindness is necessary if life is to be +carried on, and that illusion is the universal spring of movement. +Complete disillusion would mean absolute immobility. He who has +deciphered the secret and read the riddle of finite life escapes from +the great wheel of existence; he has left the world of the living--he +is already dead. Is this the meaning of the old belief that to raise the +veil of Isis or to behold God face to face brought destruction upon the +rash mortal who attempted it? Egypt and Judea had recorded the fact, +Buddha gave the key to it; the individual life is a nothing ignorant +of itself, and as soon as this nothing knows itself, individual life +is abolished 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 this +enfranchised individuality; the colored air-bubble has burst in the +infinite space, and the misery of thought has sunk to rest in the +changeless repose of all-embracing Nothing. The absolute, if it were +spirit, would still be activity, and it is activity, the daughter of +desire, which is incompatible with the absolute. The absolute, then, +must be the zero of all determination, and the only manner of being +suited to it is Non-being. + +July 2, 1870.--One of the vices of France is the frivolity which +substitutes public conventions for truth, and absolutely ignores +personal dignity and the majesty of conscience. The French are ignorant +of the A B C of individual liberty, and still show an essentially +catholic intolerance toward the ideas which have not attained +universality or the adhesion of the majority. The nation is an army +which can bring to bear mass, number, and force, but not an assembly of +free men in which each individual depends for his value on himself. +The eminent Frenchman depends upon others for his value; if he +possess stripe, cross, scarf, sword, or robe--in a word, function +and decoration--then he is held to be something, and he feels himself +somebody. It is the symbol which establishes his merit, it is the public +which raises him from nothing, as the sultan creates his viziers. +These highly-trained and social races have an antipathy for individual +independence; everything with them must be founded upon authority +military, civil, or religious, and God himself is non-existent until he +has been established by decree. Their fundamental dogma is that social +omnipotence which treats the pretension of truth to be true without any +official stamp, as a mere usurpation and sacrilege, and scouts the claim +of the individual to possess either a separate conviction or a personal +value. + +July 20, 1870 (_Bellalpe_).--A marvelous day. The panorama before me +is of a grandiose splendor; it is a symphony of mountains, a cantata of +sunny Alps. + +I am dazzled and oppressed by it. The feeling uppermost is one of +delight in being able to admire, of joy, that is to say, in a recovered +power of contemplation which is the result of physical relief, in being +able at last to forget myself and surrender myself to things, as befits +a man in my state of health. Gratitude is mingled with enthusiasm. +I have just spent two hours of continuous delight at the foot of the +Sparrenhorn, the peak behind us. A flood of sensations overpowered me. I +could only look, feel, dream, and think. + +_Later_.--Ascent of the Sparrenhorn. The peak of it is not very easy to +climb, because of the masses of loose stones and the steepness of the +path, 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 to +the Combin; and even beyond the Furka one sees a few peaks of the Ticino +and the Rhaetian Alps; while if you turn you see behind you a whole +polar world of snowfields and glaciers forming the southern side of +the enormous Bernese group of the Finsteraarahorn, the Moench, and the +Jungfrau. The near representative of the group is the Aletschhorn, +whence diverge like so many ribbons the different Aletsch glaciers which +wind about the peak from which I saw them. I could study the different +zones, one above another--fields, woods, grassy Alps, bare rock and +snow, and the principle types of mountain; the pagoda-shaped Mischabel, +with its four _aretes_ as flying buttresses and its staff of nine +clustered 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-backed +flies; but nothing grew except a few lichens. The deadness and emptiness +of the upper Aletsch glacier, like some vast white street, called up the +image of an icy Pompeii. All around boundless silence. On my way back +I noticed some effects of sunshine--the close elastic mountain grass, +starred with gentian, forget-me-not, and anemones, the mountain cattle +standing out against the sky, the rocks just piercing the soil, various +circular dips in the mountain side, stone waves petrified thousands of +thousands of years ago, the undulating ground, the tender quiet of the +evening; and I invoked the soul of the mountains and the spirit of the +heights! + +July 22, 1870 (_Bellalpe_).--The sky, which was misty and overcast this +morning, has become perfectly blue again, and the giants of the Valais +are bathed in tranquil light. + +Whence this solemn melancholy which oppresses and pursues me? I +have just read a series of scientific books (Bronn on the "Laws of +Palaeontology," Karl Ritter on the "Law of Geographical Forms"). Are +they the cause of this depression? or is it the majesty of this immense +landscape, the splendor of this setting sun, which brings the tears to +my eyes? + + "Creature d'un jour qui t'agites une heure," + +what weighs upon thee--I know it well--is the sense of thine utter +nothingness!... The names of great men hover before my eyes like a +secret reproach, and this grand impassive nature tells me that to-morrow +I shall have disappeared, butterfly that I am, without having lived. Or +perhaps it is the breath of eternal things which stirs in me the shudder +of Job. What is man--this weed which a sunbeam withers? What is our +life in the infinite abyss? I feel a sort of sacred terror, not only for +myself, but for my race, for all that is mortal. Like Buddha, I feel +the great wheel turning--the wheel of universal illusion--and the dumb +stupor which enwraps me is full of anguish. Isis lilts the corner of +her veil, and he who perceives the great mystery beneath is struck with +giddiness. I can scarcely breathe. It seems to me that I am hanging by a +thread above the fathomless abyss of destiny. Is this the Infinite face +to face, an intuition of the last great death? + + "Creature d'un jour qui t'agites une heure, + Ton ame est immortelle et tes pleurs vont finir." + +_Finir?_ When depths of ineffable desire are opening in the heart, +as vast, as yawning as the immensity which surrounds us? Genius, +self-devotion, love--all these cravings quicken into life and torture me +at once. Like the shipwrecked sailor about to sink under the waves, I am +conscious of a mad clinging to life, and at the same time of a rush of +despair and repentance, which forces from me a cry for pardon. And then +all this hidden agony dissolves in wearied submission. "Resign yourself +to the inevitable! Shroud away out of sight the flattering delusions +of youth! Live and die in the shade! Like the insects humming in the +darkness, offer up your evening prayer. Be content to fade out of life +without a murmur whenever the Master of life shall breathe upon your +tiny flame! It is out of myriads of unknown lives that every clod of +earth is built up. The infusoria do not count until they are millions +upon 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 shall +never see plainly what I ought to do. The love of the better will have +stood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost me +reality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough +to make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive +nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of +me, 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 to +Paris--Edgar Quinet, Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo. By the help of their +united experience will they succeed in maintaining the republic? It +is to be hoped so. But the past makes it lawful to doubt. While +the republic is in reality a fruit, the French look upon it as a +seed-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 universal +suffrage, as though the multitude were already enlightened, judicious, +and reasonable, and now her task is to train and discipline the force +which, by a fiction, is master. + +The ambition of France is set upon self-government, but her capacity +for it has still to be proved. For eighty years she has confounded +revolution with liberty; will she now give proof of amendment and +of wisdom? Such a change is not impossible. Let us wait for it with +sympathy, but also with caution. + +September 12, 1870 (_Basle_).--The old Rhine is murmuring under my +window. The wide gray stream rolls its great waves along and breaks +against the arches of the bridge, just as it did ten years or twenty +years ago; the red cathedral shoots its arrow-like spires toward heaven; +the ivy on the terraces which fringe the left bank of the Rhine hangs +over the walls like a green mantle; the indefatigable ferry-boat goes +and comes as it did of yore; in a word, things seem to be eternal, while +man's hair turns gray and his heart grows old. I came here first as a +student, then as a professor. Now I return to it at the downward turn of +middle age, and nothing in the landscape has changed except myself. + +The melancholy of memory may be commonplace and puerile--all the same it +is true, it is inexhaustible, and the poets of all times have been open +to its attacks. + +At bottom, what is individual life? A variation of an eternal theme--to +be 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 in +fact, whatever frantic efforts one may make, however one may strain and +excite one's self, one can but cause a greater or slighter undulation +in the line of one's destiny. Supposing a man renders the series of +fundamental phenomena a little more evident to others or a little more +distinct to himself, what does it matter? The whole is still nothing but +a fluttering of the infinitely little, the insignificant repetition of +an invariable theme. In truth, whether the individual exists or no, the +difference is so absolutely imperceptible in the whole of things that +every complaint and every desire is ridiculous. Humanity in its entirety +is but a flash in the duration of the planet, and the planet may return +to the gaseous state without the sun's feeling it even for a second. The +individual is the infinitesimal of nothing. + +What, then, is nature? Nature is Maia--that is to say, an incessant, +fugitive, indifferent series of phenomena, the manifestation of all +possibilities, the inexhaustible play of all combinations. + +And is Maia all the while performing for the amusement of somebody, +of some spectator--Brahma? Or is Brahma working out some serious and +unselfish end? From the theistic point of view, is it the purpose of +God to make souls, to augment the sum of good and wisdom by the +multiplication of himself in free beings--facets which may flash back to +him his own holiness and beauty? This conception is far more attractive +to the heart. But is it more true? The moral consciousness affirms +it. If man is capable of conceiving goodness, the general principle of +things, which cannot be inferior to man, must be good. The philosophy +of labor, of duty, of effort, is surely superior to that of phenomena, +chance, and universal indifference. If so, the whimsical Maia would be +subordinate to Brahma, the eternal thought, and Brahma would be in his +turn subordinate to a holy God. + +October 25, 1870 (_Geneva_).--"Each function to the most worthy:" this +maxim governs all constitutions, and serves to test them. Democracy is +not forbidden to apply it, but democracy rarely does apply it, because +she holds, for example, that the most worthy man is the man who pleases +her, whereas he who pleases her is not always the most worthy, and +because she supposes that reason guides the masses, whereas in reality +they are most commonly led by passion. And in the end every falsehood +has to be expiated, for truth always takes its revenge. + +Alas, whatever one may say or do, wisdom, justice, reason, and goodness +will never be anything more than special cases and the heritage of a +few elect souls. Moral and intellectual harmony, excellence in all +its forms, will always be a rarity of great price, an isolated _chef +d'oeuvre_. All that can be expected from the most perfect institutions +is that they should make it possible for individual excellence to +develop 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 have +only an importance of the second order--an importance which I do not +wish either to diminish or to ignore, but an importance which, after +all, is mostly negative. The political life is but the means of the true +life. + +October 26, 1870.--Sirocco. A bluish sky. The leafy crowns of the trees +have dropped at their feet; the finger of winter has touched them. The +errand-woman has just brought me my letters. Poor little woman, what +a life! She spends her nights in going backward and forward from her +invalid husband to her sister, who is scarcely less helpless, and +her days are passed in labor. Resigned and indefatigable, she goes on +without complaining, till she drops. + +Lives such as hers prove something: that the true ignorance is moral +ignorance, that labor and suffering are the lot of all men, and that +classification according to a greater or less degree of folly is +inferior to that which proceeds according to a greater or less degree +of virtue. The kingdom of God belongs not to the most enlightened but to +the best; and the best man is the most unselfish man. Humble, constant, +voluntary self-sacrifice--this is what constitutes the true dignity of +man. And therefore is it written, "The last shall be first." Society +rests upon conscience and not upon science. Civilization is first +and foremost a moral thing. Without honesty, without respect for law, +without the worship of duty, without the love of one's neighbor--in a +word, without virtue--the whole is menaced and falls into decay, and +neither letters nor art, neither luxury nor industry, nor rhetoric, +nor the policeman, nor the custom-house officer, can maintain erect and +whole an edifice of which the foundations are unsound. + +A state founded upon interest alone and cemented by fear is an +ignoble and unsafe construction. The ultimate ground upon which +every civilization rests is the average morality of the masses, and a +sufficient amount of practical righteousness. Duty is what upholds all. +So that those who humbly and unobtrusively fulfill it, and set a good +example thereby, are the salvation and the sustenance of this brilliant +world, which knows nothing about them. Ten righteous men would have +saved Sodom, but thousands and thousands of good homely folk are needed +to preserve a people from corruption and decay. + +If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must +be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated +classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought +and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and +vulgar crowd, is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty. When +any society produces an increasing number of literary exquisites, of +satirists, skeptics, and _beaux esprits_, some chemical disorganization +of fabric may be inferred. Take, for example, the century of Augustus, +and that of Louis XV. Our cynics and railers are mere egotists, who +stand aloof from the common duty, and in their indolent remoteness are +of no service to society against any ill which may attack it. Their +cultivation consists in having got rid of feeling. And thus they fall +farther and farther away from true humanity, and approach nearer to +the demoniacal nature. What was it that Mephistopheles lacked? Not +intelligence certainly, but goodness. + +October 28, 1870.--It is strange to see how completely justice is +forgotten in the presence of great international struggles. Even the +great majority of the spectators are no longer capable of judging except +as their own personal tastes, dislikes, fears, desires, interests, or +passions may dictate--that is to say, their judgment is not a judgment +at all. How many people are capable of delivering a fair verdict on the +struggle now going on? Very few! This horror of equity, this antipathy +to justice, this rage against a merciful neutrality, represents a kind +of eruption of animal passion in man, a blind fierce passion, which +is absurd enough to call itself a reason, whereas it is nothing but a +force. + +November 16, 1870.--We are struck by something bewildering and ineffable +when we look down into the depths of an abyss; and every soul is an +abyss, a mystery of love and piety. A sort of sacred emotion descends +upon me whenever I penetrate the recesses of this sanctuary of man, and +hear the gentle murmur of the prayers, hymns, and supplications which +rise from the hidden depths of the heart. These involuntary confidences +fill me with a tender piety and a religious awe and shyness. The whole +experience seems to me as wonderful as poetry, and divine with the +divineness 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." This +title of a poem by Goethe is the summing up of nature. Everything +changes, but with such unequal rapidity that one existence appears +eternal to another. A geological age, for instance, compared to the +duration of any living being, the duration of a planet compared to +a geological age, appear eternities--our life, too, compared to the +thousand impressions which pass across us in an hour. Wherever one +looks, one feels one's self overwhelmed by the infinity of infinites. +The universe, seriously studied, rouses one's terror. Everything seems +so relative that it is scarcely possible to distinguish whether anything +has a real value. + +Where is the fixed point in this boundless and bottomless gulf? Must +it not be that which perceives the relations of things--in other words, +thought, infinite thought? The perception of ourselves within the +infinite thought, the realization of ourselves in God, self-acceptance +in him, the harmony of our will with his--in a word, religion--here +alone is firm ground. Whether this thought be free or necessary, +happiness lies in identifying one's self with it. Both the stoic and +the Christian surrender themselves to the Being of beings, which the one +calls sovereign wisdom and the other sovereign goodness. St. John +says, "God is Light," "God is Love." The Brahmin says, "God is the +inexhaustible fount of poetry." Let us say, "God is perfection." And +man? Man, for all his inexpressible insignificance and frailty, may +still apprehend the idea of perfection, may help forward the supreme +will, and die with Hosanna on his lips! + + * * * * * + +All teaching depends upon a certain presentiment and preparation in the +taught; we can only teach others profitably what they already virtually +know; we can only give them what they had already. This principle of +education is also a law of history. Nations can only be developed on the +lines of their tendencies and aptitudes. Try them on any other and they +are rebellious and incapable of improvement. + + * * * * * + +By despising himself too much a man comes to be worthy of his own +contempt. + + * * * * * + +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 not +satiate, while the sublime is relative, temporary and violent. + + * * * * * + +February 4, 1871.--Perpetual effort is the characteristic of modern +morality. A painful process has taken the place of the old harmony, the +old equilibrium, the old joy and fullness of being. We are all so +many fauns, satyrs, or Silenuses, aspiring to become angels; so +many deformities laboring for our own embellishment; so many clumsy +chrysalises each working painfully toward the development of the +butterfly within him. Our ideal is no longer a serene beauty of soul; +it is the agony of Laocoon struggling with the hydra of evil. The lot +is cast 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." + +Moliere said that reasoning banished reason. It is possible also that +the progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentious +imperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it means +lessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, +but not happiness; it is an incessant pursuit of an unattainable goal, +a noble madness, but not reason; it is homesickness for the +impossible--pathetic and pitiful, but still not wisdom. + +The being which has attained harmony, and every being may attain it, has +found its place in the order of the universe, and represents the divine +thought at least as clearly as a flower or a solar system. Harmony seeks +nothing outside itself. It is what it ought to be; it is the expression +of right, order, law, and truth; it is greater than time, and represents +eternity. + +February 6,1871.--I am reading Juste Olivier's "Chansons du Soir" over +again, 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 of +melancholy reverie. + +How much character there is in "Musette," the "Chanson de l'Alouette," +the "Chant du Retour," and the "Gaite," and how much freshness in +"Lina," and "A ma fille!" But the best pieces of all are "Au dela," +"Homunculus," "La Trompeuse," and especially "Frere Jacques," its +author's masterpiece. To these may be added the "Marionettes" and the +national song, "Helvetie." Serious purpose and intention disguised in +gentle gayety and childlike _badinage_, feeling hiding itself under +a smile of satire, a resigned and pensive wisdom expressing itself +in rustic round or ballad, the power of suggesting everything in a +nothing--these are the points in which the Vaudois poet triumphs. On the +reader's side there is emotion and surprise, and on the author's a sort +of pleasant slyness which seems to delight in playing tricks upon you, +only tricks of the most dainty and brilliant kind. Juste Olivier has the +passion we might imagine a fairy to have for delicate mystification. +He hides his gifts. He promises nothing and gives a great deal. His +generosity, which is prodigal, has a surly air; his simplicity is really +subtlety; his malice pure tenderness; and his whole talent is, as it +were, the fine flower of the Vaudois mind in its sweetest and dreamiest +form. + +February 10, 1871.--My reading for this morning has been some vigorous +chapters of Taine's "History of English Literature." Taine is a writer +whose work always produces a disagreeable impression upon me, as though +of a creaking of pulleys and a clicking of machinery; there is a smell +of the laboratory about it. His style is the style of chemistry and +technology. 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 on +one's taste, ear, and heart, depends probably upon two things: upon the +moral philosophy of the author and upon his literary principles. The +profound contempt for humanity which characterizes the physiological +school, and the intrusion of technology into literature inaugurated +by Balzac and Stendhal, explain the underlying aridity of which one is +sensible in these pages, and which seems to choke one like the gases +from a manufactory of mineral products. The book is instructive in +the highest degree, but instead of animating and stirring, it parches, +corrodes, and saddens its reader. It excites no feeling whatever; it is +simply a means of information. I imagine this kind of thing will be the +literature of the future--a literature _a l'Americaine_, as different as +possible from Greek art, giving us algebra instead of life, the formula +instead of the image, the exhalations of the crucible instead of the +divine 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 its +destruction during ten generations; it is Germany who will regenerate +contemporary France, by the effort to crush her. Revolutionary France +will teach equality to the Germans, who are by nature hierarchical. +Germany will teach the French that rhetoric is not science, and that +appearance is not as valuable as reality. The worship of prestige--that +is to say, of falsehood; the passion for vainglory--that is to say, for +smoke 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 that +this war will issue in a new balance of things better than any which has +gone before--a new Europe, in which the government of the individual by +himself will be the cardinal principle of society, in opposition to the +Latin principle, which regards the individual as a thing, a means to an +end, an instrument of the church or of the state. + +In the order and harmony which would result from free adhesion and +voluntary submission to a common ideal, we should see the rise of a new +moral world. It would be an equivalent, expressed in lay terms, to the +idea of a universal priesthood. The model state ought to resemble +a great musical society in which every one submits to be organized, +subordinated, and disciplined for the sake of art, and for the sake of +producing a masterpiece. Nobody is coerced, nobody is made use of for +selfish purposes, nobody plays a hypocritical or selfish part. All bring +their talent to the common stock, and contribute knowingly and gladly +to the common wealth. Even self-love itself is obliged to help on the +general action, under pain of rebuff should it make itself apparent. + +February 18, 1871.--It is in the novel that the average vulgarity of +German society, and its inferiority to the societies of France and +England, are most clearly visible. The notion of "bad taste" seems to +have no place in German aesthetics. Their elegance has no grace in it; +and they cannot understand the enormous difference there is between +distinction (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 +Sunday dress. The race is poetical and intelligent, but common and +ill-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 the +faculties which I have so often observed among the best Germans, +ever come to the surface? Will the conquerors of to-day ever learn to +civilize and soften their forms of life? It is by their future novels +that we shall be able to judge. As soon as they are capable of the novel +of "good society" they will have excelled all rivals. Till then, finish, +polish, the maturity of social culture, are beyond them; they may have +humanity of feeling, but the delicacies, the little perfections of life, +are unknown to them. They may be honest and well-meaning, but they are +utterly without _savoir vivre_. + +February 22, 1871.--_Soiree_ at the M--. About thirty people +representing our best society were there, a happy mixture of sexes and +ages. There were gray heads, young girls, bright faces--the whole framed +in some Aubusson tapestries which made a charming background, and gave a +soft air of distance to the brilliantly-dressed groups. + +In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosia +and concerned themselves with nothing but the loftiest interests. +Anxiety, need, passion, have no existence. All realism is suppressed as +brutal. In a word, what we call "society" proceeds for the moment on +the flattering illusory assumption that it is moving in an ethereal +atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. All vehemence, all natural +expression, all real suffering, all careless familiarity, or any +frank sign of passion, are startling and distasteful in this delicate +_milieu_; they at once destroy the common work, the cloud palace, +the magical architectural whole, which has been raised by the general +consent and effort. It is like the sharp cock-crow which breaks the +spell of all enchantments, and puts the fairies to flight. These select +gatherings produce, without knowing it, a sort of concert for eyes and +ears, an improvised work of art. By the instinctive collaboration +of everybody concerned, intellect and taste hold festival, and +the associations of reality are exchanged for the associations of +imagination. So understood, society is a form of poetry; the cultivated +classes deliberately recompose the idyll of the past and the buried +world of Astrea. Paradox or no, I believe that these fugitive attempts +to reconstruct a dream whose only end is beauty represent confused +reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human heart, or rather +aspirations toward a harmony of things which every day reality denies to +us, and of which art alone gives us a glimpse. + +April 28, 1871.--For a psychologist it is extremely interesting to +be readily and directly conscious of the complications of one's own +organism and the play of its several parts. It seems to me that the +sutures of my being are becoming just loose enough to allow me at once +a clear perception of myself as a whole and a distinct sense of my own +brittleness. A feeling like this makes personal existence a perpetual +astonishment and curiosity. Instead of only seeing the world which +surrounds me, I analyze myself. Instead of being single, all of a piece, +I become legion, multitude, a whirlwind--a very cosmos. Instead of +living on the surface, I take possession of my inmost self, I apprehend +myself, if not in my cells and atoms, at least so far as my groups of +organs, almost my tissues, are concerned. In other words, the central +monad isolates itself from all the subordinate monads, that it may +consider them, and finds its harmony again in itself. + +Health is the perfect balance between our organism, with all its +component parts, and the outer world; it serves us especially for +acquiring a knowledge of that world. Organic disturbance obliges us to +set up a fresh and more spiritual equilibrium, to withdraw within the +soul. Thereupon our bodily constitution itself becomes the object of +thought. It is no longer we, although it may belong to us; it is nothing +more than the vessel in which we make the passage of life, a vessel of +which we study the weak points and the structure without identifying it +with our own individuality. + +Where is the ultimate residence of the self? In thought, or rather in +consciousness. But below consciousness there is its germ, the _punctum +saliens_ of spontaneity; for consciousness is not primitive, it +_becomes_. The question is, can the thinking monad return into its +envelope, that is to say, into pure spontaneity, or even into the dark +abyss of virtuality? I hope not. The kingdom passes; the king remains; +or rather is it the royalty alone which subsists--that is to say, the +idea--the personality begin in its turn merely the passing vesture +of the permanent idea? Is Leibnitz or Hegel right? Is the individual +immortal under the form of the spiritual body? Is he eternal under the +form of the individual idea? Who saw most clearly, St. Paul or Plato? +The theory of Leibnitz attracts me most because it opens to us an +infinite of duration, of multitude, and evolution. For a monad, which +is the virtual universe, a whole infinite of time is not too much to +develop the infinite within it. Only one must admit exterior actions +and influences which affect the evolution of the monad. Its independence +must be a mobile and increasing quantity between zero and the infinite, +without ever reaching either completeness or nullity, for the monad can +be neither absolutely passive nor entirely free. + +June 21, 1871.--The international socialism of the _ouvriers_, +ineffectually put down in Paris, is beginning to celebrate its +approaching victory. For it there is neither country, nor memories, +nor property, nor religion. There is nothing and nobody but itself. Its +dogma is equality, its prophet is Mably, and Baboeuf is its god. + +[Footnote: Mably, the Abbe Mably, 1709-85, one of the precursors of the +revolution, the professor of a cultivated and classical communism +based on a study of antiquity, which Babeuf and others like him, in +the following generation, translated into practical experiment. "Caius +Gracchus" Babeuf, born 1764, and guillotined in 1797 for a conspiracy +against the Directory, is sometimes called the first French socialist. +Perhaps socialist doctrines, properly so called, may be said to make +their first entry into the region of popular debate and practical +agitation with his "Manifeste des Egaux," issued April 1796.] + +How is the conflict to be solved, since there is no longer one single +common principle between the partisans and the enemies of the existing +form of society, between liberalism and the worship of equality? Their +respective notions of man, duty, happiness--that is to say, of life +and its end--differ radically. I suspect that the communism of the +_Internationale_ is merely the pioneer of Russian nihilism, which will +be the common grave of the old races and the servile races, the Latins +and the Slavs. If so, the salvation of humanity will depend upon +individualism of the brutal American sort. I believe that the nations +of the 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 to +instinct, to nature, to the passions--that is to say, to blind impulse, +to elemental gravitation, to generic fatality. Perpetual vacillation +between contraries becomes its only mode of progress, because it +represents that childish form of prejudice which falls in love +and cools, adores, and curses, with the same haste and unreason. A +succession of opposing follies gives an impression of change which the +people readily identify with improvement, as though Enceladus was more +at ease on his left side than on his right, the weight of the volcano +remaining the same. The stupidity of Demos is only equaled by its +presumption. It is like a youth with all his animal and none of his +reasoning powers developed. + +Luther's comparison of humanity to a drunken peasant, always ready to +fall from his horse on one side or the other, has always struck me as +a particularly happy one. It is not that I deny the right of the +democracy, but I have no sort of illusion as to the use it will make of +its right, so long, at any rate, as wisdom is the exception and conceit +the rule. Numbers make law, but goodness has nothing to do with figures. +Every fiction is self-expiating, and democracy rests upon this legal +fiction, that the majority has not only force but reason on its +side--that it possesses not only the right to act but the wisdom +necessary 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 +of majority will be lowered, the barriers of sex will be swept away, and +democracy will finally make itself absurd by handing over the decision +of all that is greatest to all that is most incapable. Such an end will +be the punishment of its abstract principle of equality, which dispenses +the ignorant man from the necessity of self-training, the foolish man +from that of self-judgment, and tells the child that there is no need +for him to become a man, and the good-for-nothing that self-improvement +is of no account. Public law, founded upon virtual equality, will +destroy itself by its consequences. It will not recognize the +inequalities of worth, of merit, and of experience; in a word, it +ignores individual labor, and it will end in the triumph of platitude +and the residuum. The _regime_ of the Parisian Commune has shown us what +kind of material comes to the top in these days of frantic vanity and +universal suspicion. + +Still, humanity is tough, and survives all catastrophes. Only it makes +one impatient to see the race always taking the longest road to an end, +and exhausting all possible faults before it is able to accomplish one +definite step toward improvement. These innumerable follies, that are to +be and must be, have an irritating effect upon me. The more majestic is +the history of science, the more intolerable is the history of politics +and religion. The mode of progress in the moral world seems an abuse of +the patience of God. + +Enough! There is no help in misanthropy and pessimism. If our race vexes +us, let us keep a decent silence on the matter. We are imprisoned on the +same ship, and we shall sink with it. Pay your own debt, and leave the +rest to God. Sharer, as you inevitably are, in the sufferings of your +kind, set a good example; that is all which is asked of you. Do all the +good you can, and say all the truth you know or believe; and for the +rest 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 a +living being. Goethe, Schleiermacher and Humboldt, were masters of the +art. If we are to remain among the living there must be a perpetual +revival of youth within us, brought about by inward change and by love +of the Platonic sort. The soul must be forever recreating itself, trying +all its various modes, vibrating in all its fibres, raising up new +interests for itself.... + +The "Epistles" and the "Epigrams" of Goethe which I have been reading +to-day do not make one love him. Why? Because he has so little soul. His +way of understanding love, religion, duty, and patriotism has something +mean and repulsive in it. There is no ardor, no generosity in him. A +secret barrenness, an ill-concealed egotism, makes itself felt through +all the wealth and flexibility of his talent. It is true that the +egotism of Goethe has at least this much that is excellent in it, that +it respects the liberty of the individual, and is favorable to all +originality. But it will go out of its way to help nobody; it will give +itself no trouble for anybody; it will lighten nobody else's burden; +in a word, it does away with charity, the great Christian virtue. +Perfection for Goethe consists in personal nobility, not in love; his +standard is aesthetic, not moral. He ignores holiness, and has never +allowed himself to reflect on the dark problem of evil. A Spinozist +to the core, he believes in individual luck, not in liberty, nor in +responsibility. He is a Greek of the great time, to whom the inward +crises of the religious consciousness are unknown. He represents, then, +a state of soul earlier than or subsequent to Christianity, what the +prudent critics of our time call the "modern spirit;" and only one +tendency of the modern spirit--the worship of nature. For Goethe stands +outside all the social and political aspirations of the generality +of mankind; he takes no more interest than Nature herself in the +disinherited, 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 man +who knows nothing of the voice of conscience, the voice of regret or +remorse, cannot even guess at the troubles of those who live under two +masters and two laws, and belong to two worlds--that of nature and that +of liberty. For himself, his choice is made. But humanity cannot choose +and 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 her +of religion; pleasure attracts her, but sacrifice moves her; and she +hardly knows whether she hates or whether she adores the crucifix. + +_Later_.--Still re-reading the sonnets and the miscellaneous poems of +Goethe. The impression left by this part of the "Gedichte" is much more +favorable 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. Completely +lacking as he is in the sense of obligation and of sin, Goethe +nevertheless finds his way to seriousness through dignity. Greek +sculpture 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 of +this 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 is +that it brought them deliverance from sin--in a word, salvation. A man, +however, is bound to explain a religion seriously, and not to shirk the +very center of his subject. This white-marble Christ is not the Christ +who inspired the martyrs and has dried so many tears. The author lacks +moral seriousness, and confounds nobility of character with holiness. He +speaks as an artist conscious of a pathetic subject, but his moral sense +is not interested in the question. It is not possible to mistake the +epicureanism of the imagination, delighting itself in an aesthetic +spectacle, for the struggles of a soul passionately in search of truth. +In Renan there are still some remains of priestly _ruse_; he strangles +with sacred cords. His tone of contemptuous indulgence toward a more or +less captious clergy might be tolerated, but he should have shown a +more respectful sincerity in dealing with the sincere and the spiritual. +Laugh at Pharisaism as you will, but speak simply and plainly to honest +folk. [Footnote: "'Persifflez les pharisaismes, mais parlez droit aux +honnetes gens' me dit Amiel, avec une certaine aigreur. Mon Dieu, que +les honnetes gens sont souvent exposes a etre des pharisiens sans le +savoir!"--(M. Renan's article, already quoted).] + +_Later_.--To understand is to be conscious of the fundamental unity +of the thing to be explained--that is to say, to conceive it in its +entirety both of life and development, to be able to remake it by a +mental process without making a mistake, without adding or omitting +anything. It means, first, complete identification of the object, +and then the power of making it clear to others by a full and just +interpretation. To understand is more difficult than to judge, for +understanding is the transference of the mind into the conditions of +the object, whereas judgment is simply the enunciation of the individual +opinion. + +August 25, 1871. (_Charnex-sur-Montreux_).--Magnificent weather. The +morning seems bathed in happy peace, and a heavenly fragrance rises from +mountain and shore; it is as though a benediction were laid upon us. No +vulgar intrusive noise disturbs the religious quiet of the scene. One +might believe one's self in a church--a vast temple in which every being +and every natural beauty has its place. I dare not breathe for fear of +putting the dream to flight--a dream traversed by angels. + + "Comme autrefois j'entends dans l'ether 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 epoux en mourant m'a laisse ses lumieres; + Son sang dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir + M'a dessille 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 vexations +of life, are forgotten; the universal joy absorbs us; we enter into the +divine order, and into the blessedness of the Lord. Labor and tears, +sin, pain, and death have passed away. To exist is to bless; life +is happiness. In this sublime pause of things all dissonances have +disappeared. It is as though creation were but one vast symphony, +glorifying the God of goodness with an inexhaustible wealth of praise +and harmony. We question no longer whether it is so or not. We have +ourselves become notes in the great concert; and the soul breaks the +silence of ecstasy only to vibrate in unison with the eternal joy. + +September 22, 1871. (_Charnex_).--Gray sky--a melancholy day. A friend +has left me, the sun is unkind and capricious. Everything passes away, +everything forsakes us. And in place of all we have lost, age and gray +hairs! ... After dinner I walked to Chailly between two showers. A rainy +landscape 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 with +traces 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 sort +of beauty only reveals itself to the initiated, and is all the more +exquisite 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 within +the reach of all the world. Its attraction is peculiar, and affects one +like some strange perfume, or bizarre melody. When once the taste for it +is set up the mind takes a special and keen delight in it, for one finds +in it + + "Son bien premierement, puis le dedain d'autrui," + +and it is pleasant to one's vanity not to be of the same opinion as +the common herd. This, however, is not possible with things which are +evident, and beauty which is incontestable. Charm, perhaps, is a better +name for the esoteric and paradoxical beauty, which escapes the vulgar, +and appeals to our dreamy, meditative side. Classical beauty belongs, +so to speak, to all eyes; it has ceased to belong to itself. Esoteric +beauty is shy and retiring. It only unveils itself to unsealed eyes, and +bestows its favors only upon love. + +This is why my friend ----, who places herself immediately in relation +with the souls of those she meets, does not see the ugliness of people +when once she is interested in them. She likes and dislikes, and those +she likes are beautiful, those she dislikes are ugly. There is nothing +more complicated in it than that. For her, aesthetic considerations are +lost in moral sympathy; she looks with her heart only; she passes by the +chapter of the beautiful, and goes on to the chapter of charm. I can +do the same; only it is by reflection and on second thoughts; my friend +does it involuntarily and at once; she has not the artistic fiber. The +craving for a perfect correspondence between the inside and the outside +of things--between matter and form--is not in her nature. She does not +suffer from ugliness, she scarcely perceives it. As for me, I can only +forget what shocks me, I cannot help being shocked. All corporal defects +irritate me, and the want of beauty in women, being something which +ought not to exist, shocks me like a tear, a solecism, a dissonance, a +spot of ink--in a word, like something out of order. On the other +hand, beauty restores and fortifies me like some miraculous food, like +Olympian ambrosia. + + "Que le bon soit toujours camarade du beau + Des demain je chercherai femme. + Mais comme le divorce entre eux n'est pas nouveau, + Et que peu de beaux corps, hotes d'une belle ame, + Assemblent l'un et l'autre point----" + +I will not finish, for after all one must resign one's self, A beautiful +soul in a healthy body is already a rare and blessed thing; and if one +finds heart, common sense, intellect, and courage into the bargain, +one may well do without that ravishing dainty which we call beauty, +and almost without that delicious seasoning which we call grace. We do +without--with a sigh, as one does without a luxury. Happy we, to possess +what is necessary. + +December 29, 1871.--I have been reading Bahnsen ("Critique +de l'evolutionisme de Hegel-Hartmann, au nom des principes de +Schopenhauer"). What a writer! Like a cuttle-fish in water, every +movement produces a cloud of ink which shrouds his thought in darkness. +And what a doctrine! A thoroughgoing pessimism, which regards the world +as absurd, "absolutely idiotic," and reproaches Hartmann for having +allowed the evolution of the universe some little remains of logic, +while, on the contrary, this evolution is eminently contradictory, and +there is no reason anywhere except in the poor brain of the reasoner. Of +all possible worlds that which exists is the worst. Its only excuse is +that it tends of itself to destruction. The hope of the philosopher is +that reasonable beings will shorten their agony and hasten the return +of everything to nothing. It is the philosophy of a desperate Satanism, +which has not even the resigned perspectives of Buddhism to offer to the +disappointed and disillusioned soul. The individual can but protest and +curse. This frantic Sivaism is developed from the conception which makes +the world the product of blind will, the principle of everything. + +The acrid blasphemy of the doctrine naturally leads the writer to +indulgence in epithets of bad taste which prevent our regarding his work +as the mere challenge of a paradoxical theorist. We have really to do +with a theophobist, whom faith in goodness rouses to a fury of +contempt. In order to hasten the deliverance of the world, he kills all +consolation, all hope, and all illusion in the germ, and substitutes +for the love of humanity which inspired Cakyamouni, that Mephistophelian +gall which defiles, withers, and corrodes everything it touches. + +Evolutionism, fatalism, pessimism, nihilism--how strange it is to see +this desolate and terrible doctrine growing and expanding at the very +moment when the German nation is celebrating its greatness and its +triumphs! The contrast is so startling that it sets one thinking. + +This orgie of philosophic thought, identifying error with existence +itself, and developing the axiom of Proudhon--"Evil is God," will bring +back the mass of mankind to the Christian theodicy, which is neither +optimist nor pessimist, but simply declares that the felicity which +Christianity calls eternal life is accessible to man. + +Self-mockery, starting from a horror of stupidity and hypocrisy, +and standing in the way of all wholeness of mind and all true +seriousness--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 is +not 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 it +with wholesale injustice. + + * * * * * + +It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; it +deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery. + + * * * * * + +We learn to recognize a mere blunting of the conscience in that +incapacity for indignation which is not to be confounded with the +gentleness 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 an +energetic principle of action. Being without proof, it is the contrary +of science. Hence its two aspects and its two effects. Is its point of +departure intelligence? No. Thought may shake or strengthen faith; it +cannot produce it. Is its origin in the will? No; good will may favor +it, ill-will may hinder it, but no one believes by will, and faith is +not 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 the +individual at birth; it is that which binds him to the whole of being. +The individual only detaches himself with difficulty from the maternal +breast; he only isolates himself by an effort from the nature around +him, from the love which enwraps him, the ideas in which he floats, the +cradle in which he lies. He is born in union with humanity, with the +world, and with God. The trace of this original union is faith. Faith is +the reminiscence of that vague Eden whence our individuality issued, but +which it inhabited in the somnambulist state anterior to the personal +life. + +Our individual life consists in separating ourselves from our _milieu_; +in so reacting upon it that we apprehend it consciously, and make +ourselves spiritual personalities--that is to say, intelligent and free. +Our primitive faith is nothing more than the neutral matter which our +experience of life and things works up a fresh, and which may be so +affected by our studies of every kind as to perish completely in its +original form. We ourselves may die before we have been able to +recover the harmony of a personal faith which may satisfy our mind and +conscience 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 into +harmony. 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 excellent +faith. That which is a mere prejudice of childhood, which has never +known doubt, which ignores science, which cannot respect or understand +or tolerate different convictions--such a faith is a stupidity and a +hatred, the mother of all fanaticisms. We may then repeat of faith what +Aesop said of the tongue-- + + "Quid medius lingua, lingua quid pejus eadem?" + +To draw the poison-fangs of faith in ourselves, we must subordinate it +to the love of truth. The supreme worship of the true is the only means +of purification for all religions all confessions, all sects. Faith +should only be allowed the second place, for faith has a judge--in +truth. When she exalts herself to the position of supreme judge the +world is enslaved: Christianity, from the fourth to the seventeenth +century, is the proof of it... Will the enlightened faith ever conquer +the vulgar faith? We must look forward in trust to a better future. + +The difficulty, however, is this. A narrow faith has much more energy +than an enlightened faith; the world belongs to will much more than +to wisdom. It is not then certain that liberty will triumph over +fanaticism; and besides, independent thought will never have the force +of prejudice. The solution is to be found in a division of labor. After +those whose business it will have been to hold up to the world the ideal +of a pure and free faith, will come the men of violence, who will bring +the new creed within the circle of recognized interests, prejudices, and +institutions. Is not this just what happened to Christianity? After the +gentle Master, the impetuous Paul and the bitter Councils. It is true +that this is what corrupted the gospel. But still Christianity has +done more good than harm to humanity, and so the world advances, by the +successive 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 in +determining the constituent conditions of Protestant belief.] The +supernatural is the stone of stumbling. + +It might be possible to agree on the idea of the divine; but no, that is +not the question--the chaff must be separated from the good grain. +The supernatural is miracle, and miracle is an objective phenomenon +independent of all preceding casuality. Now, miracle thus understood +cannot be proved experimentally; and besides, the subjective phenomena, +far more important than all the rest, are left out of account in the +definition. Men will not see that miracle is a perception of the soul; +a vision of the divine behind nature; a psychical crisis, analogous to +that of Aeneas on the last day of Troy, which reveals to us the heavenly +powers prompting and directing human action. For the indifferent there +are no miracles. It is only the religious souls who are capable of +recognizing the finger of God in certain given facts. + +The minds which have reached the doctrine of immanence are +incomprehensible to the fanatics of transcendence. They will never +understand--these last--that the _panentheism_ of Krause is ten times +more religious than their dogmatic supernaturalism. Their passion for +the facts which are objective, isolated, and past, prevents them from +seeing the facts which are eternal and spiritual. They can only +adore what comes to them from without. As soon as their dramaturgy is +interpreted symbolically all seems to them lost. They must have their +local prodigies--their vanished unverifiable miracles, because for them +the divine is there and only there. + +This faith can hardly fail to conquer among the races pledged to the +Cartesian dualism, who call the incomprehensible clear, and abhor what +is profound. Women also will always find local miracle more easy +to understand than universal miracle, and the visible objective +intervention of God more probable than his psychological and inward +action. The Latin world by its mental form is doomed to petrify its +abstractions, and to remain forever outside the inmost sanctuary of +life, that central hearth where ideas are still undivided, without shape +or determination. The Latin mind makes everything objective, because +it remains outside things, and outside itself. It is like the eye which +only perceives what is exterior to it, and which cannot see itself +except artificially, and from a distance, by means of the reflecting +surface of a mirror. + +August 30, 1872.--_A priori_ speculations weary me now as much as +anybody. All the different scholasticisms make me doubtful of what they +profess to demonstrate, because, instead of examining, they affirm +from the beginning. Their object is to throw up entrenchments around +a prejudice, and not to discover the truth. They accumulate that which +darkens rather than that which enlightens. They are descended, all +of them, from the Catholic procedure, which excludes comparison, +information, and previous examination. Their object is to trick men into +assent, to furnish faith with arguments, and to suppress free inquiry. +But to persuade me, a man must have no _parti pris_, and must begin with +showing a temper of critical sincerity; he must explain to me how the +matter lies, point out to me the questions involved in it, their origin, +their difficulties, the different solutions attempted, and their +degree of probability. He must respect my reason, my conscience, and my +liberty. All scholasticism is an attempt to take by storm; the authority +pretends to explain itself, but only pretends, and its deference is +merely 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 therefore +independence of all social, political, or religious prejudice. It is +to begin with neither Christian nor pagan, neither monarchical nor +democratic, neither socialist nor individualist; it is critical and +impartial; it loves one thing only--truth. If it disturbs the ready-made +opinions of the church or the state--of the historical medium--in which +the philosopher happens to have been born, so much the worse, but there +is no help for it. + + "Est ut est aut non est," + +Philosophy means, first, doubt; and afterward the consciousness of what +knowledge means, the consciousness of uncertainty and of ignorance, the +consciousness of limit, shade, degree, possibility. The ordinary man +doubts nothing and suspects nothing. The philosopher is more cautious, +but he is thereby unfitted for action, because, although he sees the +goal less dimly than others, he sees his own weakness too clearly, and +has no illusions as to his chances of reaching it. + +The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal +intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are +the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own +nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this +that his liberty consists--in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in +the power of mental record. Philosophy has for its foundation critical +lucidity. The end and climax of it would be the intuition of the +universal 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. The +philosopher is a skeptic seeking a plausible hypothesis, which may +explain to him the whole of his experiences. When he imagines that he +has found such a key to life he offers it to, but does not force it on +his fellow men. + +October 9, 1872.--I have been taking tea at the M's. These English +homes are very attractive. They are the recompense and the result of a +long-lived civilization, and of an ideal untiringly pursued. What ideal? +That of a moral order, founded on respect for self and for others, and +on reverence for duty--in a word, upon personal worth and dignity. The +master shows consideration to his guests, the children are deferential +to their parents, and every one and everything has its place. They +understand both how to command and how to obey. The little world is well +governed, and seems to go of itself; duty is the _genius loci_--but +duty tinged with a reserve and self-control which is the English +characteristic. The children are the great test of this domestic system; +they are happy, smiling, trustful, and yet no trouble. One feels that +they know themselves to be loved, but that they know also that they +must obey. _Our_ children behave like masters of the house, and when +any definite order comes to limit their encroachments they see in it an +abuse of power, an arbitrary act. Why? Because it is their principle to +believe that everything turns round them. Our children may be gentle +and affectionate, but they are not grateful, and they know nothing of +self-control. + +How do English mothers attain this result? By a rule which is +impersonal, invariable, and firm; in other words, by law, which forms +man for liberty, while arbitrary decree only leads to rebellion and +attempts at emancipation. This method has the immense advantage of +forming characters which are restive under arbitrary authority, and yet +amenable to justice, conscious of what is due to them and what they owe +to others, watchful over conscience, and practiced in self-government. +In every English child one feels something of the national motto--"God +and my right," and in every English household one has a sense that the +home is a citadel, or better still, a ship in which every one has +his place. Naturally in such a world the value set on family life +corresponds with the cost of producing it; it is sweet to those whose +efforts maintain it. + +October 14, 1872.--The man who gives himself to contemplation looks on +at, rather than directs his life, is rather a spectator than an actor, +seeks rather to understand than to achieve. Is this mode of existence +illegitimate, immoral? Is one bound to act? Is such detachment an +idiosyncrasy to be respected or a sin to be fought against? I have +always hesitated on this point, and I have wasted years in futile +self-reproach and useless fits of activity. My western conscience, +penetrated as it is with Christian morality, has always persecuted my +oriental quietism and Buddhist tendencies. I have not dared to approve +myself, 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 action +or thought becomes impossible. + +Having early a glimpse of the absolute, I have never had the indiscreet +effrontery of individualism. What right have I to make a merit of a +defect? I have never been able to see any necessity for imposing myself +upon others, nor for succeeding. I have seen nothing clearly except my +own deficiencies and the superiority of others. That is not the way to +make a career. With varied aptitudes and a fair intelligence, I had +no dominant tendency, no imperious faculty, so that while by virtue of +capacity I felt myself free, yet when free I could not discover what was +best. Equilibrium produced indecision, and indecision has rendered all +my faculties barren. + +November 8, 1872. (_Friday_).--I have been turning over the "Stoics" +again. Poor Louisa Siefert! [Footnote: Louise Siefert, a modern French +poetess, died 1879. In addition to "Les Stoiques," she published +"L'Annee Republicaine," Paris 1869, and other works.] Ah! we play the +stoic, and all the while the poisoned arrow in the side pierces and +wounds, _lethalis arundo_. What is it that, like all passionate souls, +she really craves for? Two things which are contradictory--glory +and happiness. She adores two incompatibles--the Reformation and the +Revolution, France and the contrary of France; her talent itself is a +combination of two opposing qualities, inwardness and brilliancy, noisy +display and lyrical charm. She dislocates the rhythm of her verse, +while at the same time she has a sensitive ear for rhyme. She is always +wavering between Valmore and Baudelaire, between Leconte de Lisle +and Sainte-Beuve--that is to say, her taste is a bringing together of +extremes. She herself has described it: + + "Toujours extreme en mes desirs, + Jadis, enfant joyeuse et folle, + Souvent une seule parole + Bouleversait tous mes plaisirs." + +But what a fine instrument she possesses! what strength of soul! what +wealth of imagination! + +December 3, 1872.--What a strange dream! I was under an illusion and yet +not under it; I was playing a comedy to myself, deceiving my imagination +without being able to deceive my consciousness. This power which dreams +have of fusing incompatibles together, of uniting what is exclusive, of +identifying yes and no, is what is most wonderful and most symbolical +in them. In a dream our individuality is not shut up within itself; it +envelops, so to speak, its surroundings; it is the landscape, and all +that it contains, ourselves included. But if our imagination is not our +own, if it is impersonal, then personality is but a special and limited +case of its general functions. _A fortiori_ it would be the same for +thought. And if so, thought might exist without possessing itself +individually, without embodying itself in an _ego_. In other words, +dreams lead us to the idea of an imagination enfranchised from the +limits of personality, and even of a thought which should be no longer +conscious. The individual who dreams is on the way to become dissolved +in the universal phantasmagoria of Maia. Dreams are excursions into the +limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. The man +who dreams is but the _locale_ of various phenomena of which he is the +spectator in spite of himself; he is passive and impersonal; he is the +plaything of unknown vibrations and invisible sprites. + +The man who should never issue from the state of dream would have never +attained humanity, properly so called, but the man who had never dreamed +would only know the mind in its completed or manufactured state, and +would not be able to understand the genesis of personality; he would +be like a crystal, incapable of guessing what crystallization means. +So that the waking life issues from the dream life, as dreams are an +emanation from the nervous life, and this again is the fine flower of +organic life. Thought is the highest point of a series of ascending +metamorphoses, which is called nature. Personality by means of thought, +recovers in inward profundity what it has lost in extension, and makes +up for the rich accumulations of receptive passivity by the enormous +privilege of that empire over self which is called liberty. Dreams, by +confusing and suppressing all limits, make us feel, indeed, the severity +of the conditions attached to the higher existence; but conscious and +voluntary thought alone brings knowledge and allows us to act--that is +to say, is alone capable of science and of perfection. Let us then take +pleasure in dreaming for reasons of psychological curiosity and mental +recreation; but let us never speak ill of thought, which is our strength +and our dignity. Let us begin as Orientals, and end as Westerns, for +these are the two halves of wisdom. + +December 11, 1872.--A deep and dreamless sleep and now I wake up to the +gray, lowering, rainy sky, which has kept us company for so long. The +air is mild, the general outlook depressing. I think that it is partly +the fault of my windows, which are not very clean, and contribute by +their dimness to this gloomy aspect of the outer world. Rain and smoke +have besmeared them. + +Between us and things how many screens there are! Mood, health, the +tissues 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 one +sees 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 mind +establishes regular relations, a _modus vivendi_, between things, men, +and itself, and it is under the delusion that it has got hold of stable +truth and eternal fact. Madness does not even see what sanity sees, +deceiving itself all the while by the belief that it sees better than +sanity. The sane mind or common sense confounds the fact of experience +with necessary fact, and assumes in good faith that what is, is the +measure of what may be; while madness cannot perceive any difference +between what is and what it imagines--it confounds its dreams with +reality. + +Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, +and in lending one's self to the universal illusion without becoming its +dupe. It is best, on the whole, for a man of taste who knows how to be +gay with the gay, and serious with the serious, to enter into the +game of Maia, and to play his part with a good grace in the fantastic +tragi-comedy which is called the Universe. It seems to me that here +intellectualism reaches its limit. [Footnote: "We all believe in duty," +says M. Renan, "and in the triumph of righteousness;" but it is possible +notwithstanding, "que tout le contraire soit vrai--et que le monde ne +soit qu'une amusante feerie dont aucun dieu ne se soucie. Il faut donc +nous arranger de maniere a ceque, dans le cas ou le seconde hypothese +serait la vraie, nous n'ayons pas ete trop dupes." + +This strain of remark, which is developed at considerable length, is +meant as a criticism of Amiel's want of sensitiveness to the irony of +things. But in reality, as the passage in the text shows, M. Renan is +only expressing a feeling with which Amiel was just as familiar as his +critic. Only he is delivered from this last doubt of all by his habitual +seriousness; by that sense of "horror and awe" which M. Renan puts away +from him. Conscience saves him "from the sorceries of Maia."] The mind, +in its intellectual capacity, arrives at the intuition that all reality +is but the dream of a dream. What delivers us from the palace of dreams +is pain, personal pain; it is also the sense of obligation, or that +which combines the two, the pain of sin; and again it is love; in short, +the moral order. What saves us from the sorceries of Maia is +conscience; conscience dissipates the narcotic vapors, the opium-like +hallucinations, the placid stupor of contemplative indifference. It +drives us into contact with the terrible wheels within wheels of human +suffering and human responsibility; it is the bugle-call, the cockcrow, +which puts the phantoms to flight; it is the armed archangel who chases +man from an artificial paradise. Intellectualism may be described as an +intoxication conscious of itself; the moral energy which replaces it, +on the other hand, represents a state of fast, a famine and a sleepless +thirst. Alas! Alas! + +Those who have the most frivolous idea of sin are just those who suppose +that there is a fixed gulf between good people and others. + + * * * * * + +The ideal which the wife and mother makes for herself, the manner in +which she understands duty and life, contain the fate of the community. +Her faith becomes the star of the conjugal ship, and her love the +animating principle that fashions the future of all belonging to her. +Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its +destinies in the folds of her mantle. + + * * * * * + +Perhaps it is not desirable that a woman should be free in mind; she +would immediately abuse her freedom. She cannot become philosophical +without losing her special gift, which is the worship of all that is +individual, the defense of usage, manners, beliefs, traditions. Her +role is to slacken the combustion of thought. It is analogous to that of +azote in vital air. + + * * * * * + +In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past--a pious guardian +of 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 of +the old prophets. Both depict a religious revolution--a profound crisis +in the life of humanity. In "Prometheus" it is civilization wrenched +from the jealous hands of the gods; in the "Eumenides" it is the +transformation of the idea of justice, and the substitution of atonement +and pardon for the law of implacable revenge. "Prometheus" shows us the +martyrdom which waits for all the saviors of men; the "Eumenides" is the +glorification of Athens and the Areopagus--that is to say, of a truly +human civilization. How magnificent it is as poetry, and how small +the adventures of individual passion seem beside this colossal type of +tragedy, 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 +my old enemy.... It is a sense of void and anguish; a sense of something +lacking: what? Love, peace--God perhaps. The feeling is one of pure +want unmixed with hope, and there is anguish in it because I can clearly +distinguish neither the evil nor its remedy. + + "O printemps sans pitie, dans l'ame endolorie, + Avec tes chants d'oiseaux, tes brises, ton azur, + Tu creuses sourdement, conspirateur obscur, + Le gouffre des langueurs et de la reverie." + +Of all the hours of the day, in fine weather, the afternoon, about 3 +o'clock, is the time which to me is most difficult to bear. I never +feel more strongly than I do then, "_le vide effrayant de la vie_," +the stress of mental anxiety, or the painful thirst for happiness. This +torture born of the sunlight is a strange phenomenon. Is it that the +sun, just as it brings out the stain upon a garment, the wrinkles in +a face, or the discoloration of the hair, so also it illumines with +inexorable distinctness the scars and rents of the heart? Does it rouse +in us a sort of shame of existence? In any case the bright hours of the +day are capable of flooding the whole soul with melancholy, of kindling +in us the passion for death, or suicide, or annihilation, or of driving +us to that which is next akin to death, the deadening of the senses +by the pursuit of pleasure. They rouse in the lonely man a horror of +himself; they make him long to escape from his own misery and solitude-- + + "Le coeur trempe sept fois dans le neant divin." + +People talk of the temptations to crime connected with darkness, but +the dumb sense of desolation which is often the product of the most +brilliant 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 follows +his senses and the cry of his passion; in the second, he feels himself +lost 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, a toi prends garde!" + +April 3, 1873.--I have been to see my friends ----. Their niece has just +arrived with two of her children, and the conversation turned on Father +Hyacinthe's lecture. + +Women of an enthusiastic temperament have a curious way of speaking of +extempore preachers and orators. They imagine that inspiration radiates +from a crowd as such, and that inspiration is all that is wanted. Could +there be a more _naif_ and childish explanation of what is really a +lecture in which nothing has been left to accident, neither the +plan, nor the metaphors, nor even the length of the whole, and where +everything has been prepared with the greatest care! But women, in their +love of what is marvelous and miraculous, prefer to ignore all this. The +meditation, the labor, the calculation of effects, the art, in a word, +which have gone to the making of it, diminishes for them the value of +the thing, and they prefer to believe it fallen from heaven, or sent +down from on high. They ask for bread, but cannot bear the idea of a +baker. The sex is superstitious, and hates to understand what it wishes +to admire. It would vex it to be forced to give the smaller share to +feeling, and the larger share to thought. It wishes to believe that +imagination 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 and +imagination, have never distinguished themselves as orators--that is to +say, have never known how to combine a multitude of facts, ideas, and +impulses, into one complex unity. Enthusiastic women never even suspect +the difference that there is between the excitement of a popular +harangue, which is nothing but a mere passionate outburst, and the +unfolding of a didactic process, the aim of which is to prove something +and 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 the +dazzled assembly. + +Evidently women divide orators into two groups; the artisans of speech, +who manufacture their laborious discourses by the aid of the midnight +lamp, and the inspired souls, who simply give themselves the trouble +to be born. They will never understand the saying of Quintilian, "_Fit +orator, nascitur poeta._" + +The enthusiasm which acts is perhaps an enlightening force, but the +enthusiasm which accepts is very like blindness. For this latter +enthusiasm confuses the value of things, ignores their shades of +difference, and is an obstacle to all sensible criticism and all +calm judgment. The "Ewig-Weibliche" favors exaggeration, mysticism, +sentimentalism--all that excites and startles. It is the enemy of +clearness, of a calm and rational view of things, the antipodes of +criticism and of science. I have had only too much sympathy and weakness +for the feminine nature. The very excess of my former indulgence toward +it 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 Catholic +superstition is maintained by women, one feels how needful it is not to +hand 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 of +modifying the tendencies, habits, and character of real beings, and as +though verbiage were an efficient substitute for will, conscience, and +education. + +France proceeds by bursts of eloquence, of cannonading, or of +law-making; she thinks that so she can change the nature of things; and +she produces only phrases and ruins. She has never understood the first +line of Montesquieu: "Laws are necessary relations, derived from the +nature of things." She will not see that her incapacity to organize +liberty comes from her own nature; from the notions which she has of the +individual, of society, of religion, of law, of duty--from the manner +in which she brings up children. Her way is to plant trees downward, +and then she is astonished at the result! Universal suffrage, with a bad +religion and a bad popular education, means perpetual wavering between +anarchy and dictatorship, between the red and the black, between Danton +and Loyola. + +How many scapegoats will Prance sacrifice before it occurs to her to +beat her own breast in penitence? + +August 18, 1873. (_Scheveningen_).--Yesterday, Sunday, the landscape was +clear and distinct, the air bracing, the sea bright and gleaming, and +of an ashy-blue color. There were beautiful effects of beach, sea, and +distance; and dazzling tracks of gold upon the waves, after the sun had +sunk below the bands of vapor drawn across the middle sky, and before +it had disappeared in the mists of the sea horizon. The place was very +full. All Scheveningen and the Hague, the village and the capital, +had streamed out on to the terrace, amusing themselves at innumerable +tables, and swamping the strangers and the bathers. The orchestra played +some Wagner, some Auber, and some waltzes. What was all the world doing? +Simply enjoying life. + +A thousand thoughts wandered through my brain. I thought how much +history it had taken to make what I saw possible; Judaea, Egypt, Greece, +Germany, Gaul; all the centuries from Moses to Napoleon, and all the +zones from Batavia to Guiana, had united in the formation of this +gathering. The industry, the science, the art, the geography, the +commerce, the religion of the whole human race, are repeated in every +human combination; and what we see before our own eyes at any given +moment is inexplicable without reference to all that has ever been. This +interlacing of the ten thousand threads which necessity weaves into the +production of one single phenomenon is a stupefying thought. One feels +one's self in the presence of law itself--allowed a glimpse of the +mysterious workshop of nature. The ephemeral perceives the eternal. + +What matters the brevity of the individual span, seeing that the +generations, the centuries, and the worlds themselves are but occupied +forever with the ceaseless reproduction of the hymn of life, in all +the hundred thousand modes and variations which make up the universal +symphony? The motive is always the same; the monad has but one law: +all truths are but the variation of one single truth. The universe +represents the infinite wealth of the Spirit seeking in vain to exhaust +all possibilities, and the goodness of the Creator, who would fain share +with the created all that sleeps within the limbo of Omnipotence. + +To contemplate and adore, to receive and give back, to have uttered +one's note and moved one's grain of sand, is all which is expected from +such insects as we are; it is enough to give motive and meaning to our +fugitive apparition in existence.... + +After the concert was over the paved esplanade behind the hotels and the +two roads leading to the Hague were alive with people. One might have +fancied one's self upon one of the great Parisian boulevards just when +the theaters are emptying themselves--there were so many carriages, +omnibuses, and cabs. Then, when the human tumult had disappeared, the +peace of the starry heaven shone out resplendent, and the dreamy glimmer +of 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 the +enjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only the +role of the looker-on? + +False shame, no doubt. I have been ashamed to desire. Fatal result +of timidity, aggravated by intellectual delusion! This renunciation +beforehand of all natural ambitions, this systematic putting aside of +all longings and all desires, has perhaps been false in idea; it has +been too like a foolish, self-inflicted mutilation. Fear, too, has had a +large share in it-- + + "La peur de ce que j'aime est ma fatalite." + +I very soon discovered that it was simpler for me to give up a wish than +to satisfy it. Not being able to obtain all that my nature longed for, +I renounced the whole _en bloc_, without even taking the trouble to +determine in detail what might have attracted me; for what was the good +of stirring up trouble in one's self and evoking images of inaccessible +treasure? + +Thus I anticipated in spirit all possible disillusions, in the true +stoical fashion. Only, with singular lack of logic, I have sometimes +allowed regret to overtake me, and I have looked at conduct founded upon +exceptional principles with the eyes of the ordinary man. I should have +been 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 +a man, and not a theorem. A system cannot suffer, but I suffer. Logic +makes only one demand--that of consequence; but life makes a thousand; +the body wants health, the imagination cries out for beauty, and the +heart for love; pride asks for consideration, the soul yearns for peace, +the conscience for holiness; our whole being is athirst for happiness +and for perfection; and we, tottering, mutilated, and incomplete, cannot +always feign philosophic insensibility; we stretch out our arms toward +life, and we say to it under our breath, "Why--why--hast thou deceived +me?" + +August 19,1873. (_Scheveningen_).--I have had a morning walk. It has +been 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 +is about her business, in no threatening but at the same time in no +lingering mood. She is making her clouds, heaping up her sands, visiting +her shores and bathing them with foam, gathering up her floods for +the tide, carrying the ships to their destinations, and feeding the +universal life. I found in a hidden nook a sheet of fine sand which the +water had furrowed and folded like the pink palate of a kitten's mouth, +or like a dappled sky. Everything repeats itself by analogy, and each +little fraction of the earth reproduces in a smaller and individual +form all the phenomena of the planet. Farther on I came across a bank of +crumbling shells, and it was borne in upon me that the sea-sand itself +might well be only the detritus of the organic life of preceding eras, +a vast monument or pyramid of immemorial age, built up by countless +generations of molluscs who have labored at the architecture of the +shores like good workmen of God. If the dunes and the mountains are the +dust of living creatures who have preceded us, how can we doubt but that +our death will be as serviceable as our life, and that nothing which has +been lent is lost? Mutual borrowing and temporary service seem to be the +law of existence. Only, the strong prey upon and devour the weak, +and the concrete inequality of lots within the abstract equality of +destinies wounds and disquiets the sense of justice. + +_Same day_.--A new spirit governs and inspires the generation which will +succeed me. It is a singular sensation to feel the grass growing under +one's feet, to see one's self intellectually uprooted. One must address +one's contemporaries. Younger men will not listen to you. Thought, like +love, will not tolerate a gray hair. Knowledge herself loves the young, +as Fortune used to do in olden days. Contemporary civilization does +not know what to do with old age; in proportion as it defies physical +experiment, it despises moral experience. One sees therein the triumph +of Darwinism; it is a state of war, and war must have young soldiers; it +can only put up with age in its leaders when they have the strength and +the mettle of veterans. + +In point of fact, one must either be strong or disappear, either +constantly rejuvenate one's self or perish. It is as though the humanity +of our day had, like the migratory birds, an immense voyage to make +across space; she can no longer support the weak or help on the +laggards. The great assault upon the future makes her hard and pitiless +to 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 though +the more we talk of justice and humanity, the more that other god sees +his kingdom widen. + +August 20, 1873. (_Scheveningen_).--I have now watched the sea which +beats upon this shore under many different aspects. On the whole, I +should class it with the Baltic. As far as color, effect, and landscape +go, it is widely different from the Breton or Basque ocean, and, above +all, from the Mediterranean. It never attains to the blue-green of the +Atlantic, nor the indigo of the Ionian Sea. Its scale of color runs from +flint to emerald, and when it turns to blue, the blue is a turquoise +shade splashed with gray. The sea here is not amusing itself; it has a +busy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polyps +nor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at low +water; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is the +struggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has done +little for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother though +she be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of a +hundred 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 +is soft, relaxing, and warm. In the same way there are two Hollands +in every 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 the +two agree is in calculating prudence, and in methodical persistency of +effort. + +August 22, 1873. (_Scheveningen_).--The weather is rainy, the whole +atmosphere gray; it is a time favorable to thought and meditation. I +have a liking for such days as these; they revive one's converse with +one's self and make it possible to live the inner life; they are quiet +and 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 to +reverie. It is a strange state of mind; it is like those silences +in worship which are not the empty moments of devotion, but the full +moments, and which are so because at such times the soul, instead +of being polarized, dispersed, localized, in a single impression or +thought, feels her own totality and is conscious of herself. She tastes +her own substance. She is no longer played upon, colored, set in motion, +affected, from without; she is in equilibrium and at rest. Openness and +self-surrender become possible to her; she contemplates and she adores. +She sees the changeless and the eternal enwrapping all the phenomena of +time. She is in the religious state, in harmony with the general order, +or at least in intellectual harmony. For _holiness_, indeed, more is +wanted--a harmony of will, a perfect self-devotion, death to self and +absolute submission. + +Psychological peace--that harmony which is perfect but virtual--is but +the zero, the potentiality of all numbers; it is not that moral peace +which is victorious over all ills, which is real, positive, tried by +experience, and able to face whatever fresh storms may assail it. + +The peace of fact is not the peace of principle. There are indeed two +happinesses, that of nature and that of conquest--two equilibria, that +of Greece and that of Nazareth--two kingdoms, that of the natural man +and that of the regenerate man. + +_Later_. (_Scheveningen_).--Why do doctors so often make mistakes? +Because they are not sufficiently individual in their diagnoses or their +treatment. They class a sick man under some given department of their +nosology, whereas every invalid is really a special case, a unique +example. How is it possible that so coarse a method of sifting should +produce judicious therapeutics? Every illness is a factor simple or +complex, which is multiplied by a second factor, invariably complex--the +individual, that is to say, who is suffering from it, so that the result +is a special problem, demanding a special solution, the more so the +greater the remoteness of the patient from childhood or from country +life. + +The principal grievance which I have against the doctors is that they +neglect the real problem, which is to seize the unity of the individual +who claims their care. Their methods of investigation are far too +elementary; a doctor who does not read you to the bottom is ignorant of +essentials. To me the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound +knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering +or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence. +Such a doctor is possible, but the greater number of them lack +the higher and inner life, they know nothing of the transcendent +laboratories of nature; they seem to me superficial, profane, strangers +to divine things, destitute of intuition and sympathy. The model doctor +should be at once a genius, a saint, a man of God. + +September 11, 1873. (_Amsterdam_).--The doctor has just gone. He says +I have fever about me, and does not think that I can start for another +three days without imprudence. I dare not write to my Genevese friends +and tell them that I am coming back from the sea in a radically worse +state of strength and throat than when I went there, and that I have +only wasted my time, my trouble, my money, and my hopes.... + +This contradictory double fact--on the one side an eager hopefulness +springing up afresh after all disappointments, and on the other an +experience almost invariably unfavorable--can be explained like all +illusions by the whim of nature, which either wills us to be deceived or +wills us to act as if we were so. + +Skepticism is the wiser course, but in delivering us from error it +tends to paralyze life. Maturity of mind consists in taking part in the +prescribed game as seriously as though one believed in it. Good-humored +compliance, tempered by a smile, is, on the whole, the best line to +take; one lends one's self to an optical illusion, and the voluntary +concession has an air of liberty. Once imprisoned in existence, we must +submit to its laws with a good grace; to rebel against it only ends +in impotent rage, when once we have denied ourselves the solution of +suicide. + +Humility and submission, or the religious point of view; clear-eyed +indulgence with a touch of irony, or the point of view of worldly +wisdom--these two attitudes are possible. The second is sufficient for +the minor ills of life, the other is perhaps necessary in the greater +ones. The pessimism of Schopenhauer supposes at least health and +intellect as means of enduring the rest of life. But optimism either of +the stoical or the Christian sort is needed to make it possible for +us to bear the worst sufferings of flesh, heart and soul. If we are to +escape the grip of despair, we must believe either that the whole of +things at least is good, or that grief is a fatherly grace, a purifying +trial. + +There can be no doubt that the idea of a happy immortality, serving as +a harbor of refuge from the tempests of this mortal existence, and +rewarding the fidelity, the patience, the submission, and the courage of +the travelers on life's sea--there can be no doubt that this idea, the +strength of so many generations, and the faith of the church, carries +with it inexpressible consolation to those who are wearied, burdened, +and tormented by pain and suffering. To feel one's self individually +cared for and protected by God gives a special dignity and beauty to +life. Monotheism lightens the struggle for existence. But does the study +of nature allow of the maintenance of those local revelations which are +called Mosaism, Christianity, Islamism? These religions founded upon an +infantine cosmogony, and upon a chimerical history of humanity, can they +bear confronting with modern astronomy and geology? The present mode of +escape, which consists in trying to satisfy the claims of both science +and faith--of the science which contradicts all the ancient beliefs, +and the faith which, in the case of things that are beyond nature +and incapable of verification, affirms them on her own responsibility +only--this mode of escape cannot last forever. Every fresh cosmical +conception demands a religion which corresponds to it. Our age of +transition stands bewildered between the two incompatible methods, +the scientific method and the religious method, and between the two +certitudes, which contradict each other. + +Surely the reconciliation of the two must be sought for in the moral +law, which is also a fact, and every step of which requires for its +explanation another cosmos than the cosmos of necessity. Who knows if +necessity is not a particular case of liberty, and its condition? Who +knows if nature is not a laboratory for the fabrication of thinking +beings 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 Platonic +dogma. But the question remains open. We may eliminate the idea of +purpose from nature, yet, as the guiding conception of the highest being +of our planet, it is a fact, and a fact which postulates a meaning in +the history of the universe. + +My thought is straying in vague paths: why? because I have no creed. +All my studies end in notes of interrogation, and that I may not draw +premature or arbitrary conclusions I draw none. + +_Later on_.--My creed has melted away, but I believe in good, in the +moral order, and in salvation; religion for me is to live and die in +God, in complete abandonment to the holy will which is at the root of +nature and destiny. I believe even in the gospel, the good news--that +is to say, in the reconciliation of the sinner with God, by faith in the +love of a pardoning Father. + +October 4, 1873. (_Geneva_).--I have been dreaming a long while in the +moonlight, 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 dim +and ghost-like that analysis loses its way in it, and arrives at nothing +articulate. It is something indefinite and intangible, like the noise of +waves which is made up of a thousand fused and mingled sounds. It is +the reverberation of all the unsatisfied desires of the soul, of all the +stifled sorrows of the heart, mingling in a vague sonorous whole, and +dying away in cloudy murmurs. All those imperceptible regrets, which +never individually reach the consciousness, accumulate at last into a +definite result; they become the voice of a feeling of emptiness and +aspiration; their tone is melancholy itself. In youth the tone of +these Aeolian vibrations of the heart is all hope--a proof that these +thousands of indistinguishable accents make up indeed the fundamental +note of our being, and reveal the tone of our whole situation. Tell me +what you feel in your solitary room when the full moon is shining in +upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you +are, and I shall know if you are happy. + + * * * * * + +The best path through life is the high road, which initiates us at +the right moment into all experience. Exceptional itineraries are +suspicious, and matter for anxiety. What is normal is at once most +convenient, most honest, and most wholesome. Cross roads may tempt us +for one reason or another, but it is very seldom that we do not come to +regret having taken them. + + * * * * * + +Each man begins the world afresh, and not one fault of the first man has +been avoided by his remotest descendant. The collective experience +of the race accumulates, but individual experience dies with the +individual, and the result is that institutions become wiser and +knowledge as such increases; but the young man, although more +cultivated, is just as presumptuous, and not less fallible to-day than +he ever was. So that absolutely there is progress, and relatively there +is none. Circumstances improve, but merit remains the same. The whole is +better, perhaps, but man is not positively better--he is only different. +His defects and his virtues change their form, but the total balance +does not show him to be the richer. A thousand things advance, nine +hundred and ninety-eight fall back, this is progress. There is nothing +in it to be proud of, but something, after all, to console one. + +February 4, 1874.--I am still reading the "Origines du Christianisme" by +Ernest Havet. [Footnote: Ernest Havet, born 1813, a distinguished French +scholar and professor. He became professor of Latin oratory at the +College de France in 1855, and a member of the Institute in January, +1880. His admirable edition of the "Pensees 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 like +it for its independence and courage; I dislike it for the insufficiency +of its fundamental ideas, and the imperfection of its categories. + +The author, for instance, has no clear idea of religion; and his +philosophy of history is superficial. He is a Jacobin. "The Republic and +Free Thought"--he cannot get beyond that. This curt and narrow school +of opinion is the refuge of men of independent mind, who have been +scandalized by the colossal fraud of ultramontanism; but it leads rather +to cursing history than to understanding it. It is the criticism of the +eighteenth century, of which the general result is purely negative. +But Voltairianism is only the half of the philosophic mind. Hegel frees +thought in a very different way. + +Havet, too, makes another mistake. He regards Christianity as synonymous +with Roman Catholicism and with the church. I know very well that the +Roman Church does the same, and that with her the assimilation is a +matter of sound tactics; but scientifically it is inexact. We ought +not even to identify Christianity with the gospel, nor the gospel with +religion in general. It is the business of critical precision to +clear away these perpetual confusions in which Christian practice and +Christian preaching abound. To disentangle ideas, to distinguish and +limit them, to fit them into their true place and order, is the first +duty of science whenever it lays hands upon such chaotic and complex +things as manners, idioms, or beliefs. Entanglement is the condition +of life; order and clearness are the signs of serious and successful +thought. + +Formerly it was the ideas of nature which were a tissue of errors and +incoherent fancies; now it is the turn of moral and psychological ideas. +The best issue from the present Babel would be the formation or the +sketching 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 by +the Cleons of the day that enlightenment, wisdom, thought, and reason, +are also theirs. The game of these conjurors and quacks of universal +suffrage has always been to flatter the crowd in order to make an +instrument of it. They pretend to adore the puppet of which they pull +the threads. + +The theory of radicalism is a piece of juggling, for it supposes +premises of which it knows the falsity; it manufactures the oracle +whose revelations it pretends to adore; it proclaims that the multitude +creates a brain for itself, while all the time it is the clever man who +is the brain of the multitude, and suggests to it what it is supposed +to invent. To reign by flattery has been the common practice of the +courtiers of all despotisms, the favorites of all tyrants; it is an old +and trite method, but none the less odious for that. + +The honest politician should worship nothing but reason and justice, and +it is his business to preach them to the masses, who represent, on +an average, the age of childhood and not that of maturity. We corrupt +childhood if we tell it that it cannot be mistaken, and that it knows +more than its elders. We corrupt the masses when we tell them that they +are wise and far-seeing and possess the gift of infallibility. + +It is one of Montesquieu's subtle remarks, that the more wise men you +heap together the less wisdom you will obtain. Radicalism pretends that +the greater number of illiterate, passionate, thoughtless--above all, +young people, you heap together, the greater will be the enlightenment +resulting. The second thesis is no doubt the repartee to the first, but +the joke is a bad one. All that can be got from a crowd is instinct +or passion; the instinct may be good, but the passion may be bad, and +neither is the instinct capable of producing a clear idea, nor the +passion of leading to a just resolution. + +A crowd is a material force, and the support of numbers gives a +proposition the force of law; but that wise and ripened temper of mind +which takes everything into account, and therefore tends to truth, is +never engendered by the impetuosity of the masses. The masses are the +material of democracy, but its form--that is to say, the laws which +express the general reason, justice, and utility--can only be rightly +shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property. The +fundamental error of the radical theory is to confound the right to do +good with good itself, and universal suffrage with universal wisdom. +It rests upon a legal fiction, which assumes a real equality of +enlightenment and merit among those whom it declares electors. It is +quite possible, however, that these electors may not desire the public +good, and that even if they do, they may be deceived as to the manner +of realizing it. Universal suffrage is not a dogma--it is an instrument; +and according to the population in whose hands it is placed, the +instrument is serviceable or deadly to the proprietor. + +February 27, 1874.--Among the peoples, in whom the social gifts are the +strongest, the individual fears ridicule above all things, and ridicule +is the certain result of originality. No one, therefore, wishes to make +a 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 calls +itself _we_. _We_ dress, _we_ dine, _we_ walk, _we_ go out, _we_ come +in, like this, and not like that. This _we_ is always right, whatever +it does. The subjects of _We_ are more prostrate than the slaves of the +East before the Padishah. The good pleasure of the sovereign decides +every appeal; his caprice is law. What _we_ does or says is called +custom, what it thinks is called opinion, what it believes to be +beautiful or good is called fashion. Among such nations as these _we_ +is the brain, the conscience, the reason, the taste, and the judgment +of all. The individual finds everything decided for him without his +troubling about it. He is dispensed from the task of finding out +anything whatever. Provided that he imitates, copies, and repeats the +models furnished by _we_, he has nothing more to fear. He knows all that +he need know, and has entered into salvation. + +April 29, 1874.--Strange reminiscence! At the end of the terrace of La +Treille, on the eastern side, as I looked down the slope, it seemed to +me that I saw once more in imagination a little path which existed +there when I was a child, and ran through the bushy underwood, which +was thicker then than it is now. It is at least forty years since this +impression disappeared from my mind. The revival of an image so dead and +so forgotten set me thinking. Consciousness seems to be like a book, in +which the leaves turned by life successively cover and hide each other +in spite of their semi-transparency; but although the book may be open +at the page of the present, the wind, for a few seconds, may blow back +the first pages into view. + +And at death will these leaves cease to hide each other, and shall we +see all our past at once? Is death the passage from the successive to +the simultaneous--that is to say, from time to eternity? Shall we +then understand, in its unity, the poem or mysterious episode of our +existence, which till then we have spelled out phrase by phrase? And +is this the secret of that glory which so often enwraps the brow and +countenance of those who are newly dead? If so, death would be like the +arrival of a traveler at the top of a great mountain, whence he sees +spread out before him the whole configuration of the country, of which +till then he had had but passing glimpses. To be able to overlook one's +own history, to divine its meaning in the general concert and in the +divine plan, would be the beginning of eternal felicity. Till then we +had sacrificed ourselves to the universal order, but then we should +understand and appreciate the beauty of that order. We had toiled +and labored under the conductor of the orchestra; and we should find +ourselves become surprised and delighted hearers. We had seen nothing +but our own little path in the mist; and suddenly a marvelous panorama +and boundless distances would open before our dazzled eyes. Why not? + +May 31, 1874.--I have been reading the philosophical poems of Madame +Ackermann. She has rendered in fine verse that sense of desolation which +has been so often stirred in me by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, of +Hartmann, Comte, and Darwin. What tragic force and power! What thought +and passion! She has courage for everything, and attacks the most +tremendous subjects. + +Science is implacable; will it suppress all religions? All those +which start from a false conception of nature, certainly. But if the +scientific conception of nature proves incapable of bringing harmony and +peace to man, what will happen? Despair is not a durable situation. We +shall have to build a moral city without God, without an immortality +of the soul, without hope. Buddhism and stoicism present themselves as +possible alternatives. + +But even if we suppose that there is no finality in the cosmos, it is +certain that man has ends at which he aims, and if so the notion of +end or purpose is a real phenomenon, although a limited one. Physical +science may very well be limited by moral science, and _vice versa_. But +if these two conceptions of the world are in opposition, which must give +way? + +I still incline to believe that nature is the virtuality of mind--that +the soul is the fruit of life, and liberty the flower of necessity--that +all is bound together, and that nothing can be done without. Our modern +philosophy has returned to the point of view of the Ionians, the [Greek: +_physikoi_], or naturalist thinkers. But it will have to pass once +more through 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 childishness +of which I am quite capable. But it does not last long. I am soon +brought back to the advantages and obligations of my situation; I return +to a calmer self-consciousness. It is disagreeable to me, no doubt, to +realize all that is hopelessly lost to me, all that is now and will +be forever denied to me; but I reckon up my privileges as well as my +losses--I lay stress on what I have, and not only on what I want. And +so I escape from that terrible dilemma of "all or nothing," which for me +always ends in the adoption of the second alternative. It seems to me +at such 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 the +price of my critical faculty. All my former habits become suddenly +fluid; it seems to me that I am beginning life over again, and that all +my 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, an +avocation, a sex, a species. Am I even quite sure of being a man, a +European, an inhabitant of this earth? It seems to me so easy to be +something else, that to be what I am appears to me a mere piece of +arbitrary choice. I cannot possibly take an accidental structure of +which the value is purely relative, seriously. When once a man has +touched the absolute, all that might be other than what it is seems to +him indifferent. All these ants pursuing their private ends excite his +mirth. He looks down from the moon upon his hovel; he beholds the earth +from the heights of the sun; he considers his life from the point of +view of the Hindoo pondering the days of Brahma; he sees the finite from +the distance of the infinite, and thenceforward the insignificance of +all 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, passed +over me.... Around me Russians, English, Swedes, Germans, were sleeping +their last sleep under the shadow of the Cubly. The landscape was one +vast splendor; the woods were deep and mysterious, the roses full blown; +all around me were butterflies--a noise of wings--the murmur of birds. +I caught glimpses through the trees of distant mists, of soaring +mountains, of the tender blue of the lake.... A little conjunction of +things struck me. Two ladies were tending and watering a grave; two +nurses were suckling their children. This double protest against death +had something touching and poetical in it. "Sleep, you who are dead; we, +the living, are thinking of you, or at least carrying on the pilgrimage +of the race!" such seemed to me the words in my ear. It was clear to me +that 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 sleep +instinct 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 was +staring into the future with wide startled eyes. Is it indeed to _me_ +that these things apply. [Footnote: Amiel had just received at the +hands of his doctor the medical verdict, which was his _arret de mort_.] +Incessant and growing humiliation, my slavery becoming heavier, my +circle of action steadily narrower!... What is hateful in my situation +is that deliverance can never be hoped for, and that one misery will +succeed another in such a way as to leave me no breathing space, not +even in the future, not even in hope. All possibilities are closed to +me, one by one. It is difficult for the natural man to escape from a +dumb rage against inevitable agony. + +_Noon_.--An indifferent nature? A Satanic principle of things? A +good and just God? Three points of view. The second is improbable and +horrible. The first appeals to our stoicism. My organic combination has +never 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 a +privilege; I shall die by inches. Well, submit. Rebellion would be +useless and senseless. After all, I belong to the better-endowed half of +human-kind, and my lot is superior to the average. + +But the third point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is +there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our +life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational +ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the +laws of nature? Scarcely; But what this faith makes objective we may +hold as subjective truth. The moral being may moralize his sufferings by +using natural facts for his own inner education. What he cannot change +he calls the will of God, and to will what God wills brings him peace. + +To nature both our continued existence and our morality are equally +indifferent. But God, on the other hand, if God is, desires our +sanctification; and if suffering purifies us, then we may console +ourselves or suffering. This is what makes the great advantage of the +Christian faith; it is the triumph over pain, the victory over death. +There is but one thing necessary--death unto sin, the immolation of +our selfish will, the filial sacrifice of our desires. Evil consists +in living for _self_--that is to say, for one's own vanity, pride, +sensuality, or even health. Righteousness consists in willingly +accepting one's lot, in submitting to, and espousing the destiny +assigned us, in willing what God commands, in renouncing what he forbids +us, in consenting to what he takes from us or refuses us. + +In my own particular case, what has been taken from me is health--that +is to say, the surest basis of all independence; but friendship and +material comfort are still left to me; I am neither called upon to bear +the slavery of poverty nor the hell of absolute isolation. + +Health cut off, means marriage, travel, study, and work forbidden or +endangered. It means life reduced in attractiveness and utility by +five-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 talking with +open heart, our eyes wandered over the blue immensity below us, and +the 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 clouds +climbed the broad spaces of the sky, steamers made long tracks upon the +water at our feet, white sails were dotted over the vast distance of +the lake, and sea-gulls like gigantic butterflies quivered above its +rippling surface. + +September 21, 1874. (_Charnex_).--A wonderful day! Never has the lake +been bluer, or the landscape softer. It was enchanting. But tragedy is +hidden under the eclogue; the serpent crawls under the flowers. All the +future is dark. The phantoms which for three or four weeks I have been +able to keep at bay, wait for me behind the door, as the Eumenides +waited for Orestes. Hemmed in on all sides! + + "On ne croit plus a son etoile, + On sent que derriere 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 still +left. Flowers are becoming rare--a few daisies in the fields, some blue +or yellow chicories and colchicums, some wild geraniums growing among +fragments of old walls, and the brown berries of the privet--this is all +we were able to find. In the fields they are digging potatoes, beating +down the nuts, and beginning the apple harvest. The leaves are thinning +and changing color; I watch them turning red on the pear-trees, gray on +the plums, yellow on the walnut-trees, and tinging the thickly-strewn +turf with shades of reddish-brown. We are nearing the end of the fine +weather; the coloring is the coloring of late autumn; there is no need +now to keep out of the sun. Everything is soberer, more measured, more +fugitive, less emphatic. Energy is gone, youth is past, prodigality +at an end, the summer over. The year is on the wane and tends toward +winter; it is once more in harmony with my own age and position, and +next Sunday it will keep my birthday. All these different consonances +form 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 from +the individual. + + * * * * * + +A young girl's love is a kind of piety. We must approach it with +adoration if we are not to profane it, and with poetry if we are to +understand it. If there is anything in the world which gives us a sweet, +ineffable impression, of the ideal, it is this trembling modest love. To +deceive it would be a crime. Merely to watch its unfolding life is bliss +to the beholder; he sees in it the birth of a divine marvel. When the +garland of youth fades on our brow, let us try at least to have the +virtues of maturity; may we grow better, gentler, graver, like the fruit +of the vine, while its leaf withers and falls. + + * * * * * + +To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the +most difficult chapters in the great art of living. + + * * * * * + +He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature, and +a continuous moral progress toward inward contentment and religious +submission, is less liable than any one else to miss and waste life. + +January 2, 1875. (_Hyeres_.)--In spite of my sleeping draught I have +had a bad night. Once it seemed as if I must choke, for I could breathe +neither way. + +Could I be more fragile, more sensitive, more vulnerable! People talk to +me as if there were still a career before me, while all the time I know +that the ground is slipping from under me, and that the defense of my +health is already a hopeless task. At bottom, I am only living on out of +complaisance and without a shadow of self-delusion. I know that not +one of my desires will be realized, and for a long time I have had no +desires at all. I simply accept what comes to me as though it were a +bird perching on my window. I smile at it, but I know very well that my +visitor has wings and will not stay long. The resignation which comes +from despair has a kind of melancholy sweetness. It looks at life as +a man sees it from his death-bed, and judges it without bitterness and +without vain regrets. + +I no longer hope to get well, or to be useful, or to be happy. I hope +that those who have loved me will love me to the end; I should wish to +have done them some good, and to leave them a tender memory of myself. +I wish 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 God +will. I resign myself into his hands. + +January 22, 1875. (_Hyeres_).--The French mind, according to Gioberti, +apprehends only the outward form of truth, and exaggerates it by +isolating it, so that it acts as a solvent upon the realities with which +it works. It takes the shadow for the substance, the word for the thing, +appearance for reality, and abstract formula for truth. It lives in a +world of intellectual _assignats_. If you talk to a Frenchman of art, of +language, of religion, of the state, of duty, of the family, you feel in +his way of speaking that his thought remains outside the subject, that +he never penetrates into its substance, its inmost core. He is not +striving to understand it in its essence, but only to say something +plausible about it. On his lips the noblest words become thin and empty; +for example--mind, idea, religion. The French mind is superficial and +yet not comprehensive; it has an extraordinarily fine edge, and yet no +penetrating power. Its desire is to enjoy its own resources by the help +of things, but it has none of the respect, the disinterestedness, the +patience, and the self-forgetfulness, which, are indispensable if we +wish to see things as they are. Far from being the philosophic mind, it +is a mere counterfeit of it, for it does not enable a man to solve any +problem whatever, and remains incapable of understanding all that +is living, 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 and +germination; it paints effects, results, the _caput mortuum_, but not +the cause, the motive power, the native force the development of any +phenomenon whatever. It is analytic and descriptive, but it explains +nothing, for it avoids all beginnings and processes of formation. With +it crystallization is not the mysterious act itself by which a substance +passes from the fluid state to the solid state. It is the product of +that act. + +The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything appearance +is preferred to reality, the outside to the inside, the fashion to +the material, that which shines to that which profits, opinion to +conscience. That is to say, the Frenchman's center of gravity is always +outside him--he is always thinking of others, playing to the gallery. +To him individuals are so many zeros; the unit which turns them into a +number must be added from outside; it may be royalty, the writer of the +day, the favorite newspaper, or any other temporary master of fashion. +All this is probably the result of an exaggerated sociability, which +weakens the soul's forces of resistance, destroys its capacity for +investigation and personal conviction, and kills in it the worship of +the ideal. + +January 27, 1875. (_Hyeres_).--The whole atmosphere has a luminous +serenity, a limpid clearness. The islands are like swans swimming in a +golden stream. Peace, splendor, boundless space!... And I meanwhile look +quietly on while the soft hours glide away. I long to catch the wild +bird, 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 in +sunbeams, breezes, perfumes, and sudden impulses of joy. And yet all the +time I pine for I know not what intangible Eden. + +Lamartine in the "Preludes" has admirably described this oppressive +effect of happiness on fragile human nature. I suspect that the reason +for it is that the finite creature feels itself invaded by the infinite, +and the invasion produces dizziness, a kind of vertigo, a longing +to fling one's self into the great gulf of being. To feel life too +intensely is to yearn for death; and for man, to die means to become +like unto the gods--to be initiated into the great mystery. Pathetic and +beautiful illusion. + +_Ten o'clock in the evening_.--From one end to the other the day has +been perfect, and my walk this afternoon to Beau Vallon was one long +delight. It was like an expedition into Arcadia. Here was a wild and +woodland corner, which would have made a fit setting for a dance of +nymphs, and there an ilex overshadowing a rock, which reminded me of an +ode of Horace or a drawing of Tibur. I felt a kind of certainty that +the landscape had much that was Greek in it. And what made the sense of +resemblance the more striking was the sea, which one feels to be always +near, though one may not see it, and which any turn of the valley may +bring into view. We found out a little tower with an overgrown garden, +of which the owner might have been taken for a husbandman of the +Odyssey. He could scarcely speak any French, but was not without a +certain grave dignity. I translated to him the inscription on his +sun-dial, "_Hora est benefaciendi_," which is beautiful, and pleased him +greatly. It would be an inspiring place to write a novel in. Only I do +not know whether the little den would have a decent room, and one +would certainly have to live upon eggs, milk, and figs, like Philemon. +February 15, 1875. (_Hyeres_).--I have just been reading the two last +"Discours" at the French Academy, lingering over every word and weighing +every idea. This kind of writing is a sort of intellectual dainty, for +it is the art "of expressing truth with all the courtesy and finesse +possible;" the art of appearing perfectly at ease without the smallest +loss of manners; of being gracefully sincere, and of making criticism +itself a pleasure to the person criticized. Legacy as it is from +the monarchical tradition, this particular kind of eloquence is the +distinguishing mark of those men of the world who are also men of +breeding, and those men of letters who are also gentlemen. Democracy +could never have invented it, and in this delicate _genre_ of literature +France may give points to all rival peoples, for it is the fruit of that +refined and yet vigorous social sense which is produced by court and +drawing-room life, by literature and good company, by means of a mutual +education continued for centuries. This complicated product is as +original in its way as Athenian eloquence, but it is less healthy and +less durable. If ever France becomes Americanized this _genre_ at least +will perish, without hope of revival. + +April 16, 1875. (_Hyeres_).--I have already gone through the various +emotions of leave-taking. I have been wandering slowly through the +streets and up the castle hill, gathering a harvest of images and +recollections. Already I am full of regret that I have not made a better +study of the country, in which I have now spent four months and more. It +is like what happens when a friend dies; we accuse ourselves of having +loved 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 and +submission, between the instinct of the _ego_, which is to expand, +to take delight in its own tranquil sense of inviolability, if not to +triumph in its own sovereignty, and the instinct of the soul, which is +to 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 destiny +seems, in the religious sense of the word, _good_; that is to say, when +man feels himself directly in the presence of God. Then, and then only, +does the will acquiesce. Nay more, it only completely acquiesces when it +adores. The soul only submits to the hardness of fate by virtue of +its discovery of a sublime compensation--the loving kindness of the +Almighty. That is to say, it cannot resign itself to lack or famine, +it shrinks from the void around it, and the happiness either of hope or +faith is essential to it. It may very well vary its objects, but some +object it must have. It may renounce its former idols, but it will +demand another cult. The soul hungers and thirsts after happiness, and +it is in vain that everything deserts it--it will never submit to its +abandonment. + +August 28, 1875. (_Geneva_).--A word used by Sainte-Beuve a propos of +Benjamin Constant has struck me: it is the word _consideration_. To +possess or not to possess _consideration_ was to Madame de Stael a +matter of supreme importance--the loss of it an irreparable evil, the +acquirement of it a pressing necessity. What, then, is this good thing? +The esteem of the public. And how is it gained? By honorable character +and life, combined with a certain aggregate of services rendered and +of successes obtained. It is not exactly a good conscience, but it +is something like it, for it is the witness from without, if not the +witness from within. _Consideration_ is not reputation, still less +celebrity, fame, or glory; it has nothing to do with _savoir faire_, and +is not always the attendant of talent or genius. It is the reward given +to constancy in duty, to probity of conduct. It is the homage rendered +to a life held to be irreproachable. It is a little more than esteem, +and a little less than admiration. To enjoy public consideration is +at once a happiness and a power. The loss of it is a misfortune and a +source of daily suffering. Here am I, at the age of fifty-three, +without ever having given this idea the smallest place in my life. It is +curious, but the desire for consideration has been to me so little of a +motive that I have not even been conscious of such an idea at all. +The fact shows, I suppose, that for me the audience, the gallery, the +public, has never had more than a negative importance. I have neither +asked nor expected anything from it, not even justice; and to be a +dependent upon it, to solicit its suffrages and its good graces, has +always seemed to me an act of homage and flunkeyism against which my +pride has instinctively rebelled. I have never even tried to gain the +good will of a _coterie_ or a newspaper, nor so much as the vote of +an elector. 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 and +reputation--to force the esteem of others--seemed to me an effort +unworthy of myself, almost a degradation. I have never even thought of +it. + +Perhaps I have lost consideration by my indifference to it. Probably I +have disappointed public expectation by thus allowing an over-sensitive +and irritable consciousness to lead me into isolation and retreat. I +know that the world, which is only eager to silence you when you do +speak, is angry with your silence as soon as its own action has killed +in you the wish to speak. No doubt, to be silent with a perfectly clear +conscience a man must not hold a public office. I now indeed say to +myself that a professor is morally bound to justify his position by +publication; that students, authorities, and public are placed thereby +in a healthier relation toward him; that it is necessary for his good +repute in the world, and for the proper maintenance of his position. But +this point of view has not been a familiar one to me. I have endeavored +to give conscientious lectures, and I have discharged all the subsidiary +duties of my post to the best of my ability; but I have never been able +to bend myself to a struggle with hostile opinion, for all the while my +heart has been full of sadness and disappointment, and I have known +and felt that I have been systematically and deliberately isolated. +Premature despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constant +portion. 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 +by them had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found +peace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better +satisfied than my heart. + +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 my +half-century of existence? What have I paid back to my country? Are all +the documents I have produced, taken together, my correspondence, these +thousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes +of different kinds, anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to +what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and will +it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! A great many +comings and goings, a great many scrawls--for nothing. When all is added +up--nothing! And worst of all, it has not been a life used up in the +service of some adored object, or sacrificed to any future hope. +Its sufferings will have been vain, its renunciations useless, its +sacrifices gratuitous, its dreariness without reward.... No, I am wrong; +it will have had its secret treasure, its sweetness, its reward. It will +have inspired a few affections of great price; it will have given joy to +a few souls; its hidden existence will have had some value. Besides, +if in itself it has been nothing, it has understood much. If it has not +been in harmony with the great order, still it has loved it. If it has +missed happiness and duty, it has at least felt its own nothingness, and +implored its pardon. + +_Later on._--There is a great affinity in me with the Hindoo +genius--that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy, and speculative, +but destitute of ambition, personality, and will. Pantheistic +disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, +womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action--these +are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been +developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also had its +part in me. What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice in +favor of any form, nationality, or individuality whatever. Hence my +indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest, or opinions +of the moment. What does it all matter? _Omnis determinatio est +negatio_. Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thought +delivers us from personality.... To be a man is a poor thing, to be +a man is well; to be _the_ man--man in essence and in principle--that +alone is to be desired. + +Yes, but in these Brahmanic aspirations what becomes of the +subordination of the individual to duty? Pleasure may lie in ceasing to +be individual, but duty lies in performing the microscopic task allotted +to us. The problem set before us is to bring our daily task into the +temple of contemplation and ply it there, to act as in the presence of +God, to interfuse one's little part with religion. So only can we inform +the detail of life, all that is passing, temporary, and insignificant, +with beauty and nobility. So may we dignify and consecrate the meanest +of occupations. So may we feel that we are paying our tribute to the +universal work and the eternal will. So are we reconciled with life and +delivered 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 on +Mme. de Stael, but with what labor, what painful effort! When I write +for 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 the +number of possibilities which open before me at every step. + +Composition demands a concentration, decision, and pliancy which I no +longer possess. I cannot fuse together materials and ideas. If we are +to give anything a form, we must, so to speak, be the tyrants of it. +[Footnote: Compare this paragraph from the "Pensees of a new writer, +M. Joseph Roux, a country cure, living in a remote part of the _Bas +Limousin_, whose thoughts have been edited and published this year by M. +Paul Marieton (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre): + +"Le verbe ne souffre et ne connait que la volonte qui le dompte, et +n'emporte loin sans peril que l'intelligence qui lui menage avec empire +l'eperon et le frein."] + +We must treat our subject brutally, and not be always trembling lest we +are doing it a wrong. We must be able to transmute and absorb it into +our own substance. This sort of confident effrontery is beyond me: my +whole nature tends to that impersonality which respects and subordinates +itself to the object; it is love of truth which holds me back from +concluding and deciding. And then I am always retracing my steps: +instead of going forward I work in a circle: I am afraid of having +forgotten a point, of having exaggerated an expression, of having used +a word out of place, while all the time I ought to have been thinking +of essentials and aiming at breadth of treatment. I do not know how to +sacrifice 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 +the best way of making an article, an essay, a book, nor have I ever +methodically undergone the writer's apprenticeship; it would have been +useful 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 the +masters of literature, against picking _chef-d'oeuvres_ to pieces. When +I think that I have always postponed the serious study of the art of +writing, from a sort of awe of it, and a secret love of its beauty, I +am furious with my own stupidity, and with my own respect. Practice and +routine would have given me that ease, lightness, and assurance, without +which the natural gift and impulse dies away. But on the contrary, +I have developed two opposed habits of mind, the habit of scientific +analysis which exhausts the material offered to it, and the habit of +immediate notation of passing impressions. The art of composition lies +between the two; you want for it both the living unity of the thing and +the sustained operation of thought. + +October 25, 1875.--I have been listening to M. Taine's first lecture +(on the "Ancien Regime") delivered in the university hall. It was an +extremely substantial piece of work--clear, instructive, compact, and +full of matter. As a writer he shows great skill in the French method of +simplifying his subject by massing it in large striking divisions; his +great defect is a constant straining after points; his principal merit +is the sense he has of historical reality, his desire to see things +as they are. For the rest, he has extreme openness of mind, freedom of +thought, and precision of language. The hall was crowded. + +October 26, 1875.--All origins are secret; the principle of every +individual or collective life is a mystery--that is to say, something +irrational, inexplicable, not to be defined. We may even go farther +and say, Every individuality is an insoluble enigma, and no beginning +explains it. In fact, all that has _become_ may be explained +retrospectively, 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, it +simply appears among anterior things which make a _milieu_, an occasion, +a surrounding for it, but which are witnesses of its appearance without +understanding whence it comes. + +Perhaps also there are no true individuals, and, if so, no beginning but +one only, the primordial impulse, the first movement. All men on this +hypothesis would be but _man_ in two sexes; man again might be reduced +to the animal, the animal to the plant, and the only individuality left +would be a living nature, reduced to a living matter, to the hylozoism +of Thales. However, even upon this hypothesis, if there were but one +absolute beginning, relative beginnings would still remain to us as +multiple symbols of the absolute. Every life, called individual for +convenience sake and by analogy, would represent in miniature the +history of the world, and would be to the eye of the philosopher a +microscopic 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 has +humanized it or some gifted personality has translated and embodied it. +Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated +by contagion. + +January 30, 1876.--After dinner I went two steps off, to Marc Monnier's, +to hear the "Luthier de Cremone," a one-act comedy in verse, read by the +author, Francois Coppee. + +It was a feast of fine sensations, of literary dainties. For the little +piece is a pearl. It is steeped in poetry, and every line is a fresh +pleasure to one's taste. + +This young _maestro_ is like the violin he writes about, vibrating and +passionate; he has, besides delicacy, point, grace, all that a writer +wants to make what is simple, naive, heartfelt, and out of the beaten +track, acceptable to a cultivated society. + +How to return to nature through art: there is the problem of all highly +composite literatures like our own. Rousseau himself attacked letters +with all the resources of the art of writing, and boasted the delights +of savage life with a skill and adroitness developed only by the most +advanced civilization. And it is indeed this marriage of contraries +which charms us; this spiced gentleness, this learned innocence, this +calculated simplicity, this yes and no, this foolish wisdom. It is the +supreme irony of such combinations which tickles the taste of advanced +and artificial epochs, epochs when men ask for two sensations at once, +like the contrary meanings fused by the smile of La Gioconda. And +our satisfaction, too, in work of this kind is best expressed by that +ambiguous curve of the lip which says: I feel your charm, but I am not +your dupe; I see the illusion both from within and from without; I yield +to you, but I understand you; I am complaisant, but I am proud; I am +open to sensations, yet not the slave of any; you have talent, I have +subtlety of perception; we are quits, and we understand each other. + +February 1, 1876.--This evening we talked of the infinitely great and +the infinitely small. The great things of the universe are for----so +much easier to understand than the small, because all greatness is a +multiple of herself, whereas she is incapable of analyzing what requires +a different sort of measurement. + +It is possible for the thinking being to place himself in all points of +view, and to teach his soul to live under the most different modes of +being. But it must be confessed that very few profit by the possibility. +Men are in general imprisoned, held in a vice by their circumstances +almost as the animals are, but they have very little suspicion of it +because they have so little faculty of self-judgment. It is only the +critic 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 intellect +allows itself to be tyrannized over or terrified by the categories to +which itself gives birth, it is in the wrong, for it is not allowed to +intellect--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 the +creator, the son not more than the father. The point of view wants +rectifying. The mind has to free itself from space, which gives it a +false notion of itself, but it can only attain this freedom by reversing +things and by learning to see space in the mind instead of the mind in +space. 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 thousand +millions of cube leagues, nor a hundred times more nor a hundred times +less. + +In the state of thought the universe occupies but a single point; but in +the state of dispersion and analysis this thought requires the heaven of +heavens for its expansion. + +In the same way, time and number are contained in the mind. Man, as +mind, is not their inferior, but their superior. + +It is true that before he can reach this state of freedom his own body +must appear to him at will either speck or world--that is to say, +he must be independent of it. So long as the self still feels itself +spatial, dispersed, corporeal, it is but a soul, it is not a mind; it +is conscious 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; the +mirror of an image, if it was an image, could not be a mirror. There can +be no echo without a noise. Consciousness means some one who experiences +something. And all the somethings together cannot take the place of the +some 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 "Etrangeres." +[Footnote: _Les Etrangeres: Poesies traduites de diverses litteratures_, +par H. F. Amiel, 1876.] Here at least is one thing off my hands. The +piece of prose theorizing which ends the volume pleased and satisfied +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 French verse-translation +considered as a special art. It is science applied to poetry. 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 that +I feel nothing at all, or at least my feeling is so vague and doubtful +that I cannot analyze it. On the whole, I am rather tempted to say to +myself, how much labor for how small a result--_Much ado about nothing!_ +And yet the work in itself is good, is successful. But what does +verse-translation matter? Already my interest in it is fading; my mind +and 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--a +Lilliputian affair. In comparing my work with other work of the same +kind, I find a sort of relative satisfaction; but I see the intrinsic +futility of it, and the insignificance of its success or failure. I do +not believe in the public; I do not believe in my own work; I have +no ambition, properly speaking, and I blow soap-bubbles for want of +something to do. + + "Car le neant peut seul bien cacher l'infini." + +Self-satire, disillusion, absence of prejudice, may be freedom, but they +are not strength. + +July 12, 1876.--Trouble on trouble. My cough has been worse than ever. +I cannot see that the fine weather or the holidays have made any change +for the better in my state of health. On the contrary, the process of +demolition seems more rapid. It is a painful experience, this premature +decay!... "_Apres tant de malheurs, que vous reste-t-il? Moi._" This +_"moi"_ is the central consciousness, the trunk of all the branches +which have been cut away, that which bears every successive mutilation. +Soon I shall have nothing else left than bare intellect. Death reduces +us to the mathematical "point;" the destruction which precedes it forces +us back, as it were, by a series of ever-narrowing concentric circles to +this last inaccessible refuge. Already I have a foretaste of that zero +in which all forms and all modes are extinguished. I see how we return +into the night, and inversely I understand how we issue from it. Life is +but 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. To +see one's self as a firework in the darkness--to become a witness of +one's own fugitive phenomenon--this is practical psychology. I prefer +indeed the spectacle of the world, which is a vaster and more splendid +firework; but when illness narrows my horizon and makes me dwell +perforce upon my own miseries, these miseries are still capable of +supplying food for my psychological curiosity. What interests me in +myself, in spite of my repulsions is, that I find in my own case a +genuine example of human nature, and therefore a specimen of general +value. The sample enables me to understand a multitude of similar +situations, and numbers of my fellow-men. + +To enter consciously into all possible modes of being would be +sufficient occupation for hundreds of centuries--at least for our finite +intelligences, which are conditioned by time. The progressive happiness +of the process, indeed may be easily poisoned and embittered by the +ambition which asks for everything at once, and clamors to reach +the absolute at a bound. But it may be answered that aspirations are +necessarily prophetic, for they could only have come into being under +the action of the same cause which will enable them to reach their goal. +The soul can only imagine the absolute because the absolute exists; our +consciousness of a possible perfection is the guarantee that perfection +will be realized. + +Thought itself is eternal. It is the consciousness of thought which +is gradually achieved through the long succession of ages, races, and +humanities. Such is the doctrine of Hegel. The history of the mind is, +according to him one of approximation to the absolute, and the absolute +differs 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 +of itself with the gradual unfolding of creation. Such also was the +conception of Aristotle. + +If the history of the mind and of consciousness is the very marrow and +essence of being, then to be driven back on psychology, even personal +psychology, is to be still occupied with the main question of things, to +keep to the subject, to feel one's self in the center of the universal +drama. There is comfort in the idea. Everything else may be taken away +from us, but if thought remains we are still connected by a magic thread +with the axis of the world. But we may lose thought and speech. Then +nothing remains but simple feeling, the sense of the presence of God +and of death in God--the last relic of the human privilege, which is to +participate in the whole, to commune with the absolute. + + "Ta vie est un eclair qui meurt dans son nuage, + Mais l'eclair t'a sauve s'il t'a fait voir le ciel." + +July 26, 1876.--A private journal is a friend to idleness. It frees us +from the necessity of looking all round a subject, it puts up with every +kind of repetition, it accompanies all the caprices and meanderings of +the inner life, and proposes to itself no definite end. This journal +of mine represents the material of a good many volumes: what prodigious +waste of time, of thought, of strength! It will be useful to nobody, and +even for myself--it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practice +it. A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or +wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country +and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and +withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of +everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all.... + +What is it which makes the history of a soul? It is the stratification +of its different stages of progress, the story of its acquisitions +and of the general course of its destiny. Before my history can teach +anybody anything, or even interest myself, it must be disentangled from +its materials, distilled and simplified. These thousands of pages are +but the pile of leaves and bark from which the essence has still to +be extracted. A whole forest of cinchonas are worth but one cask of +quinine. 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 end +be 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 read +them over myself. So--so what? I shall have lived my life, and life +consists in repeating the human type, and the burden of the human song, +as myriads of my kindred have done, are doing, and will do, century +after century. To rise to consciousness of this burden and this type is +something, and we can scarcely achieve anything further. The realization +of the type is more complete, and the burden a more joyous one, if +circumstances are kind and propitious, but whether the puppets have done +this or that-- + + "Trois p'tits tours et puis s'en vont!" + +everything falls into the same gulf at last, and comes to very much the +same thing. + +To rebel against fate--to try to escape the inevitable issue--is almost +puerile. When the duration of a centenarian and that of an insect are +quantities sensibly equivalent--and geology and astronomy enable us to +regard such durations from this point of view--what is the meaning of +all 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 these +make-believe tempests. The forty millions of infusoria which make up a +cube-inch of chalk--do they matter much to us? and do the forty millions +of men who make up France matter any more to an inhabitant of the moon +or Jupiter? + +To be a conscious monad--a nothing which knows itself to be the +microscopic phantom of the universe: this is all we can ever attain to. + +September 12, 1876.--What is your own particular absurdity? Why, +simply that you exhaust yourself in trying to understand wisdom without +practicing it, that you are always making preparations for nothing, that +you live without living. Contemplation which has not the courage to be +purely contemplative, renunciation which does not renounce completely, +chronic contradiction--there is your case. Inconsistent skepticism, +irresolution, not convinced but incorrigible, weakness which will not +accept itself and cannot transform itself into strength--there is your +misery. + +The comic side of it lies in capacity to direct others, becoming +incapacity to direct one's self, in the dream of the infinitely great +stopped short by the infinitely little, in what seems to be the utter +uselessness of talent. To arrive at immobility by excess of motion, at +zero from abundance of numbers, is a strange farce, a sad comedy; the +poorest gossip can laugh at its absurdity. + +September 19, 1876.--My reading to-day has been Doudan's "Lettres et +Melanges." [Footnote: Ximenes Doudan, born in 1800, died 1872, the +brilliant friend and tutor of the De Broglie family, whose conversation +was so much sought after in life, and whose letters have been so eagerly +read in France since his death. Compare M. Scherer's two articles +on Doudan's "Lettres" and "Pensees" in his last published volume +of essays.] A fascinating book! Wit, grace, subtlety, imagination, +thought--these letters possess them all. How much I regret that I never +knew the man himself. He was a Frenchman of the best type, _un delicat +ne sublime_, to quote Sainte-Beuve's expression. Fastidiousness of +temper, and a too keen love of perfection, led him to withhold his +talent from the public, but while still living, and within his own +circle, he was the recognized equal of the best. He scarcely lacked +anything except that fraction of ambition, of brutality and material +force which are necessary to success in this world; but he was +appreciated 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 the +bestowal on him of two pleasures, that of understanding one thing and +that of guessing another, and so achieving a double stroke. + +Thus Doudan scarcely ever speaks out his thought directly; he disguises +and suggests it by imagery, allusion, hyperbole; he overlays it +with light irony and feigned anger, with gentle mischief and assumed +humility. The more the thing to be guessed differs from the thing +said, the more pleasant surprise there is for the interlocutor or the +correspondent concerned. These charming and delicate ways of expression +allow a man to teach what he will without pedantry, and to venture what +he will without offense. There is something Attic and aerial in them; +they mingle grave and gay, fiction and truth, with a light grace of +touch such as neither La Fontaine nor Alcibiades would have been ashamed +of. Socratic _badinage_ like this presupposes a free and equal mind, +victorious over physical ill and inward discontents. Such delicate +playfulness is the exclusive heritage of those rare natures in whom +subtlety is the disguise of superiority, and taste its revelation. +"What balance of faculties and cultivation it requires! What personal +distinction it shows! Perhaps only a valetudinarian would have been +capable of this _morbidezza_ of touch, this marriage of virile thought +and feminine caprice. If there is excess anywhere, it lies perhaps in a +certain effeminacy of sentiment. Doudan can put up with nothing but +what is perfect--nothing but what is absolutely harmonious; all that +is rough, harsh, powerful, brutal, and unexpected, throws him into +convulsions. Audacity--boldness of all kinds--repels him. This Athenian +of the Roman time is a true disciple of Epicurus in all matters of +sight, hearing, and intelligence--a crumpled rose-leaf disturbs him. + + "Une ombre, un souffle, un rien, tout lui donnait la fievre." + +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 world +and the Renaissance--that is to say, the horizon of La Fontaine--is his +horizon. He is out of his element in the German or Slav literatures. He +knows 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 is +more or less exclusive. In philosophy he stops at Kant. To sum up: he +is a man of exquisite and ingenious taste, but he is not a first-rate +critic, still less a poet, philosopher, or artist. He was an admirable +talker, a delightful letter writer, who might have become an author had +he chosen to concentrate himself. I must wait for the second volume in +order to review and correct this preliminary impression. + +Midday.--I have now gone once more through the whole volume, lingering +over the Attic charm of it, and meditating on the originality and +distinction of the man's organization. Doudan was a keen penetrating +psychologist, a diviner of aptitudes, a trainer of minds, a man of +infinite taste and talent, capable of every _nuance_ and of every +delicacy; but his defect was a want of persevering energy of thought, +a lack of patience in execution. Timidity, unworldliness, indolence, +indifference, confined him to the role of the literary counsellor and +made him judge of the field in which he ought rather to have fought. But +do I mean to blame him?--no indeed! In the first place, it would be to +fire 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 famous +men we find men who never achieve fame, and yet were esteemed by those +who did, as their equals or superiors? Descartes, I think, said the same +thing. Fame will not run after the men who are afraid of her. She makes +mock of those trembling and respectful lovers who deserve but cannot +force her favors. The public is won by the bold, imperious talents--by +the enterprising and the skillful. It does not believe in modesty, which +it regards as a device of impotence. The golden book contains but a +section of the true geniuses; it names those only who have taken glory +by storm. + +November 15, 1876.--I have been reading "L'Avenir Religieux des Peuples +Civilises," by Emile de Laveleye. The theory of this writer is that the +gospel, in its pure form, is capable of providing the religion of the +future, and that the abolition of all religious principle, which is what +the socialism of the present moment demands, is as much to be feared as +Catholic superstition. The Protestant method, according to him, is the +means of transition whereby sacerdotal Christianity passes into the pure +religion of the gospel. Laveleye does not think that civilization can +last without the belief in God and in another life. Perhaps he forgets +that Japan and China prove the contrary. But it is enough to determine +him against atheism if it can be shown that a general atheism would +bring about a lowering of the moral average. After all, however, this is +nothing but a religion of utilitarianism. A belief is not true because +it is useful. And it is truth alone--scientific, established, proved, +and rational truth--which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened +minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, "faith governs the +world"--but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or +in the priest--it is in reason and in science. Is there a science of +goodness and happiness?--that is the question. Do justice and goodness +depend 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 +law of irony. Every epoch has two contradictory aspirations which are +logically antagonistic and practically associated. Thus the philosophic +materialism of the last century was the champion of liberty. And at the +present moment we find Darwinians in love with equality, while Darwinism +itself is based on the right of the stronger. Absurdity is interwoven +with life: real beings are animated contradictions, absurdities brought +into action. Harmony with self would mean peace, repose, and perhaps +immobility By far the greater number of human beings can only conceive +action, or practice it, under the form of war--a war of competition at +home, a bloody war of nations abroad, and finally war with self. So that +life is a perpetual combat; it wills that which it wills not, and wills +not 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 the +absurd. + +Is such a result inevitable? I think not. Struggle is the caricature of +harmony, and harmony, which is the association of contraries, is also a +principle of movement. War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; +it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement +of the conquered. Mutual respect would be a better way out of +difficulties. Conflict is the result of the selfishness which will +acknowledge no other limit than that of external force. The laws of +animality govern almost the whole of history. The history of man is +essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then +only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, +enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with +difficulty through the highly-organized brute. The divine aureole plays +only with a dim and fugitive light around the brows of the world's +governing race. + +The Christian nations offer many illustrations of the law of irony. +They profess the citizenship of heaven, the exclusive worship of eternal +good; and never has the hungry pursuit of perishable joys, the love of +this world, or the thirst for conquest, been stronger or more active +than among these nations. Their official motto is exactly the reverse of +their real aspiration. Under a false flag they play the smuggler with a +droll ease of conscience. Is the fraud a conscious one? No--it is but an +application of the law of irony. The deception is so common a one that +the delinquent becomes unconscious of it. Every nation gives itself the +lie in the course of its daily life, and not one feels the ridicule +of its position. A man must be a Japanese to perceive the burlesque +contradictions of the Christian civilization. He must be a native of +the moon to understand the stupidity of man and his state of constant +delusion. The philosopher himself falls under the law of irony, for +after having mentally stripped himself of all prejudice--having, that is +to say, wholly laid aside his own personality, he finds himself slipping +back 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, after +having for a moment behaved like no other. This is the point where +the comic poets are lying in wait for him; the animal needs revenge +themselves 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, "Le +fiance de Mademoiselle de St. Maur." It is a jeweled mosaic of precious +stones, sparkling with a thousand lights. But the heart gets little +from it. The Mephistophelian type of novel leaves one sad. This subtle, +refined world is strangely near to corruption; these artificial women +have an air of the Lower Empire. There is not a character who is not +witty, and neither is there one who has not bartered conscience for +cleverness. The elegance of the whole is but a mask of immorality. +These stories of feeling in which there is no feeling make a strange and +painful impression upon me. + +December 4, 1876.--I have been thinking a great deal of Victor +Cherbuliez. Perhaps his novels make up the most disputable part of his +work--they are so much wanting in simplicity, feeling, reality. And yet +what knowledge, style, wit, and subtlety--how much thought everywhere, +and what mastery of language! He astonishes one; I cannot but admire +him. + +Cherbuliez's mind is of immense range, clear-sighted, keen, full of +resource; he is an Alexandrian exquisite, substituting for the feeling +which makes men earnest the irony which leaves them free. Pascal would +say of him--"He has never risen from the order of thought to the order +of charity." But we must not be ungrateful. A Lucian is not worth an +Augustine, but still he is Lucian. Those who enfranchise the mind +render service to man as well as those who persuade the heart. After the +leaders come the liberators, and the negative and critical minds have +their place and function beside the men of affirmation, the convinced +and inspired souls. The positive element in Victor Cherbuliez's work is +beauty, not goodness, not moral or religious life. Aesthetically he +is serious; what he respects is style. And therefore he has found +his vocation; for he is first and foremost a writer--a consummate, +exquisite, and model writer. He does not win our love, but he claims our +homage. + +In every union there is a mystery--a certain invisible bond which must +not be disturbed. This vital bond in the filial relation is respect; +in friendship, esteem; in marriage, confidence; in the collective life, +patriotism; in the religious life, faith. Such points are best left +untouched by speech, for to touch them is almost to profane them. + + * * * * * + +Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are +but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed +for the modification of the ideas supplied by genius. Stupidity is +dynamically the necessary balance of intellect. To make an atmosphere +which human life can breathe, oxygen must be combined with a great +deal--with three-fourths--of azote. And so, to make history, there must +be a great deal of resistance to conquer and of weight to drag. + +January 5, 1877.--This morning I am altogether miserable, half-stifled +by bronchitis--walking a difficulty--the brain weak--this last the worst +misery of all, for thought is my only weapon against my other ills. +Rapid deterioration of all the bodily powers, a dull continuous waste of +vital organs, brain decay: this is the trial laid upon me, a trial that +no one suspects! Men pity you for growing old outwardly; but what does +that matter?--nothing, so long as the faculties are intact. This boon of +mental soundness to the last has been granted to so many students that +I hoped for it a little. Alas, must I sacrifice that too? Sacrifice is +almost easy when we believe it laid upon us, asked of us, rather, by +a fatherly God and a watchful Providence; but I know nothing of this +religious joy. The mutilation of the self which is going on in me lowers +and lessens me without doing good to anybody. Supposing I became blind, +who would be the gainer? Only one motive remains to me--that of manly +resignation to the inevitable--the wish to set an example to others--the +stoic view of morals pure and simple. + +This moral education of the individual soul--is it then wasted? When our +planet has accomplished the cycle of its destinies, of what use will +it have been to any one or anything in the universe? Well, it will have +sounded its note in the symphony of creation. And for us, individual +atoms, seeing monads, we appropriate a momentary consciousness of the +whole 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. If +we are a laboratory of the universal mind, may that mind at least profit +and grow by us! If we realize the supreme will, may God have the joy +of it! If the trustful humility of the soul rejoices him more than the +greatness of intellect, let us enter into his plan, his intention. +This, in theological language, is to live to the glory of God. Religion +consists 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 the +inevitable? And is not destiny the anonymous title of him or of that +which the religions call God? To descend without murmuring the stream of +destiny, to pass without revolt through loss after loss, and diminution +after diminution, with no other limit than zero before us--this is +what is demanded of us. Involution is as natural as evolution. We sink +gradually back into the darkness, just as we issued gradually from it. +The play of faculties and organs, the grandiose apparatus of life, is +put back bit by bit into the box. We begin by instinct; at the end comes +a clearness of vision which we must learn to bear with and to employ +without murmuring upon our own failure and decay. A musical theme once +exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence. + +February 6, 1877.--I spent the evening with the ----, and we talked +of the anarchy of ideas, of the general want of culture, of what it is +which keeps the world going, and of the assured march of science in the +midst of universal passion and superstition. + +What is rarest in the world is fair-mindedness, method, the critical +view, the sense of proportion, the capacity for distinguishing. The +common state of human thought is one of confusion, incoherence, and +presumption, and the common state of human hearts is a state of +passion, in which equity, impartiality, and openness to impressions are +unattainable. Men's wills are always in advance of their intelligence, +their desires ahead of their will, and accident the source of their +desires; so that they express merely fortuitous opinions which are not +worth the trouble of taking seriously, and which have no other account +to give of themselves than this childish one: I am, because I am. The +art of finding truth is very little practiced; it scarcely exists, +because there is no personal humility, nor even any love of truth among +us. We are covetous enough of such knowledge as may furnish weapons to +our hand or tongue, as may serve our vanity or gratify our craving +for power; but self-knowledge, the criticism of our own appetites and +prejudices, is unwelcome and disagreeable to us. + +Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to +satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels +against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the +idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him +disturbance 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 their +situation 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 of +yesterday, an experience in which the sweets of friendship, the charm +of mutual understanding, aesthetic pleasure, and a general sense of +comfort, were happily combined and intermingled. There was not a crease +in 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 there +gathered together. "The incorruptibility of a gentle and quiet spirit," +innocent mirth, faithfulness to duty, fine taste and sympathetic +imagination, form an attractive and wholesome _milieu_ in which the soul +may rest. + +The party--which celebrated the last day of vacation--gave much +pleasure, and not to me only. Is not making others happy the best +happiness? To illuminate for an instant the depths of a deep soul, to +cheer those who bear by sympathy the burdens of so many sorrow-laden +hearts and suffering lives, is to me a blessing and a precious +privilege. There is a sort of religious joy in helping to renew the +strength and courage of noble minds. We are surprised to find ourselves +the possessors of a power of which we are not worthy, and we long to +exercise it purely and seriously. + +I feel most strongly that man, in all that he does or can do which is +beautiful, great, or good is but the organ and the vehicle of something +or some one higher than himself. This feeling is religion. The religious +man takes part with a tremor of sacred joy in these phenomena of which +he is the intermediary but not the source, of which he is the scene, but +not the author, or rather, the poet. He lends them voice, and will, +and help, but he is respectfully careful to efface himself, that he may +alter as little as possible the higher work of the genius who is making +a momentary use of him. A pure emotion deprives him of personality and +annihilates the self in him. Self must perforce disappear when it is +the Holy Spirit who speaks, when it is God who acts. This is the mood in +which the prophet hears the call, the young mother feels the movement +of the child within, the preacher watches the tears of his audience. +So long as we are conscious of self we are limited, selfish, held +in bondage; when we are in harmony with the universal order, when +we vibrate in unison with God, self disappears. Thus, in a perfectly +harmonious choir, the individual cannot hear himself unless he makes +a false note. The religious state is one of deep enthusiasm, of moved +contemplation, of tranquil ecstasy. But how rare a state it is for us +poor creatures harassed by duty, by necessity, by the wicked world, by +sin, by illness! It is the state which produces inward happiness; but +alas! the foundation of existence, the common texture of our days, is +made up of action, effort, struggle, and therefore dissonance. Perpetual +conflict, interrupted by short and threatened truces--there is a true +picture of our human condition. + +Let us hail, then, as an echo from heaven, as the foretaste of a more +blessed economy, these brief moments of perfect harmony, these halts +between two storms. Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only +as the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident. "Happy are the +peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." + +April 26, 1877.--I have been turning over again the "Paris" of Victor +Hugo (1867). For ten years event after event has given the lie to the +prophet, but the confidence of the prophet in his own imaginings is not +therefore a whit diminished. Humility and common sense are only fit for +Lilliputians. Victor Hugo superbly ignores everything that he has not +foreseen. He does not see that pride is a limitation of the mind, and +that a pride without limitations is a littleness of soul. If he could +but learn to compare himself with other men, and France with other +nations, he would see things more truly, and would not fall into these +mad exaggerations, these extravagant judgments. But proportion and +fairness will never be among the strings at his command. He is vowed +to the Titanic; his gold is always mixed with lead, his insight with +childishness, his reason with madness. He cannot be simple; the only +light he has to give blinds you like that of a fire. He astonishes a +reader and provokes him, he moves him and annoys him. There is always +some falsity of note in him, which accounts for the _malaise_ he so +constantly excites in me. The great poet in him cannot shake off the +charlatan. + +A few shafts of Voltairean irony would have shriveled the inflation +of his genius and made it stronger by making it saner. It is a public +misfortune that the most powerful poet of a nation should not have +better understood his role, and that, unlike those Hebrew prophets +who scourged because they loved, he should devote himself proudly and +systematically 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 one +in which the good is not counterbalanced by evil. Each is a caricature +of man, a proof that no one among them deserves to crush the others, and +that all have something to learn from all. I am alternately struck with +the qualities and with the defects of each, which is perhaps lucky for +a critic. I am conscious of no preference for the defects of north or +south, of west or east; and I should find a difficulty in stating my own +predilections. Indeed I myself am wholly indifferent in the matter, +for to me the question is not one of liking or of blaming, but of +understanding. My point of view is philosophical--that is to +say, impartial and impersonal. The only type which pleases me is +perfection--_man_, in short, the ideal man. As for the national man, I +bear with and study him, but I have no admiration for him. I can only +admire the fine specimens of the race, the great men, the geniuses, the +lofty characters and noble souls, and specimens of these are to be found +in all the ethnographical divisions. The "country of my choice" (to +quote Madame de Stael) is with the chosen souls. I feel no greater +inclination toward the French, the Germans, the Swiss, the English, +the Poles, the Italians, than toward the Brazilians or the Chinese. The +illusions of patriotism, of Chauvinist, family, or professional feeling, +do not exist for me. My tendency, on the contrary, is to feel with +increased force the lacunas, deformities, and imperfections of the +group to which I belong. My inclination is to see things as they are, +abstracting my own individuality, and suppressing all personal will and +desire; so that I feel antipathy, not toward this or that, but toward +error, prejudice, stupidity, exclusiveness, exaggeration. I love +only justice and fairness. Anger and annoyance are with me merely +superficial; the fundamental tendency is toward impartiality and +detachment. Inward liberty and aspiration toward the true--these are +what I care for and take pleasure in. + +June 4, 1877.--I have just heard the "Romeo and Juliet" of Hector +Berlioz. The work is entitled "Dramatic symphony for orchestra, with +choruses." The execution was extremely good. The work is interesting, +careful, curious, and suggestive, but it leaves one cold. When I come to +reason out my impression I explain it in this way. To subordinate man +to things--to annex the human voice, as a mere supplement, to the +orchestra--is false in idea. To make simple narrative out of dramatic +material, is a derogation, a piece of levity. A Romeo and Juliet in +which there is no Romeo and no Juliet is an absurdity. To substitute +the inferior, the obscure, the vague, for the higher and the clear, is +a challenge to common sense. It is a violation of that natural hierarchy +of things which is never violated with impunity. The musician has put +together a series of symphonic pictures, without any inner connection, +a string of riddles, to which a prose text alone supplies meaning and +unity. The only intelligible voice which is allowed to appear in the +work is that of Friar Laurence: his sermon could not be expressed in +chords, and is therefore plainly sung. But the moral of a play is not +the play, and the play itself has been elbowed out by recitative. + +The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is +beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new. False originality, +false grandeur, false genius! This labored art is wholly antipathetic to +me. 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 when +he 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 to +me neither fruitful nor wholesome; there is no true and solid beauty in +it. + +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 the +omissions in him. He has neither butterfly nor rose. He utilizes neither +the crane, nor the quail, nor the dromedary, nor the lizard. There is +not a single echo of chivalry in him. For him, the history of France +dates from Louis XIV. His geography only ranges, in reality, over a few +square miles, and touches neither the Rhine nor the Loire, neither the +mountains nor the sea. He never invents his subjects, but indolently +takes them ready-made from elsewhere. But with all this what an adorable +writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a humorist, what a +story-teller! I am never tired of reading him, though I know half his +fables by heart. In the matter of vocabulary, turns, tones, phrases, +idioms, his style is perhaps the richest of the great period, for it +combines, in the most skillful way, archaism and classic finish, the +Gallic 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 the +happiness of the epithets, the piquancy of the sayings, the felicity +of his rapid sketches and unforeseen audacities, and the unforgettable +sharpness of phrase! His defects are eclipsed by his immense variety of +different aptitudes. + +One has only to compare his "Woodcutter and Death" with that of Boileau +in order to estimate the enormous difference between the artist and the +critic who found fault with his work. La Fontaine gives you a picture of +the poor peasant under the monarchy; Boileau shows you nothing but a man +perspiring under a heavy load. The first is a historical witness, +the second a mere academic rhymer. From La Fontaine it is possible to +reconstruct the whole society of his epoch, and the old Champenois with +his beasts remains the only Homer France has ever possessed. He has as +many portraits of men and women as La Bruyere, and Moliere is not more +humorous. + +His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. This, no +doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. The religious note is absent +from his lyre; there is nothing in him which shows any contact with +Christianity, any knowledge of the sublimer tragedies of the soul. Kind +nature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and Montaigne his gospel. In +other words, his horizon is that of the Renaissance. This pagan island +in the full Catholic stream is very curious; the paganism of it is +so perfectly sincere and naive. But indeed, Reblais, Moliere, Saint +Evremond, are much more pagan than Voltaire. It is as though, for the +genuine Frenchman, Christianity was a mere pose or costume--something +which has nothing to do with the heart, with the real man, or his +deeper nature. This division of things is common in Italy too. It is the +natural effect of political religions: the priest becomes separated from +the layman, the believer from the man, worship from sincerity. + +July 18, 1877.--I have just come across a character in a novel with +a passion for synonyms, and I said to myself: Take care--that is your +weakness too. In your search for close and delicate expression, you run +through the whole gamut of synonyms, and your pen works too often in +series of three. Beware! Avoid mannerisms and tricks; they are signs +of weakness. Subject and occasion only must govern the use of words. +Procedure by single epithet gives strength; the doubling of a word gives +clearness, because it supplies the two extremities of the series; the +trebling of it gives completeness by suggesting at once the beginning, +middle, and end of the idea; while a quadruple phrase may enrich by +force of enumeration. + +Indecision being my principal defect, I am fond of a plurality of +phrases 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 would +be well to practice one's self in the use of the single word--of the +shaft delivered promptly and once for all. I should have indeed to cure +myself of hesitation first. I see too many ways of saying things; a more +decided mind hits on the right way at once. Singleness of phrase implies +courage, self-confidence, clear-sightedness. To attain it there must be +no 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 a +character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and +scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different +shades 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 +any definite end. Conversation with self is a gradual process of +thought-clearing. Hence all these synonyms, these waverings, these +repetitions and returns upon one's self. Affirmation maybe brief; +inquiry takes time; and the line which thought follows is necessarily an +irregular one. + +I am conscious indeed that at bottom there is but one right expression; +[Footnote: Compare La Bruyere: + +"Entre toutes les differentes expressions qui peuvent rendre une seule +de nos pensees il n'y en a qu'une qui soit la bonne; on ne la rencontre +pas toujours en parlant ou en ecrivant: il est vray neanmoins qu'elle +existe, que tout ce qui ne l'est point est foible, et ne satisfait point +un homme d'esprit qui veut se faire entendre."] but in order to find +it I wish to make my choice among all that are like it; and my mind +instinctively goes through a series of verbal modulations in search of +that shade which may most accurately render the idea. Or sometimes it is +the idea itself which has to be turned over and over, that I may know +it and apprehend it better. I think, pen in hand; it is like the +disentanglement, the winding-off of a skein. Evidently the corresponding +form of style cannot have the qualities which belong to thought which is +already 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 provoke +reflection; that of the book is to demonstrate. + +July 21, 1877.--A superb night--a starry sky--Jupiter and Phoebe holding +converse before my windows. Grandiose effects of light and shade over +the courtyard. A sonata rose from the black gulf of shadow like a +repentant prayer wafted from purgatory. The picturesque was lost in +poetry, and admiration in feeling. + +July 30, 1877.-- ... makes a very true remark about Renan, _a propos_ of +the volume of "Les Evangiles." He brings out the contradiction between +the literary taste of the artist, which is delicate, individual, and +true, and the opinions of the critic, which are borrowed, old-fashioned +and wavering. This hesitancy of choice between the beautiful and the +true, between poetry and prose, between art and learning, is, in fact, +characteristic. Renan has a keen love for science, but he has a still +keener love for good writing, and, if necessary, he will sacrifice the +exact phrase to the beautiful phrase. Science is his material rather +than his object; his object is style. A fine passage is ten times more +precious in his eyes than the discovery of a fact or the rectification +of a date. And on this point I am very much with him, for a beautiful +piece of writing is beautiful by virtue of a kind of truth which is +truer than any mere record of authentic facts. Rousseau also thought the +same. A chronicler may be able to correct Tacitus, but Tacitus survives +all the chroniclers. I know well that the aesthetic temptation is the +French temptation; I have often bewailed it, and yet, if I desired +anything, it would be to be a writer, a great writer. Te leave a +monument behind, _aere perennius_, an imperishable work which might +stir the thoughts, the feelings, the dreams of men, generation after +generation--this is the only glory which I could wish for, if I were +not weaned even from this wish also. A book would be my ambition, if +ambition were not vanity and vanity of vanities. + +August 11, 1877.--The growing triumph of Darwinism--that is to say +of materialism, or of force--threatens the conception of justice. But +justice will have its turn. The higher human law cannot be the offspring +of animality. Justice is the right to the maximum of individual +independence compatible with the same liberty for others; in other +words, 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 of +which is to increase the sum of happiness, and to satisfy the aspiration +of the individual. That some should make use of others for their own +purposes is an injury to justice. The right of the stronger is not a +right, but a simple fact, which obtains only so long as there is +neither protest nor resistance. It is like cold, darkness, weight, which +tyrannize over man until he has invented artificial warmth, artificial +light, and machinery. Human industry is throughout an emancipation from +brute nature, and the advances made by justice are in the same way a +series of rebuffs inflicted upon the tyranny of the stronger. As the +medical art consists in the conquest of disease, so goodness consists in +the conquest of the blind ferocities and untamed appetites of the human +animal. I see the same law throughout--increasing emancipation of +the individual, 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 a +performance in chorus of "Lorelei" and other popular airs. What in our +country is only done for worship is done also in Germany for poetry and +music. Voices blend together; art shares the privilege of religion. It +is 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 a +welcome balance to certain clumsy and prosaic elements in the race. + +_Later_.--Perhaps the craving for independence of thought--the tendency +to go back to first principles--is really proper to the Germanic mind +only. The Slavs and the Latins are governed rather by the collective +wisdom of the community, by tradition, usage, prejudice, fashion; or, +if they break through these, they are like slaves in revolt, without any +real living apprehension of the law inherent in things--the true law, +which is neither written, nor arbitrary, nor imposed. The German wishes +to get at nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian, stop at +conventions. The root of the problem is in the question of the relations +between God and the world. Immanence or transcendence--that, step by +step, decides the meaning of everything else. If the mind is radically +external to things, it is not called upon to conform to them. If the +mind is destitute of native truth, it must get its truth from outside, +by revelations. And so you get thought despising nature, and in bondage +to the church--so you have the Latin world! + +November 6, 1877. (_Geneva_).--We talk of love many years before we know +anything about it, and we think we know it because we talk of it, or +because we repeat what other people say of it, or what books tell us +about it. So that there are ignorances of different degrees, and degrees +of knowledge which are quite deceptive. One of the worst plagues of +society is this thoughtless inexhaustible verbosity, this careless +use of words, this pretense of knowing a thing because we talk about +it--these counterfeits of belief, thought, love, or earnestness, which +all the while are mere babble. The worst of it is, that as self-love +is behind the babble, these ignorances of society are in general +ferociously affirmative; chatter mistakes itself for opinion, prejudice +poses as principle. Parrots behave as though they were thinking beings; +imitations give themselves out as originals; and politeness demands the +acceptance of the convention. It is very wearisome. + +Language is the vehicle of this confusion, the instrument of this +unconscious fraud, and all evils of the kind are enormously increased +by universal education, by the periodical press, and by all the other +processes of vulgarization in use at the present time. Every one deals +in paper money; few have ever handled gold. We live on symbols, and even +on the symbols of symbols; we have never grasped or verified things for +ourselves; 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 true +self in the majority is lost in the borrowed self. How few are anything +else than a bundle of inclinations--anything more than animals--whose +language and whose gait alone recall to us the highest rank in nature! + +The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and +nothing 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, people +the islands and the continents, the country and the town. If we wish to +respect men we must forget what they are, and think of the ideal which +they carry hidden within them, of the just man and the noble, the man of +intelligence and goodness, inspiration and creative force, who is loyal +and true, faithful and trustworthy, of the higher man, in short, and +that divine thing we call a soul. The only men who deserve the name +are the heroes, the geniuses, the saints, the harmonious, puissant, and +perfect samples of the race. + +Very few individuals deserve to be listened to, but all deserve that our +curiosity with regard to them should be a pitiful curiosity--that the +insight we bring to bear on them should be charged with humility. Are we +not all shipwrecked, diseased, condemned to death? Let each work out his +own salvation, and blame no one but himself; so the lot of all will +be bettered. Whatever impatience we may feel toward our neighbor, and +whatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to +another, and, companions in labor and misfortune, have everything to +lose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each +other's weakness, helpful, tolerant, nay, tender toward each other! Or, +if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity! May we put away +from us the satire which scourges and the anger which brands; the oil +and wine of the good Samaritan are of more avail. We may make the ideal +a reason for contempt; but it is more beautiful to make it a reason for +tenderness. + +December 9, 1877.--The modern haunters of Parnassus [Footnote: Amiel's +expression is _Les Parnassieus_, an old name revived, which nowadays +describes the younger school of French poetry represented by such +names as Theophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Theodore de Bauville, and +Baudelaire. The modern use of the word dates from the publication of +"La Parnasse Contemporain" (Lemerre, 1866).] carve urns of agate and +of onyx, but inside the urns what is there?--ashes. Their work lacks +feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos--in a word, soul and +moral life. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a way of +understanding poetry. The talent shown is astonishing, but stuff and +matter are wanting. It is an effort of the imagination to stand alone--a +substitute for everything else. We find metaphors, rhymes, music, color, +but not man, not humanity. Poetry of this factitious kind may beguile +one at twenty, but what can one make of it at fifty? It reminds me of +Pergamos, of Alexandria, of all the epochs of decadence when beauty of +form hid poverty of thought and exhaustion of feeling. I strongly share +the repugnance which this poetical school arouses in simple people. It +is as though it only cared to please the world-worn, the over-subtle, +the corrupted, while it ignores all normal healthy life, virtuous +habits, pure affections, steady labor, honesty, and duty. It is an +affectation, and because it is an affectation the school is struck +with sterility. The reader desires in the poet something better than +a juggler in rhyme, or a conjurer in verse; he looks to find in him a +painter of life, a being who thinks, loves, and has a conscience, who +feels passion and repentance. + + * * * * * + +Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together +complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary +qualities of style. + +So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as +in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something +living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes +a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and +spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm. + +The true critic strives for a clear vision of things as they are--for +justice and fairness; his effort is to get free from himself, so that he +may in no way disfigure that which he wishes to understand or reproduce. +His superiority to the common herd lies in this effort, even when its +success is only partial. He distrusts his own senses, he sifts his +own impressions, by returning upon them from different sides and at +different times, by comparing, moderating, shading, distinguishing, and +so endeavoring to approach more and more nearly to the formula which +represents the maximum of truth. + + * * * * * + +Is it not the sad natures who are most tolerant of gayety? They know +that gayety means impulse and vigor, that generally speaking it is +disguised kindliness, and that if it were a mere affair of temperament +and mood, still it is a blessing. + + * * * * * + +The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the +greatest elevation both in artist and in public. + +How much folly is compatible with ultimate wisdom and prudence? It is +difficult to say. The cleverest folk are those who discover soonest how +to utilize their neighbor's experience, and so get rid in good time of +their natural presumption. + +We must try to grasp the spirit of things, to see correctly, to speak to +the point, to give practicable advice, to act on the spot, to arrive at +the proper moment, to stop in time. Tact, measure, occasion--all these +deserve our cultivation and respect. + + * * * * * + +April 22, 1878.--Letter from my cousin Julia. These kind old relations +find it very difficult to understand a man's life, especially a +student's life. The hermits of reverie are scared by the busy world, and +feel themselves out of place in action. But after all, we do not change +at seventy, and a good, pious old lady, half-blind and living in a +village, can no longer extend her point of view, nor form any idea of +existences which have no relation with her own. + +What is the link by which these souls, shut in and encompassed as they +are by the details of daily life, lay hold on the ideal? The link of +religious aspiration. Faith is the plank which saves them. They know +the meaning of the higher life; their soul is athirst for heaven. Their +opinions are defective, but their moral experience is great; their +intellect is full of darkness but their souls is full of light. We +scarcely know how to talk to them about the things of earth, but +they are ripe and mature in the things of the heart. If they cannot +understand us, it is for us to make advances to them, to speak their +language, to enter into their range of ideas, their modes of feeling. We +must approach them on their noble side, and, that we may show them +the more respect, induce them to open to us the casket of their most +treasured thoughts. There is always some grain of gold at the bottom +of every honorable old age. Let it be our business to give it an +opportunity of showing itself to affectionate eyes. + +May 10, 1878.--I have just come back from a solitary walk. I heard +nightingales, saw white lilac and orchard trees in bloom. My heart is +full of impressions showered upon it by the chaffinches, the golden +orioles, the grasshoppers, the hawthorns, and the primroses. A dull, +gray, fleecy sky brooded with a certain melancholy over the nuptial +splendors of vegetation. Many painful memories stirred afresh in me; +at Pre l'Eveque, at Jargonnant, at Villereuse, a score of +phantoms--phantoms of youth--rose with sad eyes to greet me. The walls +had changed, and roads which were once shady and dreamy I found now +waste and treeless. But at the first trills of the nightingale a flood +of tender feeling filled my heart. I felt myself soothed, grateful, +melted; a mood of serenity and contemplation took possession of me. A +certain 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 the +bloom of feeling. I had need of it. + +May 19, 1878.--Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter +of tact and _flair_; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. +Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances +or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the +errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss +or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing +deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail. It is +the talent of the _Juge d'Instruction_, who knows how to interrogate +circumstances, and to extract an unknown secret from a thousand +falsehoods. The true critic can understand everything, but he will be +the dupe of nothing, and to no convention will he sacrifice his duty, +which is to find out and proclaim truth. Competent learning, general +cultivation, absolute probity, accuracy of general view, human sympathy +and technical capacity--how many things are necessary to the critic, +without reckoning grace, delicacy, _savoir vivre_, and the gift of happy +phrase-making! + +July 26, 1878.--Every morning I wake up with the same sense of vain +struggle against a mountain tide which is about to overwhelm me. I shall +die by suffocation, and the suffocation has begun; the progress it has +already made stimulates it to go on. + +How can one make any plans when every day brings with it some fresh +misery? I cannot even decide on a line of action in a situation so full +of confusion and uncertainty in which I look forward to the worst, while +yet all is doubtful. Have I still a few years before me or only a +few months? Will death be slow or will it come upon me as a sudden +catastrophe? How am I to bear the days as they come? how am I to fill +them? How am I to die with calmness and dignity? I know not. Everything +I do for the first time I do badly; but here everything is new; there +can be no help from experience; the end must be a chance! How mortifying +for one who has set so great a price upon independence--to depend upon a +thousand unforeseen contingencies! He knows not how he will act or what +he will become; he would fain speak of these things with a friend of +good sense and good counsel--but who? He dares not alarm the affections +which are most his own, and he is almost sure that any others would try +to distract his attention, and would refuse to see the position as it +is. + +And while I wait (wait for what?--certainty?) the weeks flow by like +water, and strength wastes away like a smoking candle.... + +Is one free to let one's self drift into death without resistance? Is +self-preservation a duty? Do we owe it to those who love us to prolong +this desperate struggle to its utmost limit? I think so, but it is one +fetter the more. For we must then feign a hope which we do not feel, +and hide the absolute discouragement of which the heart is really full. +Well, why not? Those who succumb are bound in generosity not to cool the +ardor 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 every +direction the end is closing upon me. My own melancholy anticipates and +endorses the medical judgment which says, "Your journey is done." The +two 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 is +incredulous, and inclined to regard it all as a bad dream. In vain the +reason asserts it; the mind's inward assent is still refused. Another +contradiction! + +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, and +yet I cannot realize that I am dying. Is it madness already? No, it +is human nature taken in the act; it is life itself which is +a contradiction, for life means an incessant death and a daily +resurrection; it affirms and it denies, it destroys and constructs, it +gathers and scatters, it humbles and exalts at the same time. To live +is to die partially--to feel one's self in the heart of a whirlwind of +opposing forces--to be an enigma. + +If the invisible type molded by these two contradictory currents--if +this form which presides over all my changes of being--has itself +general and original value, what does it matter whether it carries on +the game a few months or years longer, or not? It has done what it had +to do, it has represented a certain unique combination, one particular +expression of the race. These types are shadows--_manes_. Century after +century employs itself in fashioning them. Glory--fame--is the proof +that one type has seemed to the other types newer, rarer, and more +beautiful than the rest. The common types are souls too, only they +have no interest except for the Creator, and for a small number of +individuals. + +To feel one's own fragility is well, but to be indifferent to it is +better. To take the measure of one's own misery is profitable, but to +understand its _raison d'etre_ is still more profitable. To mourn for +one's self is a last sign of vanity; we ought only to regret that which +has real values, and to regret one's self, is to furnish involuntary +evidence that one had attached importance to one's self. At the same +time it is a proof of ignorance of our true worth and function. It +is not necessary to live, but it is necessary to preserve one's type +unharmed, to remain faithful to one's idea, to protect one's monad +against 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 which +does not aim at being confounded with reality itself. Realism wishes +to entrap sensation; the object of true art is only to charm the +imagination, 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 the +other hand, a wax figure produces a sort of terror in us; its frozen +life-likeness makes a deathlike impression on us, and we say, "It is a +ghost!" In the one case we see what is lacking, and demand it; in the +other we see what is given us, and we give on our side. Art, then, +addresses itself to the imagination; everything that appeals to +sensation only is below art, almost outside art. A work of art ought to +set 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 the +artist leads the way. Mere copyist's painting, realistic reproduction, +pure imitation, leave us cold because their author is a machine, a +mirror, 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 +with the soul, because in it nature is only a reminiscence touched with +emotion, an image vibrating with our own life, a form without weight--in +short, a mode of the soul. The poetry which is most real and objective +is the expression of a soul which throws itself into things, and forgets +itself in their presence more readily than others; but still, it is the +expression of the soul, and hence what we call style. Style may be +only collective, hieratic, national, so long as the artist is still the +interpreter of the community; it tends to become personal in proportion +as society makes room for individuality and favors its expansion. + + * * * * * + +There is a way of killing truth by truths. Under the pretense that +we want to study it more in detail we pulverize the statue--it is an +absurdity of which our pedantry is constantly guilty. Those who can only +see the fragments of a thing are to me _esprits faux_, just as much as +those who disfigure the fragments. The good critic ought to be master +of the three capacities, the three modes of seeing men and things--he +should 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 and +subtle colors, which can be more easily felt than measured or defined. +Its very superiority consists in the complexity, the association of +contraries, the skillful combination it implies. The man of to-day, +fashioned by the historical and geographical influences of twenty +countries and of thirty centuries, trained and modified by all the +sciences and all the arts, the supple recipient of all literatures, is +an entirely new product. He finds affinities, relationships, analogies +everywhere, but at the same time he condenses and sums up what is +elsewhere scattered. He is like the smile of La Gioconda, which seems +to reveal a soul to the spectator only to leave him the more certainly +under a final impression of mystery, so many different things are +expressed in it at once. + + * * * * * + +To understand things we must have been once in them and then have come +out of them; so that first there must be captivity and then deliverance, +illusion followed by disillusion, enthusiasm by disappointment. He +who is still under the spell, and he who has never felt the spell, are +equally incompetent. We only know well what we have first believed, then +judged. 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, of +religion, 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 completeness +into the spirit of things and the intention of persons, and who arrives +at 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 and +germinates no more. + + * * * * * + +January 3, 1879.--Letter from----. This kind friend of mine has +no pity.... I have been trying to quiet his over-delicate +susceptibilities.... It is difficult to write perfectly easy letters +when one finds them studied with a magnifying glass, and treated like +monumental inscriptions, in which each character has been deliberately +engraved with a view to an eternity of life. Such disproportion between +the word and its commentary, between the playfulness of the writer and +the 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 attach +importance to everything; it is difficult to write open-heartedly if one +must 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 self +on the required level; _esprit_ is that just and accurate sense which +divines, appreciates, and weighs quickly, lightly, and well. The +mind must have its play, the Muse is winged--the Greeks knew it, and +Socrates. + +January 13, 1879.--It is impossible for me to remember what letters +I wrote yesterday. A single night digs a gulf between the self of +yesterday 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 form +of consciousness, seems to be letting go its hold on all that generally +peoples the understanding, as the glacier throws off the stones and +fragments fallen into its crevasses, that it may remain pure crystal. +The philosophic mind is both to overweight itself with too many material +facts or trivial memories. Thought clings only to thought--that is to +say, to itself, to the psychological process. The mind's only ambition +is for an enriched experience. It finds its pleasure in studying the +play of its own facilities, and the study passes easily into an aptitude +and habit. Reflection becomes nothing more than an apparatus for the +registration of the impressions, emotions, and ideas which pass across +the mind. The whole moulting process is carried on so energetically +that the mind is not only unclothed, but stripped of itself, and, so +to speak, _de-substantiated_. The wheel turns so quickly that it melts +around the mathematical axis, which alone remains cold because it is +impalpable, and has no thickness. All this is natural enough, but very +dangerous. + +So long as one is numbered among the living--so long, that is to say, as +one is still plunged in the world of men, a sharer of their interests, +conflicts, vanities, passions, and duties, one is bound to deny one's +self this subtle state of consciousness; one must consent to be a +separate individual, having one's special name, position, age, and +sphere of activity. In spite of all the temptations of impersonality, +one must resume the position of a being imprisoned within certain limits +of time and space, an individual with special surroundings, friends, +enemies, profession, country, bound to house and feed himself, to make +up his accounts and look after his affairs; in short, one must behave +like all the world. There are days when all these details seem to me a +dream--when I wonder at the desk under my hand, at my body itself--when +I ask myself if there is a street before my house, and if all this +geographical and topographical phantasmagoria is indeed real. Time and +space become then mere specks; I become a sharer in a purely spiritual +existence; I see myself _sub specie oeternitatis_. + +Is not mind simply that which enables us to merge finite reality in the +infinite possibility around it? Or, to put it differently, is not mind +the universal virtuality, the universe latent? If so, its zero would +be the germ of the infinite, which is expressed mathematically by the +double zero (00). + +Deduction: that the mind may experience the infinite in itself; that +in the human individual there arises sometimes the divine spark which +reveals to him the existence of the original, fundamental, principal +Being, within which all is contained like a series within its generating +formula. The universe is but a radiation of mind; and the radiations of +the Divine mind are for us more than appearances; they have a +reality parallel to our own. The radiations of our mind are imperfect +reflections from the great show of fireworks set in motion by Brahma, +and great art is great only because of its conformities with the Divine +order--with that which is. + +Ideal conceptions are the mind's anticipation of such an order. The +mind is capable of them because it is mind, and, as such, perceives +the Eternal. The real, on the contrary, is fragmentary and passing. Law +alone is eternal. The ideal is then the imperishable hope of something +better--the mind's involuntary protest against the present, the leaven +of the future working in it. It is the supernatural in us, or rather +the super-animal, and the ground of human progress. He who has no ideal +contents himself with what is; he has no quarrel with facts, which for +him 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. Its +flora and fauna are still changing. The evolution of humanity is nearer +its origin than its close. The complete spiritualization of the animal +element in nature seems to be singularly difficult, and it is the task +of our species. Its performance is hindered by error, evil, selfishness, +and death, without counting telluric catastrophes. The edifice of a +common happiness, a common science of morality and justice, is sketched, +but only sketched. A thousand retarding and perturbing causes hinder +this giant's task, in which nations, races, and continents take part. At +the present moment humanity is not yet constituted as a physical unity, +and its general education is not yet begun. All our attempts at order +as yet have been local crystallizations. Now, indeed, the different +possibilities are beginning to combine (union of posts and telegraphs, +universal exhibitions, voyages round the globes, international +congresses, etc.). Science and common interest are binding together +the great fractions of humanity, which religion and language have kept +apart. A year in which there has been talk of a network of African +railways, running from the coast to the center and bringing the +Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean into communication +with each other--such a year is enough to mark a new epoch. The +fantastic has become the conceivable, the possible tends to become the +real; the earth becomes the garden of man. Man's chief problem is how to +make 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 explore +in every direction at once; industry, science, art, law, education, +morals, religion, politics, and economical relations--all are in process +of birth. + +Thus everything may be brought back to zero by the mind, but it is a +fruitful zero--a zero which contains the universe and, in particular, +humanity. The mind has no more difficulty in tracking the real within +the innumerable than in apprehending infinite possibility. 00 may issue +from 0, or may return to it. + +January 19, 1879.--Charity--goodness--places a voluntary curb on +acuteness of perception; it screens and softens the rays of a too vivid +insight; it refuses to see too clearly the ugliness and misery of +the great intellectual hospital around it. True goodness is loth +to recognize any privilege in itself; it prefers to be humble and +charitable; it tries not to see what stares it in the face--that is to +say, the imperfections, infirmities, and errors of humankind; its pity +puts on airs of approval and encouragement. It triumphs over its own +repulsions that it may help and raise. + +It has often been remarked that Vinet praised weak things. If so, it +was not from any failure in his own critical sense; it was from charity. +"Quench not the smoking flax,"--to which I add, "Never give unnecessary +pain." The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw +yourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and more +ingenious; and it is what charity commands. + +Intellect is aristocratic, charity is democratic. In a democracy the +general equality of pretensions, combined with the inequality of merits, +creates considerable practical difficulty; some get out of it by making +their prudence a muzzle on their frankness; others, by using kindness +as a corrective of perspicacity. On the whole, kindness is safer than +reserve; it inflicts no wound, and kills nothing. + +Charity is generous; it runs a risk willingly, and in spite of a hundred +successive experiences, it thinks no evil at the hundred-and-first. +We cannot be at the same time kind and wary, nor can we serve two +masters--love and selfishness. We must be knowingly rash, that we may +not be like the clever ones of the world, who never forget their own +interests. We must be able to submit to being deceived; it is the +sacrifice which interest and self-love owe to conscience. The claims of +the 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 all +the grandeur there is in charity?" + +January 21, 1879.--At first religion holds the place of science and +philosophy; afterward she has to learn to confine herself to her own +domain--which is in the inmost depths of conscience, in the secret +recesses of the soul, where life communes with the Divine will and the +universal order. Piety is the daily renewing of the ideal, the steadying +of our inner being, agitated, troubled, and embittered by the common +accidents of existence. Prayer is the spiritual balm, the precious +cordial which restores to us peace and courage. It reminds us of +pardon and of duty. It says to us, "Thou art loved--love; thou hast +received--give; thou must die--labor while thou canst; overcome anger +by kindness; overcome evil with good. What does the blindness of opinion +matter, or misunderstanding, or ingratitude? Thou art neither bound to +follow the common example nor to succeed. _Fais ce que dois, advienne +que pourra_. Thou hast a witness in thy conscience; and thy conscience +is God speaking to thee!" + +March 3, 1879.--The sensible politician is governed by considerations +of social utility, the public good, the greatest attainable good; +the political windbag starts from the idea of the rights of the +individual--abstract rights, of which the extent is affirmed, not +demonstrated, for the political right of the individual is precisely +what is in question. The revolutionary school always forgets that right +apart from duty is a compass with one leg. The notion of right inflates +the individual fills him with thoughts of self and of what others owe +him, while it ignores the other side of the question, and extinguishes +his capacity for devoting himself to a common cause. The state becomes +a shop with self-interest for a principle--or rather an arena, in which +every combatant fights for his own hand only. In either case self is the +motive power. + +Church and state ought to provide two opposite careers for the +individual; in the state he should be called on to give proof of +merit--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 own +merits, 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 the +world; society, the state, made for him. I am chilled by its lack of +gratitude, of the spirit of deference, of the instinct of solidarity. It +is an ideal without beauty and without grandeur. + +But, as a consolation, the modern zeal for equality makes a counterpoise +for Darwinism, just as one wolf holds another wolf in check. Neither, +indeed, acknowledges the claim of duty. The fanatic for equality affirms +his right not to be eaten by his neighbor; the Darwinian states the fact +that the big devour the little, and adds--so much the better. Neither +the one nor the other has a word to say of love, of eternity, of +kindness, of piety, of voluntary submission, of self-surrender. + +All forces and all principles are brought into action at once in this +world. The result is, on the whole, good. But the struggle itself is +hateful because it dislocates truth and shows us nothing but error +pitted against error, party against party; that is to say, mere halves +and fragments of being--monsters against monsters. A nature in love with +beauty cannot reconcile itself to the sight; it longs for harmony, for +something else than perpetual dissonance. The common condition of human +society must indeed be accepted; tumult, hatred, fraud, crime, the +ferocity of self-interest, the tenacity of prejudice, are perennial; but +the philosopher sighs over it; his heart is not in it; his ambition is +to see human history from a height; his ear is set to catch the music of +the 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 Legouve. +These writers press wit, grace, gayety, and charm into the service of +goodness; their desire is to show that virtue is not so dull nor common +sense so tiresome as people believe. They are persuasive moralists, +captivating story-tellers; they rouse the appetite for good. This pretty +manner of theirs, however, has its dangers. A moral wrapped up in sugar +goes down certainly, but it may be feared that it only goes down because +of its sugar. The Sybarites of to-day will tolerate a sermon which is +delicate enough to flatter their literary sensuality; but it is their +taste which is charmed, not their conscience which is awakened; their +principle of conduct escapes untouched. + +Amusement, instruction, morals, are distinct _genres_. They may no doubt +be mingled and combined, but if we wish to obtain direct and simple +effects, we shall do best to keep them apart. The well-disposed child, +besides, does not like mixtures which have something of artifice and +deception in them. Duty claims obedience; study requires application; +for amusement, nothing is wanted but good temper. To convert obedience +and application into means of amusement is to weaken the will and the +intelligence. These efforts to make virtue the fashion are praiseworthy +enough, but if they do honor to the writers, on the other hand they +prove the moral anaemia of society. When the digestion is unspoiled, so +much 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; even +the distant voices of the city have something young and springlike in +them. It is indeed a new birth. The ascension of the Saviour of men is +symbolized by this expansion, this heavenward yearning of nature.... I +feel myself born again; all the windows of the soul are clear. Forms, +lines, tints, reflections, sounds, contrasts, and harmonies, the general +play and interchange of things--it is all enchanting! The atmosphere is +steeped in joy. May is in full beauty. + +In my courtyard the ivy is green again, the chestnut tree is full of +leaf, the Persian lilac beside the little fountain is flushed with red, +and just about to flower; through the wide openings to the right and +left of the old College of Calvin I see the Saleve above the trees +of St. Antoine, the Voiron above the hill of Cologny; while the three +flights of steps which, from landing to landing, lead between two high +walls from the Rue Verdaine to the terrace of the Tranchees, recall to +one's imagination some old city of the south, a glimpse of Perugia or of +Malaga. + +All the bells are ringing. It is the hour of worship. A historical and +religious impression mingles with the picturesque, the musical, the +poetical impressions of the scene. All the peoples of Christendom--all +the churches scattered over the globe--are celebrating at this moment +the glory of the Crucified. + +And what are those many nations doing who have other prophets, and honor +the 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 ideal +end for life--all aim at raising man above the sorrows and smallnesses +of the present, and of the individual existence. All have faith in +something greater than themselves, all pray, all bow, all adore; all see +beyond nature, Spirit, and beyond evil, Good. All bear witness to the +Invisible. Here we have the link which binds all peoples together. All +men are equally creatures of sorrow and desire, of hope and fear. All +long to recover some lost harmony with the great order of things, and to +feel themselves approved and blessed by the Author of the universe. All +know 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 of +the sinner with God, by means of the certainty that God loves in spite +of everything, and that he chastises because he loves. Christianity +furnished a new motive and a new strength for the achievement of moral +perfection. It made holiness attractive by giving to it the air of +filial gratitude. + +June 28, 1879.--Last lecture of the term and of the academic year. I +finished the exposition of modern philosophy, and wound up my course +with the precision I wished. The circle has returned upon itself. In +order to do this I have divided my hour into minutes, calculated my +material, and counted every stitch and point. This, however, is but +a very small part of the professorial science, It is a more difficult +matter to divide one's whole material into a given number of lectures, +to determine the right proportions of the different parts, and the +normal speed of delivery to be attained. The ordinary lecturer may +achieve a series of complete _seances_--the unity being the _seance_. +But a scientific course ought to aim at something more--at a general +unity of subject and of exposition. + +Has this concise, substantial, closely-reasoned kind of work been useful +to my class? I cannot tell. Have my students liked me this year? I +am not sure, but I hope so. It seems to me they have. Only, if I have +pleased them, it cannot have been in any case more than a _succes +d'estime_; I have never aimed at any oratorical success. My only object +is to light up for them a complicated and difficult subject. I respect +myself too much, and I respect my class too much, to attempt rhetoric. +My role 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 +with showing off the master; his business is one of serious study and +impersonal exposition. To yield anything on this point would seem to +me a piece of mean utilitarianism. I hate everything that savors of +cajoling and coaxing. All such ways are mere attempts to throw dust in +men's eyes, mere forms of coquetry and stratagem. A professor is the +priest of his subject; he should do the honors of it gravely and with +dignity. + +September 9, 1879.--"Non-being is perfect. Being, imperfect:" this +horrible sophism becomes beautiful only in the Platonic system, because +there 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 +so great a superiority to the Real, which, on its side, has the +incomparable advantage of existing. The Ideal kills enjoyment and +content by disparaging the present and actual. It is the voice which +says No, like Mephistopheles. No, you have not succeeded; no, your work +is not good; no, you are not happy; no, you shall not find rest--all +that you see and all that you do is insufficient, insignificant, +overdone, badly done, imperfect. The thirst for the ideal is like +the goad of Siva, which only quickens life to hasten death. Incurable +longing that it is, it lies at the root both of individual suffering +and of the progress of the race. It destroys happiness in the name of +dignity. + +The only positive good is order, the return therefore to order and to +a state of equilibrium. Thought without action is an evil, and so is +action without thought. The ideal is a poison unless it be fused with +the 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 evil +when it lessens strength; contemplation is fatal when it destroys +character. "Too much" and "too little" sin equally against wisdom. +Excess is one evil, apathy another. Duty may be defined as energy +tempered by moderation; happiness, as inclination calmed and tempered by +self-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 +think of one's self in this detached spirit. It only needs a little +self-knowledge, a little intuitive preception of the ideal, a little +religion. There is even much sweetness in this conception that we are +nothing of ourselves, and that yet it is granted to us to summon each +other 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 +his disciples languid and effeminate. The ideal pursued is the decisive +point; the stoical ideal is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an ideal +out of an interest. Two tendencies, two systems of morals, two worlds. +In the same way the Jansenists, and before them the great reformers, are +for predestination, the Jesuits for free-will--and yet the first founded +liberty, the second slavery of conscience. What matters then is not the +theoretical principle; it is the secret tendency, the aspiration, the +aim, which is the essential thing. + + * * * * * + +At every epoch there lies, beyond the domain of what man knows, the +domain of the unknown, in which faith has its dwelling. Faith has no +proofs, but only itself, to offer. It is born spontaneously in certain +commanding souls; it spreads its empire among the rest by imitation and +contagion. A great faith is but a great hope which becomes certitude as +we move farther and farther from the founder of it; time and distance +strengthen it, until at last the passion for knowledge seizes upon it, +questions, and examines it. Then all which had once made its strength +becomes its weakness; the impossibility of verification, exaltation of +feeling, 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 +were right. The old man who is at once sympathetic and disinterested, +necessarily develops the spirit of contemplation, and it is given to +the spirit of contemplation to see things most truly, because it alone +perceives them in their relative and proportional value. + +January 2, 1880.--A sense of rest, of deep quiet even. Silence within +and without. A quietly-burning fire. A sense of comfort. The portrait +of my mother seems to smile upon me. I am not dazed or stupid, but only +happy in this peaceful morning. Whatever may be the charm of emotion, +I do not know whether it equals the sweetness of those hours of +silent meditation, in which we have a glimpse and foretaste of the +contemplative joys of paradise. Desire and fear, sadness and care, are +done away. Existence is reduced to the simplest form, the most ethereal +mode of being, that is, to pure self-consciousness. It is a state of +harmony, without tension and without disturbance, the dominical state +of the soul, perhaps the state which awaits it beyond the grave. It +is happiness as the orientals understand it, the happiness of the +anchorite, who neither struggles nor wishes any more, but simply adores +and enjoys. It is difficult to find words in which to express this +moral situation, for our languages can only render the particular and +localized vibrations of life; they are incapable of expressing this +motionless concentration, this divine quietude, this state of the +resting ocean, which reflects the sky, and is master of its own +profundities. Things are then re-absorbed into their principles; +memories are swallowed up in memory; the soul is only soul, and is no +longer conscious of itself in its individuality and separateness. It is +something which feels the universal life, a sensible atom of the Divine, +of God. It no longer appropriates anything to itself, it is conscious of +no void. Only the Yogis and Soufis perhaps have known in its profundity +this humble and yet voluptuous state, which combines the joys of being +and of non-being, which is neither reflection nor will, which is above +both the moral existence and the intellectual existence, which is +the return to unity, to the pleroma, the vision of Plotinus and of +Proclus--Nirvana in its most attractive form. + +It is clear that the western nations in general, and especially the +Americans, know very little of this state of feeling. For them life is +devouring and incessant activity. They are eager for gold, for power, +for dominion; their aim is to crush men and to enslave nature. They show +an obstinate interest in means, and have not a thought for the end. They +confound being with individual being, and the expansion of the self with +happiness--that is to say, they do not live by the soul; they ignore the +unchangeable 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 of +the self. When death comes they recognize that it is so--why not then +admit it sooner? Activity is only beautiful when it is holy--that is to +say, 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 of +Bersot, the director of the "Ecole Normale," a philosopher who bore +like a stoic a terrible disease, and who labored to the last without +a complaint.... I have just read the four orations delivered over his +grave. They have brought the tears to my eyes. In the last days of this +brave man everything was manly, noble, moral, and spiritual. Each of the +speakers paid homage to the character, the devotion, the constancy, and +the intellectual elevation of the dead. "Let us learn from him how to +live and how to die." The whole funeral ceremony had an antique dignity. + +February 7, 1880.--Hoar-frost and fog, but the general aspect is bright +and fairylike, and has nothing in common with the gloom in Paris and +London, of which the newspapers tell us. + +This silvery landscape has a dreamy grace, a fanciful charm, which are +unknown both to the countries of the sun and to those of coal-smoke. The +trees seem to belong to another creation, in which white has taken the +place of green. As one gazes at these alleys, these clumps, these groves +and arcades, these lace-like garlands and festoons, one feels no wish +for anything else; their beauty is original and self-sufficing, all the +more 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--all +is velvet. My enchantment beguiled me out both before and after dinner. +The impression is that of a _fete_, and the subdued tints are, or seem +to be, a mere coquetry of winter which has set itself to paint something +without sunshine, and yet to charm the spectator. + +February 9, 1880,--Life rushes on--so much the worse for the weak and +the stragglers. As soon as a man's _tendo Achillis_ gives way he finds +himself trampled under foot by the young, the eager, the voracious. +"_Vae victis, vae debilibus!_" yells the crowd, which in its turn is +storming the goods of this world. Every man is always in some other +man's way, since, however small he may make himself, he still occupies +some space, and however little he may envy or possess, he is still +sure to be envied and his goods coveted by some one else. Mean +world!--peopled by a mean race! To console ourselves we must think of +the exceptions--of the noble and generous souls. There are such. What +do the rest matter! The traveler crossing the desert feels himself +surrounded by creatures thirsting for his blood; by day vultures fly +about his head; by night scorpions creep into his tent, jackals prowl +around his camp-fire, mosquitoes prick and torture him with their greedy +sting; everywhere menace, enmity, ferocity. But far beyond the horizon, +and the barren sands peopled by these hostile hordes, the wayfarer +pictures to himself a few loved faces and kind looks, a few true hearts +which follow him in their dreams--and smiles. When all is said, indeed, +we defend ourselves a greater or lesser number of years, but we are +always conquered and devoured in the end; there is no escaping the grave +and its worm. Destruction is our destiny, and oblivion our portion.... + +How near is the great gulf! My skiff is thin as a nutshell, or even more +fragile still. Let the leak but widen a little and all is over for the +navigator. A mere nothing separates me from idiocy, from madness, +from death. 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; the +soap-bubble is the best poetical translation of all this illusory +magnificence, this fugitive apparition of the tiny self, which is we, +and we it. + +... A miserable night enough. Awakened three or four times by my +bronchitis. Sadness--restlessness. One of these winter nights, possibly, +suffocation will come. I realize that it would be well to keep myself +ready, to put everything in order.... To begin with, let me wipe out +all personal grievances and bitternesses; forgive all, judge no one; +in enmity and ill-will, see only misunderstanding. "As much as lieth in +you, be at peace with all men." On the bed of death the soul should have +no eyes but for eternal things. All the littlenesses of life disappear. +The fight is over. There should be nothing left now but remembrance of +past blessings--adoration of the ways of God. Our natural instinct +leads us back to Christian humility and pity. "Father, forgive us our +trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us." + +Prepare thyself as though the coming Easter were thy last, for thy days +henceforward shall be few and evil. + +February 11, 1880.--Victor de Laprade [Footnote: Victor de Laprade, born +1812, first a disciple and imitator of Edgar Quinet, then the friend of +Lamartine, Lamennais, George Sand, Victor Hugo; admitted to the +Academy in 1857 in succession to Alfred de Musset. He wrote "Parfums de +Madeleine," 1839; "Odes et Poemes," 1843; "Poemes Evangeliques," 1852; +"Idylles Heroiques," 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, the +over-intensity, the inspired air, the statue-like gait, which annoy +one in him. His is a muse which never lays aside the _cothurnus_, and a +royalty which never puts off its crown, even in sleep. The total absence +in him of playfulness, simplicity, familiarity, is a great defect. +De Laprade is to the ancients as the French tragedy is to that of +Euripides, or as the wig of Louis XIV. to the locks of Apollo. His +majestic airs are wearisome and factitious. If there is not exactly +affectation in them, there is at least a kind of theatrical and +sacerdotal posing, a sort of professional attitudinizing. Truth is not +as 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 a +poet, then I am not one?" + +February 27, 1880.--I have finished translating twelve or fourteen +little poems by Petoefi. They have a strange kind of savor. There is +something of the Steppe, of the East, of Mazeppa, of madness, in these +songs, which seem to go to the beat of a riding-whip. What force and +passion, what savage brilliancy, what wild and grandiose images, there +are in them! One feels that the Magyar is a kind of Centaur, and that he +is only Christian and European by accident. The Hun in him tends toward +the Arab. + +March 20, 1880.--I have been reading "La Banniere Bleue"--a history of +the world at the time of Genghis Khan, under the form of memoirs. It is +a Turk, Ouigour, who tells the story. He shows us civilization from +the wrong side, or the other side, and the Asiatic nomads appear as the +scavengers of its corruptions. + +Genghis proclaimed himself the scourge of God, and he did in fact +realize the vastest empire known to history, stretching from the Blue +Sea to the Baltic, and from the vast plains of Siberia to the banks +of the sacred Ganges. The most solid empires of the ancient world were +overthrown by the tramp of his horsemen and the shafts of his archers. +From the tumult into which he threw the western continent there issued +certain vast results: the fall of the Byzantine empire, involving the +Renaissance, the voyages of discovery in Asia, undertaken from both +sides of the globe--that is to say, Gama and Columbus; the formation +of the Turkish empire; and the preparation of the Russian empire. This +tremendous hurricane, starting from the high Asiatic tablelands, felled +the decaying oaks and worm-eaten buildings of the whole ancient +world. The descent of the yellow, flat-nosed Mongols upon Europe is a +historical cyclone which devastated and purified our thirteenth century, +and broke, at the two ends of the known world, through two great Chinese +walls--that which protected the ancient empire of the Center, and that +which made a barrier of ignorance and superstition round the little +world of Christendom. Attila, Genghis, Tamerlane, ought to range in the +memory of men with Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. They roused +whole peoples into action, and stirred the depths of human life, they +powerfully affected ethnography, they let loose rivers of blood, and +renewed the face of things. The Quakers will not see that there is a law +of tempests in history as in nature. The revilers of war are like the +revilers of thunder, storms, and volcanoes; they know not what they do. +Civilization tends to corrupt men, as large towns tend to vitiate the +air. + +"Nos patimur longae pacis mala." + +Catastrophes bring about a violent restoration of equilibrium; they put +the world brutally to rights. Evil chastises itself, and the tendency to +ruin in human things supplies the place of the regulator who has not yet +been discovered. No civilization can bear more than a certain proportion +of abuses, injustice, corruption, shame, and crime. When this proportion +has been reached, the boiler bursts, the palace falls, the scaffolding +breaks down; institutions, cities, states, empires, sink into ruin. The +evil contained in an organism is a virus which preys upon it, and if +it is 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 +the characteristic of my life. I have not been able to fit myself to +anything, to content myself with anything. I have never had the quantum +of illusion necessary for risking the irreparable. I have made use of +the ideal itself to keep me from any kind of bondage. It was thus with +marriage: only perfection would have satisfied me; and, on the +other hand, I was not worthy of perfection.... So that, finding no +satisfaction in things, I tried to extirpate desire, by which things +enslave us. Independence has been my refuge; detachment my stronghold. +I have lived the impersonal life--in the world, yet not in it, thinking +much, desiring nothing. It is a state of mind which corresponds with +what in women is called a broken heart; and it is in fact like it, since +the characteristic common to both is despair. When one knows that +one will never possess what one could have loved, and that one can be +content with nothing less, one has, so to speak, left the world, one has +cut the golden hair, parted with all that makes human life--that is to +say, illusion--the incessant effort toward an apparently attainable end. +May 31, 1880.--Let us not be over-ingenious. There is no help to be got +out of subtleties. Besides, one must live. It is best and simplest +not to quarrel with any illusion, and to accept the inevitable +good-temperedly. Plunged as we are in human existence, we must take it +as it comes, not too bitterly, nor too tragically, without horror +and without sarcasm, without misplaced petulance or a too exacting +expectation; cheerfulness, serenity, and patience, these are best--let +us aim at these. Our business is to treat life as the grandfather treats +his granddaughter, or the grandmother her grandson; to enter into the +pretenses of childhood and the fictions of youth, even when we ourselves +have long passed beyond them. It is probable that God himself looks +kindly upon the illusions of the human race, so long as they are +innocent. There is nothing evil but sin--that is, egotism and revolt. +And as for error, man changes his errors frequently, but error of some +sort is always with him. Travel as one may, one is always somewhere, and +one's mind rests on some point of truth, as one's feet rest upon some +point of the globe. + +Society alone represents a more or less complete unity. The individual +must content himself with being a stone in the building, a wheel in the +immense machine, a word in the poem. He is a part of the family, of +the state, of humanity, of all the special fragments formed by human +interests, beliefs, aspirations, and labors. The loftiest souls are +those who are conscious of the universal symphony, and who give their +full and willing collaboration to this vast and complicated concert +which we call civilization. + +In principle the mind is capable of suppressing all the limits which it +discovers in itself, limits of language, nationality, religion, race, or +epoch. But it must be admitted that the more the mind spiritualizes and +generalizes itself, the less hold it has on other minds, which no longer +understand it or know what to do with it. Influence belongs to men +of action, and for purposes of action nothing is more useful than +narrowness of thought combined with energy of will. + +The forms of dreamland are gigantic, those of action are small and +dwarfed. To the minds imprisoned in things, belong success, fame, +profit; a great deal no doubt; but they know nothing of the pleasures of +liberty or the joy of penetrating the infinite. However, I do not mean +to put one class before another; for every man is happy according to +his nature. History is made by combatants and specialists; only it is +perhaps not a bad thing that in the midst of the devouring activities of +the western world, there should be a few Brahmanizing souls. + +... This soliloquy means--what? That reverie turns upon itself as +dreams do; that impressions added together do not always produce a +fair judgment; that a private journal is like a good king, and permits +repetitions, outpourings, complaint.... These unseen effusions are the +conversation of thought with itself the arpeggios involuntary but not +unconscious, of that aeolian harp we bear within us. Its vibrations +compose no piece, exhaust no theme, achieve no melody, carry out no +programme, 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 of +naturalist novels, which suppress the intervention of the moral sense, +and scoff at the claim of free-will. Individuals are irresponsible; they +are governed by their passions, and the play of human passions is the +observer's joy, the artist's material. Stendhal is a novelist after +Taine's heart, a faithful painter who is neither touched nor angry, and +whom everything amuses--the knave and the adventuress as well as honest +men and women, but who has neither faith, nor preference, nor ideal. +In him literature is subordinated to natural history, to science. It no +longer forms part of the humanities, it no longer gives man the honor +of a separate rank. It classes him with the ant, the beaver, and +the monkey. And this moral indifference to morality leads direct to +immorality. + +The vice of the whole school is cynicism, contempt for man, whom they +degrade 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 a +word, it is _inhumanity_. No man can be a naturalist with impunity: +he will be coarse even with the most refined culture. A free mind is +a great thing no doubt, but loftiness of heart, belief in goodness, +capacity for enthusiasm and devotion, the thirst after perfection and +holiness, are greater things still. + +June 7, 1880.--I am reading Madame Necker de Saussure [Footnote: +Madame Necker de Saussure was the daughter of the famous geologist, +De Saussure; she married a nephew of Jacques Necker, and was therefore +cousin by marriage of Madame de Stael. She is often supposed to be the +original of Madame de Cerlebe in "Delphine," and the _Notice sur +le Caractere et les Ecrits de Mdme. de Stael_, prefixed to the +authoritative edition of Madame de Stael's collected works, is by her. +Philanthropy and education were her two main interests, but she had also +a very large amount of general literary cultivation, as was proved by +her translation of Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature."] again. +"L'Education progressive" is an admirable book. What moderation and +fairness of view, what reasonableness and dignity of manner! Everything +in it is of high quality--observation, thought, and style. The +reconciliation of science with the ideal, of philosophy with religion, +of psychology with morals, which the book attempts, is sound and +beneficent. It is a fine book--a classic--and Geneva may be proud of +a piece of work which shows such high cultivation and so much solid +wisdom. Here we have the true Genevese literature, the central tradition +of the country. + +_Later_.--I have finished the third volume of Madame Necker. The +elevation and delicacy, the sense and seriousness, the beauty +and perfection of the whole are astonishing. A few harshnesses or +inaccuracies of language do not matter. I feel for the author a respect +mingled with emotion. How rare it is to find a book in which everything +is sincere and everything is true! + +June 26, 1880.--Democracy exists; it is mere loss of time to dwell upon +its absurdities and defects. Every _regime_ has its weaknesses, and +this _regime_ is a lesser evil than others. On things its effect is +unfavorable, but on the other hand men profit by it, for it develops +the individual by obliging every one to take interest in a multitude +of questions. It makes bad work, but it produces citizens. This is +its excuse, and a more than tolerable one; in the eyes of the +philanthropist, indeed, it is a serious title to respect, for, after +all, social institutions are made for man, and not _vice versa_. + +June 27, 1880.--I paid a visit to my friends--, and we resumed the +conversation of yesterday. We talked of the ills which threaten +democracy and which are derived from the legal fiction at the root of +it. Surely the remedy consists in insisting everywhere upon the +truth which democracy systematically forgets, and which is its proper +makeweight--on the inequalities of talent, of virtue, and merit, and +on the respect due to age, to capacity, to services rendered. Juvenile +arrogance and jealous ingratitude must be resisted all the more +strenuously because social forms are in their favor; and when the +institutions of a country lay stress only on the rights of the +individual, it is the business of the citizen to lay all the more stress +on duty. There must be a constant effort to correct the prevailing +tendency of things. All this, it is true, is nothing but palliative, but +in human society one cannot hope for more. + +_Later_.--Alfred de Vigny is a sympathetic writer, with a meditative +turn of thought, a strong and supple talent. He possesses elevation, +independence, seriousness, originality, boldness and grace; he has +something of everything. He paints, describes, and judges well; he +thinks, and has the courage of his opinions. His defect lies in an +excess of self-respect, in a British pride and reserve which give him a +horror of familiarity and a terror of letting himself go. This tendency +has naturally injured his popularity as a writer with a public whom he +holds at arm's length as one might a troublesome crowd. The French race +has never cared much about the inviolability of personal conscience; +it does not like stoics shut up in their own dignity as in a tower, and +recognizing no master but God, duty or faith. Such strictness annoys and +irritates it; it is merely piqued and made impatient by anything solemn. +It repudiated Protestantism for this very reason, and in all crises +it has crushed those who have not yielded to the passionate current of +opinion. + +July 1, 1880. (_Three o'clock_).--The temperature is oppressive; I ought +to be looking over my notes, and thinking of to-morrow's examinations. +Inward distaste--emptiness--discontent. Is it trouble of conscience, or +sorrow of heart? or the soul preying upon itself? or merely a sense of +strength decaying and time running to waste? Is sadness--or regret--or +fear--at the root of it? I do not know; but this dull sense of misery +has danger in it; it leads to rash efforts and mad decisions. Oh, for +escape from self, for something to stifle the importunate voice of want +and yearning! Discontent is the father of temptation. How can we gorge +the invisible serpent hidden at the bottom of our well--gorge it so that +it 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 I +know not what. It is the instinct of happiness, which, like some +wild animal, is restless for its prey. It is God calling-God avenging +himself. + +July 4, 1880. (_Sunday, half-past eight in the morning_).--The sun has +come out after heavy rain. May one take it as an omen on this solemn +day? The great voice of Clemence has just been sounding in our ears. The +bell's deep vibrations went to my heart. For a quarter of an hour +the pathetic appeal went on--"Geneva, Geneva, remember! I am called +_Clemence_--I am the voice of church and of country. People of Geneva, +serve God and be at peace together." [Footnote: A law to bring about +separation between Church and State, adopted by the Great Council, +was on this day submitted to the vote of the Genevese people. It was +rejected by a large majority (9,306 against 4,044).--[S.]] + +_Seven o'clock in the evening_.--_Clemence_ 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 a +crowd when it is waiting for the return of the judge and the delivery of +the death sentence. The fate of the Genevese church and country is now +in the voting box. + +_Eleven o'clock in the evening_.--Victory along the whole line. The +Ayes have 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 virtue +with the mass of the people: those of State, Republic, Country, Nation, +Flag, and even, I think, Church. Our skeptical and mocking culture knows +nothing of the emotion, the exaltation, the delirium, which these words +awaken in simple people. The blases of the world have no idea how the +popular mind vibrates to these appeals, by which they themselves are +untouched. It is their punishment; it is also their infirmity. +Their temper is satirical and separatist; they live in isolation and +sterility. + +I feel again what I felt at the time of the Rousseau centenary; my +feeling and imagination are chilled and repelled by those Pharisaical +people who think themselves too good to associate with the crowd. + +At the same time, I suffer from an inward contradiction, from a +two-fold, instinctive repugnance--an aesthetic repugnance toward +vulgarity of every kind, a moral repugnance toward barrenness and +coldness of heart. + +So that personally I am only attracted by the individuals of cultivation +and eminence, while on the other hand nothing is sweeter to me than to +feel myself vibrating in sympathy with the national spirit, with the +feeling of the masses. I only care for the two extremes, and it is this +which separates me from each of them. + +Our everyday life, split up as it is into clashing parties and opposed +opinions, and harassed by perpetual disorder and discussion, is painful +and almost hateful to me. A thousand things irritate and provoke me. But +perhaps it would be the same elsewhere. Very likely it is the inevitable +way of the world which displeases me--the sight of what succeeds, of +what men approve or blame, of what they excuse or accuse. I need to +admire, to feel myself in sympathy and in harmony with my neighbor, with +the march of things, and the tendencies of those around me, and almost +always 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 a +national festival.] Toward evening I went with our three ladies to the +plain of Plainpalais. There was an immense crowd, and I was struck with +the bright look of the faces. The festival wound up with the traditional +fireworks, under a calm and starry sky. Here we have the republic +indeed, I thought as I came in. For a whole week this people has been +out-of-doors, camping, like the Athenians on the Agora. Since Wednesday +lectures and public meetings have followed one another without +intermission; 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 the +Molard, festival for the adults. Tuesday, the college fete-day. +Wednesday, the fete-day of the primary schools. + +Geneva is a caldron always at boiling-point, a furnace of which the +fires are never extinguished. Vulcan had more than one forge, and Geneva +is certainly one of those world-anvils on which the greatest number of +projects have been hammered out. When one thinks that the martyrs of all +causes have been at work here, the mystery is explained a little; +but the truest explanation is that Geneva--republican, protestant, +democratic, learned, and enterprising Geneva--has for centuries depended +on herself alone for the solution of her own difficulties. Since the +Reformation she has been always on the alert, marching with a lantern +in her left hand and a sword in her right. It pleases me to see that +she has not yet become a mere copy of anything, and that she is still +capable of deciding for herself. Those who say to her, "Do as they do at +New York, at Paris, at Rome, at Berlin," are still in the minority. The +_doctrinaires_ who would 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 of vitality. Only that which is original has a +sufficient reason for existence. A country in which the word of command +comes from elsewhere is nothing more than a province. This is what our +Jacobins and our Ultramontanes never will recognize. Neither of them +understand the meaning of self-government, and neither of them have any +idea of the dignity of a historical state and an independent people. + +Our small nationalities are ruined by the hollow cosmopolitan formulae +which 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 the +help of realism, liberalism, or romanticism. Separatism has even less +virtue than any of the other _isms_, for it is the abstraction of a +negation, the shadow of a shadow. The various _isms_ of the present are +not fruitful principles: they are hardly even explanatory formulae. They +are 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 beings +slips through these categories. The man who is perfectly well is neither +sanguineous--[to use the old medical term]--nor bilious nor nervous. +A normal republic contains opposing parties and points of view, but it +contains them, as it were, in a state of chemical combination. All the +colors are contained in a ray of light, while red alone does not contain +a 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 I +was wild for pictures; in 1845 that I was studying Krause's philosophy; +in 1850 that I became professor of aesthetics. ---- may be the same +age as I am; it is none the less true that when a particular stage +has become to me a matter of history, he is just arriving at it. This +impression of distance and remoteness is a strange one. I begin to +realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual +standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. + +Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial +growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds +of 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 never +been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but +a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer +on 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 +by incessant training, it is all culture, but it has retained hardly +anything in its meshes. It is without matter, and is only form. It +no longer has knowledge; it has become method. It is etherealized, +algebraicized. Life has treated it as death treats other minds; it +has already prepared it for a further metamorphosis. Since the age of +sixteen onward I have been able to look at things with the eyes of a +blind man recently operated upon--that is to say, I have been able to +suppress in myself the results of the long education of sight, and to +abolish distances; and now I find myself regarding existence as though +from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as +it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am _depersonalized_, +detached, cut adrift. Is this madness? No. Madness means the +impossibility of recovering one's normal balance after the mind has +thus played truant among alien forms of being, and followed Dante +to invisible worlds. Madness means incapacity for self-judgment and +self-control. Whereas it seems to me that my mental transformations +are but philosophical experiences. I am tied to none. I am but making +psychological investigations. At the same time I do not hide from myself +that such experiences weaken the hold of common sense, because they act +as solvents of all personal interests and prejudices. I can only defend +myself against them by returning to the common life of men, and by +bracing and fortifying the will. + +July 14, 1880.--What is the book which, of all Genevese literature, I +would soonest have written? Perhaps that of Madame Necker de Saussure, +or Madame de Stael's "L'Allemagne." To a Genevese, moral philosophy +is still the most congenial and remunerative of studies. Intellectual +seriousness is what suits us least ill. History, politics, economical +science, education, practical philosophy--these are our subjects. +We have everything to lose in the attempt to make ourselves mere +Frenchified copies of the Parisians: by so doing we are merely carrying +water to the Seine. Independent criticism is perhaps easier at Geneva +than at Paris, and Geneva ought to remain faithful to her own special +line, which, as compared with that of France, is one of greater freedom +from the tyranny of taste and fashion on the one hand, and the tyranny +of ruling opinion on the other--of Catholicism or Jacobinism. Geneva +should be to _La Grande Nation_ what Diogenes was to Alexander; her role +is to represent the independent thought and the free speech which is not +dazzled by prestige, and does not blink the truth. It is true that +the role is an ungrateful one, that it lends itself to sarcasm and +misrepresentation--but what matter? + +July 28, 1880.--This afternoon I have had a walk in the sunshine, and +have just come back rejoicing in a renewed communion with nature. The +waters of the Rhone and the Arve, the murmur of the river, the austerity +of its banks, the brilliancy of the foliage, the play of the leaves, +the splendor of the July sunlight, the rich fertility of the fields, the +lucidity of the distant mountains, the whiteness of the glaciers under +the azure serenity of the sky, the sparkle and foam of the mingling +rivers, the leafy masses of the La Batie woods--all and everything +delighted me. It seemed to me as though the years of strength had come +back to me. I was overwhelmed with sensations. I was surprised and +grateful. The universal life carried me on its breast; the summer's +caress went to my heart. Once more my eyes beheld the vast horizons, +the soaring peaks, the blue lakes, the winding valleys, and all the free +outlets of old days. And yet there was no painful sense of longing. The +scene left upon me an indefinable impression, which was neither hope, +nor desire, nor regret, but rather a sense of emotion, of passionate +impulse, mingled with admiration and anxiety. I am conscious at once +of joy and of want; beyond what I possess I see the impossible and the +unattainable; I gauge my own wealth and poverty; in a word, I am and +I am not--my inner state is one of contradiction, because it is one of +transition. The ambiguity of it is characteristic of human nature, which +is ambiguous, because it is flesh becoming spirit, space changing into +thought, the Finite looking dimly out upon the Infinite, intelligence +working its way through love and pain. + +Man is the _sensorium commune_ of nature, the point at which all values +are interchanged. Mind is the plastic medium, the principle, and the +result of all; at once material and laboratory, product and formula, +sensation, expression, and law; that which is, that which does, that +which knows. All is not mind, but mind is in all, and contains all. +It is the consciousness of being--that is, Being raised to the second +power. If the universe subsists, it is because the Eternal mind loves to +perceive its own content, in all its wealth and expansion--especially in +its stages of preparation. Not that God is an egotist. He allows myriads +upon myriads of suns to disport themselves in his shadow; he grants +life and consciousness to innumerable multitudes of creatures who +thus participate in being and in nature; and all these animated monads +multiply, so to speak, his divinity. + +August 4, 1880.--I have read a few numbers of the _Feuille Centrale de +Zofingen_. [Footnote: The journal of a students' society, drawn from the +different cantons of Switzerland, which meets every year in the little +town of Zofingen] It is one of those perpetual new beginnings of youth +which thinks it is producing something fresh when it is only repeating +the old. + +Nature is governed by continuity--the continuity of repetition; it is +like an oft-told tale, or the recurring burden of a song. The rose-trees +are never tired of rose-bearing, the birds of nest-building, young +hearts of loving, or young voices of singing the thoughts and feelings +which have served their predecessors a hundred thousand times before. +Profound monotony in universal movement--there is the simplest formula +furnished by the spectacle of the world. All circles are alike, and +every existence tends to trace its circle. + +How, then, is _fastidium_ to be avoided? By shutting our eyes to the +general uniformity, by laying stress upon the small differences which +exist, and then by learning to enjoy repetition. What to the intellect +is old and worn-out is perennially young and fresh to the heart; +curiosity is insatiable, but love is never tired. The natural +preservative against satiety, too, is work. What we do may weary others, +but the personal effort is at least useful to its author. Where every +one works, the general life is sure to possess charm and savor, even +though it repeat forever the same song, the same aspirations, the same +prejudices, and the same sighs. "To every man his turn," is the motto +of mortal beings. If what they do is old, they themselves are new; when +they imitate, they think they are inventing. They have received, and +they transmit. _E sempre bene!_ + +August 24, 1880.--As years go on I love the beautiful more than the +sublime, the smooth more than the rough, the calm nobility of Plato +more than the fierce holiness of the world's Jeremiahs. The vehement +barbarian is to me the inferior of the mild and playful Socrates. My +taste is for the well-balanced soul and the well-trained heart--for +a liberty which is not harsh and insolent, like that of the newly +enfranchised slave, but lovable. The temperament which charms me is +that in which one virtue leads naturally to another. All exclusive and +sharply-marked qualities are but so many signs of imperfection. + +August 29, 1880.--To-day I am conscious of improvement. I am taking +advantage of it to go back to my neglected work and my interrupted +habits; but in a week I have grown several months older--that is easy to +see. 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 from +the pleasure of convalescence; but still one hears in it the shuttle of +destiny, and death seems to be nearing rapidly, in spite of the halts +and truces which are granted one. The most beautiful existence, it seems +to me, would be that of a river which should get through all its rapids +and waterfalls not far from its rising, and should then in its widening +course form a succession of rich valleys, and in each of them a lake +equally but diversely beautiful, to end, after the plains of age were +past, in the ocean where all that is weary and heavy-laden comes to seek +for rest. How few there are of these full, fruitful, gentle lives! What +is the use of wishing for or regretting them? It is Wiser and harder to +see in one's own lot the best one could have had, and to say to one's +self that after all the cleverest tailor cannot make us a coat to fit us +more closely than our skin. + + "Le vrai nom du bonheur est le contentement." + +... The essential thing, for every one is to accept his destiny. Fate +has deceived you; you have sometimes grumbled at your lot; well, no more +mutual reproaches; go to sleep in peace. + +August 30, 1880. (_Two o'clock_).--Rumblings of a grave and distant +thunder. The sky is gray but rainless; the sharp little cries of the +birds show agitation and fear; one might imagine it the prelude to a +symphony or a catastrophe. + + "Quel eclair te traverse, o 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, +as it 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 something +expectant, contemplative, almost anxious in it. Are there days on which +"the little breath" of Job produces more effect than tempest? on which a +dull rumbling on the distant horizon is enough to suspend the concert of +voices, 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 +active force I am becoming more purely spirit; everything is growing +transparent to me. I see the types, the foundation of beings, the sense +of things. + +All personal events, all particular experiences, are to me texts for +meditation, facts to be generalized into laws, realities to be reduced +to ideas. Life is only a document to be interpreted, matter to be +spiritualized. Such is the life of the thinker. Every day he strips +himself 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 may +know what will is. Although it is sweet to him to be loved, and he knows +nothing else so sweet, yet there also he seems to himself to be the +occasion of the phenomenon rather than its end. He contemplates the +spectacle of love, and love for him remains a spectacle. He does not +even believe his body his own; he feels the vital whirlwind passing +through him--lent to him, as it were, for a moment, in order that he +may perceive the cosmic vibrations. He is a mere thinking subject; he +retains only the form of things; he attributes to himself the material +possession of nothing whatsoever; he asks nothing from life but wisdom. +This temper of mind makes him incomprehensible to all that loves +enjoyment, dominion, possession. He is fluid as a phantom that we see +but cannot grasp; he resembles a man, as the _manes_ of Achilles or the +shade 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 palace +with a thousand rooms, do not exist in my case; I am still in the +primitive unicellular state. I possess myself only as Monad and as Ego, +and I feel my faculties themselves reabsorbed into the substance which +they have individualized. All the endowment of animality is, so to +speak, repudiated; all the produce of study and of cultivation is in the +same way annulled; the whole crystallization is redissolved into fluid; +the whole rainbow is withdrawn within the dewdrop; consequences return +to the principle, effects to the cause, the bird to the egg, the +organism to its germ. + +This psychological reinvolution is an anticipation of death; it +represents the life beyond the grave, the return to school, the soul +fading into the world of ghosts, or descending into the region of _Die +Muetter_; it implies the simplification of the individual who, allowing +all the accidents of personality to evaporate, exists henceforward +only in the indivisible state, the state of point, of potentiality, of +pregnant nothingness. Is not this the true definition of mind? Is not +mind, dissociated from space and time, just this? Its development, +past or future, is contained in it just as a curve is contained in its +algebraical formula. This nothing is an all. This _punctum_ without +dimensions is a _punctum saliens_. What is the acorn but the oak which +has lost its branches, its leaves, its trunk, and its roots--that is +to say, all its apparatus, its forms, its particularities--but which is +still present in concentration, in essence, in a force which contains +the possibility of complete revival? + +This impoverishment, then, is only superficially a loss, a reduction. To +be reduced to those elements in one which are eternal, is indeed to die +but 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. The +sunlight, the leaves, the sky, the bells, all said to me--"Be of good +strength and courage, poor bruised one. This is nature's kindly season; +here is forgetfulness, calm, and rest. Faults and troubles, anxieties +and regrets, cares and wrongs, are but one and the same burden. We make +no distinctions; we comfort all sorrows, we bring peace, and with us +is consolation. Salvation to the weary, salvation to the afflicted, +salvation to the sick, to sinners, to all that suffer in heart, in +conscience, and in body. We are the fountain of blessing; drink and +live! God maketh his sun to rise upon the just and upon the unjust. +There is nothing grudging in his munificence; he does not weigh his +gifts like a moneychanger, or number them like a cashier. Come--there is +enough for all!" + +October 29, 1880. (_Geneva_).--The ideal which a man professes may +itself be only a matter of appearance--a device for misleading his +neighbor, or deluding himself. The individual is always ready to claim +for himself the merits of the badge under which he fights; whereas, +generally speaking, it is the contrary which happens. The nobler the +badge, the less estimable is the wearer of it. Such at least is the +presumption. It is extremely dangerous to pride one's self on any moral +or 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 by +intuition. Soul judges soul by elective affinity, reaching through and +beyond both words and silence, looks and actions. + +The criterion is subjective, I allow, and liable to error; but in the +first place there is no safer one, and in the next, the accuracy of the +judgment is in proportion to the moral culture of the judge. Courage is +an authority on courage, goodness on goodness, nobleness on nobleness, +loyalty on uprightness. We only truly know what we have, or what we have +lost and regret, as, for example, childish innocence, virginal purity, +or stainless honor. The truest and best judge, then, is Infinite +Goodness, and next to it, the regenerated sinner or the saint, the man +tried by experience or the sage. Naturally, the touchstone in us becomes +finer and truer the better we are. + +November 3, 1880.--What impression has the story I have just read +made upon me? A mixed one. The imagination gets no pleasure out of it, +although the intellect is amused. Why? Because the author's mood is one +of incessant irony and _persiflage_. The Voltairean tradition has been +his guide--a great deal of wit and satire, very little feeling, no +simplicity. It is a combination of qualities which serves eminently +well for satire, for journalism, and for paper warfare of all kinds, but +which is much less suitable to the novel or short story, for cleverness +is not poetry, and the novel is still within the domain of poetry, +although on the frontier. The vague discomfort aroused in one by these +epigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds. +Ambiguity of style keeps one in a perpetual state of tension and +self-defense; we ought not to be left in doubt whether the speaker is +jesting or serious, mocking or tender. Moreover, banter is not humor, +and never will be. I think, indeed, that the professional wit finds a +difficulty in being genuinely comic, for want of depth and disinterested +feeling. To laugh at things and people is not really a joy; it is at +best but a cold pleasure. Buffoonery is wholesomer, because it is a +little more kindly. The reason why continuous sarcasm repels us is that +it lacks two things--humanity and seriousness. Sarcasm implies pride, +since it means putting one's self above others--and levity, because +conscience is allowed no voice in controlling it. In short, we read +satirical books, but we only love and cling to the books in which there +is _heart_. + +November 22, 1880.--How is ill-nature to be met and overcome? First, by +humility: when a man knows his own weaknesses, why should he be angry +with others for pointing them out? No doubt it is not very amiable +of them to do so, but still, truth is on their side. Secondly, by +reflection: after all we are what we are, and if we have been thinking +too much of ourselves, it is only an opinion to be modified; the +incivility of our neighbor leaves us what we were before. Above all, by +pardon: there is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and +that is by doing them good; anger is best conquered by kindness. Such +a victory 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 +angry on 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 the +balm of a silent and thoughtful charity. Why do we let human malignity +embitter us? why should ingratitude, jealousy--perfidy even--enrage +us? There is no end to recriminations, complaints, or reprisals. The +simplest plan is to blot everything out. Anger, rancor, bitterness, +trouble the soul. Every man is a dispenser of justice; but there is one +wrong that he is not bound to punish--that of which he himself is the +victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged. Fire purifies all. + + "Mon ame est comme un feu qui devore et parfume + Ce qu'on jette pour le ternir." + +December 27, 1880--In an article I have just read, Biedermann +reproaches Strauss with being too negative, and with having broken with +Christianity. The object to be pursued, according to him, should be the +freeing of religion from the mythological element, and the substitution +of another point of view for the antiquated dualism of orthodoxy--this +other point of view to be the victory over the world, produced by the +sense of divine sonship. + +It is true that another question arises: has not a religion which has +separated itself from special miracle, from local interventions of the +supernatural, and from mystery, lost its savor and its efficacy? For +the sake of satisfying a thinking and instructed public, is it wise to +sacrifice the influence of religion over the multitude? Answer. A pious +fiction is still a fiction. Truth has the highest claim. It is for the +world to accommodate itself to truth, and not _vice versa_. Copernicus +upset the astronomy of the Middle Ages--so much the worse for it! The +Eternal Gospel revolutionizes modern churches--what matter! When symbols +become transparent, they have no further binding force. We see in them +a poem, 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 it +produces on pious souls is a more or less profane one; it has a +disrespectful, incredulous, frivolous look, and it seems to free a man +from traditional dogma at the cost of seriousness of conscience. How are +sensitiveness of feeling, the sense of sin, the desire for pardon, the +thirst for holiness, to be preserved among us, when the errors which +have served them so long for support and food have been eliminated? Is +not illusion indispensable? is it not the divine process of education? + +Perhaps the best way is to draw a deep distinction between opinion and +belief, and between belief and science. The mind which discerns these +different degrees may allow itself imagination and faith, and still +remain 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 friends +from our enemies, and distinguishes those who are antipathetic to us, +those who are indifferent, those who can serve or harm us; the second is +disinterested--it classes men according to their intrinsic value, their +own qualities and defects, apart from the feelings which they have for +us, or we for them. + +My tendency is to the second kind of classification. I appreciate +men less by the special affection which they show to me than by their +personal excellence, and I cannot confuse gratitude with esteem. It is a +happy thing for us when the two feelings can be combined; and nothing is +more painful than to owe gratitude where yet we can feel neither respect +nor 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 gentleness +of a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, the +piety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interest +me as phenomena--nay, even touch me if I am the object of them, but they +inspire me with very little confidence. I foresee the end of them too +clearly. Every exception tends to disappear and to return to the rule. +All privilege is temporary, and besides, I am less flattered than +anxious when I find myself the object of a privilege. + +A man's primitive character may be covered over by alluvial deposits of +culture and acquisition--none the less is it sure to come to the surface +when years have worn away all that is accessory and adventitious. I +admit indeed the possibility of great moral crises which sometimes +revolutionize the soul, but I dare not reckon on them. It is a +possibility--not a probability. In choosing one's friends we must +choose those whose qualities are inborn, and their virtues virtues of +temperament. To lay the foundations of friendship on borrowed or added +virtues 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 they +charm our vanity. To catch and fix a fickle heart is a task which +tempts all women; and a man finds something intoxicating in the tears of +tenderness and joy which he alone has had the power to draw from a proud +woman. But attractions of this kind are deceptive. Affinity of nature +founded on worship of the same ideal, and perfect in proportion to +perfectness of soul, is the only affinity which is worth anything. True +love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and +sanctifies the existence. And the being we love must not be mysterious +and sphinx-like, but clear and limpid as a diamond; so that admiration +and attachment may grow with knowledge. + + * * * * * + +Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely +love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object +loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its +own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most +passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, +and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The +contrast is perfect. + + * * * * * + +Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power of +loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; their +fidelity as resisting as the diamond; they are hungry for devotion +and athirst for sacrifice. Their love is a piety, their tenderness +a religion, and they triple the energy of love by giving to it the +sanctity of duty. + + * * * * * + +To the spectator over fifty, the world certainly presents a good deal +that is new, but a great deal more which is only the old furbished +up--mere plagiarism and modification, rather than amelioration. Almost +everything is a copy of a copy, a reflection of a reflection, and the +perfect 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; that +is why history goes on. + +Is not progress the goad of Siva? It excites the torch to burn itself +away; it hastens the approach of death. Societies which change rapidly +only reach their final catastrophe the sooner. Children who are too +precocious 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 an +intelligence--and thus the organs which seem to be in the service of +intelligence, are in reality only the agents of passion. For all the +commoner sorts of being, determinism is true: inward liberty exists only +as an exception and as the result of self-conquest. And even he who has +tasted liberty is only free intermittently and by moments. True +liberty, then, is not a continuous state; it is not an indefeasible +and invariable quality. We are free only so far as we are not dupes of +ourselves, our pretexts, our instincts, our temperament. We are freed by +energy 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. The +bullet 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 more +beautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow, after +the method of Cakyamouni. + + * * * * * + +Life should be a giving birth to the soul, the development of a higher +mode of reality. The animal must be humanized; flesh must be made +spirit; physiological activity must be transmuted into intellect and +conscience, into reason, justice, and generosity, as the torch is +transmuted into life and warmth. The blind, greedy, selfish nature of +man must put on beauty and nobleness. This heavenly alchemy is what +justifies our presence on the earth: it is our mission and our glory. + + * * * * * + +To renounce happiness and think only of duty, to put conscience in the +place of feeling--this voluntary martyrdom has its nobility. The natural +man in us flinches, but the better self submits. To hope for justice in +the world is a sign of sickly sensibility; we must be able to do without +it. True manliness consists in such independence. Let the world think +what it will of us, it is its own affair. If it will not give us the +place which is lawfully ours until after our death, or perhaps not at +all, it is but acting within its right. It is our business to behave as +though our country were grateful, as though the world were equitable, as +though opinion were clear-sighted, as though life were just, as though +men 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 upon +the last period of Amiel's illness. Although he continued to attend to +his professional duties, and never spoke of his forebodings, he felt +himself mortally ill, as we shall see by the following extracts from the +Journal. Amiel wrote up to the end, doing little else, however, toward +the last than record the progress of his disease, and the proofs of +interest and kindliness which he received. After weeks of suffering and +pain a state of extreme weakness gradually gained upon him. His last +lines are dated the 29th of April; it was on the 11th of May that he +succumbed, without a struggle, to the complicated disease from which he +suffered.--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 blush +to find myself determined by interest, submitting to constraint, or +becoming the slave of any will whatever. To me vanity is slavery, +self-love degrading, and utilitarianism meanness. I detest the ambition +which makes you the liege man of something or some-one--I desire to be +simply my own master. + +If I had health I should be the freest man I know. Although perhaps +a little hardness of heart would be desirable to make me still more +independent. + +Let me exaggerate nothing. My liberty is only negative. Nobody has any +hold over me, but many things have become impossible to me, and if I +were so foolish as to wish for them, the limits of my liberty would soon +become apparent. Therefore I take care not to wish for them, and not to +let my thoughts dwell on them. I only desire what I am able for, and in +this way I run my head against no wall, I cease even to be conscious +of the boundaries which enclose me. I take care to wish for rather less +than is in my power, that I may not even be reminded of the obstacles in +my way. Renunciation is the safeguard of dignity. Let us strip ourselves +if we would not be stripped. He who has freely given up his life may +look death in the face: what more can it take away from him? Do away +with desire and practice charity--there you have the whole method of +Buddha, the whole secret of the great Deliverance.... + +It is snowing, and my chest is troublesome. So that I depend on nature +and on God. But I do not depend on human caprice; this is the point to +be insisted on. It is true that my chemist may make a blunder and poison +me, my banker may reduce me to pauperism, just as an earthquake may +destroy my house without hope of redress. Absolute independence, +therefore, is a pure chimera. But I do possess relative +independence--that of the stoic who withdraws into the fortress of his +will, and shuts the gates behind him. + + "Jurons, excepte Dieu, de n'avoir point de maitre." + +This oath of old Geneva remains my motto still. + +January 10, 1881.--To let one's self be troubled by the ill-will, the +ingratitude, the indifference, of others, is a weakness to which I am +very 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 vulnerable +than it ought to be. It seems to me, however, that I have grown tougher +in this respect than I used to be. The malignity of the world troubles +me less than it did. Is it the result of philosophy, or an effect of +age, or simply caused by the many proofs of respect and attachment that +I have received? These proofs were just what were wanting to inspire me +with some self-respect. Otherwise I should have so easily believed in +my own nullity and in the insignificance of all my efforts. Success is +necessary for the timid, praise is a moral stimulus, and admiration a +strengthening elixir. We think we know ourselves, but as long as we are +ignorant of our comparative value, our place in the social assessment, +we do not know ourselves well enough. If we are to act with effect, we +must count for something with our fellow-men; we must feel ourselves +possessed of some weight and credit with them, so that our effort may be +rightly proportioned to the resistance which has to be overcome. As +long as we despise opinion we are without a standard by which to measure +ourselves; we do not know our relative power. I have despised opinion +too much, while yet I have been too sensitive to injustice. These two +faults 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 +or calculation to obtain them.... I do not think I have been wrong +altogether, 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 excepte pour mourir." + +This is why I can look at it all historically. + +January 23, 1881.--A tolerable night, but this morning the cough has +been 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 doom +should 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 up +afresh in us, troubling our reason, and casting doubt on the verdict of +science. All life is tenacious and persistent. It is like the parrot in +the fable, who, at the very moment when its neck is being wrung, still +repeats with its last breath: + + "Cela, cela, ne sera rien." + +The intellect puts the matter at its worst, but the animal protests. +It will 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 against +death; hope is only the love of life; it is an organic impulse which +religion has taken under its protection. Who knows? God may save us, +may work a miracle. Besides, are we ever sure that there is no remedy? +Uncertainty is the refuge of hope. We reckon the doubtful among the +chances in our favor. Mortal frailty clings to every support. How be +angry with it for so doing? Even with all possible aids it hardly ever +escapes desolation and distress. The supreme solution is, and always +will be, to see in necessity the fatherly will of God, and so to submit +ourselves and bear our cross bravely, as an offering to the Arbiter +of human destiny. The soldier does not dispute the order given him: he +obeys and dies without murmuring. If he waited to understand the use of +his sacrifice, where would his submission be? + +It occurred to me this morning how little we know of each other's +physical troubles; even those nearest and dearest to us know nothing +of our conversations with the King of Terrors. There are thoughts +which brook no confidant: there are griefs which cannot be shared. +Consideration for others even bids us conceal them. We dream alone, we +suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last resting-place alone. But +there is nothing to prevent us from opening our solitude to God. And +so what was an austere monologue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes +docility, renunciation passes into peace, and the sense of painful +defeat 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 +the soul has once recognized the order of things and submitted itself +thereto, then all is well. + + "Comme un sage mourant puissions nous dire en paix: + J'ai trop longtemps erre, cherche; je me trompais: + Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe." + +January 28, 1881.--A terrible night. For three or four hours I struggled +against suffocation and looked death in the face.... It is clear that +what awaits me is suffocation--asphyxia. I shall die by choking. + +I should not have chosen such a death; but when there is no option, one +must simply resign one's self, and at once.... Spinoza expired in the +presence of the doctor whom he had sent for. I must familiarize myself +with the idea of dying unexpectedly, some fine night, strangled by +laryngitis. The last sigh of a patriarch surrounded by his kneeling +family 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 not +to torment them. The last journey is only made more painful by scenes +and lamentations: one word is worth all others--"Thy will, not mine, be +done!" Leibnitz was accompanied to the grave by his servant only. +The loneliness of the deathbed and the tomb is not an evil. The great +mystery cannot be shared. The dialogue between the soul and the King of +Terrors needs no witnesses. It is the living who cling to the thought +of last greetings. And, after all, no one knows exactly what is reserved +for 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 +self down to rest with the thought that perhaps one will never see the +morrow. Yesterday I felt it strongly, and yet here I am. Humility +is made easy by the sense of excessive frailty, but it cuts away all +ambition. + + "Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensees." + +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, +a year, a month, of free activity--when he is reduced to counting +the hours, and to seeing in the coming night the threat of an unknown +fate--it is plain that he must give up art, science, and politics, +and that he must be content to hold converse with himself, the one +possibility which is his till the end. Inward soliloquy is the only +resource of the condemned man whose execution is delayed. He withdraws +upon the fastnesses of conscience. His spiritual force no longer +radiates outwardly; it is consumed in self-study. Action is cut +off--only contemplation remains. He still writes to those who have +claims upon him, but he bids farewell to the public, and retreats into +himself. Like the hare, he comes back to die in his form, and this form +is his consciousness, his intellect--the journal, too, which has been +the companion of his inner life. As long as he can hold a pen, as long +as he has a moment of solitude, this echo of himself still claims his +meditation, still represents to him his converse with his God. + +In all this, however, there is nothing akin to self-examination: it is +not an act of contrition, or a cry for help. It is simply an Amen of +submission--"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 on +Gethesemane allowed himself to make the same prayer; let us add to +it the words that he did: "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be +done,"--and wait. + +... For many years past the immanent God has been more real to me than +the transcendent God, and the religion of Jacob has been more alien to +me than that of Kant, or even Spinoza. The whole Semitic dramaturgy has +come to seem to me a work of the imagination. The apostolic documents +have changed in value and meaning to my eyes. Belief and truth have +become distinct to me with a growing distinctness. Religious psychology +has become a simple phenomenon, and has lost its fixed and absolute +value. The apologetics of Pascal, of Leibnitz, of Secretan, are to me no +more convincing than those of the Middle Ages, for they presuppose what +is really in question--a revealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeable +Christianity. It seems to me that what remains to me from all my studies +is a new phenomenology of mind, an intuition of universal metamorphosis. +All particular convictions, all definite principles, all clear-cut +formulas and fixed ideas, are but prejudices, useful in practice, but +still narrownesses of the mind. The absolute in detail is absurd and +contradictory. All political, religious, aesthetic, or literary +parties are protuberances, misgrowths of thought. Every special belief +represents a stiffening and thickening of thought; a stiffening, +however, which is necessary in its time and place. Our monad, in its +thinking capacity, overleaps the boundaries of time and space and of +its own historical surroundings; but in its individual capacity, and +for purposes of action, it adapts itself to current illusions, and +puts before itself a definite end. It is lawful to be _man_, but it +is needful also to be _a_ man, to be an individual. Our role is thus a +double one. Only, the philosopher is specially authorized to develop the +first role, which the vast majority of humankind neglects. + +February 7, 1881.--Beautiful sunshine to-day. But I have scarcely spring +enough left in me to notice it. Admiration, joy, presuppose a little +relief 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 the +aesthetic 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 be +wasted. We reserve ourselves for a future which never comes. _Omnis +mortar_. + +February 14, 1881.--Supposing that my weeks are numbered, what duties +still remain to me to fulfill, that I may leave all in order? I must +give every one his due; justice, prudence, kindness must be satisfied; +the last memories must be sweet ones. Try to forget nothing useful, +nor anybody who has a claim upon thee! February 15, 1881.--I have, very +reluctantly, given up my lecture at the university, and sent for my +doctor. On my chimney-piece are the flowers which ---- has sent me. +Letters from London, Paris, Lausanne, Neuchatel ... They seem to me like +wreaths thrown into a grave. + +Mentally I say farewell to all the distant friends whom I shall never +see again. + +February 18, 1881.--Misty weather. A fairly good night. Still, the +emaciation goes on. That is to say, the vulture allows me some respite, +but he still hovers over his prey. The possibility of resuming my +official work seems like a dream to me. + +Although just now the sense of ghostly remoteness from life which I +so often have is absent, I feel myself a prisoner for good, a hopeless +invalid. This vague intermediate state, which is neither death nor life, +has its sweetness, because if it implies renunciation, still it allows +of thought. It is a reverie without pain, peaceful and meditative. +Surrounded with affection and with books, I float down the stream of +time, as once I glided over the Dutch canals, smoothly and noiselessly. +It is as though I were once more on board the _Treckschute_. Scarcely +can one hear even the soft ripple of the water furrowed by the barge, +or the hoof of the towing horse trotting along the sandy path. A journey +under these conditions has something fantastic in it. One is not +sure whether one still exists, still belongs to earth. It is like the +_manes_, the shadows, flitting through the twilight of the _inania +regna_. Existence has become fluid. From the standpoint of complete +personal renunciation I watch the passage of my impressions, my dreams, +thoughts, and memories.... It is a mood of fixed contemplation akin to +that which we attribute to the seraphim. It takes no interest in the +individual self, but only in the specimen monad, the sample of +the general history of mind. Everything is in everything, and the +consciousness examines what it has before it. Nothing is either great or +small. The mind adopts all modes, and everything is acceptable to it. In +this state its relations with the body, with the outer world, and with +other individuals, fade out of sight. _Selbst-bewusstsein_ becomes once +more 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, between +pantheism and theism, between Spinoza and Leibnitz, to be regretted? No, +for it is the one state which makes us conscious of the other. And +as man is capable of ranging the two domains, why should he mutilate +himself? + +February 22, 1881.--The march of mind finds its typical expression in +astronomy--no pause, but no hurry; orbits, cycles, energy, but at the +same time harmony; movement and yet order; everything has its own weight +and its relative weight, receives and gives forth light. Cannot this +cosmic and divine become oars? Is the war of all against all, the +preying of man upon man, a higher type of balanced action? I shrink form +believing it. Some theorists imagine that the phase of selfish brutality +is the last phase of all. They must be wrong. Justice will prevail, and +justice is not selfishness. Independence of intellect, combined with +goodness of heart, will be the agents of a result, which will be the +compromise required. + +March 1, 1881.--I have just been glancing over the affairs of the world +in the newspaper. What a Babel it is! But it is very pleasant to be able +to make the tour of the planet and review the human race in an hour. It +gives one a sense of ubiquity. A newspaper in the twentieth century +will be 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 two +parts only--_Urbs_ and _Orbis_. The need of totalizing, of simplifying, +will bring about the general use of such graphic methods as permit of +series and comparisons. We shall end by feeling the pulse of the race +and the globe as easily as that of a sick man, and we shall count the +palpitations of the universal life, just as we shall hear the grass +growing, or the sunspots clashing, and catch the first stirrings of +volcanic disturbances. Activity will become consciousness; the earth +will see herself. Then will be the time for her to blush for her +disorders, her hideousness, her misery, her crime and to throw herself +at last with energy and perseverance into the pursuit of justice. When +humanity has cut its wisdom-teeth, then perhaps it will have the grace +to reform itself, and the will to attempt a systematic reduction of the +share of the evil in the world. The _Weltgeist_ will pass from the state +of instinct to the moral state. War, hatred, selfishness, fraud, the +right of the stronger, will be held to be old-world barbarisms, mere +diseases of growth. The pretenses of modern civilization will be +replaced by real virtues. Men will be brothers, peoples will be friends, +races will sympathize one with another, and mankind will draw from love +a principle of emulation, of invention, and of zeal, as powerful as any +furnished by the vulgar stimulant of interest. This millennium--will it +ever be? It is at least an act of piety to believe in it. + +March 14, 1881.--I have finished Merimee's letters to Panizzi. Merimee +died of the disease which torments me--"_Je tousse, et j'etouffe_." +Bronchitis and asthma, whence defective assimilation, and finally +exhaustion. 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 same +color as my thoughts. And yet the irrevocable has its own sweetness and +serenity. The fluctuations of illusion, the uncertainties of desire, the +leaps and bounds of hope, give place to tranquil resignation. One feels +as 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 15, 1881.--The "Journal" is full of details of the horrible affair +at Petersburg. How clear it is that such catastrophes as this, in +which the innocent suffer, are the product of a long accumulation of +iniquities. Historical justice is, generally speaking, tardy--so tardy +that it becomes unjust. The Providential theory is really based on human +solidarity. Louis XVI. pays for Louis XV., Alexander II. for Nicholas. +We expiate the sins of our fathers, and our grandchildren will be +punished for ours. A double injustice! cries the individual. And he is +right if the individualist principle is true. But is it true? That is +the point. It seems as though the individual part of each man's destiny +were but one section of that destiny. Morally we are responsible +for what we ourselves have willed, but socially, our happiness +and unhappiness depend on causes outside our will. Religion +answers--"Mystery, obscurity, submission, faith. Do your duty; leave the +rest to God." + +March 16, 1881.--A wretched night. A melancholy morning.... The two +stand-bys of the doctor, digitalis and bromide, seem to have lost their +power over me. Wearily and painfully I watch the tedious progress of +my own decay. What efforts to keep one's self from dying! I am worn out +with the struggle. + +Useless and incessant struggle is a humiliation to one's manhood. The +lion finds the gnat the most intolerable of his foes. The natural +man feels the same. But the spiritual man must learn the lesson of +gentleness and long-suffering. The inevitable is the will of God. We +might have preferred something else, but it is our business to accept +the lot assigned us.... One thing only is necessary-- + + "Garde en mon coeur la foi dans ta volonte sainte, + Et de moi fais, o Dieu, tout ce que tu voudras." + +_Later_.--One of my students has just brought me a sympathetic message +from my class. My sister sends me a pot of azaleas, rich in flowers and +buds;----sends roses and violets: every one spoils me, which proves that +I am ill. + +March 19, 1881.--Distaste--discouragement. My heart is growing cold. +And yet what affectionate care, what tenderness, surrounds me!... But +without health, what can one do with all the rest? What is the good +of it all to me? What was the good of Job's trials? They ripened his +patience; they exercised his submission. + +Come, let me forget myself, let me shake off this melancholy, this +weariness. Let me think, not of all that is lost, but of all that I +might still lose. I will reckon up my privileges; I will try to be +worthy of my blessings. + +March 21, 1881.--This invalid life is too Epicurean. For five or six +weeks now I have done nothing else but wait, nurse myself, and amuse +myself, and how weary one gets of it! What I want is work. It is work +which gives flavor to life. Mere existence without object and without +effort is a poor thing. Idleness leads to languor, and languor to +disgust. Besides, here is the spring again, the season of vague desires, +of dull discomforts, of dim aspirations, of sighs without a cause. We +dream wide-awake. We search darkly for we know not what; invoking the +while 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 +be glad to let one's friends spoil one for a few months; it is an +experience which is good for us all; but afterward? How much better to +make 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 health +that 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 possess +ye your souls." + +April 10, 1881. (_Sunday_).--Visit to ----. She read over to me letters +of 1844 to 1845--letters of mine. So much promise to end in so meager +a result! What creatures we are! I shall end like the Rhine, lost among +the sands, and the hour is close by when my thread of water will have +disappeared. + +Afterward I had a little walk in the sunset. There was an effect of +scattered rays and stormy clouds; a green haze envelops all the trees-- + + "Et tout renait, et deja l'aubepine + A vu l'abeille accourir a ses fleurs," +--but to me it all seems strange already. + +_Later_.--What dupes we are of our own desires!... Destiny has two ways +of crushing us--by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. But he +who only wills what God wills escapes both catastrophes. "All things +work together for his good." + +April 14, 1881.--Frightful night; the fourteenth running, in which I +have been consumed by sleeplessness.... + +April 15, 1881.--To-morrow is Good Friday, the festival of pain. I know +what it is to spend days of anguish and nights of agony. Let me bear my +cross humbly.... I have no more future. My duty is to satisfy the claims +of the present, and to leave everything in order. Let me try to end +well, seeing that to undertake and even to continue, are closed to me. + +April 19, 1881.--A terrible sense of oppression. My flesh and my heart +fail me. + + "Que vivre est difficile, o mon coeur fatigue!" + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Amiel's Journal, by Henri-Frederic Amiel + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMIEL'S JOURNAL *** + +***** This file should be named 8545.txt or 8545.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/4/8545/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Tonya Allen, +Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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