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Updated: June 21, 2025
Pascal, from considerations to which Amiel was no stranger, came to the large hopes of the Catholic Church; Amiel stopped short at a faith almost hopeless; and by stopping short just there he really failed, as we think, of intellectual consistency, and missed that appeasing influence which his nature demanded as the condition of its full activity, as a force, an intellectual force, in the world in the special business of his life.
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.
So that the thinker, the historian, the critic, will find himself at home with Amiel.
She tossed back her long curls and talked to Amiel with an occasional droop of her long lashes, and Dorothea, beaming upon them both, had no notion that, hovering above her in the quiet twilight, the green- eyed Monster was even then scenting its victim and preparing to strike. Presently Dorothea's father and mother and Amiel's stout and amiable parents joined their offspring in the summerhouse.
When not waiting upon the invalid Mother Marklin, Bess broke into her father's bookshelves, and read the owlish authors such as Bacon and Dr. Johnson, with side-flights into Montaigne, Voltaire, Amiel, and others of hectic kidney. She discovered, moreover, a sympathy with those women of strong minds who have a quarrel with Providence for that they were not made men.
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.
The English-speaking race is almost as much his debtor as is his own. The French Huguenots of the revival felt him to be one of themselves. Even to Amiel and Scherer he was a kindred spirit. It is a true remark of Dilthey that in unusual degree an understanding of the man's personality and career is necessary to the appreciation of his thought.
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.
It was the first of those diaries of personal record of the intellectual life, which have become more and more the fashion and have culminated at length in the ultra-refinement of Amiel and the conscious self-analysis of Marie Bashkirtseff.
They said he'd bring them over to-night." "He will," Cap'n Abe assured her. But he stopped a moment, stock-still in the middle of the room, and stared at her unseeingly. Evidently his mind was fixed upon an idea suddenly suggested by her speech. "He will," he repeated. Then: "I'll get the fat kettle over an' the fry-cage ready. Amiel brought me a likely cod.
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