n within the lines of your plan." Bring,
we should add, the Great Possibility at least within the lines of your
plan--your plan of action or production; of morality; especially of
your conceptions of religion. And still, Amiel too, be it remembered
(we are not afraid to repeat it), has said some things in Pascal's vein
not unworthy of Pascal.

And so we get only the Journal. Watching in it, in the way we have
suggested, the contention of those two men, those two minds in him, and
observing how the one might have ascertained and corrected the
shortcomings of the other, we certainly understand, and can sympathize
with Amiel's despondency in the retrospect of a life which seemed to
have been but imperfectly occupied. But, then, how excellent a
literary product, after all, the Journal is. And already we have found
that it improves also on second reading. A book of "thoughts" should
be a book that may be fairly dipped into, and yield good quotable
sayings. Here are some of its random offerings:

"Look twice, if what you want is a just [36] conception; look once, if
what you want is a sense of beauty."

"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."

"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."

"Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world,
while at the same time detaching us from it."

"As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to
dwell in Him."

"He also (the Son of Man), He above all, is the great Misunderstood,
the least comprehended."

"The pensee writer is to the philosopher what the dilettante is to the
artist."

There are some, we know, who hold that genius cannot, in the nature of
things, be "sterile"; that there are no "mute" Miltons, or the like.
Well! genius, or only a very distinguished talent, the gift which Amiel
nursed so jealously did come into evidence. And the [37] reader, we
hope, sees also already how well his English translator has done her
work. She may justly feel, as part at least of the reward of a labour
which must have occupied much time, so many of the freshest hours of
mind and spirit, that she has done something to help her author in the
achievement of his, however discouraged still irrepressible, desire, by
giving a