y of Geneva from 1849
until his death, on March 11, 1881. The "Journal Intime," of
which we give a summary, was published in 1882-84, and an
English translation by Mrs. Humphrey Ward appeared in 1885.
The book has the profound interest which attaches to all
genuine personal confessions of the interior life; but it has
the further claim to notice that it is the signal expression
of the spirit of its time, though we can no longer call it the
modern spirit. The book perfectly renders the disillusion,
languor and sentimentality which characterise a self-centred
scepticism. It is the record, indeed, of a morbid mind, but of
a mind gifted with extraordinary acuteness and with the utmost
delicacy of perception. Amiel wrote also several essays and
poems, but it is for the "Intimate Diary" alone that his name
will be remembered.

_Thoughts on Life and Conduct_

Only one thing is needful--to possess God. The senses, the powers of the
soul, and all outward resources are so many vistas opening upon
Divinity, so many ways of tasting and adoring God. To be detached from
all that is fugitive, and to seize only on the eternal and the absolute,
using the rest as no more than a loan, a tenancy! To worship,
understand, receive, feel, give, act--this is your law, your duty, your
heaven!

After all, there is only one object which we can study, and that is the
modes and metamorphoses of the human spirit. All other studies lead us
back to this one.

I have never felt the inward assurance of genius, nor the foretaste of
celebrity, nor of happiness, nor even the prospect of being husband,
father, or respected citizen. This indifference to the future is itself
a sign; my dreams are vague, indefinite; I must not now live, because I
am now hardly capable of living. Let me control myself; let me leave
life to the living, and betake myself to my ideas; let me write the
testament of my thoughts and of my heart.

_Heroism and Duty_

Heroism is the splendid and wonderful triumph of the soul over the
flesh; that is to say, over fear--the fear of poverty, suffering,
calumny, disease, isolation and death. There is no true piety without
this dazzling concentration of courage.

Duty has this great value--it makes us feel reality of the positive
world, while yet it detaches us from it.

How vulnerable am I! If I were a father, what a host of sorrows a child
could bring