In 1889 an admirable English translation of Amiel by Mrs. Humphry Ward, the novelist, appeared in London.  The introductory essay by Mrs. Ward is the best study of him in our language.  The appended selections are taken from the Ward translation.

Richard Burton

EXTRACTS FROM AMIEL’S JOURNAL

October 1st, 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 refractions 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 centre 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, I think, said, “The eye by which I see God is the same eye by which He sees me.”

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

February 20th, 1851.—­I have almost finished these two volumes of [Joubert’s] ‘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 affections and preoccupations,