Chapter XIX: Amiel 432 (19)

“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 civilize their
forms of life? It is by their future novels that we shall be able to
judge. As soon as the German novel can give us quite good society, the
Germans will be in the raw stage no longer.”

And this pupil of Berlin, this devourer of German books, this victim, say the French critics, to the contagion of German style, after three hours, one day, of a _Geschichte der Æsthetik in Deutschland_, breaks out:—

“Learning and even thought are not everything. A little _esprit_,
point, vivacity, imagination, grace, would do no harm. Do these
pedantic books leave a single image or sentence, a single striking or
new fact, in the memory when one lays them down! No, nothing but
fatigue and confusion. Oh, for clearness, terseness, brevity! Diderot,
Voltaire, or even Galiani! A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer,
Renan, Victor Cherbuliez, gives one more pleasure, and makes one
ponder and reflect more than a thousand of these German pages crammed
to the margin and showing the work itself rather than its result. The
Germans heap the faggots for the pile, the French bring the fire.
Spare me your lucubrations, give me facts or ideas. Keep your vats,
your must, your dregs, to yourselves; I want wine fully made, wine
which will sparkle in the glass, and kindle my spirits instead of
oppressing them.”

Amiel may have been led away _deteriora sequi_: he may have Germanized until he has become capable of the verb _dépersonnaliser_ and the noun _réimplication_; but after all, his heart is in the right place: _videt meliora probatque_. He remains at bottom the man who said: _Le livre serait mon ambition._ He adds, to be sure, that it would be _son ambition_, “if ambition were not vanity, and vanity of vanities.”

Yet this disenchanted brooder, “full of a tranquil disgust at the futility of our ambitions, the void of our existence,” bedazzled with the infinite, can observe the world and society with consummate keenness and shrewdness, and at the same time with a delicacy which to the man of the world is in general wanting. Is it possible to analyze _le grand monde_, high society, as the Old World knows it and America knows it not, more acutely than Amiel does in what follows?—

“In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosia
and concerned themselves with no interests but such as are noble.
Care, need, passion, do not exist. All realism is suppressed as
brutal. In a word, what is called _le grand monde_ gives itself for
the moment the flattering illusion that it is moving in an ethereal
atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. For this reason all
vehemence, any cry of nature, all real suffering, all heedless
familiarity, any genuine sign of passion, are startling and
distasteful in this delicate _milieu_, and at once destroy the
collective work, the cloud-palace, the imposing architectural creation
raised by common consent. It is like the shrill cock-crow which breaks
the spell of all enchantments, and puts the fairies to flight. These
select gatherings produce without intending it a sort of concert for
eye and ear, an improvised work of art. By the instinctive
collaboration of everybody concerned, wit 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 Astræa. Paradox or not, 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 towards a harmony of things which
every-day reality denies to us, and of which art alone gives us a
glimpse.”

I remember reading in an American newspaper a solemn letter by an excellent republican, asking what were a shopman’s or a laborer’s feelings when he walked through Eaton or Chatsworth. Amiel will tell him: they are “reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human heart, aspirations towards a harmony of things which every-day reality denies to us.” I appeal to my friend the author of _Triumphant Democracy_ himself, to say whether these are to be had in walking through Pittsburg.

Indeed it is by contrast with American life that _Nirvâna_ appears to Amiel so desirable:—

“For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. They
must win gold, predominance, power; they must crush rivals, subdue
nature. They have their heart set on the means, and never for an
instant think of the end. They confound being with individual being,
and the expansion of self with happiness. This means that they do not
live by the soul, that they ignore the immutable and eternal, bustle
at the circumference of their existence because they cannot penetrate
to its center. They are restless, eager, positive, because they are
superficial. To what end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle? It is
all a mere being stunned and deafened!”

Space is failing me, but I must yet find room for a less indirect criticism of democracy than the foregoing remarks on American life:—

“_Each function to the most worthy_: this maxim is the professed rule
of 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.”

What publicists and politicians have to learn is, that “the ultimate ground upon which every civilization rests is the average morality of the masses and a sufficient amount of practical righteousness.” But where does duty find its inspiration and sanctions? In religion. And what does Amiel think of the traditional religion of Christendom, the Christianity of the Churches? He tells us repeatedly; but a month or two before his death, with death in full view, he tells us with peculiar impressiveness:—

“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. The distinction between belief and truth has grown clearer
and clearer to me. Religious psychology has become a simple
phenomenon, and has lost its fixed and absolute value. The apologetics
of Pascal, Leibnitz, Secrétan, appear to me no more convincing than
those of the Middle Age, for they assume that which is in question—a
revealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeable Christianity.”

Is it possible, he asks, to receive at this day the common doctrine of a Divine Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and consequently inflicting upon us our miseries as means of education?

“Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws
of nature? Hardly. But what this faith makes objective we may take
subjectively. The moral being may moralize his suffering in turning
the natural fact to account for the education of his inner man. What
he cannot change he calls the will of God, and to will what God wills
brings him peace.”

But can a religion, Amiel asks again, without miracles, without unverifiable mystery, be efficacious, have influence with the many? And again he answers:—

“Pious fiction is still fiction. Truth has superior rights. The world
must adapt itself to truth, not truth to the world. Copernicus upset
the astronomy of the Middle Age; so much the worse for the astronomy.
The Everlasting Gospel is revolutionizing the Churches; what does it
matter?”

This is water to our mill, as the Germans say, indeed. But I have come even thus late in the day to speak of Amiel, not because I found him supplying water for any particular mill, either mine or any other, but because it seemed to me that by a whole important side he was eminently worth knowing, and that to this side of him the public, here in England at any rate, had not had its attention sufficiently drawn. If in the seventeen thousand pages of the Journal there are many pages still unpublished in which Amiel exercises his true vocation of critic, of literary critic more especially, let his friends give them to us, let M. Scherer introduce them to us, let Mrs. Humphry Ward translate them for us. But _sat patriæ Priamoque datum_: Maïa has had her full share of space already: I will not ask for a word more about the infinite illusion, or the double zero, or the Great Wheel.

THE END.

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Transcriber’s Note

The Roman number of the sixth essay of Series One at p. 143 (_Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment_) was missing, and has been added here.

Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

x.4 what is our puny war[e]fare against the Removed.
Philistines
8.19 But the prescriptions of[ of[ reason Repeated.
41.16 perceive [e/c]learly what we have to amend Replaced.
52.30 what a pi[e]ce of extravagance Inserted.
57.36 behoves the Fren[e/c]h Replaced.
75.21 the laughing whistle of the woodpecker[./,] Replaced.
79.22 Uranus of Keats’s p[e/o]em Replaced.
85.3 with some ex[rt/tr]acts from it Transposed.
85.33 to attract her so often?[”/’] Replaced.
87.31 In the times whe[u/n] I kept my night-watches Inverted.
87.32 I have sometimes believed tha[s/t] I was Replaced.
94.11 whom Christendom knows i[n/s] Saint Theresa Replaced.
repulsed
97.8 s[n/h]e joined a great force Replaced.
97.9 this force of charac[s/t]er, Replaced.
97.19 of her re[i/l]igious life. Replaced.
99.28 to escape from it.[”] Added.
103.28 but it melted in our[ our] hands Repeated.
108.36 [‘]Change your brains Added.
108.39 lose, or seemed to his sister to [c]lose Removed.
112.10 the world of sp[i]rits Inserted.
112.25 prayer has[ has] been such a power to me Repeated.
119.34 It was a life and death battle with Replaced.
Philistinism[,/.]
125.22 ‘And how shall I recompense thy fidelity?[”/’] Replaced.
137.25 his pack and] and] his cares Repeated.
149.39 _Praxinoe[.]_ Added.
162.2 It really suc[e/c]eeds Replaced.
163.14 Of all this uni[n]telligible world Inserted.
178.32 to the audi[a/e]nce Replaced.
179.1 tell us what it is like.[”/’] Replaced.
179.23 th[r]ow up their arms Inserted.
203.23 passed by them on th[ǝ/e] Abbé Delille Turned.
212.4 is the soul of all re[ /l]igions. Restored.
214.35 to put nature in bonds.[”] Added.
229.13 show their governments that[ that] they will Redundant.
do well
234.31 was[ was] known as “mad Shelley” Repeated.
237.7 that mira[a]cles are possible. Removed.
240.20 the phe[e]nomena of nature Removed.
259.24 publication of[ of] the _Centaur_ Repeated.
269.22 to[ to] be strangely overpressed Repeated.
299.13 their mission and destiny their[ their] poetry Redundant.
299.17 in the forest ranged.[’/”] Replaced.
308.23 some d[o/a]nger to the ideal Replaced.
313.4 have the power of[ of] verse Removed.
316.5 “When Johnson was publishing his Life of Replaced.
Gray[./,]”
322.36 could have been from his verses.[”] Added.
325.6 I e[ʌ/v]en tremble at an east wind. Inverted.
329.24 quite false[.] Added.
330.9 Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλ[εῖ] Added.
330.23 “[t]he style he aimed at Added.
332.13 I ha[y/v]e a sensation Replaced.
333.20 and creamy breast.[’] Added.
334.32 between Haydon [u/a]nd Hunt. Replaced.
337.19 she has li[n]ked him for his own sake Removed.
338.35 ob[ej/je]cts of a sensuous Transposed.
341.31 he [h]is perfect. Removed.
351.6 the best poems of Word[s]worth Inserted.
358.7 [“]O for the coming of that glorious time Added.
367.11 out of the [_Æ/Œ_]_dipus_ Replaced.
370.14 correct use and consumma[ma]te management of
words,
374.3 Here, again, Profess[e/o]r Nichol translates: Replaced.
374.38 Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosit[a/ä]t Replaced.
375.33 when I first used this express[s/i]on Replaced.
378.23 “In la sua volontade e nostra pace;[”] Added.
382.33 which B[ry/yr]on poured forth Transposed.
387.39 in which Professor Dowd[o/e]n has performed Replaced.
388.19 one’s former impress[s]ion of him Removed.
390.37 that [“]their proceedings would become Added.
393.18 where [b/h]e threw himself Replaced.
393.28 and wears green spectacles!”[;] Added.
402.10 was perfectl[y] innocent.
418.36 our admiration and sympathy[,/.] Replaced.
418.28 How ugly those flowers are.[”/’] Replaced.
420.15 that it _petrifies feeling_[,/.] Replaced.
422.9 [e/c]ried Levine, Replaced.
426.19 what am I to teach?[”/’] Added.
431.33 in abandoning the work [a/o]f the poet Replaced.
436.39 in its algebraical fo[r]mula. Inserted.
437.1 French critics throw [n/u]p their hands Inverted.
442.5 L[a] Fontaine Restored.
445.3 Victor Cherbuli[o/e]z Replaced.
447.20 Religious p[ys/sy]chology Transposed.
447.21 The apologetics of Pascal[,] Added.