The whole “Journal Intime” is in some sense Amiel’s explanation of these facts. In it he has made full and bitter confession of his weakness, his failure; he has endeavored, with an acuteness of analysis no other hand can rival, to make the reasons of his failure and isolation clear both to himself and others. “To love, to dream, to feel, to learn, to understand--all these are possible to me if only I may be dispensed from willing--I have a sort of primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, of hatred, of all which dissipates the soul and makes it dependent on external things and aims. The joy of becoming once more conscious of myself, of listening to the passage of time and the flow of the universal life, is sometimes enough to make me forget every desire and to quench in me both the wish to produce and the power to execute.” It is the result of what he himself calls _“l’éblouissement de l’infini_.” He no sooner makes a step toward production, toward action and the realization of himself, than a vague sense of peril overtakes him. The inner life, with its boundless horizons and its indescribable exaltations, seems endangered. Is he not about to place between himself and the forms of speculative truth some barrier of sense and matter--to give up the real for the apparent, the substance for the shadow? One is reminded of Clough’s cry under a somewhat similar experience: “If this pure solace should desert my mind, What were all else? I dare not risk the loss. To the old paths, my soul!” 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 défaut,”_ and makes him conscious at once of the weak point, the germ of failure in a project or an action. It is another aspect of the same idiosyncrasy. “The point I have reached seems to be explained by a too restless search for perfection, by the abuse of the critical faculty, and by an unreasonable distrust of first impulses, first thoughts, first words. Confidence and spontaneity of life are drifting out of my reach, and this is why I can no longer act.” For abuse of the critical faculty brings with it its natural consequences--timidity of soul, paralysis of the will, complete self-distrust. “To know is enough for me; expression seems to me often a profanity. What I lack is character, will, individuality.” “By what mystery,” he writes to M. Scherer, “do others expect much from me? whereas I feel myself to be incapable of anything serious or important.” _Défiance_ and _impuissance_ are the words constantly on his lips. “My friends see what I might have been; I see what I am.”