Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric AmielAmiel, Henri Frédéric
Philosophy
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Amiel, Henri Frédéric
Amiel, Henri Frédéric, 1821-1881 -- Diaries; Authors, Swiss -- 19th century -- Diairies
The center of life is neither in thought nor in feeling, nor in will,
nor even in consciousness, so far as it thinks, feels, or wishes. For
moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways,
and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness there is our being
itself, our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have
entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become
spontaneous and involuntary, instinctive and unconscious, are really our
life--that is to say something more than our property. So long as we
are able to distinguish any space whatever between the truth and us
we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire, the
consciousness of life, are not yet quite life. But peace and repose can
nowhere be found except in life, and in eternal life and the eternal
life is the divine life, is God. To become divine is then the aim of
life: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of
loss, because it is no longer outside us, nor even in us, but we are it,
and it is we; we ourselves are a truth, a will, a work of God. Liberty
has become nature; the creature is one with its creator--one through
love. It is what it ought to be; its education is finished, and its
final happiness begins. The sun of time declines and the light of
eternal blessedness arises.
Our fleshly hearts may call this mysticism. It is the mysticism of
Jesus: “I am one with my Father; ye shall be one with me. We will be one
with you.”
Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer.
From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the
infinite.
There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of
self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably
at its purest in the last.
* * * * *
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe,
by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that
we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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