“Notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, I was predestined to be what I am, a romantic protesting against romanticism, an utopian preaching materialistic politics, an idealist uselessly giving himself much trouble to appear _bourgeois_, a tissue of contradictions.... It is as a great observer Challemel-Lacour has excellently said, ‘He thinks like a man, feels like a woman, and acts like a child.’ I do not complain, since this moral constitution has procured me the most vivid intellectual joys that may be tasted.”[121] But the most striking example of this permanent state of doubt is supplied by another philosopher, the author of a journal of his own life, Amiel. He was so tormented by doubt that the strength of his genius was only shown after his death, when in his journal he revealed with absolute exactness the wound which gnawed him. Let us read a few of the most remarkable passages:-- “As life flees,” he says, “I mourn the loss of reality: thought is sad without action, and action is sad without thought: the real is spoilt when the ideal has not added its perfume; but the ideal, when not made one with the real, becomes a poison. I have never learnt the art of writing; it would have been useful to me, but I was ashamed of the useful: on the other hand, I have acquired two opposed intellectual habits: to note immediately passing impressions and to analyse them scientifically.... This journal will be useful to no one, and even for me it will serve rather to plan out life than to practice it; it is a pillow of idleness.... And even in style I am unequal. Always energetic and correct: that results from my existence: I see before me several expressions and I do not know which I ought to choose. The unique expression is an act of courage which implies confidence in oneself.... I discovered very early that it is easier to give up a wish than to gratify it.... The idea may be modified, but not the action, so I abhor it, for I fear useless remorse: I thrust aside the idea of a family, because every lost joy is the stab of a knife, because every hope is an egg from which may proceed a serpent as well as a dove.... Action is my cross because it would be my dream; but to be false to the ideal would soil the conscience and be an unpardonable error.... It is my passion to injure my interests. When a thing attracts me I flee from it.”[122] Every one may see the glorious kinship to genius of all these forms of disease. And every one will think of the great poet-alienist who divined insanity in genius, and left of it a monumental portrait in Hamlet, the man afflicted by _folie du doute_.