August 9, 1862.—Life, which seeks its
own continuance, tends to repair itself without our help. It mends
its
spider's webs when they have been torn; it re−establishes in
us the conditions of health, and itself heals the
injuries inflicted
upon it; it binds the bandage again upon our eyes, brings back hope
into our hearts, breathes
health once more into our organs, and
regilds the dream of our imagination. But for this, experience would
have hopelessly withered and faded us long before the time, and the
youth would be older than the
centenarian. The wise part of us,
then, is that which is unconscious of itself; and what is most
reasonable in
man are those elements in him which do not reason.
Instinct, nature, a divine, an impersonal activity, heal in
us the
wounds made by our own follies; the invisible genius of our life is
never tired of providing material for
the prodigalities of the self.
The essential, maternal basis of our conscious life, is therefore
that unconscious
life which we perceive no more than the outer
hemisphere of the moon perceives the earth, while all the time
indissolubly and eternally bound to it. It is our [Greek: antichoon],
to speak with Pythagoras.
Amiel's Journal
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