October 27, 1856.—In all the chief
matters of life we are alone, and our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of
the drama is a monologue, rather an intimate debate between God, our
conscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions,
disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts,
decisions,
uncertainties, deliberations, all these belong to our secret, and are
almost all incommunicable and
intransmissible, even when we try to
speak of them, and even when we write them down. What is most
precious in us never shows itself, never finds an issue even in the
closest intimacy. Only a part of it reaches
our consciousness, it
scarcely enters into action except in prayer, and is perhaps only
perceived by God, for
our past rapidly becomes strange to us. Our
monad may be influenced by other monads, but none the less does
it
remain impenetrable to them in its essence; and we ourselves, when
all is said, remain outside our own
mystery. The center of our
consciousness is unconscious, as the kernel of the sun is dark. All
that we are,
desire, do, and know, is more or less superficial, and
below the rays and lightnings of our periphery there
remains the
darkness of unfathomable substance.
I was then well−advised when, in my
theory of the inner man, I placed at the foundation of the self,
after the
seven spheres which the self contains had been
successively disengaged, a lowest depth of darkness, the abyss
of
the un−revealed, the virtual pledge of an infinite future, the
obscure self, the pure subjectivity which is
incapable of realizing
itself in mind, conscience, or reason, in the soul, the heart, the
imagination, or the life of
the senses, and which makes for itself
attributes and conditions out of all these forms of its own life.
But the obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies
the opportunity of all victory and all progress.
Whether it call
itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life,
of light, of liberty, and the spirit.
For it represents resistance
—that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its
development and its
triumph.
Amiel's Journal
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