September 12, 1861.—In me an
intellect which would fain forget itself in things, is contradicted
by a heart
which yearns to live in human beings. The uniting link of
the two contradictions is the tendency toward
self−abandonment,
toward ceasing to will and exist for one's self, toward laying down
one's own personality,
and losing —dissolving—one's self in love
and contemplation. What I lack above all things is character, will,
individuality. But, as always happens, the appearance is exactly the
contrary of the reality, and my outward
life the reverse of my true
and deepest aspiration. I whose whole being—heart and
intellect—thirsts to absorb
itself in reality, in its neighbor
man, in nature and in God, I, whom solitude devours and destroys, I
shut
myself up in solitude and seem to delight only in myself and to
be sufficient for myself. Pride and delicacy of
soul, timidity of
heart, have made me thus do violence to all my instincts and invert
the natural order of my
life. It is not astonishing that I should be
unintelligible to others. In fact I have always avoided what
attracted
me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I
desired to be.
“Deux instincts sont en moi: vertige
et deraison;
J'ai l'effroi du bonheur et la soif du
poison.”
It is the Nemesis which dogs the steps
of life, the secret instinct and power of death in us, which labors continually for the destruction of all
that seeks to be, to take form, to exist; it is the passion for
destruction, the
tendency toward suicide, identifying itself with
the instinct of self−preservation. This antipathy toward all that
does one good, all that nourishes and heals, is it not a mere
variation of the antipathy to moral light and
regenerative truth?
Does not sin also create a thirst for death, a growing passion for
what does harm?
Discouragement has been my sin. Discouragement is an
act of unbelief. Growing weakness has been the
consequence of it;
the principle of death in me and the influence of the Prince of
Darkness have waxed
stronger together. My will in abdicating has
yielded up the scepter to instinct; and as the corruption of the
best
results in what is worst, love of the ideal, tenderness,
unworldliness, have led me to a state in which I shrink
from hope
and crave for annihilation. Action is my cross.
Amiel's Journal
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