Time is the supreme illusion

November 16, 1864.—Heard of the death of—. Will and intelligence lasted till there was an effusion on the brain which stopped everything.

A bubble of air in the blood, a drop of water in the brain, and a man is out of gear, his machine falls to pieces, his thought vanishes, the world disappears from him like a dream at morning. On what a spider thread is hung our individual existence! Fragility, appearance, nothingness. If it were for our powers of self−detraction and forgetfulness, all the fairy world which surrounds and draws us would seem to us but a broken spectre in the darkness, an empty appearance, a fleeting hallucination. Appeared—disappeared—there is the whole history of a man, or of a world, or of an infusoria.

Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea. The eye does not see a sphere all at once although the sphere exists all at once. Either the sphere must turn before the eye which is looking at it, or the eye must go round the sphere. In the first case it is the world which unrolls, or seems to unroll in time; in the second case it is our thought which successively analyzes and recomposes. For the supreme intelligence there is no time; what will be, is. Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures. God permits them, that he may not be alone. They are the mode under which creatures are possible and conceivable. Let us add that they are also the Jacob's ladder of innumerable steps by which the creation reascends to its Creator, participates in being, tastes of life, perceives the absolute, and can adore the fathomless mystery of the infinite divinity. That is the other side of the question. Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal. To escape by the ecstasy of inward vision from the whirlwind of time, to see one's self sub specie eterni is the word of command of all the great religions of the higher races; and this psychological possibility is the foundation of all great hopes. The soul may be immortal because she is fitted to rise toward that which is neither born nor dies, toward that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say toward God.

Amiel's Journal

An appearance, a vanity, a nothing

How sensible I am to the restless change which rules the world. To appear, and to vanish—there is then biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they describe, and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is the shadow of a smoke−wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyph traced for an instant in the sand, and effaced a moment afterward by a breath of wind, an air−bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of the great river of being—an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this nothing is, however, the symbol of the universal being, and this passing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world.

Amiel's Journal

Bad principles

Liberty, equality—bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice, and justice toward the feeble becomes necessarily protection or kindness.

Amiel

To personify and embody the eternal, is to be religious

Wisdom! how inexhaustible a theme! A sort of peaceful aureole surrounds and illumines this thought, in which are summed up all the treasures of moral experience, and which is the ripest fruit of a well−spent life. Wisdom never grows old, for she is the expression of order itself—that is, of the Eternal. Only the wise man draws from life, and from every stage of it, its true savor, because only he feels the beauty, the dignity, and the value of life. The flowers of youth may fade, but the summer, the autumn, and even the winter of human existence, have their majestic grandeur, which the wise man recognizes and glorifies. To see all things in God; to make of one's own life a journey toward the ideal; to live with gratitude, with devoutness, with gentleness and courage; this was the splendid aim of Marcus Aurelius. And if you add to it the humility which kneels, and the charity which gives, you have the whole wisdom of the children of God, the immortal joy which is the heritage of the true Christian. But what a false Christianity is that which slanders wisdom and seeks to do without it! In such a case I am on the side of wisdom, which is, as it were, justice done to God, even in this life. The relegation of life to some distant future, and the separation of the holy man from the virtuous man, are the signs of a false religious conception. This error is, in some degree, that of the whole Middle Age, and belongs, perhaps, to the essence of Catholicism. But the true Christianity must purge itself from so disastrous a mistake. The eternal life is not the future life; it is life in harmony with the true order of things—life in God. We must learn to look upon time as a movement of eternity, as an undulation in the ocean of being. To live, so as to keep this consciousness of ours in perpetual relation with the eternal, is to be wise; to live, so as to personify and embody the eternal, is to be religious.

Amiel's Journal

Landscape of Estrangement and Exile

Tower of Silence of my yearnings, may this book be the moonlight that transformed you on the night of the Ancient Mystery!

River of painful Imperfection, may this book be the boat that drifts with your waters until it ends in the dreamed see.

Landscape of Estrangement and Exile, may this book be yours like your very Hour, and not be limited by you or by the Hour of false purples.

Pessoa

The Book of Disquiet

translation: Richard Zenith

p. 444