LIBRARY OF THE

The Gutenberg Bible (Colored Plate)	Frontispiece
Lyly's "Euphues" (Fac-simile)	[485]
Hans Christian Andersen (Portrait)	[500]
"Haroun al Raschid" (Photogravure)	[622]
Dominique François Arago (Portrait)	[704]
Ludovico Ariosto (Portrait)	[742]
Aristotle (Portrait)	[788]
Matthew Arnold (Portrait)	[844]
"Lancelot Bids Adieu to Elaine" (Photogravure)	[890]
John James Audubon (Portrait)	[956]

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

[Anacreon]
[Lucius Apuleius]
[Thomas Aquinas]
[John Arbuthnot]
[Aristophanes]
[Ernst Moritz Arndt]
[Roger Ascham]
[Berthold Auerbach]

HENRI FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL--(Continued from Volume I)

to the storms of air and sea; and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

MAY 27TH, 1857.--Wagner's is a powerful mind endowed with strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,--that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings; so that his works are rather symphonic dramas than operas. The voice is brought down to the rank of an instrument, put on a level with the violins, the hautboys, and the drums, and treated instrumentally. Man is deposed from his superior position, and the centre of gravity of the work passes into the baton of the conductor. It is music depersonalized,--neo-Hegelian music,--music multiple instead of individual. If this is so, it is indeed the music of the future,--the music of the socialist democracy replacing the art which is aristocratic, heroic, or subjective.

DECEMBER 4TH, 1863.--The whole secret of remaining young in spite of years, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in one's self, by poetry, by contemplation, by charity,--that is, in fewer words, by the maintenance of harmony in the soul.

APRIL 12TH, 1858.--The era of equality means the triumph of mediocrity. It is disappointing, but inevitable; for it is one of time's revenges.... Art no doubt will lose, but justice will gain. Is not universal leveling down the law of nature?... The world is striving with all its force for the destruction of what it has itself brought forth!

MARCH 1ST, 1869.--From the point of view of the ideal, humanity is triste and ugly. But if we compare it with its probable origins, we see that the human race has not altogether wasted its time. Hence there are three possible views of history: the view of the pessimist, who starts from the ideal; the view of the optimist, who compares the past with the present; and the view of the hero-worshiper, who sees that all progress whatever has cost oceans of blood and tears.

AUGUST 31ST, 1869.--I have finished Schopenhauer. My mind has been a tumult of opposing systems,--Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity. Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, why am I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, why return to it, after having judged and conquered it?

Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepest reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life seems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternal dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by hope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of Schopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me, even in my moments of religious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Maïa; and I look at her, as it were, with the eyes of an artist. My intelligence remains skeptical. What, then, do I believe in? I do not know. And what is it I hope for? It would be difficult to say. Folly! I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden--a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer.

"Borne dans sa nature, infini dans ses voeux,

L'homme est un dieu tombé qui se souvient des cieux."

MARCH 17TH, 1870.--This morning the music of a brass band which had stopped under my windows moved me almost to tears. It exercised an indefinable, nostalgic power over me; it set me dreaming of another world, of infinite passion and supreme happiness. Such impressions are the echoes of Paradise in the soul; memories of ideal spheres whose sad sweetness ravishes and intoxicates the heart. O Plato! O Pythagoras! ages ago you heard these harmonies, surprised these moments of inward ecstasy,--knew these divine transports! If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

APRIL 1ST, 1870.--I am inclined to believe that for a woman love is the supreme authority,--that which judges the rest and decides what is good or evil. For a man, love is subordinate to right. It is a great passion, but it is not the source of order, the synonym of reason, the criterion of excellence. It would seem, then, that a woman places her ideal in the perfection of love, and a man in the perfection of justice.

JUNE 5TH, 1870.--The efficacy of religion lies precisely in that which is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion in proportion as it demands more faith,--that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It is mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and pursues: it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross became the "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, and is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its own repeated extravagances.

It is the forgetfulness of this psychological law which stultifies the so-called liberal Christianity. It is the realization of it which constitutes the strength of Catholicism.

Apparently, no positive religion can survive the supernatural element which is the reason for its existence. Natural religion seems to be the tomb of all historic cults. All concrete religions die eventually in the pure air of philosophy. So long then as the life of nations is in need of religion as a motive and sanction of morality, as food for faith, hope, and charity, so long will the masses turn away from pure reason and naked truth, so long will they adore mystery, so long--and rightly so--will they rest in faith, the only region where the ideal presents itself to them in an attractive form.

OCTOBER 26TH, 1870.--If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and vulgar crowd, is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty. When any society produces an increasing number of literary exquisites, of satirists, skeptics, and beaux esprits, some chemical disorganization of fabric may be inferred. Take, for example, the century of Augustus and that of Louis XV. Our cynics and railers are mere egotists, who stand aloof from the common duty, and in their indolent remoteness are of no service to society against any ill which may attack it. Their cultivation consists in having got rid of feeling. And thus they fall farther and farther away from true humanity, and approach nearer to the demoniacal nature. What was it that Mephistopheles lacked? Not intelligence, certainly, but goodness.

LIBRARY OF THE

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HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIELUCIA GILBERT RUNKLEGEORGE HENRY WARNER

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Connoisseur Edition

VOL. II.

1896

THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOL. II.

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME II.

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

HENRI FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL--(Continued from Volume I)

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER