expression; and I have been encouraged to do so by the fact that Amiel,
when he came to prepare for publication a certain number of "Pens es,"
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extracted from the Journal, and printed at the end of a volume of poems
published in 1853, frequently softened his phrases, so that sentences
which survive in the Journal in a more technical form are to be found in
a more literary form in the "Grains de Mil."
In two or three cases--not more, I think--I have allowed myself to
transpose a sentence bodily, and in a few instances I have added some
explanatory words to the text, which wherever the addition was of any
importance, are indicated by square brackets.
My warmest thanks are due to my friend and critic, M. Edmond Scherer,
from whose valuable and interesting study, prefixed to the French
Journal, as well as from certain materials in his possession which he
has very kindly allowed me to make use of, I have drawn by far the
greater part of the biographical material embodied in the Introduction.
M. Scherer has also given me help and advice through the whole process
of translation--advice which his scholarly knowledge of English has made
especially worth having.
In the translation of the more technical philosophical passages I have
been greatly helped by another friend, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, Fellow of
University College, Oxford, the translator of Lotze, of whose care and
pains in the matter I cherish a grateful remembrance.
But with all the help that has been so freely given me, not only by
these friends but by others, I confide the little book to the public
with many a misgiving! May it at least win a few more friends and
readers here and there for one who lived alone, and died sadly persuaded
that his life had been a barren mistake; whereas, all the while--such is
the irony of things--he had been in reality working out the mission
assigned him in the spiritual economy, and faithfully obeying the secret
mandate which had impressed itself upon his youthful consciousness:
"_Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave
behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so_."
MARY A. WARD.
INTRODUCTION
It was in the last days of December, 1882, that the first volume of
Henri Fr d ric Amiel's "Journal Intime" was published at Geneva. The
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book, of which the general literary world knew nothing prior to its
appearance, contained a long and remarkable Introduction from the pen of
M. Edmond Scherer, the well-known French critic, who had been for many
years one of Amiel's most valued friends, and it was prefaced also by a
little _Avertissement_, in which the "Editors"--that is to say, the
Genevese friends to whom the care and publication of the Journal had
been in the first instance entrusted--described in a few reserved and
sober words the genesis and objects of the publication. Some thousands
of sheets of Journal, covering a period of more than thirty years, had
come into the hands of Amiel's literary heirs. "They were written," said
the _Avertissement_, "with several ends in view. Amiel recorded in them
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