God, awake! Sow in tears, that ye may reap in triumph!' What a study is such a sermon! I felt all the extraordinary literary skill of it, while my eyes were still dim with tears. Diction, composition, similes, all is instructive and precious to remember. I was astonished, shaken, taken hold of.

18th November 1851. The energetic subjectivity, which has faith in itself, which does not fear to be something particular and definite without any consciousness or shame of its subjective illusion, is unknown to me. I am, so far as the intellectual order is concerned, essentially objective, and my distinctive speciality is to be able to place myself in all points of view, to see through all eyes, to emancipate myself, that is to say, from the individual prison. Hence aptitude for theory and irresolution in practice; hence critical talent and a difficulty in spontaneous production. Hence, also, a continuous uncertainty of conviction and opinion, so long as my aptitude remained mere instinct; but now that it is conscious and possesses itself, it is able to conclude and affirm in its turn, so that, after having brought disquiet, it now brings

peace. It says: There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.' Nothing finite is true, is interesting, or worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being. Then, in the light of the absolute, every idea becomes worth studying; in that of the infinite, every existence worth respecting; in that of the divine, every creature worth loving.

2d December 1851.- Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guest, an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new-thought or feeling. wakening in the depths of your being, do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to

look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness; let it take shape and grow, and not a word of your happiness to any one! Sacred work of nature as it is, all conception should be enwrapped by the triple veil of modesty, silence, and night.

Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the first condition of savoirvivre.

He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; he who does not advance, falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of the end - it is the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live, is to achieve a perpetual triumph; it is to assert one's self against destruction, against sickness, against the annulling and dispersion of one's physical and moral being. It is to will without ceasing, or rather to refresh one's will day by day.

It is not history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is the conscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting, — it is we who correct it by the persistence of our ideal. The soul moralises the past in order not to be demoralised by it. Like the alchemists of the middle age, she finds in the crucible of experience only the gold that she herself has poured into it.

1st February 1852 (Sunday). — Passed the afternoon in reading the Monologues of Schleiermacher. This little book made an impression on me almost as deep as it did twelve years ago, when I read it for the first time. It replunged me into the inner world, to which I return with joy whenever I may have forsaken it. I was able, besides, to measure my progress since then by the transparency of all the thoughts to me, and by the freedom with which I entered into and judged the point of view.

It is great, powerful, profound, but there is still pride in it, and even selfishness. For the centre of the universe is still the Self, the great Ich of Fichte. The tameless liberty, the divine dignity of the individual spirit, expanding till it admits neither any limit nor anything foreign to itself, and

conscious of a strength instinct with creative such is the point of view of the

force, Monologues.

The inner life in its enfranchisement from time, in its double end, the realisation of the species and of the individuality, in its proud dominion over all hostile circumstance, in its prophetic certainty of the future, in its immortal youth—such is their theme. Through them we are enabled to enter into a life of monumental interest, wholly original and beyond the influence of anything exterior- - an astonishing example of the autonomy of the ego, an imposing type of character — Zeno and Fichte in one. But still the motive power of this life is not religious; it is rather moral and philosophic. I see in it not so much a magnificent model to imitate as a precious subject of study. This ideal of a liberty, absolute, indefeasible, inviolable, respecting itself above all, disdaining the visible and the universe, and developing itself after its own laws alone, is also the ideal of Emerson, the Stoic of a young America. According to it, man finds his joy in himself, and, safe in the inaccessible sanctuary of his personal consciousness, becomes almost a god.5 He is himself principle, motive, and end of his own des