equivalent, at once terse and clear, is hard to find. Another difficulty
has been his constant use of a technical philosophical language, which,
according to his French critics, is not French--even philosophical
French--but German. Very often it has been impossible to give any other
than a literal rendering of such passages, if the thought of the
original was to be preserved; but in those cases where a choice was open
to me, I have preferred the more literary to the more technical
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 "Pensees,"
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