In his young alertness
Amiel seemed to be entering upon life as a conqueror; one would have
said the future was all his own."
His return, moreover, was marked by a success which seemed to secure him
at once an important position in his native town. After a public
competition he was appointed, in 1849, professor of esthetics and French
literature at the Academy of Geneva, a post which he held for four
years, exchanging it for the professorship of moral philosophy in 1854.
Thus at twenty-eight, without any struggle to succeed, he had gained, it
would have seemed, that safe foothold in life which should be all the
philosopher or the critic wants to secure the full and fruitful
development of his gifts. Unfortunately the appointment, instead of the
foundation and support, was to be the stumbling block of his career.
Geneva at the time was in a state of social and political ferment. After
a long struggle, beginning with the revolutionary outbreak of November,
1841, the Radical party, led by James Fazy, had succeeded in ousting the
Conservatives--that is to say, the governing class, which had ruled the
republic since the Restoration--from power. And with the advent of the
democratic constitution of 1846, and the exclusion of the old Genevese
families from the administration they had so long monopolized, a number
of subsidiary changes were effected, not less important to the ultimate
success of Radicalism than the change in political machinery introduced
by the new constitution.
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