itself veins of mysticism, elements of _Schwaermerei_, here and there, of
which a good deal must be laid to the account of his German training.

M. Renan regrets that after Geneva and after Berlin he never came to
Paris. Paris, he thinks, would have counteracted the Hegelian influences
brought to hear upon him at Berlin, [Footnote: See a not, however, on
the subject of Amiel's philosophical relationships, printed as an
Appendix to the present volume.] would have taught him cheerfulness, and
taught him also the art of writing, not beautiful fragments, but a book.
Possibly--but how much we should have lost! Instead of the Amiel we
know, we should have had one accomplished French critic the more.
Instead of the spiritual drama of the "Journal Intime," some further
additions to French _belles lettres_; instead of something to love,
something to admire! No, there is no wishing the German element in Amiel
away. Its invading, troubling effect upon his thought and temperament
goes far to explain the interest and suggestiveness of his mental
history. The language he speaks is the language of that French criticism
which--we have Sainte-Beuve's authority for it--is best described by
the motto of Montaigne, "_Un peu de chaque chose et rien de l'ensemble,
a la francaise_," and the thought he tries to express in it is thought
torn and strained by the constant effort to reach the All, the totality
of things: "What I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek to
know is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always the
complete, the absolute, the _teres atque rotundum_." And it was this
antagonism, or rather this fusion of traditions in him, which went far
to make him original, which opened to him, that is to say, so many new
lights on old paths, and stirred in him such capacities of fresh and
individual expression.

We have been carried forward, however, a little too far by this general