Not that he succeeds altogether in the task of fusion. For one
who was to write and think in French, he was perhaps too long in
Germany; he had drunk too deeply of German thought; he had been too much
dazzled by the spectacle of Berlin and its imposing intellectual
activities. "As to his _literary_ talent," says M. Scherer, after
dwelling on the rapid growth of his intellectual powers under German
influence, "the profit which Amiel derived from his stay at Berlin is
more doubtful. Too long contact with the German mind had led to the
development in him of certain strangenesses of style which he had
afterward to get rid of, and even perhaps of some habits of thought
which he afterward felt the need of checking and correcting." This is
very true. Amiel is no doubt often guilty, as M. Caro puts it, of
attempts "to write German in French," and there are in his thought
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.
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