Senancour and Maurice de Guerin in
one, seem to have been supplemented here by a larger experience, a
far greater education, than either of them had attained to. So
multiplex is the result that minds of quite opposite type might well
discover in these pages their own special thought or humour, happily
expressed at last (they might think) in precisely that just shade of
language themselves had searched for in vain. And with a writer so
vivid and impressive as Amiel, those varieties of tendency are apt to
present themselves as so many contending persons. The perplexed
experience gets the apparent clearness, as it gets also the
animation, of a long dialogue; only, the disputants never part
company, and there is no real conclusion. "This nature," he
observes, of one of the many phases of character he has discovered in
himself, "is, as it were, only one of the men which exist in me. It
is one of my departments. It is not the whole of my territory, the
whole of my inner kingdom"; and again, "there are ten men in me,
according to time, place, surrounding, [24] and occasion; and, in my
restless diversity, I am for ever escaping myself."
Yet, in truth, there are but two men in Amiel--two sufficiently
opposed personalities, which the attentive reader may define for
himself; compare with, and try by each other--as we think, correct
also by each other.
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