Taine's influence on French intellectual culture and literature was significant. He had a special relationship, in particular, with Émile Zola. As critic Philip Walker says of Zola, "In page after page, including many of his most memorable writings, we are presented with what amounts to a mimesis of the interplay between sensation and imagination which Taine studied at great length and out of which, he believed, emerges the world of the mind." The Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, was fascinated with both Zola and Taine early on (although he eventually concluded that Taine's influence on literature had been negative).