LIBRARY OF XHE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIFT OF S THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN BY HERMAN G. A. BRAUER, M. A. A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OP DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OP {WISCONSIN, 1902 (Reprinted from the Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and Literature Series, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 205-379) MADISON, WISCONSIN OCTOBER, 1903 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN BY HERMAN G. A. BRAUER, M. A. A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OP DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN, 1902 (Reprinted from the Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and Literature Series, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 205-379) MADISON, WISCONSIN OCTOBER, 1903 Co fay 2>ear fl&otber FROM WHOM I HAVE ALL THAT IS BEST IN MY LIFE I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK A TRIBUTE OF LOVE AND ESTEEM ".: or THE UNIVERSITY 01 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. CHAPTEK I. INTRODUCTORY. "Kenan pout etre defini d'un soul mot, qui, heureusement, n'est pas une formule: ce fut Fhomnie le plus intelligent du XIXe siecle." fimile Faguet, in the Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature francaise, Paris, 1899, tome VIII, pp. 397. Of. Monod: Renan, etc., 40, 48.* "Personne n'a parle d nos jours un frangais plus savant k la fois et plus simple, plus limpide, plus sincere, a travers lequel s'apercoive mieux la pensee." Gaston Boissier, L'Academie Frangaise, Recueil des Discours, Rapports et Pieces diverges, tome I, p. 808. On the two qualities emphasized in these judgments the fame of Renau chiefly rests: the clearness, simplicity and sincerity of his matchless prose, and the extraordinary fertility and com- prehensive culture of his many-sided mind. In this paper it is from the side of his thought, and not of his style, that he is approached. A study of Renan as a philosophic; thinker would seem to re- veal a third quality in respect of which he stands unexcelled, if not unequalled, in the century just closed. If it is true that he was the most intelligent man of the nineteenth century, it certainly is true no less that he was the most inconsistent. Even more remarkable than his wonderful fertility in ideas is the amazing incongruity of these ideas among themselves. Lest this should seem an exaggeration, I hasten to' adduce his *Fo'r this and all other abbreviations see Appendix C, page 378. 210 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. own testimony in support of these statements. That Renan was abundantly aware of the many contradictions in his writ- ings, the following passage alone would sufficiently prove. "Bon gre, mal gre, et nonobstant tous mes efforts conscien- tieux en sens contraire, j'etais predestine a etre: ce que je suis, un romantique protestant contre le romantisme, un utopiste prechant en politique le terre-a-terre, un. idealiste se donnant inutilement beaucoup de mal pour paraitre bourgeois, un tissu de contradictions, rappellant Vhircocerf de la scolastique, qui avait deux natures. line de mes moities devait etre occupee a demolir 1'autre, comme cet animal fabuleux de Ctesias qui se mangeait les pattes sans s'en douter." Souv.,* 73. Cf. Ibid., 62, 116-7. This confession is amply endorsed by a careful study of Eo- nan's writings, except ^perhaps the phrase: "nonobstant tous mes efforts conscientieux en sens contraire," which certainly does not accord very well with the following statement, written about the same time, and in which he seems rather to glory in his very inconsistencies: ff ln utrumque paratiLs! fitre pret a tout, voila peut-etre la sagesse. S'abandonner, suivant les heures, a la confiance, au scepticisme, a Toptimisme, a Tironie, voila le moyen d'etre sur qu'au moins par momients on a ete dans le vrai." F. Det., 396. Cf. A. S., 43. Similar utterances abound in his books, especially those of the later period. Such cavalierly indifference to logic might seem, at first sight to be only an expression of certain moods in his later phase, when experience had shown that his "efforts conscientieux" at consistency remained stubbornly fruitless. But such an ex- planation is forbidden by the facts. For nowhere is the incon- sistency of his opposite ideals more frankly avowed, or the pol- icy of alternative contradictory assertion more deliberately em- braced, than in his earliest writings. As early as 1845, for example, in a personal letter, he says: "J'ai pris la-dessus franchement mon parti; je me suis de- barrasse du joug importun de la consequence, au moins provisoi- rement. Dieu me condamnera-t-il pour avoir admis simulta- BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 211 nement ce quo reclament simultanement mes different fao- ultes, quoique j n puiss concilier lours exigences contraires f" Souv., 321. This casting aside of the importunate fetters of logic, reluc- tantly accepted in this letter as a provisional compromise, was destined soon to become a settled policy. Three years later, in the Avenir de la\ Science, the impossibility of expressing the whole truth within the limits of logical consistency, is already proclaimed in a very different tone: "Le premier pas de celui qui veut penser est de s'enhardir aux contradictions, laissant a Pavenir le soin d tout concilier. Un homme consequent dans son systeme de vie est certainement un esprit etroit. Car je le den, dans Petat actuel de Pesprit humain, de faire concorder tous les elements d la nature 1m- maine. S'il veut un systeme tout d'une piece, il sera done reduit a nier et exclure." A. S., 100. The unhesitating firmness; of tone in this passage, when con- trasted with the apologetic timidity of his earlier statements, seemjs to indicate a more settled conviction. Unwilling com- pulsion has already become deliberate choice. The same position is reaffirmed in his first published book, L'Ave-rroes et I'averro'isme, 1852 : "L'inconsequence est un element essential de toutes les choses hwnaines. La logique mene aux abimes. Qui peut sonder Pindiscernable mystere'de sa, propre conscience, et, dans le grand chaos de la vie humaine, quelle raison sait au juste oil s'arretent ses chances de bien voir et son droit d'affirmer? ?> Averr., 1YO. Of. ibid., X. Kenan does not mean of course to advocate a systematic disregard of logical rules as such. He merely contends that the various "faculties" and "capacities" of what w call human nature habitually and spontaneously, and perhaps inevitably, tend to affirm propositions and imply points of view which can- not be brought into logical accord with each other. A few typ- ical passages from his later books will help to make clear his meaning, and incidentally show how deliberately and persist- 212 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ently this indifference to self-contradiction prevailed in his own practice. In his Discours de reception before the Academ-ie Frangaise, 1878, he says: "Pestime qu'il est des sujets sur lesquels il est bon de se con- tredire; car aucune vue partielle n'en saurait epuiser les in- times replis. Les verites de la conscience sont des phares a feux changeants. A certaines heures, ces verites paraissent e- videntes; puis, on s'etonne qu'on ait pu j croire. . . Vingt fois rhumanite les a niees et afnrmees; vingt fois I'humanite les niera et les affirmera encore." Disc., 41-2. And two years later, in his address before the Royal Society of London, speaking of Marcus Aurelius: "II vit bien que lorsqu'il s'agit de 1'infini aucune formule n'est absolue, et qu'en pareille matiere on n'a quelque chance d^avoir aperu la verite une fois en sa vie que si 1'on s'est beau- coup contredit." C. d'Angl., 237-8. In his Introduction to the Book of Job and his Essay on Ec- clesiastes, once more, he declares that consistency, in matters of metaphysical speculation, is a mark of pedantry and narrow- ness, and inconsistency rather a sign of truth: "La question que Fauteur se propose est precisement celle que tout penseur agite, sans pouvoir la resoudre; ses embarras, ses inquietudes, cette fagon de retourner dans tous les sens le noeud fatal sans en trouver Tissue, renferment bien plus de philosophic que la scolastique tranchante qui pretend imposer silence aux doutes de la raison par des reponses d'iine appar- ente clarte. La contradiction, en de pareilles matieres, est le signe de la verite." Job, LXVII. Of. Dr. Ph., 176. "Malheur a qui ne se contredit pas au moins une fois par jour. On ne fut jamais plus eloigne du pedantisme que Tau- teur de 1'Ecclesiaste. La vue claire d'une verite ne Tempeche pas de voir, tout de suite apres, la verite contraire, avec la mieme clarte." EccL, 24. I have purposely quoted at length from Kenan's own words, in order to leave no doubt that he was quite aware of the many BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 213 inconsistencies in his own writings, and that he was rather proud than otherwise of their presence. When a writer thus boldly admits logical contradictions among his first principles., it of course becomes a difficult task to exhibit his thoughts in coherent form. "Abandon logic all who enter here," might be written over the entrance of Kenan s temple of philosophic truth. In the present instance this difficulty of exposition is increased by the fact that many of his characteristic doctrines are most clearly developed in his Dialogues and his Drames Philosophiques ; but he expressly declines to be held responsible for the opinions professed by his interlocutors: "Je me resigne d'avance a ce que Ton m ; attribue directe- ment toutes les opinions professees par m|es interlocuteurs, meme quand elles sont contradictoires. Je n'ecris que pour des lecteurs intelligent et eclaires, Ceux-la admettront parfaite- ment que je n*aie nulle solidarite avec mes personnages et que je ne doive porter la responsabilite d'aucune des opinions qu'ils expriment." Dial., VII. Cf. Dr. Ph., 257; Souv., 377. From most writers such a disclaimer would be entirely rea- sonable, or rather unnecessary. But Renan, surely, should be the last of all men to repudiate opinions professed in his dramas merely on the ground of their contradicting each other ; and to absolve him from responsibility for those opinions, on that ground alone, would seem] to> be going counter to his own. professed principles. But there is, in fact, a special reason, in his case, for insist- ing on this responsibility. It would not be hard to show that every doctrine of importance developed in \hoDialogues and the Drames PhilosopJiiques is put forward elsewhere in his writ- ings, explicitly or implicitly, by himself directly. Cf. Seailles, E. R,, 280-1. The following example is typical. In his preface to tihe Pretre de Nemi, he complains that certain critics, have imputed to him, the subversive doctrines of Ganeo, the least attractive character in the play, to whom he himself refers in the same connection as "le vil coquin." BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. "Pai mis en scene Ganeo, % vil coquin/ trouvant un dis- ciple digne do lui dans Leporinus, et lui enseignant la derniere consequence de regoisme, la lachete. C'est la doctrine de Ganeo qu'on a presentee comme la mienne. J'aurais preche justement ce dont j'ai voulu inspirer le mepris! C'est comme si Ton soutenait que les Spartiates montraient des esclaves ivres a leurs eofants, non pour les lenr f aire prendre en horreur, mais pour les engager a les imiter." Dr. Ph., 259. Now what is this doctrine of Ganeo, so indignantly repudi- ated by E-enan? Briefly this: that courage in battle is frequently punished by death, and cowardice rewarded by es- cape from death ; the brave man dies on the field while cowards at home enjoy the fruits of his bravery. "La lachete est presque toujours recompensee; quant an courage, c'est une vertu qui est le plus souvent punie de la peine de mort." "N'est-ce pas 1 ?" continues Ganeo, "Le vrai vainqueur, c'est celui qui se sauve. Vaincre, c'est ne pas se f aire tuer. On a Tair de supposer que le vainqueur mort jouit de sa victoire. Mais il n'en salt rien. Les honneurs qu'on rend a son cadavre, c'est compne si on les rendait a un tronc d'arbre." "Mais on dit que les dieux aiment les braves," objects Lepo- rinus. "Tant mieux pour les dieux," retorts Ganeo, "s'il y en a. "J'aime mieux ma peau que ramour des dieux. Avec ramour des dieux, on pouirit bel et bien sous terre." "On a a,ussi Testime des hommes." "Oui, 1'estime de vos deux voisins de rang, a condition qu'ils n'aieiit pas ete tues comme vous." "Mais il y a la nation," "Ah! si je te disais que la nation aussi a interet a etre vain- cue. Malheur a la nation victorieuse.' . . . Le vain- queur est le pire des maitres, le plus oppose aux reformes. O ? est au lendemain d^une defaite qu'une nation fait des pro- gres. O ? est au lendemain d'une defaite que Ton est libre, heu- reux. Dieu nous preserve de la victoire ! Eh bien, BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 215 reflechis done, mon cher. A moins de conserves rimmortalite de Fame pour les militaires, 1'essentiel, dans une bataille, est de se sauver." ... La mort est la faute irreparable. . . ." Dr. PL, 355-358. Embarrassing reflections, truly; reflections 1 which, encour- aged by the authoritative pen of M. 1' Administrates du Col- lege de France, might well provoke objections from French pa- triots. But in what respect does Ganeo's doctrine differ from the following declaration, published by our author himself four- teen years earlier? "L'interet personnel ne conseille jamais le courage militaire; car aucun des inconvenients qu'on encourt par la lachete n'equivaut a ce que Ton risque par le courage. II faut, pour exposer sa vie, la foi a quelque chose d'immateriel. OT, cette foi disparait de jour en jour." Kef. Int., 116. Of. Dr. Ph., 258. What effort did Kenan ever make, one cannot help wonder- ing, to encourage men's faith in a future life ? The further assertion of Ganeo, that individual welfare is not necessarily proportioned to national strength, is likewise endorsed by Kenan directly: "Le gouvernement representative est etabli presque partout. Mais des signes evidents de la fatigue causee par les charges nationales se montrent a 1'horizon. Le patriotisms devient lo- cal; Tentrainement national diminue. . . Dans cinquante ans le principe national sera en baisse. . . II est devenu trop clair, en effet, que le bonheur de Tindividu n'est pas en proportion de la grandeur de la nation a laquelle il appartient. . . ..." A. S., XY-XVI. The truth is< that Kenan's disavowal of the teachings of his interlocutors whenever they contradict his own, must be re- garded as adding another contradiction to the number, for in point of fact they never do contradict him. The opposite points of view which these characters are usually made to es- pouse, in reality represent the opposite conceptions of the two lobes of his own brain. His very reason, indeed, for giving to his thoughts the form of a dialogue was because in this way, 216 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVEKSITY OF WISCONSIN. as he himself says, he could best give expression to his own two-sided philosophic beliefs. "Prive de mes livres et separe de mes travanx," he writes in the preface: to his Dialogues pliilosopliiques, "j 'employ ais ces loisirs forces a f aire un retour sur moi-meme> et a dresser une so-rte d'etat sommaire de mes croyances philosophiques. La forme du dialogue me parut bonne pour cela, parce qu'elle n'a rien de dogmatique et qu'elle permet de presenter succes- sivement les diverses faces du probleme, sans que 1'on soit oblige de condom Moins que jamais je me 1 sens 1'audace de parler doctrinalement en pareille matiere." Dial., V-VI. But on the next page in the same preface he writes : "Chacon de ces personnages represente . . . les cotes successif s d'one pensee libre ; aucun d'eux n'est un pseudonyme que j'aurais choisi . . . pour exposer mon propre senti- ment." These statements, taken both together, can only mean that, while each of his' interlocutors represents a certain phase of Re- nan's own dootrinei, no one of them represents that doctrine com- pletely. And this is true. Any one of his characters, taken alone, would certainly misrepresent Kenan's position. But the misrepresentation would be due not to a real contradiction, but rather to the consistent advocacy of a single phase of the ques- tion at any one time. In view of our author's protest, however, the Dialogues and the Drames philosophiques are quoted in this paper only as con- firming positions taken by the author elsewhere, which they often express more briefly and more clearly. Few men have been more written about, by friends and by foes, than Kenan. All the eminent literary critics, and many others, have had their say; and several biographers have told the story of his life. A list of these works will be found in Appendix B. The most elaborate attempt yet made to explain, from a psy- chological point of view, the complex personality of Kenan, and the many contradictions in his writings resulting therefrom, is BKAUEE, THE PHILOSOPHY OF EKNEST BEN AN. 217 that of M. Gabriel Seailles: Ernest Renan, Essai de Biogra- phie psychologique>, 2 e edition, Paris, 1895. This writer tries to show that Kenan's inconsistencies are the logical outcome of his rejection of metaphysics, and his ex- clusive reliance upon the experimental method. "Renan attend tout de la science, il n'y a pas une verite qui lie vienne d'elle, il lui demande non settlement les faits et les lois, mais, plus hardi qu'A. Comte, Tidee qui domine les faits et coordonne les lois a la fin ideale de 1'univers II etait bon que cette experience fut faite, et en un sens elle a ete faite pour tous. L'echec de Renan n'est pas un accident, il est le terme logique d'une philosophic qui se reduit a 1'his- toire, demande aux faits eux-memes Tintelligence des faits, et devant leurs dementis ne pent que renoncer a elle-meme et desesperer. ... La vie intellectuelle de RJenan est une experience faite pour tous, elle nous apprend ou la logique conduit un esprit sincere qui, resolu a suivre la verite jusqu'au bout, Fattend du seul temoignage des faits." E. R., VIII, 341. My own opinion is that M. Seailles is trying too hard to refer to a single cause what in truth was due to the coopera- tion of a great many; and that, moreover, he has approached his author too exclusively from the intellectual side. It was not so much Renan's rejection, of metaphysics, indeed, he did not reject it in the sweeping manner assumed by M. Seailles but rathecr his heterogeneous temperament; not his adherence to the experimental method, but rather his frequent and capri- cious departure from that method, that furnished the principal source of the puzzling contradictions in his philosophical writ- ings. But further discussion of this point must be reserved for a later chapter. An explanation seems called for in regard to the form of the exposition here attempted. After bringing together and comparing with one another all Renan's utterances on the va- rious topics discussed, his contradictions were found to be so bold and so unceasing, that it seemed impossible to avoid mis- representation, or to convey anything like a true idea of the 218 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. nature of his mind, except by exhibiting his own statements side by side, and making discussion and criticism incidental. This mode of exposition will of course not lend itself well to continuous narrative, and is certain for that reason to prove less attractive to the reader; but it seemed the only way to avoid arbitrary exclusions. Moreover, this method has the advantage of presenting Kenan's views mainly in his own words, and thus provides at least, in convenient groupings, materials for a more detailed study of the subject at somie future time. The topics are accordingly grouped under three heads : Nature, Man, Society. Under the first will be found Kenan's ideas on such questions as evolution vs. special creation, law and miracle ; materialism and spiritualism; theism:, pantheism, agnosticism and positivism. In the other two divisions are presented his views on certain questions in ethics and politics respectively. The concluding chapter suggests the direction in which we must turn for a knowledge of the psychological factors involved in the production of his heterogeneous personality. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 219 CHAPTER II. I NATURE. Of Kenan's nature-philosophy, in the sense just described, the most characteristic feature is its thorough-going evolution- ism!. As early as 1845, fourteen years before the publication of the Origin of Species, he had quite abandoned the special- creation hypothesis, and adopted instead, at least within the limits of his own specialty, the principle of gradual evolution in accordance with natural law. Souv., 251. At least as early as 1848 also, he had developed a formula for evolution in general, recalling that which has since become f amous in the wording of Herbert Spencer. It may help the comparison to place the two side by side. Mr. Spencer's well- known formula runs thus : "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dis- sipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent het- erogeneity ; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." First Principles, 145. Kenan's conception is not expressed in such definite terms; it is less abstract, but also less concise and less comprehensive, being restricted to living forms. He writes in 1848 : "Evolution d'un germie primitif et syncretique par I'analyse de ses membres, et nouvelle unite resultant de cette analyse, telle est la loi de tout ce qui vit. Un germe est pose, renfer- mant en puissance, sans distinction, tout ce que 1'etre sera un jour; le germe se developpe, les formes se constituent dans leurs proportions regnlieres 1 . . . Mais rien ne se cree, rien ne s'ajoute. Je me suis sou vent servi avec succes de la comparaison suivante pour faire comprendre cette vue. Soit 220 BULLETIN OF THE UNTVEBSITY OF WISCONSIN. nne masse de clianvre homogene, que Ton tire en cordelles dis- tinctes ; la masse representera le syncretisme, oii coexistent con- fusement tous les instincts; les cordelles representeront 1'ana- lyse. Si Ton suppose que les cordelles, tout en rest-ant distinctes, soient ensuite entrelacees pour former une corde, on aura la synthese, qui differe du syncretisme primitif, en ce que les individuality bien que nouees en unite y restent distinctes." A. S., 313. This conception is applied by Benan to the evolution of the htiman mind, as represented in languages, literatures and re- ligions; and, in a more hypothetical way, to cosmic evolution at large. See A. S., 301-318. Herder, Michelet, and Cousin are frequently mentioned by him in connection with these views. So extreme was Kenan's enthusiasm for evolutionary science in this early period of his life that, had he been free to de- vote himself to biology instead of theology, as he often declared in later days, he would probably have anticipated some of the demonstrations of Darwin. Souv., 262-3. He was forced into other fields, however; and so, instead of an Origines des Especes, it was Les Origines du Christianisme which established his famle in the world. Writing nearly half a century later of his views in the forties : "J'avais un sentiment juste de ce que j'appellais les origines de la vie. Je voyais bien que tout se fait dans I'humaiiite et dans la nature, que la creation n'a pas de place dans la serie des effets et des causes. Trop peu naturaliste pour suivre les voies de la vie dans le labyrinthe que nous voyons sans le voir, j'etais evolutionniste decide en tout ce qui concerne les produits de rimmanite, langues, ecritures, litteratures, legislations, formes sociales. J'entrevoyais que le daniier morphologique des especes vegetales et animales est bien 1'indice d'une geiiese, que tout est ne selon un dessein dont nous voyons 1'obscur cane- vas." A. S., XII-XIII. Of. ibid., 170-2. But the truth is that Benan and Darwin approached the prob- lem! from entirely different points of view. Consistently with his clerical antecedents^\Benan approached the question of evo- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 221 ^ lution from the side of its theological and religious significance. To his mind, at least in the earlier period, the assertion of evo- lution was primarily a denial of the biblical account of creation, and of all the theological dogmas thence derived. ^In a world governed by natural law, this is the very key- stone of his nature-philosophy supernatural agencies have no place. In the endless chain of cause and effect which formed his conception of nature, each event is bound to its neighbor by a tie of internal necessity which is never broken through by interpositions of a supernatural or extra-natural power. Dial., 162; Or. Lang., 241. "Une chose absolument hors; de doute, c'est quo, dans 1'uni- vers accessible a notre experience, on n' observe et on 11 a jamais observe aucun fait passager provenant d'une volonte ni de volontes superieures a celle de Phomme." F. Det., 402 ; also 406. This conviction dates back as far as 1846, and was apparently formed under the influence of, or at least in co-operation with, his friend M. Berthelot. In all his life Kenan never again changed from this position. Souv., 337-8 ; also, 371-2. Neither is there any such thing as intentional action to be discovered in the operations of Nature. Whatever may be true of the government of the universe as a whole, in the details of this planet, if we except the actions of finite beings, there is no such thing as intelligently directed action ; nor ever has been, so far as man can ascertain. The unerring precision and ab- solute constancy of natural la,w, making it possible to predict results from a given combination of known materials and forces, is alone sufficient ground, he affirms, for discarding the idea of intelligent or intentional action, in the workings of Nature. "Le ca,ractere de precsion absolue du monde que nous ap- pelons materiel suifirait a eloigner 1'idee d'intention; Pinten- tionnel se trahissant presque ton jours par le manque de geo- metrie et Fa-peii-pres." ~F. Dei, 404. Cf. Or. Lang., 241. In the present state of the universe, intelligence is restricted to a middle region: both above and below finite minds, all is night. There is no evidence that our planet has ever been in- 222 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. fluenced by any rational being higher than man. A God, in the ordinary sense of the word, a living, acting God, a Provi- dence, is nowhere discernible. F. Dei, 406-7. And this ab- sence of purposive action may be affirmed without hesitation, he declares, of the entire solar system, and even of the whole universe, so far as planetary motions are concerned. There is no reasonable doubt that the other celestial bodies likewise fol- low laws of development inherent in their own constitution. At any rate, the onus probandi rests upon those who deny this. 1 F. Det., 405. Ren an does not mean to assert that a conscious ruler of the world does not exist ; but merely that no such influence is dis- cernible in the details of the world's government over that por- tion of space and time which man can investigate. Dial., 20. In other worlds or other ages, interventions by outside powers may possibly occur. It may well be that, compared with the totality of things, the portion of the universe accessible to the observations of man is a mere point; and what is true of this point, need not, of course, be true of the whole. At all events, with respect to the totality of things, it would be as rash to deny as to affirm intervention by superior powers. Dial., 22 ; F. Det., 417. The same course of reasoning applies, mutatis mutandis, to infinite time. Between our phenomenal universe, which we know is not eternal, and the primordial universe, of which we know nothing at all, there may be infinitudes of intervals. But if we admit, as Renan thinks we must, that our phenomenal world is but a finite part, of an infinite whole, everything is possible, even God. F. Det., 416. The day may come, for ^ught we know or can do to the contrary, .when some outside in- fluence will break through the causal nexus of our world and destroy its autonomy, without more regard for our theories than we show for the microbes in a clod that we crush. F. Det., 416. Imagine an atom, unconscious as a whole but inhabited by con- scious individuals asserting the complete autonomy of their little world. Suppose that chemistry should some clay succeed in disintegrating these atoms. And is it quite impossible that BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 223 our universe should have similar proof some day of the possi- bility of interventions from outside powers? F. Det., 414. But plainly, all this speculation about the constitution of a supposed primordial universe turns on mere possibilities, and between posse and esse the gulf is too wide to be bridged by the fragile fabrics of mere fancy. So far as our positive knowl- edge of nature extends, Reman maintains, inviolate natural law, unbroken by any trace of supernatural intervention, reigns su- preme in the universe. Cf . A. S., 170-1 ; 174. This intense constitutional aversion, as it must be called, for anything that savored of miracle, is best understood from a study, of his childhood environment. As Mr. Balfour among others has pointed out, one of the most important causes of belief, because the most irresistible, is the psychological climate, as he calls it, in which a person is born. And indeed, a little reflection will show that none of o>ur earli- est beliefs, whether in religion, philosophy or science, can be properly called the product of our own reasoning at all. A man cannot choose the first beginnings of his intellectual life any more than he can choose his parents or his native land. His first beliefs are matters of ethnical geography, and are de- termined by what may be called the moral zone or psychological climate of his early surroundings. In the words of Mr. Balfour : "Considered from the side of their origin, a man's early beliefs are mere products of natural conditions, psychological growths, comparable to the flora and fauna of continents and oceans." Found. Bel., 196; Cf. James, Will to Bel.; Bain's Ment and Mor. Sci., especially the Appendix, p. 80; also Philos. Rev., V, p. Iff. This truth is well exemplified in the life of Ernest Renan. His native town, T'reguier, had grown out of an ancient mon- astery, and was shrouded in an atmosphere of mythology, as dense as Benares or Jagatnata. Souv., I. He calls it a nest of priests and nuns, cut off from all trade and industry. Secu- lar pursuits were looked upon as vanity and vexation of spirit, while all about the town, in the high places and the country holy- 424 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. wells, Mab and Merlin, the fairies and the witches, had their devotees. Cf . Mme. Darmsteter, Life of Renan, pp. 4-5 ; Seailles, K R, p. 4. A large pla,ce in the lives of the people was given to the wor- ship of saints, most of them; unkown to the rest of Christendom, and whose solitary little chapels stood here and there among the moors or barren rocks. These local deities have left indelible marks on the mind of Renan. More than half a century later he writes : "La physionomie etrange, terrible, de ces saints, plus druides que chretiens, sauvages, vindicatifs, me poursuivait comme un cauchemar." Souv., 82. Among other virtues, these saints were reputed to possess the power of working miracles. A good example of these is the miracle by which, as Kenan was taught to believe, his father was cured of fever whan a child. Before day-break, the child was taken to the chapel of the saint who exercised the healing power. A blacksmith arrived at the sarnie time with his forge, nails and tongs. He lighted his fire, made his tongs red-hot, and held them before the face of the saint, threatening to shoe him like a horse unless he cured the child of his fever. The threat took immediate effect, and the child was cured. Souv., p. 86. A still better test of credulity was the miracle performed once a year by Saint Yves de Id Verite, the patron-saint of Brit- tany, on the occasion of an annual festival held in his honor : ;< La veille de la fete, le peuple se reunissait le soir dans Teglise et, a minuit, le saint etendait le bras pour benir 1'as- sistance prosternee. Mais s'il y avait dans la foule un seul incredule qui levat les yeux pour voir si le miracle etait reel, le saint, justement blesse de ce soupcon, ne bougeait pas, et, par la faute clu mecreant, personne n'etait beni." Souv., 11. Renan was not slow to discover a common trait in all these miracles: the credulity of the witnesses. "Das Wunder 1st, Jes Glaubens liebstes Kind." BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 225 With this environment of his childhood and the circum- stances of his early life in view, we are no longer surprised to find that his interest as a theological student in, Paris should have centered in the subject of miracles, and that throughout his long life the question of naturalism vs. supernaturalism should have been in the fore-ground of all his philosophical speculations. It is impossible to read his later discussions of miracles without being reminded of the wonder-working saints of his early surroundings. "II y a des miracles quand on y croit ; ils disparaissent quand on n'y croit plus." Mor. Or., 194. Cf. V. J., L-LII, 268; Dial, 14-22 ; Q. C., 221. "Aucun miracle ne s'est produit dans des conditions vrai- ment scientifiques, en presence de juges competents." Or. Lang., 241; Apost,, 37-42; Fragm., 318-19. Renan insists that his rejection of miracles is not a violation of scientific method, nor an a priori procedure. Rather is it the inevitable result of an impartial study of nature and his- tory. There is no evidence at the present day of any violation or suspension of natural law, he, maintains ; and as for the mir- acles alleged to have occurred in the distant past, they are in the same class with sirens and centaurs. What reason have we for disbelieving either the one or the other except that they have never been seen? Dial., 246. Hence the burden of proof, he insists, lies not with those who reject miracles, but with those who affirm them. Science is not called upon to disprove groundless assertions gratuitously made. Quod gratis asseri- tur gratis negatur. F. Det, 405. "Chercher a expliquer les recits surnaturels ou les reduire a des legendes, ce n'est pas mutiler les faits au nom 1 de la theo- rie; c'est partir de robservation meme des faits. . . Une observation qui n'a pas ete une seule fois dementie nous ap- prend qu'il n'arrive de miracles que dans les tem'ps. et les pays ou Ton y croit, devant des personnes disposees a y croire. . . Ce n'est don<5 pas au nom^ de telle ou telle philosophiei, c'est au nom d ? une constante experience, que nous banissons le miracle 2 226 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. de riiistoire." V. J., L-LI; Apost, 37ff; Dial, 318-19. "C'est par les sciences historiques qu'oni pent etablir (et, selon moi, d'une maniere peremptoire) . . . qu'il n'y a jamais eu de fait surnaturel. Ce n'est point par un raisonne- inent a priori que nous repoussons le miracle; c'est par un rai- sonnement critique ou historique." Souv., 328. Cf. ibid., 282. It is a noteworthy fact that Kenan seldom approaches the question of miracles without citing either MaJebranche or Lit- tre. The influence of the former on Renan was probably greater in this matter than that of any other writer. The conception of miracle, according to Renan, is a legacy from an unscientific age, and entirely without rational mean- ing today. At a time when everybody believed, as a matter of course, in spirits and their intervention in human affairs, any- thing that baffled the understanding was considered sufficiently explained by calling it a miracle, that is to say the work of su- pernatural powers. A. S., 262. But to a modern mind such an explanation is without meaning. To call an event- miracu- lous to-day is not. to explain it, but rather to' class it as unex- plained. "La condition mema de la science est de croire que tout est explicable naturellement, meme 1'inexplique. Pour la science, une explication surnaturelle n'est ni vraie ni fausse; ce n'est pas une explication." Q. C., 223. In Rman's sense of the word miracle', indeed, it would be a contradiction in terms to speak of miracles in the remote past. The miraculous, as he conceives it, is not merely the inexpli- cable; it is a formal derogation from recognized laws in the name of a particular desire. A thing is not miraculous merely because it is unique,, or not understood. Apost., 37-42 ; Or. Lang., 239. As thus denned, a miracle is a comparatively modern con- ception, a kind of^ by-product of natural science. Obviously, there must be a conception of natural law before we can think of an infraction or suspension of natural law ; or rather the two BBATTER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 227 conceptions, law and miracle, undifferentiated in primitive minds, develop together, pari passu, as the idea of natural law becomes definite. 2 Miracle implies law, as supernaturalism implies naturalism. They are correlative terms, and only have a meaning with reference to each other. The opposition of law and miracle, of naturalism: and super- naturalism, thus represent different stages in the evolution of man's ideas about nature. Time was when the word miracle explained things, in the sense of satisfying curiosity, just as phlogiston, chemism, heredity, electricity, microbe, even evolu- tion itself, have: served in turn to> explain almost anything, to unscientific minds of a later day. In the mythological ages of primitive man, spirits were as real as bacteria are to-day, and their action as universal. The exact nature of their ac- tivity, its limits and conditions, nobody stopped to examine in detail. Of. A. S., 45-6 ; also V. J., 41. But in his polemics against the miraculous Reman seems not to have realized sufficiently, at least in his earlier days, the ne- cessity of compromise in passing from the one regime to the other. "Tout on rien," he exclaims 1 , "supernaturalisme absolu 001 rationalisme sans reserve." A. S. ? 49. But who could expect that the humian race should pass from mythology to logic at a single bound? Should we not call it the greatest miracle of all if humanity had leaped suddenly from undoubting belief to> unbelieving doubt? JSTor has Renan, in his crusade against supernaturalism, al- ways kept to the straight and narrow path, of sound logic. When, for example, miracles are declared impossible because natural law is absolute and universal (A. S., 48, 169), he is plainly assuming the very point at issue. Such a statement amounts to saying that miracles cannot happen because they do not ; a position which he has himself refuted elsewhere : "Dans le milieu que nous experimentons, il ne se passe pas de miracles; mais, au point de vue de Tinfini, rien n'est imh possible." F. Det, 418. Occasionally also, in reply to a certain class of theologians, 228 BULLETIN OF TILE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. and presumably on the biblical principle of answering the fool according to his folly, he has repeated the well-worn argument that miracles are inconsistent with the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful creator, as subsequent interventions would im- ply that the original plan of the world was defective and needed occasional correction. Or. Lang., 239. But in such quibbling he rarely indulges. Already in L'Avemr de la science he takes the ground that belief in super- naturalism, like belief in fetichism, will never be dispelled by metaphysical argumentation. "Le seul moyen de guerir de cette etrange maladie qui, a la honte de la civilisation, n'a pas encore disparue de rhumanite, c'est la culture moderne. Mettez 1'esprit au niveau de la sci- ence, nourissez-le dans la methode rationnelle, et, sans lutte, sans argumentation, tomberont ces superstitions surannees. . . . La science positive et experimentale, en donnant a Thomme le sentiment de la vie reelle, pent seule detruire le supernatural- isme," A. S., 48-9. It is interesting to note that Itenan, while repudiating mir- acles in the past and the present, admits their possibility in the future. Supernatural interventions do not occur at the pres- ent time, because there is no supernatural being capable of in- tervening. Some day, however, such a being may exist. In the remote future, when evolution has run its course and the universe attained to complete self -consciousness, personal acts of divine will may take the place of natural law, even to the extent of becoming the normal modus operandi of nature. "Mais le miracle, c'est-a-dire ^intervention d'un etre su- perieur, qui maintenant n'a pas lieu, pourra un jour, quand Dieu sera conscient, etre le regime normal de Tunivers." F. Det, 441. Also in his article on Amid, F. Det., 392-3. Is Renan, then, to be classed as a materialist, in view of his disbelief in the existence of a conscious ruler of the universe? That wo>uld be a great mistake. Of. Dial., 143-4, 253, 141. The truth is that materialism in every form, whether ra- tional or temperamental, was repulsive to him. As for onto- logical materialism;, the doctrine that matter is the one eternal* BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 229 self-existent reality, the ultimate Weltstoff,, so to speak, he ex- plicitly rejects it as a palpable absurdity. A. S., 478. Mat- ter, he declares, has no real independent existence. It is merely the form in which the true substance of the universe, whatever that may be, becomes manifest to our senses ; a bridge of communication, as it were, between spirit and spirit in the finite world. "Je ne puis trop le repeter," he writes in 1862, "c'est Tideal qui est, et la realite passagere qui parait etre." Frag., 250. "S'il est une induction qui resulte naturellemient de 1'aspect general des f aits, c'est que la conscience de 1'individu nait et se forme, qu'elle est une resultante, mais une resultante plus re- elle que la cause qui la produit et sans commune mesure avec elle. . . . Le materialisme est done un non-sens plutot qu'une erreur. II est le fait d'esprits etroits qui se noient dans leurs propres mots et s'arretent au petit cote des choses." Mor. Cr., 65. "L'amfi! est la premiere desi realites et la seule pleine realite. C'est Tame qui est, et le corps qui parait etre." Ibid., 63. Of. Dial., 56, 141; A. S., 261; Or. Lang., 99; V. J., 29; Dr. Ph v 22-3. Is spirit, then, the ultimate reality, the true substance of the world 2 There are numerous passages in Kenan's books which would make it appear that he thought, so, as for example, the statement last quoted. That is not his meaning, however. In reality he takes a, middle ground, declaring the one assertion as unwarranted as the other. Neither matter nor mind are abso- lute, independent, self-existent realities. Rather, our ideas of matter and spirit are both of them negative conceptions. "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." All that we know about either is that it is not the other; mat- ter is not-mind, mind is not-matter. "Tout ce qui n'est point prose est vers, et tout ce qui n'est point vers est prose." H&- nan's only advance upon this tautology consists in the state- ment, little more than a guess, that matter and spirit are dis- tinct and irreducible modes of existence in which the real real- ity, whatever that may be, becomes manifest to our senses. BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. This view, already distinctly expressed in the Avenir de la sci- ence, he maintained to the end. "Les mots de corps et d'ame restent parfaitement distincts, en taut que representant des ordres de phenomenes irredue- tibles; mais faire cette diversite toiite phenomenale synonyme d'une distinction ontologique, c'est toimber dans un pesant re- alisme, et imiter les anciennes hypotheses des sciences phy- siques, qui supposaient autant de causes que, de faits. Le vrai est qu'il y a un substance unique, qui n'est ni corps ni esprit^ mais qui se manifeste par deux ordres de phenomenes, qui sont le corps et Tesprit, que ces deux mots n'ont de sens que par leur opposition, et que cette opposition n'est que dans les faits." A. S., 4T8. In his reply to the Discours de reception of M. Pasteur be- fore the Academie Francaise, 1882, he says: "Le but du monde, c'est 1'idee; mjais je ne connais pas un cas ou Fidee so soit produite sans matiere; je ne connais pas d'esprit pur ni d'oeoivre d'esprit pur. . . . Je ne sais pas si je fruis spiritualiste ou materialiste." Disc., 78. Cf. Dial., 55-6; Frag., 253. It i* only very occasionally, however, that Renan adverts to questions of this order. Ke was not much addicted to specula- tions about the essence of Being. Metaphysical speculations seemed to him 1 , in his normjal moods, an unprofitable waste of time, an intellectual legerdemain unworthy of a serious mind, and completely barren of results so far as the advancement of positive knowledge is concerned. 3 "Si la philosophic ne veut pas rester une toile de Penelope, sans cesse et toujours vainement recommencee, il faut qu'elle devienne savante." Mor. Crit, 81. "La tentative de construire la theorie des choses par le jeu dcs formules vides de 1'esprit est une prevention aussi vaine que celle du tisserand que voudrait produire de la toile en faisant aller sa navette sans y mettre du fil." Mor. Crit, 82. Cf. Souv., 250; Averr. IV, 323; Lang. Eem,, 505; D;sc., 39. But although the ultimate nature of reality is thus unknown, and presumably unknowable, Renan is very positive in his BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST BEN AN. 231 numerous assertions regarding its aims. An essential feature of his nature-philosophy is its teleology. The universe is cer- tainly not an assemblage of undirected, blindly acting forces, it is a mechanism moving towards a predetermined goal. "L'univers a un but ideal et sort, a une fin divine; il n'est pas seulement tine vaine agitation, dont la balance finale est zero," Dial., XIV. This is inferred from the fact of evolution throughout na- ture, the universal tendency in virtue of which the possible de- velops into the actual, the actual into the conscious, and the con- scious intoi progressively higher forms of self-consciousness. As the germ of an animal or plant tends to evolve conformably to its ancestral pattern, so does the evolution of the world as a whole follow a predetermined course. Dial., 234 ; Frag., 177. This belief in the purposive character of world evolution is not by any m;eans the expression merely of a passing mood, or the casual flight of an erratic fancy. It is repeated again and again, in a great variety of forms essays, speeches, dialogues, histories, plays, and in widely different associations. It is, in fact, one of the few constant items in his eminently incon- stant creed. Renan thoroughly believed, in his more serious moments at least, in some "far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves." As if to make sure of being taken in earnest, he declares his belief in teleology to be one of the only two propositions in philosophy of which he is certain be- yond a, doubt, the other being his belief in the absoluteness and universality of natural law. "Autant je tiens pour indubitable qu'aucun caprice, aucune volonte particuliere n'intervient dans le tissu des f aits de 1'uni- vers, autant je regarde comme evident que le monde a un but et travaille a une oeuvre mrysterieuse. II y a. quelque chose qui se developpe par une necessite interieure, par un instinct inconseient, analogue au mouvement des planter vers 1'eau ou la lumiere. . . Le monde est en travail de quelque chose; omnis creatura\ ingemiscit et parturit" Dial., 22. Cf. Frag., 177, 179. 232 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. If we ask what can be this ulterior goal of world-develop- ment, his answer is ready: It is the production of Reason. "Le but du monde est de produire de la raison. Tout lui est bon pour cela. Chaque planete fabrique de la pensee, du sentiment esthetique et moral; la petite recolte de vertu et de raison que produit chaque monde est la fin de ce monde, comme la secretion de la granine est le dernier but du gommier. 7 ' Dial., 58-9. Again in his letter to M. Berthelot, Frag., 177 : "Deux elements, le temps et la tendance au progres, ex- pliquent Punivers. Mens agitat molem. . . Spiritus Mus alii. . . . II v a une conscience obscure de Punivers qui tend a se faire, un secret ressort qui pousse le possible a ex- ister." Frag., 177-8. Cf. Dial., 144; Dr. Ph., 189. It is needless to observe that the Reason which, according to Kenan, the universe is destined to evolve, is not human rea- son, but intelligence or mind in its widest sense, including all conscious beings of whatever sort, past, present and to come. Human reason, it is true, mjarks the highest point yet reached, so far as the process is represented on this planet. "Pour moi je pense qu'il n'est pas dans Punivers d'intelli- gence superieure a celle de Phomme, en sorte que le plus vaste genie . de notre planete est vraiment le pretre du monde, puisqu'il en est la plus haute reflection." Frag., 283. Cf. Dial., 20-1 ; A. SI, note 14. Au moyen age, le plus haut resultat du monde, au moins de la planete Terre, etait un choeur de religieux chantant des psaumes. La science de notre temps, repondant au desir qu'a le monde de se connaitre, atteint des effets bien superieurs." Frag., 430-1. But, of course, evolution does not stop with man. Human- ity is merely a transitional link, human reason only a phase in the evolutionary movement whose ultimate goal is the pro- duction of a universal reason or world-consciousness. A. S., XX ; Dial, 118-23 ; Frag., 182-3 ; A. S., note 14. In a single word, evolution is a deific process. The development of con- BRAUEE, THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 233 sciousness is the development of God, that is to say of a being who will one day permeate and govern the universe as the soul its body. F. Det, 430. Of. A. S., 37 ; and especially, note 42 ; also Dial., 143 ; Souv., XXI-II. God is immanent in na- ture, and in all its products; the laws of nature are the habits of God. Dial., 25-6; 125; Frag., 248. "De qui est done cette phrase. . . "Dieu est immanent dans I'ensemble de Funivers, et dans chacun des etres qui le composent. Seulement il ne se connait pas egalement dans tous. II se connait plus dans la plante que dans le rocher, dans Tanimal que dans la plante, dans I'homnue que dans 1'ani- inal, dans 1'hoiinme intelligent que dans 1'homme borne, dans Thomme de genie que dans 1'homme intelligent, dans Socrate que dans 1'homme! de genie, dans Bouddha que dans Socrate, dans le Christ que dans B'ouddha," Voila la these fonda- mentale de toute notre theologie. Si c'est bien la ce qu'a voulu dire Hegel, soyons hegeliens," Dial, 187 ; 310 ; Dr. Ph. 22-3 ; A. S., 188-9 ; 200-1 ; Or. Lang., 99. Reman insists, that his teleology is not open to the objections properly raised against the Aristotelian finalism of the schol- astics. His own conception, he claimis, does not imply the ex- istence of a conscious, deliberating, omnipotent power. The re- alization of nature's aim is not a conscious execution of a pre- conceived plan. Evolution attains its purpose without special aimi, by a succession of lucky hits, so to speak. "Les objections des savants qui se mettent en garde centre ce qivil tiennent pour une resurrection du finalismei portent a fond centre le systeme d'un createur reflechi et tout-puissant. Elles ne portent en rien centre notre hypothese d'un. nisus pro- fond, s'exercant d'unei mianiere aveugle dans lea abimes de I'etre, poussant tout a 1'existence a chaque point de 1'espace. Ce nisus n'est ni, conscient, ni tout-puissant; il tire le meilleur parti possible de la, matiere dont il dispose." F. Det.,429-30. Cf. A. S., 258; Souv., 373. The evolutional impulse is an unconscious tendency or drift, ein, 'blinder Drang, groping its way in the dark, and reaching its goal in the end. in spite of endless blundering and countless 234- BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. failures, because of its eternal persistence and indefatigable en- deavor. Imagine, says Renan, an insect fluttering about in a room f roan which the only escape is through a hole in the ceil- ing just large enough for the creature to pass through if it happens to strike the exact centre of the opening. Allow this insect infinite time and infinite patience and perseverance, and it will ultimately succeed. Such is the universe; always young, always enterprising, never discouraged, and with a supply of material for experimentation so inexhaustible that waste is no loss, 4 But how can these positive statements, so often repeated in Renan's books, be made to accord with his explicit rejection of metaphysics ? "II n'y a pas de verite," he has told us, "qui n'ait son point de depart dans I'experience scientifique, qui no sorte directe- ment ou indirectement d'un laboratoire oil d'une bibliotheque, etc." Frag., 283-4; ibid., 263, 265. "Comment, " asks M. Seailles, "Inexperience scientifique Tauter ise-t-elle a conclure que Dieu se fait, qn'un jour il sera?" E. R, 212. Kenan's own reply is that it does not. In spite of his fre- quent reiterations of the deific doctrine, he has really forestalled criticism by explicit declarations on the other side of the question. How, for example, can the following words be recon- ciled with his doctrine of deific evolution, when taken together with his rejection of metaphysics ? "La theodicee n'a aucun fondement experimental. Deonander la Divinite a Inexperience, c'est done s'abuser." Frag., 318-20. And again in his preface to the Dramas Philosophiques, written in 1888 : "La philosophic, an point de rafftnement on elle est arrivee, s'aceomode a merveille d'un rnbde d'exposition ou rien ne s'afiirme, o-u tout s'induit, se fond, s'oppose, se nuance. On n'en est plus a perfectionner les regies du syllogisme, ni a fortifier les preuves de 1'existence de Dieu ou de Fimmortalite de Tame. L'homme voit bien, a Fheure qu'il est, qu'il ne saura BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 235 jamais rien de la. cause supreme de 1'univers ni de sa propre destinee." Dr. Ph., III. Two years later, in another preface, all his prefaces are written with special care we have the two opposite views ex- pressed in almost the same breath : "Rien ne noois indique quelle est la volonte de la nature, ni le but de Punivers. Pour nons autres>, idealistes, une seule doctrine est vraie, la doctrine transcendante selon laquelle le but de riiumanite est la constitution d'une conscience superi- eure, ou, commie on disait autrefois, la plus grande gloire de Dieu." A. S., XVI. Here we learn that our author distinguished between scien- tific truth and transcendental truth, the one for all mien and the other reserved for idealists; but how, again, is this "doctrine transcendante' ' to be reconciled with his rejection of metaphys- ics? Is not his theory one thing, and his practice quite another ? With regard to his theory, one is curious to know what stage this God-evolving process may have reached in our own day. May we say that God is, as well as that he will le? In a letter dated August, 1862, written in answer to this very question, Reiian says: "En dehors de la nature et de Phomnie, y a-tril done quelque chose ? me demandez-vous. "II y a tout, repondrai-je. La nature n'est qu'une appa- rence, 1'homme n'est qu'un phenomene. II y a le fond eternel, il y a Finfini, la substance, Tabsolu, 1'idea.l ; il y a, selon la belle expression miusulmane, celui qui dure ; il y a, selon Fexpression juive, plus belle encore, celui qui est. Voila le pere du sein duquel tout sort, au sein duquel tout rentre." Dial., 252. This is not merely ironical jargon employ ed. to put off in> pertinent questions. The statement is repeated in many dif- ferent connections. In the lecture Rome et le Christianisme, for example, we read : "La vie nous parait un court passage entre deux longues nuite. . . . line seule chose est certaine, c'est le sourire paterael, qui, a certaines heures, traverse la nature, attestant 236 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. qu' nn oeil nous regard e et qu'un coeur nous suit," C. d'Angl. r 200-1. Cf. Souv., 376. And again in his article: la Metaphysique et son avenir: "Dans la nature et Phistoire je vois bien mieux le divin que dans des formules abstraites d'une theodicee artificielle et d'une ontologie sans rapports avec les faits L'infini n'existe que quand il revet e une forme finie. Dieu ne se voit que dans ses incarnations." Frag., 310; ibid.., 250. These are explicit statements. Unfortunately, however, for logical consistency, he is equally explicit on the other side of the question. Contrast, for example, the passage last quoted with the following, taken from the same article: "La theodicee n'a aucun fondement experimental. Loin de reveler Dieu, la nature est immorale ; le bien et le mal lui sont indifferents. . . . L'histoire de meme est un scandale permanent au point de vue de la morale." Frag., 319. Cf. Disc., pp. 75, 134. And again: "La conscience est peut-etre une forme secondaire de 1'exist- ence. Un tel mot n'a. plus de sens quand on veut 1'appliquer au tout, a Tunivers, a Dieu. Conscience suppose une limitation, une opposition du moi et du non-moi, qui est la negation meme de rinfini. Ce qui est eternel, c'est Pidee." Dial., 140-1. In his article on Amiel he speaks of the "conscience generale obscure" as being "tout a fait insoucieuse des individus" (F. Det, 391) ; and repeatedly he declares that the process of deific evolution is still very far from its goal, which per- haps it may never attain. Compared with the omnipotence and omniscience which the world-soul is probably destined some day to attain, its present condition is comparable to the semi- consciousness of an oyster. "La conscience du tout parait jusqu-ici bien obscure. Elle ne seonble pas depasser beaucoup celle de Phuitre et du polypier, mais elle exist ; le monde va vers ses fins avec un instinct sur." Dial., 23-4; cf. F. Pet., 442-3. It would be interesting to know how Henan would have us reconcile the ff *ovrire paternel . . . attestant qu'un oeil BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 237 nous regarde et qu'un coeur nous suit" with this oyster-con- sciousness of the over-soul in its present stage. A third statement of his, it is true, supplies a connecting link; but this statement appears under the heading Reves: "Croyez-mjoi, Diem est une necessite absolue. Dieu sera, et Dieu est. En tant que realite, il sera; en tan,t qu'ideal, il est. Deus est sitrwl in esse et in fieri. Cela seul pent se deve- lopper qui est deja. Comment d'ailleurs imaginer un deve- loppemen-t ayant pour point de depart le neant." Dial., 145-6. Of. F. Det, XV XVII. Without entering here on a discussion of the grounds upon which even the ideal existence of God is affirmed in this inter- mediate statement, it is clear that it does not remove the con- tradiction between the other two. Even here the existence of God as an actual and completed present reality is distinctly denied. 5 A very provoking mannerism of Kenan, whenever he touches these questions, is the substitution of vague, grandiloquent phrases for coherent ideas. What, precisely, does he mean by ff le fond eternel, t'infini, la substance, V Ideal, I'abime de I'eire," and so forth? "Kenan abuse de la mythologie," suggests M. Seailles, "il fait des etres avec des mots.' 7 E. R, 282, note 2 : Cf. ibid., 192-3. Much of Kenan's religious philosophy is in fact mere rheto- ric, His language reminds one of Napoleon's famous har- angue to his soldiers in Egypt : "Soldats, du haut de ces monu- ments quarante siecles vous contemplent !" The emptiest rhet- oric will serve when minds are made up in advance. It is so in philosophy and religion, Glittering sophistries, from the lips of a good or great man, real or supposed, are often more powerful than truth itself as inducements to noble and heroic living. Stripped of its rhetoric, Kenan's belief in a God amounts to little more than a consciousness that our phenomenal world is probably not the whole of existence. Some deeper reality, beginning and end of all things, most probably exists ; but con- 238 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ceirning its ultimate nature and attributes nothing whatever is known. "La tentative d'expliquer Pineffable par des mots est aussi desesperee que celle de Fexpliquer par des recite ou des images : la langue, condamnee a cette torture, proteste, hurle, detonne. Toute proposition appliquee a Dieu est imperti^ nente, une seule exeeptee: II est." Frag., 323-5. Renan expressly repudiates the assumption that any conclu- sions can be drawn, as to the attributes of Grod, from the bare assertion of his existence, or even from the pro-position that he is a spirit Remembering that the word spirit bears a, purely negative meaning in, his ontology, we are prepared for the fol- lowing reductio ad absurdum of scholastic argumentation: "On dit, par example, Dieu est un esprit, il a tons les attributs des esprits. Esprit signifiant seulement tout ce qui n'est pas corps, ce raisonnement equivaut a celui-ci : II y a deux classes d'aniiniaux, les chevaux et les non-chevaux. L'oiseau est un non-cheval. Le poisson est aussi un non-cheval. Done 1'oiseau et le poisson sont de la meme espece, et ce qui se dit de I'oiseau peut se dire du poisson." A. S., note 192. On questions concerning the nature and attributes of what is known as the Absolute, Renan was an agnostic. "Des voiles impenetrables," he writes in 1859, "nous de- robent le secret de ce monde etrange dont la realite a la fois s'impose a nous et nous accable; la philo'sophie et la science poursuivront a jamais, sans jamais Tatteindre, la formule de ce Protee qu'aucune raison ne limite, qu'aucun langage n'ex- prime." Mor. Or., I II; Disc., 216; also Preface to the Dial. ; Hist, rel., 418. Again, in his reply to the Discours de reception of M. Pas- teur, 1882: "Le resultat final, c'est encore que le plus grand des sages a ete TEcclesiaste, quand il represente le monde livre a,ux disputes des hoonmies, pour qu'ils n ? y comprennent rien depuis un bout jusqu'a 1'autre." Disc., 81. Already in his first book he takes up the position that the human mind, developed by contact with the phenomenal world BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 239 and therefore adapted to it alone, is unable to apprehend "things-in-tbeonselves." As the humlan ear is adapted to the perception of sound only within a certain, middle region of wave-lengths, and is deaf to everything above or below its range, so with reason : both the infinitely small and the infinitely great arei beyond its reach. Man is unable to 1 conceive either an ab- solute beginning or an absolute end ; a first cause is as unthink- able as a last effect. Carry ontological speculation beyond a certain limit, and you are brought to the merest tautology. Every act of mind, he declares, like every equation, is reduci- ble at last to A = A. See A. S., p. 477. "II faut renoncer a 1'etroit concept de la scolastique, prenant Pesprit humain commie une machine parfaitement exacto et adequate a I'absolu. Des vues, des apergusi, des jours, des ouvertures, des sensations, des couleurs, des physionomies, des aspects, voila les formes sous lesquelles Pesprit pergoit les choses. La geometrie seule se forme en axiomes et en theoremes. Ailleurs le vague est le vrai." A. S., 58. Cf. ibid., 56; 152-153; 477; and note 26. Also Dial., VI, 147. "l^ous ne savons pas! voila tout ce qu'on peut dire de clair sur ce qui est au-dela du fini. ~Ne nions rien, n'amrmons rien, esperons. Gardons une place, dans les funerailles, pour la musique et Pencens." F. Det, XVII. Cf. C. d'Angl., 6-7. TJie question whether the human mind, inadequate and un- satis factory though it be as a, measure of objective reality, is reliable within the limits of perception adapted to its own con- stitution, is raised by Ren an at the bginning of his Dialogues philosophiques : Phtialetke: "Force nous est bien, cependant, d^essayer de construire d'apres ce que nous voyons la theorie de ce que nous ne voyons pas, sons peine de rassembler a P animal qui, courbe vers la terre, ne s'occupe que de Pobjet le plus prochain de ses sens et de ses appetits. 240 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Eutliypliron: "Soit, .... Mais un doute superieur plane sur toutes ces speculations. Le doute tient a une question insolu- ble. Notre constitution psychologique, qui est 1'oeil par lequel nous voyons la realite, n'est-elle pas elle-meme trompeuse ? ISTe sommes-nous pas les jouets d'une erreur inevitable Impossi- ble de repondre a une pareille interrogation sans tomber dans un eercle vicieux. Philalethe: "Je me suis habitue a ne plus m'arreter a ce doute, qui a jete tant de philosophes dans une voie sans issue. Comme 1' in- strument de la raison, manie scientifiquement et applique a la facon d'un etalon inflexible de la realite, n ? a jamiais conduit a une erreur, il faut en conclure qu'il est bon &t qu'on pent s'y fier. Une balance se verifie par elle-meme, quand, en variant les pesees, elle donne des resultats constants." Dial., 6-7. The further question, whether man's present "faculties" of perception are final, whether new ones may not in time be de- veloped or unknown ones discovered, Kenan seems nowhere to have considered explicitly, though an affirmative answer would seem to be implied in his belief that the evolving God is devel- oping through humanity. Concerning the future of religion, Renan is in complete agree- ment with Herbert Spencer. Positive knowledge, he main- tains, can never fill out the whole region of possible thought. Beyond the circle of the known lies the region of the unknown. The very nature of intelligence and constitution of the mind imply that around this circle of knowledge must always ex- tend a margin of ignorance. The greater one's knowledge, in- deed, or the larger one's circle, the broader the outlook upon the surrounding area of the .unknown, the region of igno- rance and wonder, of mystery and miracle. Kenan concludes from this that man will always be religious, for he will always be impelled, by the very nature of his mind, to reach over into this border-land of mystery, and seek to establish communion BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REOSAN. 241 with what he regards as a super-sensuous world. And what is this, Renan asks, if not religion? "L'homime en face des choses est fatalement porte a en, cher- cher le secret. Le probleine se pose de lui-mieme, et en vertu de cette faculte qu'a rhotmme d 7 allor au dela du phenomene qu 7 il percoit : tou jours, en face de Pmconnu, Thonime ressent un douhle sentiment, respect pour le mystere, noble temerite qui le porte a dechirer le voile pour connaitre ce ,Uii est au dela." A. S., 17-18. And again before the Academie Fran^aise: "II est des sujets ou Ton aime mieux deraisonner que de se taire. Verite ou chimere, le reve de Tinfini, nous attirera tou- jours En pareille matiere, la puerilite meme des efforts est touchante. II ne f aut pas demander de logique aux solutions que rhomone imagine pour se rendre quelque raison du sort etrange qui lui est echu." Disc., 40-1. Cf. Dial., VI, VII; XIII. "La religion est necessaire. Le jour ou elle disparai trait, ce serait le coeur meme de Thumanite qui se dessecherait La religion est aussi eternelle que la poesie, aussi eternelle que 1' amour ; elle survivra a la destruction de toutes las illusionsu Jamtais Thomme ne se contentera d ? une destinee finie." Q. C., 235; ibid., 414; also C. d'Ang., 6-7; Ant, XLIX LI. This propensity of human nature to "other-worldliness" led Renan to the position of Kant. Cf. Mor. Grit., IV. Besides the pure reaison which iserves in the phenomenal world, there is in man, he believed, a mysterious transcendental faculty or capacity, in virtue of which he is enabled to hold communion with a. super-sensuous wo>rld. This capacity he variously de- nominates r 'Moral Sense, 77 "Categorical Imperative, 77 "Practi- cal Reason, 77 "Conscience, 77 "'Divine Instinct, 77 and so forth; but called by whatever name, it is always opposed to the Pure Rieason. It is the pure heart that sees God; pure reason is atheistic. Dr. Ph., 279-80. "II est une base indubitable que nul scepticisme n 7 ebranlera 3 4 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. et 011 I'homme trouvera jusqn'a la fin des jours le point fixe de ses incertitudes : le bien, c'est le bien ; le mal, c'est le mal. Pour hair Tun et pour aimer 1'autre, aucun systeme n'est necessaire, et c'est en ce sens que la foi et 1'amour, en apparence sans lien avec I'inteliigence, sont le vrai fondement de la certitude morale et 1'unique moyen qu'a I'homme de comprendre quelque chose au probleme do son origine et de sa destinee."Mor. Cr, II. Of. Job, XG XCI. "Ce qui revele le vrai Dieu, c'st le sentiment moral. Si 1'humanite n'etait qu'intelligente, elle serait athee; Le devoir, le devouement, le sacrifice, toutes chooses dont 1'his- toire est pleine, sont inexplicables sans Dieu." Frag., 321-3. Cf. Dial., 30-1, 38. Nor is the testimony of this moral sense less reliable than the deliverances of pure reason, or the verdict of sense-percep- tion. Kenan would admjit that moral and religious intuitions cannot b expressed in rational speech, nor formulated in defi- nite logical propositions ; but he would insist, at the same time, that such an admission in no wise affects their veracity, and that ideas are not necessarily false because they are vagua Once admit that there is or can be such a thing as non-rational truth, and it seems impossible to avoid acknowledging symbolistic suggestion as legitimate language by the side of syllogistic assertion; the one for religion and the other for science. 6 "La spiritualite de Tame et 1'existence de Dieu . . . sont des choses si claires qu'elles n'ont pas besoin d'etre demon- trees, 011, quand on les prend pa,r 1'analyse, des choses si obscures qu'elles ne sont pas demontrables." Frag., 2Y2. Cf. ibid., 323. To what extent, if at all, Renan was influenced by contem- porary thinkers of the agnostic and positive schools, with whom he agrees in the main in miuch of his religious philosophy, it is impossible to make out with sufficient clearness to warrant positive statements. Cf. Faguet, Hist. lit. fr., 410-11. As for positivism, there is abundant evidence that he early became familiar with the doctrines of Comte and his disciple BEAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAX. 243 Littre, though neither of these appears to have been sympa- thetically read by him, Com,tei receives frequent mention in his earlier writings,, but always in a disparaging tone. In ISAvenir de Id science, for example, Kanan's criticism is summed up in these words : "En un mot, M. Comfe n'entend rien aux sciences de 1'hu- manite, parce qu'il n'est pas philologue." A. S., 151 ; also note 117. And again in the Souvenirs: "J'eprouvai une sorte d'agacenuent a voir la reputation ex- ageree d' Augusta Comte, erige en grand homme de premier ordre pour avoir dit, en mauvais francais, ce que tous les esprits scientifiques, depuis deux cents ans, ont vu aussi clairement que lui." Souv., 250. But in spite of his unlaudatory estimates of the founder of positivism), there can be no question that Renan was deeply imf bued with its spirit, and this appears to be due to> the influence of Comte. Cf. Brunetiere, Manl. hist lit fr., 482. Mr. Bab- bitt briefly and correctly defines Renan asi a scientist and posi" tivist with a Catholic imagination. Souv., Introd., IX. Far more important than the influence of Comte, or of any of his own countrymen, except, perha.ps, Malebranche, was the influence of the Germans, notably Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Herder, Goethe, and later Schopenhauer and v. Hartmann. With Kant> Herder and Hegel, however, Kenan appears to have had only a secondhand acquaintance, apparently through Cousin, and Quinert* His scientific work, too, in history and biblical criticism, was mainly built up on the results of German schol- arship, as he often himself very gratefully acknowledged. Souv., 58, 246, 291, 311, 385 ; Bef. Int, V VI; Cf. Hist lit fr., 456-7; Platehoff, E. R., 71; Seailles, E. R, 244. For Kenan's criticisms upon Hegel, see A. S., note 14; also p. 258; and Lang. Sem., 505. We have comtpared Kenan with agnostics. But here again he very much lacked consistency. Many of his utterances, es- pecially in the earlier period, are as far as possible removed 244 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. from the agnostic creed. Imagine Huxley or Spencer writing these words: "Oui, il viendra uii jour ou Mmmanite ne croira plus, mais ou elle saura ; un jour ou elle saura le monde metaphysique et moral, comtme elle sait deja le monde physique." A. S., 91. And yet an agnostic Renan crtainly was, at least in the sense of distinguishing sharply between knowledge and opinion, fact and fable, and declaring the riddle of existence unsolvable by the human mind. Cf. Monod: Renan, etc., XIV. "On ne fait pas de dialogues sur la geometric; car la geome- trie est vraie d'une facon impersonnelle. Mait tout ce qui im- plique une nuance de foi, d'adhesion voulue, de choix, d'anti- pathie, de sympathie, de haine et d'amour, se trouve bien d'une forme disposition oil chaque opinion s'incarne en une personne et se comporte comme un etre vivant." Dr. Ph., II. Cf. Dial., XIII XIV; Disc., 75; Mor. Grit., I II; A. S., 53-4. "Refuser de determiner Dieu n'est pas le nier; cette reserve est bien plutot I'effet d'une prof onde piete, qui tremble de blas- phemier en disant ce qu^il n'est pas." Frag., 317. There are two kinds of agnosticism, as everybody knows: that of flippant indifference, and that of baffled endeavor; and between the two there is a contrast in spirit and aim as great as that between tavern and temple. Renan belongs very em- phatically in the latter class. There is no evidence, however, of any direct influence on Renan from contemporary agnosti- cism. As for the English school, there is nothing in his writ- ings to suggest that he was even acquainted with their works. Neither Huxley, nor Spencer, nor Tyndall is once mentioned in any of his books. This chapter must not close without at least a passing refer- ence to Renan's latest phase, in which his philosophy of life fades out more and more into epicurean indifferentism. After a long life laboriously spent in the quest of what he conceived to be the truth, he falls more and more, like his model the Preacher, into a habit of discoursing discouragingly upon the vanity of all things. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 245 "La. verite est sourde et froide; nos ardeurs ne la, tou client pas. Die neue Philosophic, die neuere Philosophic, die neueste Philosophic. Mon Dieu ! que ces surencheres 1 sont naives- ! Pourquoi se disputer ainsi la priorite do Perreble de 1'univers, lequel a un but et fait tout converger a ce but, L'homme est un etre sub- ordonne; quoi qu'il fasse, il adore, il sert," ISP. Hist. Bel., XV; Dial., 45. ". .La nature triomphera toujours; elle a trop bien arrange les choses, elle a, trop bien pipe les des ; elle atteindra, quoi que nous fassions, son but, qui est de nous- tromper a son profit." Dial., 42 ; also 28. In view of such statements, and remembering that, accord- ing to his own theory, mleritorious acts alone can properly be called virtuous, how is it possible to affirm that virtue con- sists in obedience to Nature, and then affirm in the same breath that man cannot possibly refuse the obedience? Is he not, as some one has said of Hegel, devising a logic for his own pri- vate use? Is he not, in the strictest sense of the terms, mak- ing a virtue of necessity ? It is true that Kenan distinguishes between cheerful and grudging obedience, graceful and ungraceful service, and de- clares the former alone to be moral, as in the following passage (among many other's) : "La vertu, c'est de contribuer avec joie et empressement au bien supreme. Le mal, c'est de servir sans grace, de ressemjbler au sold at mediocre qui murmure contre son chef, tout en allant au feu comme les autres." N. Hist. Eel., XV. But even so, what more does morality become than a cheer- ful submission to the inevitable? And what else do we mean by miaking a. virtue of necessity ? lla Man's obedience to Nature, again, viewed from another side, becomes altruismt, which in Kenan's terminology is the whole of morality. "Chose singuliere," he writes in his review of Sainte-Beuve's Port-Royal, 1860; " le principe qui fait les bons ecrivains est 268 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. le meme que celui qui fait les saints. L' amour-propre, 1'envie de briller sont le defaut capital, qu'il s'agisse de morale re- ligieuse ou qu'il s'agisse d'eloeution ; 1'oubli de soi, le mepris du succes sont la regie du bien dans tous les genres." N. Hist. Rel. ; 492-3. There is no contradiction, of course, between his conception of morality as obedience to* Mature, and his conception of it as altruism; it is both, only from different points of view. Morality is obedience, with reference to the source of the impulses and instincts by which unselfish action is prompted; it is altruism', with, reference to the end which the impulse seeks to attain. The element of altruism, in fact, has to be made very prominent in order to guard this conception of morality against obvious misunderstandings. For if virtue is obedience to Nature, what then, it might be asked, is vice? Are murder, theft and adultery less "natural" than faith, hope and charity ? It is therefore important to lay stress on the motive, and not on the motive merely as such, but on a conscious and deliberate recognition of the motive as altruistic. But in thus attempting to guard our author's coneerption against absurd misconstructions, we are landed, in fact, in an- other contradiction. For how can deliberate altruism be recon- ciled with his doctrine that Reason is always and inevitably self -centered ? But this point we shall Jiave occasion to dis- cuss more fully as we proceed. A threefold distinction seems necessary in order to bring out Kenan's full meaning. Altruism may be viewed from three sides, according as we contemplate the result of an act, or its cause, or a consciousness of the cause on the part of the actor. It is this last phase alone which Kenan has in mind when he speaks of altruism] as virtue, and of virtue as obedience to Na- ture. Throughout his moral philosophy, his attention seems directed, not to the goodness or badness of acts as determined by their consequences, but to the character or disposition from which they proceed. For an act to be altruistic, and therefore virtuous, in Kenan's sense of the terms, an act must reveal not only de facto obedience to unselfish impulses, but a conscious- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 269 ness of the impulse as being unselfish. A man is not yet virtu- ous because his conduct is in fact unselfish, whether in motive or result, but only when the unselfish motive is knowingly and deliberately followed as such. Through the instrumentality of "other-profiting" instincts, to adopt a bad word, man is ex- ploited, according to this view, whether he will or not, in the interests of universal evolution, or the good of the universe. Even when individuals imagine themselves pursuing their own interests they are all the time unconsciously furthering Nature's ulterior aims. But this is not yet virtue, or merit. It is only when we come to be clearly aware of this dupery, and yet co- operate, knowingly and deliberately, with Nature's plans, that our obedience is entitled to the lofty appellation of virtue. It is needless to say that Kenan made no effort to apply this exacting conception of virtue to work-a-day life. In the task of allotting the prizes for virtue known as the Prix Montyon, awarded each year by the Academic Franchise, and on which Renan was himself several times commissioned to report, he appears to have made no attempt to ascertain as a preliminary qualification to compete for this prize, whether the candidates were clearly aware of their being exploited in behalf of deific evolution. It is interesting to note that in his conception of morality as altruism likewise, Renan is making a virtue of necessity; for he holds that a certain amount of unselfishness is unavoidable in every human life. An utterly selfish life is an impossibi- lity. "Pretendre enlever de ce mjonde le sentiment de la piete et reduire tout au pur egoi'sme est aussi impossible qu'enlever a la femme ses organes de mere. L'egoiste lui-meme, qui pretend dresser la theorie de 1'interet bien entendu, est dupe de la na- ture. L'egoi'ste donne a chaque heure mille demjentis a son sys- teme; la vie d'un egoiste est un tissu d'inconsequences, d'ac- tions qui, a son point de yue, sont absurdes et folles." Dial., 37; 39-40. A similar paradox appears in his statements regarding the relation of morality to reason. On the one hand he insists, as 270 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. we have seen, that reason is hostile to altruism, in other words to morality and religion. He deplores the fact, that humanity, in these days of rationalism, should be living upon its moral capital, the laborious savings of past generations. "Les vieilles croyances an moyen desquelles on aidait rhomme a pratiquer la vertu sont ebranlees, et elles* n'ont pas ete remplacees. Pour nous autres, esprits cultives, les equiva- lents de ces croyances que fournit ridealisme suffisent tout a fait; car nous agissons sous Pempire d'anciennes habitudes; nous soimmes comme ces animaux a qui les physiologistes* en- levent le cerveau, et qui n'en continuent pas moins certaines f onctions de la vie par 1'effet du pli contracte. Mais ces mouve- ments instinctifs s'aiTaibliront avec le temps. . . . Les personnes religieuses vivent d'une ombre. ]STous vivons de Tombre d ? une ombre. De quoi vivra-t-on apres nous ?" Dial, XVIII-IX. F. Det, XVIII. But on the other hand he just as frequently declares that morality and religion are beyond the reach of rational argu- mentation. Compared with the deep-rooted non-rational imh pulses of man's moral nature, reason is but a superficial ven- eering, powerless to suppress the altruistic instincts which de- termine our practice in spite of our theories. There will always be 1 those, he declares, who practice virtue without stop^ ping to make sure that they are not fools for their pains. "Precher a rhomme de ne pas se devouer est comme precher a Toiseau de ne pas f aire son nid, et de ne pas nourrir ses petits. Cela est tres-peu dangereux; rhomme et Toiseau continueront toujours leur eternel manege, car la nature en a besoin. Une ingenieuse providence prend ses precautions pour assurer la somme de vertu necessaire a la sustentation de 1'univers." Dial., 32-3. "Ce que vent Tunivers, il rimposera toujours; car il a pour appuyer ses volontes des ruses monies. Les raisonnements les plus evidents des critiques ne feront rien pour demolir ces saintes illustions." ~F. Det, 426-7. "Les croyances necessaires sont au-dessus de toute atteinte. L'hum,anite ne nous ecoutera que dans la mesure ou no BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 271 temes conviendront a ses devoir et a se& instincts. Disons ce que nous pensons; la femme n'en continuera pas moins sa joyeuse cantilene, 1'enfant n'en deviendra pas plus soucieux, ni la jeunesse moins enivree; rhomme vertueux restera ver- ttuex; la carmelite continuera a macerer sa chair, la mere a remplir ses devoirs, 1'oiseau a chanter, 1'abeille a faire son miel." EccL, 88; repeated in P. Isr., V: 159. There is no real contradiction, however, between these state- ments and the assertion that reason is hostile to virtue. Ra- tionalism injures altruism,, vet altruism! survives rationalism. Both statements would seem to be true. A society which for many generations has been accustomed, like modern Europe, to associate virtuous living with religious beliefs, is certain to have its morality injuriously affected by a philosophy which tends to subvert those beliefs, It is a matter of daily observa- tion that what is known as " Aufklarung" has no tendency to improve morals. But on the other hand, it is also true that no amount of rationalization can permanently destroy the moral life of the race. Kenan's meaning appears to be that altruistic impulses, being matters of instinct, will always exist; but that it is only in virtue of certain illusions that these impulses, and the conduct they prompt, can secure the sanction of reason. By reason, indeed, Renan simply means the capacity for cool, dispassionate judgment of values. Rational judgments, ex vi termini, are dispassionate judgments. But dispassionate delib- eration in morals, he believed, is essentially and inevitably self- centered; self-interest being the pivot,, so to speak, on which the deliberation must turn. Hence reason becomes, in morals, a capacity for the calculation of self-interest, and therefore a thorough-going and consistent rationalism must of course be strictly incompatible with an unselfish life. From this position Renan never swerves. A conscious and deliberate renunciation of self-interest, he insists, is never obtained through rational persuasion ; but he was very confident that humanity will never fail to supply all the illusions and sophistries necessary for the subsistence of moral ideals and virtuous habits. "Une seule chose est sure, c'est que rhumanite tirera de son 272 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. sein tout c qui est necessaire en fait d'illusions pour qu'elle remplisse ses devoir et accomplisse sa destinee." Dial., XIX. We must remember, however, that all these illusions are ef- fective only because they are taken, or rather mistaken, for truths. However important they may be in sustaining the moral life, the time must come when they are seen to be fic- tions, at least by a disillusioned few. What then shall be the attitude of these philosophers towards, the rest of mankind? In* the event of a real conflict between the claims of truth and the requirements of morality, which shall prevail ? Can it ever be right to suppress the truth in the interests of morality, real or supposed ? As an example we may take once more the belief in a future judgment. Suppose it to be 1 known by the initiated (among whom we must reckon Kenan), beyond the possibility of a doubt, that belief in a judgment after death is based on illu- sion. Shall the fact be openly professed, even though it is certain to lead to a lowering of the standard of morals ? Here again it is possible to quote Kenan on both sides of the question. In one of his last utterances on the subject, his preface to the Avenir de la science, he insists that even truth itself is a secondary consideration when it comes into conflict with the demands of m'orality. "Je veux certes la liberte de la pensee; car le vrai a ses droits comme le Men, et on ne gagne rien a ces timides mensonges qui ne trompent personne et n'aboutissent qu ? a Thypocrisie. Mais, je 1'avoue, la science mem et la cri- tique sont a me& yeux des choses secondaire aupres de la neces- site de conserves la tradition du bien." Mor. Grit., Ill IV ; also, XVII. More frequently, however, he insists that truth must come first, regardless of consequences to religion and morals; for the advancement of truth is an end to which morality is merely a means. F. Det, 436-7. "L'ordre social, comme 1'ordre theologique, provoque la question: Qui sait si la verite n'est pas triste? L'edifice de la societe humaine porte sur un grand vide. !Nous avons ose lo BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 273 dire. Kien do plus dangereux quo de patiner sur une couche de glace sans songer combien cette couche est mince. Je n'ai jamais pii croire que, dans aucun ordre de choses, il fut mau- vais d'y voir trop clair. Toute verite est bonne a savoir. Oar toute verite elaireinent sue rend fort, ou prudent." Avant- propos to the Pretre de Nemi, Dr. Ph., 263. In his Exaimen de conscience philosopJiique he seems to up^ hold the extremie position that man exists for truth, not truth for man. A planet on which the postulates of morality are incompatible with the facts of science were better wiped away : "Si Perreur etait la, condition de la, moralite humaine, il n'y aurait aucune raison pour s'interesser a un globe, voue a rigno- rance. Nona aimons I'humanite, parce qu'elle produit la science ; nous tenons a la moralite, parce que des races honnetes peuvent seules etre des races scientifiquea Si on posait Fig- norarice co'mme borne necessaire de Thumanite, nousi ne voyons plus aucun motif de tenir a son existence. . . . Le retour de Thumanite a ses vieilles erreurs, censees indispensable^ a sa moralite, serait pire que son entiere demoralisation." 12 F. Det, 436-7. Cf. ibid., XXIV, 402; A. S., 93. Of all the contradictions in Kenan's writings the most as- tounding is contained in the following passage, when con- trasted with the doctrine which prevails in his later years: "Que les personnes qui ne croient pas a la realite du devoir, qui regardent la morale comme une illusion, prechent la these desolante de rabrutissement necessaire d'une partie de respece humaine, rien de mieux; mais pour nous qui crayons que la moralite est vraie d'une mianiere absolue, une telle doctrine nous est interdite. A tout prix, et quoi qu'il arrive, que plus de lumiere se fasse. Voila notre devise ; nous ne Fabandonnerons jamais." Eef. Int., 308. Cf. Disc., 232-3; 258-9; 39. "Nous ne I' abandonnerons jamais/' But alas for human resolutions ! I/ho>mme propose mais Dieu dispose. Only a few months later, the very doctrines so indignantly repudiated here: "la miorale comme une illusion," "la these desolante de rabru- tissement necessaire d'une partie de Tespec humaine," are de- veloped in extenso by Kenan himself in the Dialogues pliiloso- 5 274 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. pliiques, and thenceforward become dominant thoughts in all his political philosophy. The above passage is taken from a public address on the place of the State in the education of children, delivered in April, 1869, shoTtly before the outbreak of the war, and during his candidacy for the electoral district of Seine-et-Marne. Can it be that his liberal attitude towards popular education in. this address was determined by his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies ? But it seems more likely, in view of his independent charac- ter, that his statement truly represented his dominant belief at the time; and. that his espousal of the opposite view immedi- ately after the war is to be ascribed to the change of political organization which followed that disastrous event. Idealist that he was, he seems always to have been opposed to the pre- vailing regime ; a democrat under the empire, an aristocrat un- der democracy. Not that his earlier beliefs were ever abandoned, however. The old and the new, regardless of consistency, are affirmed al- ternately, as mood or necessity prompt. Audiatur et altera pars! Even in his latest writings, his faith in rational prog- ress, and his earlier enthusiasm for popular education, are fre- quently and emphatically affirmed, though the latter on differ- ent grounds. "Mieux vaut un peuple immoral qu'un peuple f anatique ; car les masses immorales ne sont pas genantes, tandis que les masses fanatiques abetissent le monde, et un monde condamne a la betise n'a plus de raison pour que je m'y interesse; j'aime autant le voir mourir. Supposons les orangers atteints d'une maladie dont on ne puisse les guerir qu'en les empechant de produire des oranges. Cela ne vaudrait pas la peine, puisque Toranger qui ne produit pas d'oranges n'est plus bon a rien." A. S., X. An intermediate position is taken in the Avenir de la sci- ence, which represents the climax of the age of reason in his own life. In the long run, he there maintains, truth and util- ity, the interests of science and those of morality, must coin- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 275 cide. It is only during periods of transition, like that from. Bupernaturalism to naturalism, that the truth ma,y seem: hostile to morals. The only morality that is ever injured by truth is a morality based on error. Reason, however inadequate and disappointing in many ways, is still the best guide we have. (Souv., 408: letter of Sep. 11, 1846, to his friend M. Cog- nat. ) Rationalism has never yet been the cause of social degen- eration. In fact, he insists, the experiment has never been tried, for the age of reason is even now only in its dawn. A. S., 74. Cf. ibid., 68; 93; 96; 101; XIX. N. Hist EeL, 505. Mor. Grit, III, VII. Turning now to the question of moral criteria: it is very obvious that Kenan's definition of morality as unselfishness can- not furnish a standard of right action, for the simple reason, that "selfish" and "unselfish" may mean as miany different things as there are different characters or selves. Selfish con- duct is presumably that which secures, or is expected to secure, the agent's own welfare, real or supposed, regardless of the wel- fare of others. But obviously, different kinds of conduct will bring satisfaction to different characters. The practice of vir- tue is pleasurable to the virtuous as vice is to the vicious. If therefore, an act becomes selfish whenever it aims at the satisfaction or pleasure of the agent, it follows that the practice of virtue by the virtuous is selfish ; and if all selfish' action is wrong, it must be wrong for the virtuous to practice virtue, which, as Euclid would say, is absurd. And besides, if all action which' aims at the agent's own 1 wel- fare is wrong, it is not certain that any opportunity for right action remains. It would be easy to show, indeed, from Renan's own words, that morality is at bottom nothing more than a; ficv tion. For if it is true that reason is utterly and unavoidably selfish, as he insists, and that hence there can be no such thing as a deliberately unselfish act ; and if, as he further maintains, deliberate unselfishness alone can be called meritorious, then 1 does it not follow that the very idea of merit, or of morality, rests on illusion ? But this is as far as possible from the position expressly main- 276 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. tained by him elsewhere. For not only is faith in morality declared to be the most certain! of all human beliefs, it is the only absolute certitude in the entire realm of philosophy. Speaking of the articles which make up his Essais de morale et de critique, he says: "Tous se resument en une pensee que je mets fort au-dessus des opinions et des hypotheses, c'est que le morale est la chose serieuse et vraie par excellence, et qu'elle suffit pour donner a la vie un sens et uiu but" Mar. Grit,, I. Cf . Frag., 311 ; also, Seailles, E. R., 218. M. Seailles comments on these passages : "A regarder les choses du point de vue de Tespace et du temps, il y a quelque chose de monstrueux dans la primaute que Renan accorde aux sciences morales, c'est revenir a Fan- thropomorphismje sans prendre la peine de le justifies. " E. R., 340. The truth is that we are confronted again with the capi- tal defect of Roman's moral philosophy, as of all his philosoph- ical speculations,: it is either so incurably vague as to afford no definite information, or so hopelessly self-contradictory as to baffle all .attempts at reconciliation, and even at clear and consistent exposition. His language is loose and elastic, sup- ple and evasive to the last degree. Moreover, he seems never to have examined the problems of moral philosophy from a psychological point of view. There is nothing in his writings to indicate that he ever went to the trouble of analyzing men's moral judgments with reference to the ultimate reasons wky acts are currently judged to be good or bad, or motives right or wrong. The only statement in his books which might sug- gest a familiarity with the subject occurs in one of his speeches before the Academie Frangaise, in which all existing theories concerning the origin of morality and the ultimate grounds of obligation are declared to be untenable. Cf. Disc., 196-7. It is true that in all his utterances; on the subject he de- clares or implies that morality consists in unselfishness; but it is too absurd to suppose that so clear-headed a man as Renan would expressly maintain that all selfish action is wrong, and BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 277 all unselfish action right The truth is that he approaches the problem from a different point of view. Morality, in his con- ception of it, is not so much a question of right and wrong, or of reasons for right and wrong, as a question of merit or absence of merit Unselfish conduct, he would say with Kant, to whom his impressions in moral philosophy all appear to go back, is meritorious conduct; and that is his reason for calling it virtuous. But even so he gets himself hopelessly involved in tauto- logy, or entangled in contradictions, the moment he is pressed to define his terms. What, for example, does he miean by mer- itorious conduct? In all the accepted meanings of the term, merit is rested upon virtue, and not the other way round. An action is meri- torious beca,use it is virtuous, or virtuous to an unusual de- gree. Merit is simply the value set upon virtue. The weaker the flesh the greater the merit if we do right. The harder it is to rise early in the mlorning, the greater the merit in doing so. Cf . Leslie Stephen, Sci. Eth., Lond., 1882, p. 311 ; Alex- ander, Mor. Order and Prog., Lond., 1891, p. 194; Kant, Met d. Sit, 1797, p. 29. To make mierit the basis of virtue, therefore, involves a logical circle. For if we ask for the ground of the mierit, the only answer can be that it is virtue, or an unusual degree of virtue. The tautology is obvious: unselfish conduct is vir- tuous because it is meritorious, and it is meritorious because it is unselfish and therefore virtuous; in other words, it is. good because it is good. And this really seems to be Kenan's position. He expressly declares, ove-r and over again, that no reason can be given why a man should be virtuous. Whenever an individual is truly unselfish, it! is in consequence of some mysterious, transcenden- tal compulsion. A moral hero can give no rational grounds for his heroism. "La signification transcendante de Tacte vertueux est pre- cisement qu'en le faisant, on ne poturra pas bien dire pour- quoi on le fait II n'y a pas d'acte vertueux qui puisse raison- 278 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. nablemtent se deduire. Le heros, quand il se mot a reflechir, trouve qu'il a agi commie un etre absurde, et c'est justement pour cela qu'il a ete un heros. II a obei a un ordre superieur, a un oracle infaillible, a une voix qui comniande de la facon la plus claire, sans donner ses raisons." Disc., 196-7; Cf. Mor. Grit., II. But again we must ask: Where is the merit of unselfish- ness, if it springs, not from the (human will, but from some unknown, irresistible source? What merit can there be in doing what we cannot avoid ? The attempt to bring logical coherence into Kenan's ethical teachings leads, in fact, as already suggested, to the strange result that there is no such thing as a truly meritorious or moral act, in his own sense of the terms ; for the only con- duct to which merit attaches is not in reality the work of man. This seems another instance of the persistence in him of theological influences. If in the place of his transcendental compulsion we put the Christian idea of divine grace, we have the theological doctrine that whatever is good or meritorious in human conduct proceeds from the grace of God. In the eyes of Reman as in those of Saint Augustine, man is inca- pable of even resolving a truly virtuous act of his own free, unaided choice. . ''Quid habes quad non accepisti? Le dogme de la grace est le plus vrai des dogmes chretiens. L'effort inconscient vers le bien et le vrai qui est dans 1'univers joue son coup de de par chacun de nous. Tout arrive, les quaternes comme le reste. Nous pouvons deranger le dessein providentiel doil obei'ssance et lutte dans Fact du statuaire et du musicien ?" A. S., 354 5. Of. James, Var. Eel. Exp., 80. The religion of the future, he prophesies, will be a pure humanism, "c'est a dire le cult de tout ce qui est de rhomme, la vie entiere sanctifiee et elevee a un valeur miorale. Soigner sa belle humamte (Schiller) sra alors la Loi t ls Prophetes." A. S., 101. "Tout c qui s'atta-ch a la vie superieure de Thomme, a cet,t vie par laquelle il se distingue d Tanimal, tout cla st sacre, tout cela est digne de la passion des belles ames. L'homme parfait serait celui qui srait a la fois poete, philo- sophe, savant, homm vertueux." A. S., 11. Cf. ibid., 355 ; M.-Aur., 554; Mor. Grit, 36T. In the following passage we have an interesting example of Kenan's application of this criterion of right to a concrete in- stance: the institution of suttee among the natives of India. The English are severely condemned for attempting to repress this beautiful effusion of idealism, that is to say the burning of womjen alive. "Les Anglais ont cru faire pour la saine moral en inter- disant dans Tlnde les processions ensanglantes par des sacri- fices volontaires, 1 suicid de la femme sur le tombeau 282 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. dii mari. Etrange meprise! Croyez-vous que ce fanatique qui va poser avec joie sa tete sous les roues du char de Jagat/- nata n'est pas plus heureux et plus beau que vous, insipides marchands? Croyez-vous qu'il ne fait pas plus d'honneur a la nature humaine en temioignant, d'une facon irrationnelle sans doute mais puissante, qu'il y a dans rhomme des instincts superieurs a tous les desirs du fini et a 1' amour de soi-memo? II faut voir dans ces actes la fascination que Tinfini exerce sur rhomme, Penthousiasme impersonnel, le culte du suprasensible. Et c'est a ces superbes debordements des grands instincts de la nature humaine que vous venez de tracer des limites, avec votre petite morale et votre etroit bon sens." A. S., 87. Is any further proof needed of the insufficiency and unre- liableness of the beauty standard as a criterion of right and wrong ? In another passage from the same book, monasticismi is pro- nounced more beautiful than industrialism}; are we to con- clude that it is therefore morally more right ? Cf . Mor. Grit., 356; ]X T oaiv. fit Eel., 337-8. I cannot resist quoting two more passages on this topic, showing what opposite judgments he himself passed on the same characters in the samje book. "Pairqe mieux un iogui, j'aime mieux un mouni de Tlnde, j'aime mieux Simeon Stylite mange des vers sur son etrange piedestal qu'un prosaique industriel, capable de suivre pen- dant vingt ans une meme pensee de fortune. Heros de la vie desinteressee, saints, apotres, mounis, solitaires, cenobites, as- cetes de tous les siecles ... que vous avez mieux comh pris la vie que ceux qui la prennent coimne un etroit calcul d'interet, comme une lutte insignifiante d'ambition ou de vanite." 13 A. S., 84-5. With this passage in mind, turn to the following, written the samje year: "L'abstinence et la mortification sont des vertus de barbares et d'hommes materiels, qui, sujets a de grossiers appetits, ne congoivent rien de plus heroique que d'y resister. . . Aux yeux d'homone'S grossiers, un hommie qui jeune, qui se flagelle, BRAUER THE PHILOSOPFIY OF ERNEST REN AN. 283 qui est chaste, qui passe sa vie sur une colonne, est 1'ideal de la vertu. . . L' abstinence affectee prouve qu'on fait beau- coup de cas de choses dont on se prive." A. S., 403-4. Taking the two statements together, it would be easy to show from his own words that Renan was ff un homme materiel," "un homme grassier" when he penned his rhapsodic admiration of the vermin-eaten hermit on his column. That would be un- true, however, as well as unkind. It is simiply another in- stance of the countless conflicting opinions expressed in his books, according as he gives expression to the idealistic values of his poetic temperament or to the subtle speculations of an analytic mind. His preference for the esthetic standard in morals, it may be noted in passing, is entirely in keeping with his pronounced aversion for logic. Esthetic impressionism in ethics fits ad- mirably with the perpetual tergiversation and mercurial fickle- ness of his general philosophy; both alike affording release from the odious fetters of logical consistency. It is another evidence of the wonderful versatility of his mind, perpetually oscillating between; different points of view, and delighting in the sense of its own ubiquity. Renan could not make up his mind to exclude from his appreciation anything that miight possibly enrich his collection of intellectual and spiritual curi- osities. Logical consistency seemed to him] too great a price to pay for this self-impoverishment. The good, the beautiful and the true, in all their various manifestations, found eager and ardent recognition from his pen, quite regardless whether or not his esthetic appreciations were consistent with his intel- lectual ones. An institution might be good but not beautiful, or beautiful but not good ; a doctrine might be true but injuri- ous, or useful but false, oar beautiful without being either true or good; but this he considered no ground for withholding his recognition of their own peculiar merits. His exclusive aim at all times was sincerity, and the reconciliation of his sepa- rate sincerities he has left to his readers, or rather expositors. Renan's emphasis on the esthetic side of life in the period imimediately following his separation from the church appears 284 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. to have been a reaction against Christian asceticism. He re- proaches the church for its one-sided emphasis upon goodness, to the neglect or even exclusion of truth and beauty. Human perfection, he insists, implies intellectual and esthetic culture as well as moral; and this remained a favorite topic with him to the end of his life. "On s'imagine trop sou vent/' he writes "que la mora- lite seule fait la perfection, que la poursuite du vrai et du beau ne constitue qu'une jouissance, que rhomtme parfait, c'est 1'honnete homime, le f rere morave par example. Le modele de la perfection nous est donne par Phumanite elle-meme; la vie la plus parf aite est celle qui represente le mieux toute Phu- manite. Or Phumanite cultivee n'est pas seulement morale; elle est encore savante, curieuse, poetique, passionnee." A. S., 12. Of. ibid., 355; Mor. Crit., 367. In his juvenile enthusiasm he even goes so far as to hope that somje day a more completely human moral ideal may be evolved, " un Christ qui ne representerait plus seulement le cote moral a sa plus haute puissance, mais encore le cote es- thetique et scientifique de Phumanite." A. S., 13. This alleged one-sidedness of the Christian ideal of human perfection is reaffirmed, more than thirty years later, in his Marc-Aurele, and indeed to the end of his days: "Le defaut du christianisme appiarait bien ici. II est trop uniquement moral ; la beaute, chez lui, est tout a fait sacrifice. Or, aux yeux d'une philosophie complete, la beaute, loin d'etre un avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvenient, est un don de Dieu, commje la vertu. Elle vaut la vertu; la femme bello exprime aussi bien une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que Fhomme de genie, ou la femmie vertueuse. Elle le sent, et de la sa fierte. . . . Elle sait bien qu'elle compte entre les premieres manifestations de Dieu. La fem^ne, en se parant, accomplit un devoir; . . la plus belle oeuvre de Dieu, c'est la beaute de la femme. M.-Aur., 554-5. Cf. Souv., YIII-IX, 14-15, 33-4, 114. But in later years he applied this principle of all-sided de- velopment, more broadly, to humanity as a whole, rather than BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 285 to separate institutions, or to individual men. He seems to Lave held in his latest phase that the ideal life for a given in- dividual at any time depends on a great many things: his age, history, rank, social function, his talents, opportunities, and so forth: "Ghaque classe de la societe est un rouage, un bras de le- vier dans cette immense machine. Voila pourquoi chacune a .-ses vertus. Nous sommes tons des fonctions de Tunivers; le devoir consiste a ce que chacun remiplisse bien sa fonetion." Dial., 132-3. "II importe pen que St Vincent de Paul n'ait pas ete un grand esprit. Raphael n'aurait rien gagne a etre bien regie dans ses moeurs. L'effort divin qui est en tout se produit par les justes, les savants, les artistes. Chacun a sa part. Le de- voir de Goethe fut d'etre egoi'ste pour son oeuvre. L'immo- ralite transcendante de Fartiste est a sa facon moralite su- premo, si elle sert a I'accomplissement de la particuliere mis- sion divine dont chacun est charge ici-bas." Dial., 133. Cf. F. Det., 382-3. Ref. Int., 2; A. S., VIII-X; Of. F. Det., 110 ; also Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 3rd ed., p. 339. "La fete de 1'univers manquerait de quelque chose, si ]e monde n'etait peuple que de fanatiques iconoclastes et de lourdauds vertueux." 13a But do not these later statements furnish a complete an- swer to his earlier criticisms on the one-sidedness of the Chris- tian ideal of goodness ? The special emphasis laid by the Christian religion on moral excellence is simply, "from a cos- mical standpoint," a case of what the economists call division of labor. And is it so certain that the interests of the race, even on secular grounds, may not require a special emphasis on some one side of human capabilities, either as being of miore fundamental importance in character, or less likely to receive sufficient attention from individuals in the absence of a constant social or institutional pressure? It was said somb pages back that the only moral criterion explicitly acknowledged by Henan as guiding his personal val- uations of right and wrong, in judgment and action, was the 286 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN". standard of beauty. It would be misrepresenting his mean- ing, however, to suppose that he intended this criterion to serve universally, regardless of the characters and the ideals of the persons judging. For refined, impeccable natures of high moral culture, like himself, he indeed believed that the right would always coincide with the beautiful; but it is only when, all have attained, as he believed all could attain, this same de- gree of moral perfection, that the beauty of an act can be a reliable criterion of its. rightness. We saw into what opposite judgments he himself was led, notwithstanding his impeccabil- ity, by this standard. The truth is that the criterion of beauty is not one, but many; varying with the character, the ideals, the knowledge, the propensities and even the moods of the persons judging. Different acts seemi beautiful to differ- ent persons, and to the sam)e person at different times. Nor did Renan see that the esthetic standard is at bottom only a sublimation of the hedonistic standard, just as truly as appreciation of beauty affords pleasure. If by pleasure is meant an agreeable state of consciousness, and what else can it mean? , then beauty is a species of pleasure, and ugliness a species of pain, in however refined a form. But this fact seems never to have occurred to Renan; for ethical hedonism is as violently antagonized in his earlier period as moral estheticism is enthusiastically chamtpioned. He ex- pressly repudiates the idea that pleasure is the ultimate item of worth in life. If happiness were the highest aim,! of life, or even the only rational aim, there would be no difference, lie argues, in respect of their destinies, between man and beast. Mor. Grit, IV; A. S., 324-5. He frequently insists on what Jias been called the paradox of hedonism, the fact that a conscious and exclusive pursuit of pleasure defeats its own aim. Pleasure-seeking, he assures the unsophisticated populace of Treguier, is impolitic as well as immoral. The surest way of finding happiness is to stop looking for it. Disc., 219. Cf. C. D'Angl., 222; Souv. y 127-8. In later years his attitude towards hedonistic conceptions BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 287 of life were very radically changed, however, and much for the worse. But this decadent phase will call for further dis- cussion in the next chapter. It remains to observe in this place that another criterion of moral judgments, besides that of beauty, was in fact presup- posed and implied in all his utterances on the subject: the standard of social utility, or social efficiency. In the Abbesse de Jouarre, for example, the most objectionable of his Dromes philosophiques, he implies all along that acts are good or bad according as their consequences are socially advantageous or the reverse. The only reason why "free love" is judged to be wrong is because it is incompatible with the requirements of civilized life. This doctrine is clearly formulated in his Avant-propos to the play: "Je m/ imagine souvent que, si Phumianite acquerait la certi- tude que le monde dut finir dans deux ou trois jours, P amour eclaterait de toutes parts avec une sorte de frenesie; car ce qui retient P amour, ce sont les conditions absolument neces- saires que la conservation morale de la societe humaine a im- posees. Quand on se verrait en face d'une mprt subite et cer- taine, la nature seule parlerait; le plus puissant de ses instincts, sans cesse bride et contrarie, reprendrait ses droits; un cri s'echapperait de toutes les poitrines, quand on saurait qu'on peut approcher avec une entiere legitimite de Tarbre em- toure de taut d'anathemes." Dr. Ph. 411 Le monde boirait a pleine coupe et sans arriere-pensee un aphro- disiaque puissant qui le ferait mourir de plaisir On mouiTait dans le sentiment de la plus haute adoration et dans Pacte de priere le plus parfait." Dr. Ph., 411-12. Cf. Dial., 133 ; F. Det., 382-3. For once, then, morality is dissociated completely from all metaphysical speculations or transcendental moral impera- tives. "J'espere que m'on Abbesse plaira aux idealistes," he says of this play "qui n'ont pas besoin de crodre a Texistence d'es- prits purs pour croire au devoir, et qui savent bien que la 288 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. noblesse morale ne depend pas des opinions metaphysiques." Dr. Ph., 413. And again: "Le vrai, le beau, le bien ont par eux-memes assez d'attrait pour n'avoir pas besoin d'une autorite qui les coonniande, ni d'une recompense qui y soit attachee." Dr. Ph., 413. Yet in the Avenir de la science, in his impassioned plea for the extension of science and its application to all departments of human life, he expressly repudiates a merely utilitarian ba- sis for his plea, and incidentally declares that morality has a value in itself, independently of any advantage to society: "(Test comnie si, pour etablir la morale, on se bornait a presenter les avantages qu'elle procure a la societe. La science, aussi bien que la morale, a sa valeur en elle-mieme et indepen- detriment de tout resultat avantageux." A. S., 22. All the reasons for morality dispersed throughout his writ- ings, or nearly all, are run in together in the following prayer, with which he concludes his article la, Melaphysique el son avendr. "O Pere celeste, j 'ignore ce que Tu nous reserves. Cette foi, que Tu ne nous permets pas d'effacer de nos coeurb, est-elle une consolation que Tu as menagee pour nous rendre supportable notre destine fragile ? Est-ce la une bienf aisante illusion que ta pitie a savamment combinee, ou bien un instinct profond, une revelation qui suffit a ceux qui en sont dignes ? Est-ce le desespoir qui a raison, et la verite serait-elle triste? Tu n'as pas voulu que ces doutes re^ussent une claire reponse, aim que la foi au bien ne restat pas sans mlerite, et que la vertu ne fut pas un calcul. Une claire revelation eut assimile Tame noble a Tame vulgaire; Fevidence en pareille matiere eut ete une atteinte a notre liberte. C'est de nos dispositions interieures que Tu as voulu faire dependre notre foi. Dans tout ce qui est objet de science et de discussion rationnelle, Tu as livre la verite aux plus ingenieux; dans Tordre moral et religieux, Tu as juge qu'elle devait appartenir aux meilleurs. II edit ete inique que le genie et 1'esprit constituassent ici un privilege 1 , et que les croyances qui doivent etre le bien commun BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 289 de tons fussent le fruit d'un raisonnement plus ou moins bieii conduit, de recherches plus ou moins favorisees." Frag., 333-4. ' Before concluding this chapter, a word must be said about Roman's position on the much-mooted question of optimism versus pessimism: It would seem that there is no> place in his philosophy for a theodicy, inasmuch as in his speculations about thje cos- mos the relations of creator and creation are inverted. In- stead of God in the beginning creating heaven and earth, the heavens and the earth are engaged through all time in, the task of evolving a God. Nevertheless, Renan has attempted some- thing like a justification of the ways of God to man. In the semi-conscious groping of the deific process, he as- sures us, a certain amount of evil is the necessary price of a greater good. F. Det, 377-8. Of., Mor. Grit., 179. Renan took every opportunity to testify that life is good, and decidedly worth living. Replying to the Discours de re- ception of M. Pasteur, before the Academie Frangaise. 1882, he declares : "Le coin imperceptible de la realite que nous entrevoyons est plein de ravissantes harmonies^ et la vie, telle qu'elle nous a ete octroyee, est un don excellent et pour chacun de nous la revelation d'une bonte infinie. Disc., 81. Of. ibid., 207- 8; 219. "Grace a la vertu, la Providence se justifie; le pessimisme lie peut citer que quelciues cas bien rares d'etres pour lesquels Texistence n'ait pas ete un bien. Un dessein d 7 amour edate dans 1'univers; malgre ses immenses defauts, ce monde rest apres tout une oeuvre de bonte infinie." Disc., 199-200. In his own experience of life, he often declares, the good was unquestionably far in excess of the evil ; and he confidently assumes that the same must be true of the lives of the vast mlajority of men. "Je n'ai jamais beaucoup sounert," he writes in concluding his Souvenirs, " A mioins que mies dernierea annees ne rne^ reservent des peines bien cruelles, je n y aurai ? 6 290 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. en disant adieu a la vie, qu'a remercier la cause de tout bien de la ehannante promenade qu'il m'a ete donne d'accomplir a travers la realite." Souv., 373-8. Ten more years were reserved for Renan after writing these words, years full of toil and much physical pain; yet we find him reaffirming this same faith in the fundamental goodness of life, to the end of his days. His charming little speech before the Felibres, in June, 1891, the year before his death, and again at the Fete de Brehat, in September of the same year, are among his latest direct confessions on the subject: "Je garderai jusqu'a la fin la foi, la certitude, 1'illusion, si Ton veut, que la vie est un fruit savoureux." F. Det., 124 ; ibid., 109, 168. The complete sincerity of these public professions is attested by the general tone and spirit of all his writings. Slide by side, with his belief in the essential goodness of life, and proceeding from the same spirit, went his faith in the essential goodness of man. In his daily intercourse with people, ihe habitually assumed that he was dealing with honest men until he had proof of the contrary. It was impossible for him, he declares, to be unkind to anybody a priori. "Un des principes fondamentaux de ma vie, principe auquel je m* attache obstinement, bien que plusieurs de mes amis me disent que c'est une enorme duperie, est de considerer comme un honnete homme toute creature humaine pour laquelle le contraire ne infest pas demontre Je persiste a pemser que si Ton tient compte de difficultes sans nombre de la condition humaine, la bienveillance generale est la vraie justice." F. Det., 194-5. Of. Souv., 374. Bcimeanbering Kenan's habit of espousing alternately both sides of any debatable question, in order to be sure not to exclude any part of the truth, it seems surprising that he should nob occasionally have defended the pessimistic attitude also. But the fact seems to be that he never did. Is this because, he was incapable by temperament of being impressed with the evil in life, the Weltschmerz, or is it because he deliberately re- solved to ignore it? There is such a thing as temperamental BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 291 optimism, rendering its happy possessor impervious to the manifestations of cosmic evil. 14 There are several passages in Kenan's books, it is truei, in which he seems at first glance to make open avowal of pessi- mism ; and. it would seemi that on the strength of these state- ments some eminent critics, M. Faguet among themi, have given him credit for a first-hand acquaintance with pessimism in his own person:. < "Bien que parfois je sois tente d'envier le don de ces natures heureuses, tou jours et facilement satisfaites, j'avoue qu'a la reflexion, je me trouve fier de mon pessimisme, t que, si je le sentais s'amollir, le siecle restant le meme, je rechercherais avidement quelle fibre s'est relach.ee en mon coeur." Mor. Grit, XII. And again in his article on M. de Sacy: "M. de Sacy est pessimiste, et il a bien raison. II est dee temps ou Poptimisme fait involontairement soupconner ehez celui qui le professe quelque petitesse d'esprit ou quelque bassesse de coeur." Mor. Grit, 20. Of. ibid., 21, 23; also Seailles, El K,., 51. But in thesei and similar passages, as a glance at the context will show, he is really using the word pessimism; in a sense very different from, that in which it would contradict his habit- ual professions of optimism. Adverse criticisms of a distaste- ful political and social regime, or gloomy forecasts of their probable future, if we call this pessimismj atl all, is yet a very different thing from the assertion that creation is a failure^ or that life is essentially and inherently not worth living. How profound and unshakable was Kenan's faith in the fundamental goodness of life and of men, is unmistakably ex- pressed even in his first book, and from the faith there pro- claimed he never appreciably swerved: "Peut-etre nos affirmations a cet egard oiHrelles un peu du m-erite de la foi, qui croit sans avoir 1 vu, et a vrai dire, quand on envisage les faits isoles, roptimisme semble une generositc faite a Dieu en toute gratuite. Pour moi, je verrais 1'hu- manite crouler sur ses fondements, je verrais les homlmes s'egor- 292 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ger dans une nuit fatale, que je proclamerais encore quo la nature humaine est droite et faite pour le parfait, que les mal- entendus se leveront, et qu'un jour viendra le regne de la raison et du parfait." A. S., 69. In his article on Amiel, however, in 1884, he reluctantly admits the deplorable fact that for some few unfortunates, not to be were better than to be. But he holds that these unfortu- nate exceptions are very few, and arise not so much from! the nature of things as from certain "coincidences funestes/' which he hopes may some day be eliminated entirely. F. Det., 388. Onei way of eliminating these few outstanding exceptions, he suggests, and there seemis no reason to suppose that he is not in earnest is to provide for all men the means of a painless, decent and voluntary exit from life, in the form of public euthanasial parlors, maintained by the State, and apparently placed at the disposal of all comers. "J'ai toujours eu pour principe," says Prospero'-RBnani, who himself dies in this way, "qu'une vie disposee selon les regies d'une belle eurythmie ne doit pas laisser au hasard une piece aussi importante que le denouement. Tout est bonheur dans la vie, quand on peut a son gre disposer de la mort. La vie n'est chose digne que quand on peut la finir a volonte." Dr. PK, 228-9, 231. "Que dites-vous!" exclaims his attendant, Jiorrified. "Le suicide implique des idees repoussantes, une mare de sang, des souillures. La proprete rinterdit." "IsTon, soyez tranquille, chere Brunissende," replies. Pros- pero. "Je n^aurai que des sensations douces, et mes traits con,- servoTont leur beaute. Mourir n'est rien. L'essentiel est de mourir avant le premier affaiblissement et d'eviter Fennui d'etre plaint," Ibid., 229. "Viens done, mon eau de mort, c'est ton heure ! Oher tissu impregne d'ether, qui possedes dans tes plis le tresor de Fanes- thesie, donne-moi le repos. Ah ! je crois que tu seras en defini- tive mon invention la plus bienfaisante," Ibid., 234. Then, gradually expiring under his euthanasial veil: BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 293 "Grace a ce linceul, je meurs entier, et sans perdre aucune des sensations delicieuses qui sont d'ordinaire obliterees chez le mourant par la douleur et raffaiblissemient. La coupe de la vie est delicieuse. Quelle sottise de s'indigner parce qu'on. en voit le fond ! C'est Pessence d'une coupe d'etre epuisabla" And taking leave of his attendants : "Dites qu'on joue les airs d'Amalfi et du golfe de Naples. Ayez soin que je ne voie pas un visage triste et que je n'entende pas un soupir. "fitre eternel et bon, merci pour Fexistenca J'ai collabore a toutes tes oeuvres, j'ai servi a toutes tes fins, Je te benis! (II s'endort en souriant. On lit sur sa figure les signes de jouissances infinies.)" Dr. Ph., 246-7. Of. James, Var. Kel. Does Kenan refuse to be held responsible for this revolting doctrine? Tihen here are the same ideas direct, from his own pen: "C'est coinome si Ton repoussait une coupe de vin exquia parce qu'elle sera vite epuisee, un plaisir parce qu'il ne dure pas longtemps. . . . Keste la douleur, qui surement est chose odieuse, humiliante, nuisible aux fonctions nobles de la vie. L'homme peut la combattre, presque la supprimer, tou- jours s ? y soustraire. Les cas ou l ? hompne est rive a la vie sont tres rares. La seulo destinee absolum^ent condamnee est celle de Panimfcl esclave, du cheval par example, qui ne peut se suicider, ou bien celle des condamnes a mort, gardes a vue, ou de Taliene: mais ce sont la des situations bien exception- nelles. L'imnaense majorite des individus n'a pas a se plaindre de son passage par 1'etre, puisque la balance de la vie se solde en joie et que la mort pourra sans doute un jour etre rendue sans douleur." 15 F. Det, 384-5. If life is a good, Kenan argues, the world as a whole must be good; for the continuance of life alone is evidence that, for each species of creatures taken as a whole, the good must be in excess of the evil, else this species would cease to exist. And if there is a balance of good for each, there must be a balance of good for all. 294- BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. "L'etre, ou du moms la conscience, n'a commence et ne con- tinue dans le monde que parce qu'il y a dans 1'etre une plua- value de bien pour 1'ensemble des individus conscieoits. Un monde ou le mal Pemporterait sur le bien serait un monde qui n'existerait pas, ou qui disparaitrait." F. Dek, 387. And again, in his Exam en de conscience phUosophique: "De cette resultants supreme de Punivers total, nous ne pou- yons dire qu'une seule chose, c'est qu'elle est bonne. Car si elle n'etait pas bonne, Punivers total, qui existe depuis Peter- nite ; se serait detruit. Supposons une miaison de banque existant depuis Peternite. Si cette 1 maison avait le moindre defaut dans ses bases, elle eut mille fois fait faillite." 16 F. Det. 427. Renan had no patience with pessimists. The fundamental error of pessimism, he declares, consists in applying to the world as a whole an anthropocentric measure of worth, as if the totality of things had been planned for the exclusive con- venience of m'an. F. Det., 388-389. But surely this again is a slip of the pen. It is impossible to suppose that Renan would seriously maintain that pessimists are specially prone to exaggerate the importance of man in the universe ! And besides, does not his reasoning hit the optimists quite as hard as the pessimists ? If it is a mistake to call the world bad because it is not the best possible for man, by what right do we call it good in the opposite case ? Yet this is precisely what he is himself continually doing. The truth seems to lie somewhere betweien the two positions, or rather alternately with each of the disputants. Optimists and pessimists are both partly right and partly wrong. Asser- tions about the goodness or badness of the world, or of life in the world, are without meaning until the statements are reduced to concrete terms. The question must be whether life is good or bad for some particular individual, or group of individuals. For the world is both good and bad ; good for some creatures and bad for others, good in some respects and bad in* others. When- ever a given species of beings is in a prosperous and progressive BEATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 295 condition,, we infer that, for this particular group, the good must predominate over the evil ("good" being taken in the seur language is to be more than empty sound. Plain statements of fact, however encouraging or discouraging these mjay be, should never be termed either optimism or pes- simism. These terms should be reserved, in the interests of clear thinking, for exaggerations of existing good and evil re- spectively. Renan maintains, in conclusion, that the world, good as it is already, is growing better every day, thanks to the labors of man. On this point he never changed from) the position af- firniied in his youth : "I/optimisme serait une erreur, si Phomime n'etait point per- fectible, s'il ne lui etait donne d'ameliorer par la science 1'ordre etabli. La formule: 'Tout est pour le mieux/ ne serait sans cela qu'une amere derision. Oui, tout est pour le mieux, grace a la raisonj humaine, capable de reformer les> imlperfections necessaires du premier etablissement des choses. Disons plu- tot: tout sera pour le mieux, quand rhommei, ay ant accomtpli son oeuvre legitime, aura retabli rharmlonie dans le monde moral et se sera assujetti le monde physique." A. S., 31. Cf. ibid., 69. 296 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. The political and social philosophy of Renan is thoroughly permeated by his metaphysics, and suffers from the same capri- ciousness and unseizable vagueness. From transcendentalism in ethics, we paiss to idealism in politics, not to say utopianism, as in the Avenir de la science. He has somewhere declared himself unable to take seriously the philosopher who has never worked, as a specialist over some problem in science. The philosopher might retort that Renan himself would have profited no less by a little of the disci- pline which philosophical system-building affords. The jux- taposition of his own divergent ideas on related subjects, had he himself undertaken the task, would probably have eliminated from his beautiful pages many a sophism which now, concealed by the charm of his magical phrase, glides by unnotit?ed ; and perhaps nothing short of such a labor could have brought this poetic writer of classical prose to a proper regard for that sacred jewel of philosophical tradition, consistency. Cf. Seailles, Ei. R>, 213-14. In his latest phase, thoroughly disillusioned in respect of all things human and divine, an all-indulging scepticism! so far predominates in his writings as to be almost his normal point of view. A few items, however, are constant in his ever-changing creed, and among these must be mentioned his unlimited faith in the possibilities of humlan reason in the field of positive sci- ence. \ The day will come, he insists, when reason, in spite of all that can be done to impede its progress, will truly govern the world, even the political world. BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 297 At the present day, to be sure, science and politics have little in common. Corr., p. 29. ; But an age of reason is coming, he prophesies in the Avenir de Id science,, evem for politics. The last word of science 1 , he insists, must be the scientific organ- ization of humanity. "Pour la politique, dit Herder, I'hommle est un moyen; pour la morale, il est une fin. La revolution de I'avenir sera le tri- omphe de la morale sur la politique. Organiser scientifique- ment rhumanite, tel est 1 lernier mot de la science moderne, telle est son audacieuse, m'ais legitime pretention." A. S., 37 ; repeated in Q. C., 334. Cf. preface to L'Eau de jouvence, Dr. Pk, 111. In respect of his method] in social philo'sophy, Ren an belongs to the synthetic or historical school. He contends that the so- cial sciences must be based on a. study of the laws which have guided the development of society thus far. Q. C., 76. In a lecture first delivered at the Sorbonne in 1882, and which has since become famous, Renan has given an elaborate definition of his idea of a nation. He begins by recalling the manifold forms which human association has taken in the past. There are those vague agglomerations of men after the manner of ancient Babylonia, China and Egypt; tribes like those of the Hebrews and Arabs ; city states, like Athens and Sparta ; unions of different countries, as in the Romjan and Carlo- vingian empires ; communities without a country, held together by religious ties, like the Israelites and the Parsees. Then we have the different types of nations and confederations of the modern world : France, England. Germany, Switzerland and the United States ; and finally there is that feeling of brother- hood and kinship established by community of race or lan- guage, uniting men into still larger groups, as when we speak of the Slavic or Grermanic peoples. All these diverse forms of human association have actually existed, or still exist ; are they all nations? In regard to the ancient world, his answer is: obviously not. A nation, in the modern sense of the term, was unknown to an- tiquity. Egypt, China and ancient Chaldea were not nations ; 298 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. they were mjasses or hordes, led by a supposed descendant of the sky. Egypt had no citizens, any more than has China today. What, then,, is it that constitutes a nation ? Is it comjmu- irity of race? But in which of our modern nations is this to be found ? The truth is that ethnographic considerations have had little or nothing to do with the formation of modern na- tions. France 1 , for exam-pie, is Celtic, Iberian and Germanic; Germany is Germanic, Celtic and Slavic. In other nations, as in Italy, the ethnographic elements are still more compli- cated. It is impossible, in fact, to determine the race-element of a modern nation in the physiological sense of the termi, for the zoological beginnings of humianity long antedate the ori- gin of civilization and language. And what is true of community of race applies equally, mutatis mutandis, to community of language and religion; neither of these is sufficient for the founding of a nation. Is it community of comjrnercial and industrial interests, then, that constitutes 1 a nation'? This also Kenan denies; a Zoll- verein is not a patrie. ~Nor is it the "natural frontiers," such as mountains or riv- ers, that determine the limits of a. nation. In a word, neither race, nor language, nor community of interests, noi* religious affinity, nor geographical conditions, none of these is suffi- cient to found a nation. A nation is a soul or spiritual principle, resulting from efforts and sacrifices made in the past. A heroic past: great men, great achievements, this is the social capital upon which a national idea may be established. To have done great things together and be willing to do more ; comjmon souve- nirs of a glorious past and a united will in the present; com- mon sufferings, common joys, a common hopei: these are bonds of union stronger than race, language or religion; these are the foundations of national existence. Cf. Disc., 2Y7ff. "Lai patrie est un compose de corps et d'amies. L^ame, ce sont les souvenirs, les usages, les legendes, les malheiirs, les esperances, le regrets communs ; le corps, c'est le sol, la race, BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 299 la langue, les montagnes, les fleuves, les productions caracte- ristiques." 0. d'Angl., 34. "Dante, Petrarque, les grands artistes de la renaissance ont ete les vrais fondateurs de I'unite italienne. Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Herder, ont cree la patrie allemande." Ref. Int., 138. The idea that a nation is something more than the sum of its members appears already in the Avenir de la science, and is repeated in all his later works. "La societe n'est pas la reunion atomiistique de individus, formee par la repetition de 1'unite; elle est une unite consti- tuee; elle est primitive." A. S., 252. "Aux yeux d'une philosophic eclairee, la societe est un grand fait providentiel ; elle est etablie, non par Phommie, mais par la nature elle-meme, afin qu'a la surface de notre planete se pro-dulse la vie intellectuelle et morale. L'homme isole n'a jamais existe. La societe humaine, miere de tO'Ut ideal, est le produit direct de la volonte supreme qui veut que le bien, le vrai, le beau, aient dans 1'univers des contemplateurs," Ref. Int., 241-2. Of. ibid., 302-3. There is naturally not mtuch in the writings of Renan with, reference to the earlier forms of human association, or the mian- ner in which the clan, the tribe or the nation develops. His only utterance on this point is 1 that the family, and more par- ticularly the monogamic family, is necessary to the formation of great races. Dial., 35. This statement he often repeats. The conjugal fidelity of women which monogamy implies is the result, he declares, of long-continued cruelty to her sax in the remote past. Like all great things 1 the family was founded by the most atrocious means; millions of women stoned to death paved the way to conjugal fidelity. P. Isr., 1:5. From the fact that society is an evolutionary and therefore non-rational product, and not the creation of some contmt social, combined with the fact that reason is acquiring an ever growing influence in political and social affairs, he appears to conclude that political progress is destined to do away with patriotism,. Social progress, from his point of view, may be defined as a substitution of reason for tradition. With the 300 BULLETIN OF THE rXIVEESITY OF WISCONSIN. progress of reason, considerations of humanity will more and more prevail over those of country. Patriotism, therefore, being essentially a non-rational form of social cohesion, u tain to grow weaker as men grow more rational, and will ulti- mately disappear altogether; a catastrophe, it may be added, which Renan would be the last to regret. Renan has said many hard things against patriotism : The fact is, he writes, that nation and philosophy have little to do with each other. Patriotism, among other meannesses, has the p-retention of having a God of its own. Jahreh elohetm, said the Israelite: unser Gott, says the German. A nation is al- ways egotistical It desires that the God of heaven and earth should think of no other interests than its own. Under one name or another it creates for itself tutelary divinities. P. Isr.. I:'2'20. Again in the Hibbert Lecture for 1880: "Grande est la patrie, et saints sont les heros de Marathon et des Thermopyles. La patrie, cependant, n'est pas tout iei-bas. On est homme et fils de Dieu, avant d'etre frangais ou allemand. Le royaume de Dieu, reve eternel qu'on n'arra- chera pas du eoeur de Fhomme, est la protestation contre ce que le patriotisme a de trop exclusif." C. d'Angl., 3T-S; also V. J.. 123. "Ma philosophic est I'ldealisme; ou je vois le bien, le beau, le vrai, la est ma patrie," Ref. Int., 177--. Cf. Coir., Je. 14, 1853. Similar declarations abound in his letters, especially those of the earlier period. Writing in 1849 to his friend Berthelot, he refers to an observation he has made among the French peasants: after only a single century of civilization, they are showing signs of decadence; and he consoles himself with the hope that the Slavic peoples, invading western Europe, may perhaps adopt its ideas and carry them forward with a new energy. Cf. Ref. Int, 192. It is only when the vanquished are superior in capacity and culture to their conquerc: adds, that an appeal to nationality is justifiabla Corr., 37-9. . -fimporte par qui le bien se fait? Xous sornnies main- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 301 tenant pour les barbares contre les Romiains. II n'y a pas de decadence au point de vue de 1'humanite." 17 Corr., 39. But though it is true that Renan made little of patriotism, especially in the ultra-rationalistic period of his earlier years ; and though he treats it as a logical fallacy kept alive by preju- dice, yet he felt it to be of the utmost importance, in the in- terests of national strength, that the fallacy should continue widely to prevail. For a long time to comje, he declares, the existence of separate* nationalities is necessary to the preserva- tion of liberty, which would be lost if the world had but one law and one master. A confederation of the world involving the abolition of independent nationalities, even if possible, would not be desirable. "La division est la condition de la liberte. II dependrait de quelqu'un de fond re les nations en une seule nation, les figlises en une seule figlise, les sectes, les ecoles, en une seule secte, en une seule ecole, qu'il faudrait s'y opposer. Le vieux monde romain a peri par 1'unite, le salut du monde moderne sera sa diversite." Q. C., 352. The same is affirmed of religions: "Des trois grandes formes que le christianisme a prises dans nos societes, catholicisme, protestantisme, orthodoxie, en est-il une qui doive supprimer les deux autres ? La puissance de la Russie fait Favenir de 1'orthodoxie, la race anglo-saxonne porte avec elle Tesprit du protestantisme sur tous les points du globe, le Catholicism e a pour resister sa centralisation puissante et sa forte discipline. Rejouissons-nous de ces divisions irreduo tibles qui sont la garantie de la liberte." Nouv. Hist, ReL, 463. Renan has been much criticised for his attitude towards dem- ocratic institutions. JM. Berthelot, who had a closer acquaintance with him than probably any one else, describes Kenan's attitude towards de> mocracy by comparing it with his own: "Nos conceptions fondamentales etaient assez differentes. Si nous etions tous deux egalement devoues a la science et a la libre pensee, Renan, en raison de ses origines bretonnes et de 302 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. son education ecclesiastique et contemplative, tournee vers le passe, avait moins de gout pour la democratie, pour la Revo- lution franchise, et surtout pour cette transformation a la fois rationnelle, industrielle et socialiste, dans laquelle est engagee la civilisation mjoderne. Les anciennes manieres d'envisager la protection des sciences, des lettres et des arts, par un pou- voir super ieur et autocratique, I'attiraient davantage: il n'en a jainais fait mystere." Corr., 2. Cf. Souv., XI, 335. It would be a mistake to suppose that Renan was anti-demo- cratic from the beginning, however. The contrary is the fact. The political and social ideas of his first book are democratic to the last degree. The revolution of 1848, coming soon after his withdrawal from the church, found him! a young man of extremely radical tendencies, fired with a zeal for social as well as religious reform. 18 Corr., 26-7; 35-6; Ref. Int., 14-15. In his later writings, his attitude towards democracy is an- tagonistic enough, it is true. His Reforme intellectuelle et morale, written in 1870, is one long tirade against democratic institutions. The very source of democracy is condemned. Popular government, he declares, springs from 1 a false and ig- noble view of life, being based on envy and selfishness. Another charge is that democracy is a cause of national weakness; a transgression, that is, of the first and greatest of Nature's commandments: be strong! Ref. Int., 49; 18; 29- 30. "La democratie est le plus fort dissolvant de rorganisation militaire. L'organisation militaire est fondee sur la disci- pline; la democratie est la negation de la discipline." Ref. Int. 2 54. Moreover, democracy rests on a fallacious assumption of hu- mjan equality. It is not true that all men are by nature free and equal; rather the proposition is absurd. Everyone knows that men are eminently unequal, in, body, mind and f character, and no human institution, can change this fundamental fact. Nor is it possible for men to treat each other as though they were equal, to -say nothing of the viola BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 303 tion of justice in doing so. Personal beauty, intellectual and physical vigor, a noble character, are intrinsically respectable, ns their opposites are inherently despicable. No amount of revolutionary legislation can sweep away the distinctions be- tween vice and virtue, beauty and ugliness, strength and weak- ness, honesty and dishonesty . Title and privileges may be abolished, but those who really deserved them will be looked up to and bowed down to as much as before. A gentleman does not become the equal of gavroche by calling them; both citoyen. He calls attention to the superiority of Germany to France in this respect. "Tandis que parmi nous un meme type d'honneur est Fide-al de tons, en Allemagne, le noble, le bourgeois, lei professeur, le paysan, Fouvrier, ont leur form'ule particuliere du devoir; les devoirs de Fhomtme, les droits de rhomme sont peu compris; et c'est la une grande force, car 1'egalite est la plus grande cause d'affaiblissenient politique et militaire qu'il y ait." Ref. Int v 52-3 ; also p. 176. "On supprime Phumanite, si Ton n'admet pas que dee classes entieres doivent vivre de la gloire et de la jouissance des autres." Ref. Int., 246; 296. But of all the absurdities of democracy, he declares, the most idiotic is the institution of universal suffrage. He could never forgive what he calls the us/parallelled recklessness of the French statesmen of 1848 for conferring universal suffrage upon the country when it was not even called for. Ref. Int., 14-15. His objections to the ballot-box have become platitudes. It affords no criterion of right policy, of true theory, or of wise and efficient administration. On the contrary, the appeal to the ballot-box is an appeal from knowledge to ignorance, and from civilization to barbarism. Furthermore, the masses are always exposed, by their love of flattery, to the evil designs and malpractices of the "peripatetic political practitioner." Dr. Ph., 383. F. Det, 171. "La masse n'a droit de gouverner que si Ton suppose qu'elle sait mieux que personne ce qui est le meilleur. Le gouveme- 304 BULLETIN" OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ment represente la raison, Diem, si 1'on veut, I'humanite dans le sens eleve (c'est a dire les hautes tendances de la nature hu- maine) mais non> un chiffre. . . Le suffrage universe! n'est legitime que s'il pent hater 1' amelioration sociale. Un despote qui realiserait cette amelioration contre la volonte du plus grand nombre serait parfaitement dans son droit." A. S., 349-50 ; Ref. Int., 47, 67-8 ; O. C., 302. Nor is the ballot-box a test of strength even: a Eb se proclamant ultima ratio, le suffrage universe! part de cette idee que le plus grand nombre est un indice de force; il suppose que, si la minorite ne pliait pas devant l'o>pinion de la majorite, elle aurait toute chance d'etre vaincue. Mais ce raisonnement n'est pas exact, car la minorite peut etre plus energique et plus versee dans le maniement des armes que la majorite." Kef. Int., 303. Already in the Avenir de la science he suggests that the m)ore direct method of actual battle is preferable to the count- ing of heads, since the truth is likely to be with those who> art) impelled by conviction to risk their own heads in defense of their claims. A. S., 344-5. Besides, he asks, by what right can a majority, merely as such, claim the privilege of deciding a nation's destiny? The only justification of government is the good of humanity; but to realize this good is not necessarily the same thing as to obey the will of the greatest number. If therefore in a given in- stance the majority, whether from ignorance, prejudice or any other cause, are found to oppose the best interests of humanity, including their own, is it not right that they should be carried along by a wiser minority, even against their will? A. S., 429-30; of. 340. "Le bien de 1'hunianite etant la, fin supreme, la mdnorite ne doit nullemlent se faire scrupule de mener contre son gre, s'il le faut, la majorite sotte ou egoiste. Mais pour cela il faut qu'elle ait raison. Sans cela, c'est une abominable tyran- nie." A. S,, 429. A further charge against democracy is its unfitness to attain what he considers the principal raison d'etre of national exist- BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 305 ence, the production of great men. Nothing without great men, he exclaims ; it is through great men that humanity will work out its salvation. Dial., 103. But democracy, he insists, Is doomed to mediocrity in all things. Mor. Crit., 371-3. With reference to methods of selecting national executives, he writes : "II est incontestable que, s'il fallait s'en tenir a un moyen de selection unique, la naissance vaudrait mdeux gue Felection. Le hasard de la naissance est moindre que le hasard du scrutin." Kef. Int., 45. Last not least, democracy stands condemned by its own inher- ent instability. France committed suicide the day it beheaded its king. Eef. Int., 8, 250-2. It would be mistaking Kenan's meaning, however, to conclude that he intends by these charges to condemn constitutional gov- ernment. Indeed, a truly constitutional government is just what democracy is incapable of producing, according to himi. Considered historically, he says, constitutional government is not a creation of democracy. England, which instead of the absolute doctrine of popular sovereignty admits only the more moderate principle that there must be no government without the people, nor against the people, has been far better governed than France. "L'Angleterre . . . s'est trouvee malle fois plus libre que la France, qui avait si fierement plante le drapeau philosophique des droits de 1'homme. (Test que la souverainete du peuple ne fonde pas le gouvernement constitutionnel." Kef. Int., 240. Cf. ibid., 43-5; Dr. Ph., 85, 99. In 1871 he writes in a letter to his friend Berthelot: a La France s'est trompee sur la forme que peut prendre la conscience d'un peuple. Un tas de sable n'est pas une nation ; or, le suffrage universel n'admet que le tas de sable. . . La civilisation a ete de tout temps une oeuvre aristocratique, main- tenue par un petit nombre ; Tame d'une nation est chose aristo- cratique aussi : cette ame doit etre guidee par un certain nombre de pasteurs officiels, formant la continuite de la nation." Corr., 395-6. Ref. Int., 67, 147. 7 306 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. He explains that this "pasteur officiel" is not necessarily a dynasty. Leadership may be exercised by a senate, like that of ancient Rome, or of Venice; or better still by religious, social, educational or gymnastic institutions, like those of the Greek cities. But a thing that has never been seen, he insists, is a society without traditional institutions, a, national education, or an accepted religion. Corr., p. 68. The most sympathetic attitude which he has anywhere taken towards democracy occurs in his preface to the Souvenirs, pp. X-XX, where different forms of political organization are compared with, regard to the influence they are likely to exert on the progress of reason, of which the first condition is declared to bo freedom] of thought and speech. "Le but du monde est le developpement de resprit^ et la premiere condition du developpement de 1' esprit, c'est la li- berte." Souv., XIIL Cf. Ref. Int., 99-100. "Le monde marche vers line sorte d'americanisme, qui blesse nos idees raffinees, mais qui, une fois les crises de I'heure actuelle passees, pourra bien n'etre pas plus mauvais que 1'ancien regime pour la seule chose qui importe, c ? est-a-dire raffranchissement et le progres de Tesprit humiain." Souv., X-XI. With reference to the ancien regime, he continues: Les con- cessions qu'il f allait faire a la cour, a la societe, au clerge etaient pires que les petite desagrements que peut nous infliger la democratie. ?> Souv., XII. But even these attenuations of his habitual bias are made re- luctantly, and not without reserve. For a few pages forward in the same preface, contrasting democracy in France with its better organization in England and America, he says of the former : "Je crois bien que, si les idees democratiques venaient a tri- onrpher definitivement, la science et Tenseignemient scientifique perdraient assez vite leurs modestes dotations. II en faudrait faire son deuil." p. XVI-XVII. "Noli me t&ngere est tout ce qu'il faut demander a la democratie." 19 Ibid. XX. Of. Dial., Y7 ; Ref. Int., 218. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 307 On the other hand, the praises which aristocracy gets from his pen are many and generous. All civilization is of aristocratic origin. Dr. Ph., 85. An aristocracy of the wise was the law of primitive man. Or. Lang., 25. It is by aristocracy that the inferior races have been disciplined, grammatical language created, that laws have been framed, and morality and reason developed. Dr. PL, 99 ; Oorr., 395. Even to-day its service^ to the State are incalculabla C. d'Angl., 122 ; also Kef. Ink 67, 244; Dial., 64-65. Seailles, 269-70. "La vertu diminue ou augmente dans Phumanite selon quo Pimlperceptible aristocratie en qui reside le depot de la noblesse humaine trouve ou non une atmosphere pour vivre et se pror- pager." Mor. Grit, 23. Of. A. SI 319 ff. This one-sided antagonism is all the more remarkable as it was characteristic of his method to advocate both sides of a question in turn, whenever it seemed fairly debatable!. Can it be that he really had nothing to say in favor of democracy ? It is plain that his preference for aristocratic institutions ig based on something more than an impartial examination of thei* comparative merits. An obvious criticismi which his treatment of democracy provokes is that he condemns it in general terms, without considering the conditions' in which it is placed (his- torical, geographical, ethnographical, political). If demjocracy is a failure in one country, that can prove nothing against its being a permanent success in another. The same nation, inr deed, not only may but does need different forms, of social and political organization at different stages in its development. It is of course impossible to decide questions as to the relative worth of political institutions one way or another in the form of general propositions, regardless of the special conditions under which these institutions are tested. In the Dialogues philosophiquzs, half in jest and half m earnest, Renan describes an. ideal social order, in which reasoni at last is the undisputed sovereign of the world. The progress of science, he suggests, may conceivably lead to the discovery of new forms of force, so hard to wield and so dangerous to maniph ulate that only a few superior minds would be capable of turn- 308 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ing the same to practical use. In the hands of these intellectual giants, veritable gods as compared with even the choicest intel- lects of the present day, these hidden forces would be instru- ments of truly super-human power. The mass of mankind, lacking capacity for such knowledge, would be forced to submit. Dial., 82. The power which popular fancy ascribed to magicians of old would then become a reality. A select few would rule the many in virtue of mysterious influences which they alone understood. Such a government would be despotic, to be sure, but not therefore unjust; for he supposes these magicians to be as high above the average in virtue as in knowledge. It- would be the beneficent tyranny of justice and truth. As soon as it was discovered that the power of these demi-gods was al- ways in the service of the right, there would be no objection to its exercise ; and very soon these heaven-born rulers would come to be loved, and their commands be accepted like irresistible natural laws. Dial., 112. In course of time, having discov- ered the secrets of matter and of life, they would rule over phys- ical creation likewise, and eventually come to be worshipped as gods. "Primos in orbe deos fecit limor." Dial., 113, Cf. Frag., 153 ff. This is mere dreaming, of course ; but it points in the direc- tion of Kenan's ideal of social organization. An enlightened despotisms, not supposedly merely but truly enlightened, and despotic only in the sense of being all-powerful, was his beau ideal of political order. Cf. A. S., 350-2 ; Souv., 335. But notwithstanding his strictures upon democracy, Renan was at all times an ardent advocate of personal liberty. "Le regime liberal est une necessite absolue," he writes, "pour toutes les nations modernes. Qui ne pourra s'y aceom- moder perira. . . . Une nation qui ne sera capable ni de la liberte de la presse, ni de la liberte de reunion, ni de la li- berte politique, sera certainement depassee et vaincue par les nations qui peuvent supporter de telles libertes. Ces dernieres seront tou jours mieux infonnees, plus instruites, plus seri- euses, mieux gouvernees." Ref. Int., 273. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 309 "Le but supreme de rhumanite est la liberte des individus." M.-Aur., 588. Many other passages of like tenor might be quoted from) his books. Conservatism, to be sure, is also indispensable. Radicalism and conservatism are the two weights, so to speak, by which society maintains its balance over the tight-ropes of destiny. "La vie est le resultat d'un conilit entre deux forces con- traires. On meurt aussi bien par 1 ? absence de tout souffle re- volutionnaire que par 1'exces de la revolution." C. d'Angl., 100. It is liberalismi, however, that needs most encouragement, for of conservatism there is always an abundant supply. Lil> eralism itself becomes eonservatismi through mere lapse of time. The liberals of to-day are the conservatives of to-mor- row. Dr. Ph., 269. In a letter of 1847 to his friend Berthelot the relation of these opposite forces to social progress is clearly set forth: "La loi, en politique, e'est de m|archer toujours. L'opinion ne peut rester un instant stationnaire. . . Mais 1'opinion marchant toujours et le gouve>rnement etant necessairement stationnaire et conservateur, le lendemain de la revolution 1' ac- cord est rompu, et une nouvelle revolution est necessaire* Elle ne se fera pas, et cela fort heureusemient, parce que Fop- position n'a pas encore la force; cela arrivera plus ta,rd, quand' le desaccord sera trop criant; alors une nouvelle revolution^ puis a recommencer. Eoi un mot, j 'imagine Topinion conune avan^ant d'un mouvement continu et les gouvernements avan- gant par soubresaiits, en sorte qu'ils ne peuvent que par in- stants se trouver de front" Corr., 26. Kenan was thoroughly modern in the distrust he showed for abstract "natural rights." A liberty which exists in fact as well as name is not the result of mere constitutional enactment. Civil liberty is not assured, he says, until it is rooted in insti- tutions which have long endured. It might be shown that the only ground upon which a certain amount of independence still finds refuge in our time is a remnant of what 310 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. in France is known as the ancien regime. Mor. Grit., 335. The French revolution made the mistake of all revolu- tions which are founded on abstract ideas, instead of antece- dent rights. Ibid., 98 ; also 37-8. "La liberte achetee ou arrachee pied a pied a ete plus du- rable que la liberte par nature. En croyant fonder le droit ab- strait, on fondait la servitude, tandis que les hauts barons d'Angleterre, ... en defendant leurs privileges, ont fonde la vraie liberte." Mor. Grit., 39. "L'Angleterre, sans rompre avec sa royaute, avec sa no- blesse, avec see oomtes, avec ses communes, avec son figlise, aveo sea universites, a trouve moyen d'etre Ffitat le plus libre, le plus prospere et le plus patriote qu'il j ait." 20 Ref. Int., 5. Of. ibid., 239. Foremost among civil liberties, in his estimation, are free thought and free speech. Without this personal freedom po- litical liberty is 1iie merest sham. Q. G., 411. This seemjs to have been his normal point of view, though he did not hold to it consistently. In the Avenir de la science , for example, he defends the opposite view, insisting that free speech, like universal suffrage, cannot be reasonable until all men have acquired, the capacity to distinguish between truth and error. The right freely to express one's thoughts presup- poses a capacity to think aright, for there can be no such thing as a right to disseminate falsehood. A. S., 357. Gf. Mor. Grit, 161. A far more urgent duty of society than the guarantee of uni- versal free speech, he declares, is to improve the minds and characters of its members. So long as the mtasses are kept in ignorance, it is simply absurd to claim in their behalf the right to free assembly and free speech. "Le vrai trouve tou jours assez de liberte pour se faire jour, et la liberte ne pent etre que prejudiciable, quand ce sont des insenses qui la reclament. . . . Nous usons la force pour conserves a tous le droit de radoter a leur aise; ne vaudrait-il pas mienix chercher a parler raison et enseigner a tous a parler et a comprendre ce langage? Fermer les clubs, ouvrez les BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 311 ecoles, et vous servirez vraiment la cause populaire." A. S., 356. Also Q. O., 477. C. d'Angl., 26-7. Legal guarantees of free speech he considered of little im- portance. A mian who is really in the right is always suffi- ciently free to disseminate his convictions. In some respects, indeed, opposition to innovating ideas is a good thing. When would-be reformers are obliged to risk their own life in the advocacy of their cause, the peace will be disturbed only by those who are sure of their mjessage. A. S., 362. "La persecution a le grand avantage d'ecarter la petite ori- ginalite qui cherche son profit dans une mesquine opposition. . . . Autrefois, sur dix novateurs, neuf etaient violem- ment etouffes, aussi le dixieme etait bien vraiment et franche- ment original. La serpe qui emonde les rameaux faibles ne fait que donner aux autres plus de force. Aujourd'hui plus de serpe; mais aussi plus de seve. En somme, tout cela est assez indifferent, et I'humanite fera son chemin sans les li- beraux et malgre les retrogrades." A. S., 362. "L'idee vraie ne demande pas de permission; elle so soucie peu que son droit soit ou non reconnu. Le christianismje n'a pas eu besoin de la liberte d la presse ni de la liberte de re- union pour conquerir le monde. . . . Occupons^nous done un peu plus de penser, et un peu mmns d' avoir le droit d'ex- primer notre pensee. L'homme qui a raison est toujours assez libre." Q. C., 303-4 Moreover, the suppression of free-thought is, strictly speak- ing, impossible. A heretic placed on the rack may alter his lan- guage, but his private conviction is beyond the reach of external coercion. Even.! in the days when free-thinking meant reasoning that was not consistent with statements in the Bible, or the Goran, and people were burnt alive for professing their real beliefs, free-thinking was not in reality suppressed. All that philosophers needed to do was to twist their own language into harmony with the scriptures, or vice versa; in which case ex- ternal coercion resulted merely in the mlultiplication of glos- saries and commentaries. A. S., 58. What else are the in- tricate commiefnts on knotty points in the scriptures but the pro- 312 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. test of reason against the enslaving letter of the text? And what is the cause of all the hermeneutical dodges and subter- fuges of theological apologetics, both Christian and pagan, save the rebellion of present knowledge against past ignorance? "La liberrte de penser est imprescriptible. . . Sous le re- gime d'Aristote, comme sous celui de la Bibkj on a pu penser presque aussi librement que de nos jours, mais a la condition de prouver que telle pensee etait reellement dans Aristote ou dans la Bible, ce qui ne faisait jamais grande difficulte. . . Tous les comjmjentaires des livres sacres se ressemblent, depuis ceux de Manou, jusqu'a ceux de la Bible, jusqu'a ceux du Goran. Tous sont la protestation de 1'esprit humain centre la lettre asservissante. . . C'est la regie etroite que fait naitre Fequivoque." A. S., 58-9. Cf. ibid., 290. So little did Kenan mjake of the right to free speech at the most rationalistic period of his own life that even the inquisi- tion itself, with all its cruelty, is condemned solely on the ground of not being in the service of truth. If the doc- trine of the church had been true, he says, the inquisi- tion would have been a beneficient institution. The moment a doctrine acquires universal acceptance and is made the foun- dation of social and national existence, society is right in pun- ishing those who attempt to subvert it. A. S., 345-7. "Du moment qu'une societe entiere accepte un dogme et pro- clame que ce dogme est la verite absolue, et cela sans opposi- tion^ on est charitable en persecutant. C'est defendre la soci- ete." A. S., 345. Cf. Mor. Grit., 161. "Je concois Tfitat reconnaissant un seul culte; je le concois ne reconnaissant aucun culte; nxais je ne le concois pas recon- naissant tous les cultes. II faut de la doctrine a Thumauite. Si le catholicisme est le vrai, les pretentious les plus extremes des ultramjontains sont legitimes, I'lnquisition est une institu- tion bienfaisante. . . De ce point de vue, . . le sou- verain fait acte de pere en separant le bon grain de Tivraie et brulant celleHci. Rien ne tient devant la seule chose neces- saire, sauver les ames. ?> A. S., 348-9. Cf. Souv., 112-13. The needs of society^ he repeatedly affirms, must in all cases BEAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 313 take precedence of individual rights. Whenever personal lib- erty comes in conflict with social welfare, it is the latter which otight to prevail. It is so, he believed, throughout nature. He goes so far as to declare that any curtailment of individual liberties is right, even to slavery itself, if the welfare of soci- ety demands it. 20a The first and most imperative duty of any society, as of any individual, is the duty of self -preservation. Fighting-ability, lie insists, is of the utmost importance to a nation's welfare. A society which is too kindly in disposition is weak. The world is not made up of perfect people; certain abuses, there- fore, are necessary and unavoidable. It is dangerous for a nation to be more civilized than its neighbors. P. Isr., Ill, 230; Dr. Ph., 346. A sound philosophy of life should fit men for killing as well as for dying. Dr. Ph., 349. The surest guarantee of peace is preparation for war. Speaking of the regime under which the happiness of the individual, guaranteed by the social group to which he belongs, is the sole object of the law: "Who will maintain this fine ideal ?" he asks ; "who will protect this little paradise of broth- ers against the attacks of external force?" P. Isr., Ill: 354. "(Test une verite bien constatee que le progres philoso- phique des lois ne repond pas toujours a un progres dans la force de Pfitat. La guerre est chose brtitale ; elle veut des bru- taux; souvent il arrive ainsi que les ameliorations morales et sociales entrainent un affaiblissement militaire." M.-Aur., 253-4. He reminds his readers that war is a legacy from uncivil- ized times, a relic of primitive barbarism. M.-Aur., 253. Militarism therefore, appealing as it does to instincts deep- rooted in human nature, cannot be suddenly abolished by mere resolutions; nor the cannon be safely discarded by any sin- gle nation alone. He believed that peoples, far more than in- dividuals even, are compelled to be selfish by the very condi- tions of existence. P. Isr., I: 210. The way to certain na- tional death is persistence in a policy of unselfish humanitar- 314 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. ianism. A nation that labors for humanity is always a victim of the universal work which it accomplishes. P. Isr., HI: 224 ; XII. A nation which devotes itself to social and religious problems, courts its own ruin. C. d'Angl., 106. This is one of his oft-repeated inductions from history. In the Hibbert lecture for 1880, he writes: "Presque toujours les nations creees pour jouer un role de civilisation universelle, comme la Judee, la Grece, PItalie de la renaissance, n'exercent leur pleine action sur le monde qu'apres avoir ete victimes de leur propre grandeur. . . Lea peuples doivent choisir, en effet, entre les destinees lon- gues, tranquilles et obscures, de celui qui vit pour soi, et la carriere troublee, orageuse, de celui qui vit pour rhumanite. La nation qui agite daus son sein des problemes sociaux et re- ligieux est presque toujours faible politiquement. Tout pays qui reve un royaume de Dieu, qui vit pour les idees generales, qui poursuit une oeuvre d'interet universel, sacrifie par la meme sa destinee particuliere, affaiblit et detruit son role comme patrie teirestre. On ne porte jamais impunement le feu en soi." C. d'Angl., 103-4. Kef. Int., 236; Q. C,, XXVIII. Renan had little sympathy, on the whole, with socialism, as a project for the re-organization of society on a basis of equal rights for all men. ^ot that he was blind to the manifold in- justice of the present social regime, or felt no sympathy with the undeserved sufferings of the less fortunate classes. The reverse is the truth. Nor would he deny that socialism is a well-grounded protest against the present regime. His want of sympathy with the movement appears rather to have sprung from a conviction that, at bottom, the wrongs for which social- ists are seeking a remedy are beyond the power of man to re> move, being inherent in the nature of things. He was much impressed with the analogy of socialism to early Christianity. The two movements appeared to him to spring from] a common source: the evils and sufferings and general unsatisfactoriness of average humlan life in this world. The great consolation of man, he says with reference to the BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST REN AN. 315 !N"ew Jerusalem, in the presence of the incurable evils of soci- ety, is to imagine an ideal city, from which he excludes every sorrow and which he endows with every perfection. P. Isr., Ill: 400. He notes a fundamental difference., however, amounting to contrast, in their respective conceptions of the possibilities of human nature. In the Christian eceonomy the reign of jus- tice, impossible on earth because the "prince of this world" is the "prince of darkness," is deferred to another life and con- stitutes the reward of those who are worthy to enter the heav- enly city. Socialism, on the other hand, with its different con- ception of nature and of man's place in nature, also less cer- tain of man's future and with, more faith in his present, hopes to establish its New Jerusalem on this planet. In a word, so- cialism is Christianity modernized and secularized. Christi- anity is socialism minus its faith in man; socialism is Chris- tianity minus its faith in God. The parallelism of the two extends to details. Like Christi- anity, socialism is international in its sympathies and aspira- tions, which is a serious matter, considering that socialism is a live issue in politics. Socialism again, with its phalansteries, communities, unions, orders, and brotherhoods, tends, like Christianity, to create separate allegiances within the state, in rivalry with patriot- ism. All religious orders, he writes, are in the same position. If socialism could attain any organization, its phalansteries, groups, syndicates, would exist in the state, like small egoisms caring very little for public interests. . . . Ideal Jerusa,- lems bring misfortune. P. Isr., Ill: 355. Of. Y. J., 172. Above nationalities there is, in fact, an eternal ideal. So- cialism, according to the Israelite and Christian dream, will probably one day kill the patriots, and make a reality of the words read in the service for the dead : Judicare secidum per ignem. P. Isr., Ill: 386. Socialism, moreover, is unmilitary in spirit and policy,- further trait of resemblance with early Christianity. 316 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. "II est clair que le socialisme des ouvriers est 1'antipode de Pesprit militaire; c'est presque la negation de la patrie; les doctrines de I'lnternationale sont la pour le prouver." Ref. Int., 23. But if socialism and Christianity are so nearly related, it may be asked, how comes it that the church is commonly re- garded by socialists as one of their very worst enemies? Should we not expect that so far as they are pursuing common aims, such as the extension of human brotherhood, Christian- ity and socialism would reinforce each other? Renan admits that in some respects Christianity is a formid- able barrier to socialism. It is, in, fact., at once an obstacle and a reinforcement; a reinforcement through its doctrine of universal brotherhood, and an, obstacle through its doctrine of the future life. The Christian who really tries to love his neighbor as himself and to do unto others as he would that they should do unto him, is so far a socialist. But on the other hand, so far as the disciple of Jesus loves, not the- world nor the things that are in the world, and considers life on earth as a; pilgrimage to his heavenly home ; so far as, concerned only to lay up treasures in heaven, he despises earthly riches and, embracing poverty, welcomes suffering and sorrow as a disci- pline to fit him for the kingdom; of God : in so far his relig- ion is the very opposite of socialism. Imagine Simeon Styl- ites heading a procession for a fairer distribution of the com- forts and pleasures of life! Already in his first book Kenan calls attention to the fact that an excessive regard for the life to come is an obstacle to social reform!. "Quand on pense que toute chose se trouvera la-haut retablie, ce n'est plus tant la peine de poursuivre Pordre et Tequite ici-bas. Notre principe, a nous, c'est qu'il faut regler la vie presente comme si la vie future n'existait pas, qu'il n'est ja- mais permis pour justifier un etat ou un acte social de s'en referer a Tau-dela. En appeler incessamment a la vie fu- ture, c'est endormir P esprit de reforme, c'est ralentir le zele pour Forganisation rationnelle de rhum'anite." A. S., 331-2. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 317 Cf. P. Isr., Ill: 208. He is especially indignant against those who feign a belief in the hereafter because they imagine this to be in the interests of social order: "Quand un sceptique preche au pauvre le dogme consolateur de I'immortalite, afin de le f aire tenir tranquille, cela doit s'ap- peler une escroqnerie ; c'est payer en billets qu'on sait faux, . . dans le sens scolastique que nous attachons a ce mot;, c'est fausser sa peonsee que de vouloir en extraire une theorie dogmatique. Et pourtant, Platon represente un esprit; Platon, est une religion." A. S., 54. Of. ibid., 446-7. These words are true of himself. Renan, like Plato, repre- sents an esprit, a philosophy, a religion if you will. He sometimes writes, as if this esprit, this personal note, this religion, were the whole of philosophy, or at least its chief char- acteristic. He expressly defines philosophy as a species of poetry: 324 BULLETIN" OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN". "De la poesie a la critique, il n'y a pas si loin qu'on le sup- pose ; les races poetiques sont les races philosophiques, et la phi- losophie n'est au fond qu'une maniere le poesie comme une autre." Mor. Or., 4-55. "Tin systeme, c'est une epopee sur les choses. II serait aussi absurde qu'un systeme renfermat le dernier mot de la realite qu'il le serait qu/une epopee epuisat le cercle entier de la beaute. A. 8., 57 Of. P. Sem,, 40. And again in his article I'Avenir de la metaphysique: La philosophic est moins une science qu'un cote de toutes les sciences ... La plus humble commie la plus sublime in- telligence a eu sa f agon de concevoir le monde ; chaque tete pen- sante a ete a sa guise le miroir de Tunivers ; chaque etre vivant a eu son reve qui Fa charme, eleve, console : grandiose ou mes- quin, plat ou sublime, ce reve a ete sa philosophie." Frag., 286-T. There would thus be as many different philosophies as dif- ferent personalities; and indeed, he says this in so many words: "La philosophie, c'est rhomme meme; chacun nait aveo sa philosophie comme avec son style." Frag., 288. Only a few pages earlier, however, in the same article, philos- ophy is described in a manner quite incompatible with this view, Joeing practically identified with ^positive science : "Les vrais philosophes se sont faits philologues, chimistes, physiologistes . . . Aux vieilles tentatives d'explication universelle se sont substitut^es des series de patientes investigar tions sur la nature et Fhistoire. La philosophie semble ainsi aspirer a redevenir co qu'elle etait a Torigine, la. science uni- verselle." Frag., 265. The same idea, A. S., 301. But two-sided statements from Renan, or even many-sided ones, no longer surprise us. We have learned to regard them as an essential part of his philosophical miethod, not to say its leading characteristic. He seems to have really believed and practiced, what in his later period he so often preached, that in philosophy and religion, the only way to mjake sure of being right sometimies, is to affirm in turn all the alternatives. Dr. Ph. 256. Of. James, Hum. Im., 12, 16. BEAUEB THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST BEN AN. 325 A complete explanation of Kenan's heterogeneous personal- ity, and the numerous contradictions in his writings to which it led, is of course not attempted ini this chapter. All that can be accomplished here is to indicate the direction in which, as the writer believes, a more exhaustive study of the subject must turn. 23 Perhaps we may best begin by examining first the explana- tions he jhimself has offered. In his Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, he tries to account for what he is pleased to call his apparent contradictions, by tracing them back to a certain dualism in his character, which in turn is variously ascribed, now to an atavistic influence of his complex descent,, and again to a later disillusionment. "Par m|a race," he says, "j'etais part-age, et comme ecartele, entre des forces contraires . . . Cette complexite d'origine est en grande partie, je crois, la cause de mes 1 apparentes con- tradictions. Je suis double; quelquefois une partie de moi rit quand Tautre pleure." S'ouv., 141-5 ; 73, 90. But a few pages earlier in the same book we find this dualism attributed to a later disenchantment, due to a wider knowledge of men and a deeper insight into the ways and the needs of the world. His native idealism, he tells us, seemed to him out of place in a world such as ours, and this discovery led hint to apply 8 double standard of worth in his judgments of men and things; . . . "de prendre pour me jugements pratiques le con- trepied exact de mfes jugements theoriques, de ne regarder commc possible que ce qui contredisait mies- aspirations." Souv., 123. "Alors s'etablit en moi une lutte ou plutot une dualite qui a ete le secret de toutes mes opinions . . . Je vis que Pideal et la realite n'ont rien a faire ensemble; que le monde, jusqu'a nouvel ordre, est voue sans appel a la platitude, a la mediocrite ; que la cause qui plait aux ames bien njees est sure d'etre vaincue ; que ce Ojui est vrai en litterature, en poesie, aux yeux des gens raffines, est tou jours faux dans le monde grossier des faits accomplis." Souv., 122 ; 123-4. Still another explanation is suggested in his preface to the 326 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. samje book, whore opposite tendencies and temperaments within the same personality are explained as a case of opposite poles attracting each other. "Presque tons nous sommes doubles. Plus I'homme se deve- loppe par la tete, plus il reve le pole contraire, c'est a dire Fir- ratioimel, le repos dans la complete ignorance, la femme qui n'est que femme, 1'etre instinctif qui n'agit que par 1'impulsion d'une conscience obscure." Souv., VII-VIII ; Of., F. Det., 39. Comparing these explanations with one another, it seems at first glance that Kenan has fallen merely into new contradictions in attempting to explain the old ones. But it is quite probable that his explanations are all of them true as far as they go; heredity, experience, the attraction of opposites, have doubtless all co-operated in the total result. It is easy to present these contradictions in such a way as to insinuate that Ren an was incapable of close reasoning, or a stranger to sound scientific methods ; and to assume that his con- tradictions are merely the result of flippant levity or self-satis- fied superficiality. But such a procedure is too absurd, and reveals a total misapprehension of the nature of his contradic- tions, as well as of his true character. Two prime factors seem to lie at the root of all his contra- dictions : sincerity and progressiveness. A more unfeigned sin- cerity there never was, either in seeking the truth or ini stating it.. In Kenan's own explanations, ascribing these contradic- tions to a kind of double personality, this ultimate trait, sin- cerity, is taken for granted ; but it has to be made explicit if the explanation is to be complete. It is quite possible, of course, for contradictory impulses and opposite points of view to exist together within the same per- sonality, without appearing in speech and conduct ; and it is only because in Kenan's case these opposite promptings were all expressed with an equal freedom and frequency that his double personality gave rise to that systematic two-sidedness which uninitiated readers of Kenan find so bewildering. Whatever Beeoued to himj to be true, in different moods and from, different points of view, he frankly and fully expressed, quite regard- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RESTAN. 327 less of consistency with other moods or other points of view. His own testimony on this question will not be disputed by any one familiar with his works. "Dans mes ecrits, j'ai ete d'une sincerite absolue. Non seulo- ment je n'ai rien dit que ce que je pense; chose bien plus rare et plus difficile, j'ai dit tout ce que je pense." Souv., 151. "Le public m'a eu autant que mes amis. ... II m'est arrive frequemment, en ecrivant une lettre, de m'arreter pour tourner en propos general les idees qui me venaient. Je n'ai existe pleinement que pour le public. II a eu tout de moi; il n'aura apres ma mort aucune surprise ; je n'ai rien reserve pour person ne." Souv., 365. And few indeed are those who have had a wider range of thoughts and feelings, of facts and fancies to express. His life has been compared to a voyage through the realm] of ideas and sentiments. "II avait connu 1'etat d ? ame religieux, Fetat d'ame scien- tifique, un etat d'ame oil science et religion co-existaient sans s'exclure; il connut Tetat d'ame optimiste, Fetat d'ame pessi- miste, la hautaine ironie et rindulgence indefinie, la resignation et le sarcasm, Felevation religieuse et le persiflage Voltairien, tous les modes en quelque sorte, de penseo et meme de croyance, donjiant a chacune une expression si vive qu'on eut pu croire a chaque fois, que c ? etait le seul qu'il entendit et pratiquat." M. Faguet, Hev. Par., Vol. 4, p. 119. "By his mastery of Eastern and Oriental languages and liter- atures," says Mr. Oonway, "he had familiarly dwelt among primitive tribes, with them; set up their dolmens, knelt at their altars, travelled with their migrations in India, Persia, Egypt, Syria, shared their pilgrimages from lower to higher beliefs, had listened to their prophets, visited the home of Mary and Joseph, walked with the disciples." Monist, vol. 3, pp. 201 ff. Cf. Monod, Kenan, etc., p. 40, 48. "Pour moi," says Theoctiste-Benan, "je goute tout Funivers par cette sorte de sentiment general qu fait que nous sommes tristes en une ville triste, gais en une ville gaie. Je jouis ainsi des voluptes du voluptueux, des debauches du debauche, de la 328 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. mondanite du mondain, de la saintete de rhomme vertueux, des meditations du savant, de Fausterite de Tascete. Par une sorte de syrnpathie douce, je me figure que je suis leur conscience. Les decouvertes du savant sont mon bien; les triomtphes de rambitieux me sont une fete. Je serais f ache que quelque chose manquat au monde; car j'ai conscience de tout ce qu'il en- ferme." Dial., 133-4. Of., ibid., XIII; Dr. Ph., 233; F. Det., 382-3 ; A. S., 1C, 123 ; Ant., 140. It was this universal recognition and comprehensive apprecia- tion of all codes and customs and philosophies, this ubiquity of interest and unprejudiced intellectual hospitality, mjore than any other single trait that could be named, which made Kenan the spokesman of all sorts and conditions of men. lie was con- tinually making new acquisitions, and at the same timje was unable to give up the old ones. His thirst for knowledge and experience was insatiable. His wish was to lead a multitude of lives all abreast of each other. "Je voudrais, dans un antre monde, parler au feminin, d'une voix de femme, penser en femme, aimer en femjme, prier en femime, voir comment les femmes ont raison." F. Det., 39. Cf. Benjamin' Constant, Journal, Paris, 1895, p. 56. Speaking in 1890 of the faults of his early manner of writing, he sumis them all up in the sentence: Je tenais trop a ne rien perdre, A. Si, VI ; and this remained to the end the condition of his mind, though not of his style. He had learned the capital art of omitting, indeed ; but only to embrace the next occasion for expressing the opposite side. Three orders of reality in particular are sharply distin- guished and made very prominent in all Kenan's writings; so prominent, in fact, that one of his best and most appreciative critics, M. Gabriel Monod, declares this three-fold grouping of experience, and the assertion of mutual equivalence among the groups thus obtained, to be the chief characteristic and the central feature in Kenan's philosophical thought. These groups are: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. The following passage, from his earliest book, is typical of scores of others throughout his writings: BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 329 "Tin beau sentiment vaut une belle pensee ; une belle pensee vaut une -belle action. Un systeine de philosophic vaut un poeme, un poeme vaut une decouverte scientifique, une vie de science vaut une vie de vertu. L'homnie parfait serait celui qui serait a la fois poete, philosophe, savant, homme vertueux." A. S., 11 ; also 101 ; Mor. Grit., 358-9. Truth, goodness and beauty, according to Kenan, represent different modes in which the ultimate cosmic reality, whatever that may be, is reflected in human consciousness. The question arises whether this is not, after all, simply an interpretation of reality in terms of human nature, a projection of his own self into external facts; in other words, a return to that very anthropocentricism which he so often condemned in other people? The truth is that a man so many-sided as Renan, who has run the entire gamut, one 1 may fairly say, of feelings and tem- peraments, and who lived so many lives in one, is too complex and abnormal a character to be fairly judged by ordinary- standards. Is it any wonder that a personality so heteroge- neous, who in thought was a m'an, in feeling a woman and in action a child; whose writings reflect now the reminiscent poetry of an outworn faith and again the subtle criticism of an aridly erudite intellect; a "tissue of contradictions," as he calls himself: is it any wonder that such a man should find it impossible to represent on paper all the disparate medley of his conflicting judgments upon experience, even to their finest shades and transitions, within the inflexible limits of syllogistic logic? But perhaps a more im*portant cause still of logical contradic- tion than the freedom he at all times practiced in expressing his judgments is the freedom with which he allowed these judg- ments to form in his mind. Imbued with the Cartesian ration- alism of the seventeenth century, especially as represented in Malebranche, he had early embraced the doctrine that reason, and reason alone, unhampered by will or desire, is the judge of all truth. Reason .was conceived as a kind of balance for weighing ideas, producing belief or disbelief, according as the 330 BULLETIN" OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. scales dip this way or that. All reasoning, therefore, to be trustworthy, must be an objective process, unbiased as the mar- iner's compass. "Les gens du monde qui croient qu'on se decide dans le choix de sea opinions par des raisons de sympathie ou d'antipathie s'etonneront certainemjent du genre de raisonnements qui m'ecarta de la foi chretienne, a laquelle j 'avals tant de motifs de coeur et d' interet de raster attache. Les personnes qui n'ont pas Fesprit scientifique ne comprennent guere qu'on laisse ses opinions se fornuer hors de soi par une sorte de concretion. in> personnelle, dont on n'est en quelque sorte que le spectateur. En me livrant ainsi a la force des choses, je croyais me oonformer aux regies de la grande ecole du XVIIe siecle, surtout de Male- branche, dont le premier principe est que la raison doit etre con- templee, et qu'on n'est pour rien dans sa procreation ; en sorte que le devoir de Phomme est de se mettre devant la verite, denue de toute personnalite, pret a se laisser trainer ou voudra la demonstration preponderante. Loin de viser d' avance certains resultats, ces illustres penseurs voulaient que, dans la recherche de la verite, on s'interdit d'avoir un desir, une tendance, un attachment personnel." 24 Souv., 296-7. But so far is this conception of reason from corresponding in fact to the psychical processes of humanity at large, that the opposite appears to be implied in nearly all the mental opera- tions of the vast majority of mankind. The position of Prof. James, for example, is the very oppo- site of that maintained by Renan in the passages above quoted. This writer insists that not only do men, as a matter of fact, allow their beliefs to be influenced by their emotions, such as hope, fear, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, but that it is right we should be so influenced in certain cases. "Oar passional nature," he writes, "not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; fo>r to say, under such circumstances, "do not decide, but leave the question open," is itself a passional decision, just like deciding BRAUEB THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 331 yes or no, and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth." The Will to Believe, 1897, p. II. "Is it wiser or better," he asks, "to yield to the fear that re- ligion may be an error than to yield to the hope that it inlay be be true I p. 27. "Where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be. an insane; logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the lowest kind of immortality into which a thinking being can fall." p., 25. "A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule." p. 28. So far is reason from being the sole and ultimate arbiter of all truth, or an infallible and sufficient guide for attaining it, according to Prof. James, that "Our reason is quite satisfied, in 999 cases out of every thou- sand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case." P., 9. But why quote this writer against Renan ? The truth is that, notwithstanding the statements of Rienan above quoted, and many others in the same key, he has himself affirmed the Tery position for which Prof. James contends. It is interest- ing to contrast the following passages with those last cited : "L' attitude la plus logique du penseur devant la religion est de faire comme si elle etait vraie. II faut agir commie si Dieu et Fame existaient. La religion entre ainsi dans le cas de ces nombreuses hypotheses telles que Tether, les fluides electriques, lumineux, caloriques, nerveux, Patome lui-meme, que nous sa- vons bien n'etre que des sym boles, des moyens commjodes pour expliquer les phenomenes, et que noiis maintenons tout de mfeme." F. Det., 432 ; cf. ibid., XVII. And again: "La Nature est imniorale. . . Mais dans la conscience s'eleve une voix sainte qui parle a 1'homme d'un tout autre monde, le mpnde de Tideal, le inonde de la verite, de la bonte, 332 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVEKSITY OF WISCONSIN. de la justice. S'il n'y avait que la nature, on pourrait se de- mander si Dieu est necessaire. Mais, depuis qu'il a existe un honnete homime, Dieu a ete prouve." Frag., 250. Cf. Job, XC; Frag., 321-323; A. S., 17-18, 56, 58, 152-3, 477; note 26; C. d'Angl., 6-7; Dial., VI, 30-1, 38, 147; Mor. Or., II; Q. C., 235, 414. But while in his writings, where it was a question merely of theorizing on the subject, we find both sides of his tempera- ment affirmed in turn; it was tlte rationalistic side that seems to have prevailed in his conduct throughout. It was this pre- dominance of the intellect over the emotions and the will which in early life had led him out of the church ; and this event, in a psychological view of his development, was by far the most im- portant of his life. His separation from the church, in fact, marks the epoch of his mental growth when the torturing strain of his opposite tendencies had become unbearable, and it is impossible to sepa- rate a study of the causes of his contradictions from an exam- ination of the factors which produced this central crisis in his life. The same causes operate in both cases. It was the sharp distinction Between the rational and the emotional nature which his studies had led him to observe, combined with the unfinality of his unusually progressive mind, that made it impossible for him to continue in the career of a priest; and these same ulti- mate factors, intellectual duality and progressive unfinality, are responsible for many of the contradictions in his work. Indeed, the more closely one examines the psychological fac- tors of his apostacy, the more does this crisis appear as an ex- periment, under exceptionally favorable conditions, with the Cartesian principle of objective reason, rigorously and consist- ently applied in the sphere of theology and religion. It wa& Descartes and Malebranche, far more than Strauss or Gesenius, that led him away from 1 the faith of his childhood. 25 His intense rationalism at the time of his apostacy is in strik- ing contrast with the poetic idealism of his early surroundings ; and these opposite temperaments no doubt underlie that system- BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 333 atic two-sidedness so obtrusively characteristic of all his philo- sophic speculations. For the idealistic side, his "moral romanticism" as he calls it, no explanation seeins necessary, or rather none is possible, beyond the general recognition of environmental pressure, the passive contagion of example and precept, working upon he- reditary predispositions in the same direction. The general character of these influences has been sufficiently indicated in an earlier chapter. For the rational side, however, which represents a later de- velopment, it is possible to assign more specific causes, and these must now be briefly set forth. The more closely one looks at Kenan's early development, the more does the course he actually followed appear to have been inevitable. Everything, after liis removal to Paris, seems to- have combined to undo the work of his childhood sur- roundings, by which he had been moulded for sixteen, years. The mere geographical change, from the quiet seclusion of T'reguier to cosmopolitan, glittering Paris, marks an epoch in his mental development. It was not merely a transfer from country to city, but a change to a different civilization ; a sud- den leap from medievalism into the modern age. At Treguier he had been in actual contact, he tells us, with the primitive woirld. The most remote past was still in existence in Brittany up to 1830. The life of the fourteenth and fif- teenth centuries was daily before the eyes of those who lived in the towns. In the country, the epoch of the Welsh emdgra'- tion ? the fifth and sixth centuries, was plainly visible to the practiced eye. "Le paganisme se degageait derriere la couche chretienne, souvent fort transparente. A cela se melaient des traits d'un monde plus vieux encore, quo j'ai retrouve chez les Lapons. En visitant, en 1870, avec le prince Napoleon, les huttes d'un eamipement de Lapons, pres de Trom&oe, je cms plus d'une fois, dans des types de femmes et d'enfants, dans certains traits, dans certaines habitudes, voir ressusciter devant moi mes plus anciens souvenirs." Souv., 87-8. 334 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVEBSITY OF WISCONSIN. For the possibility of going to Paris he was indebted, next to his own industry and talents, to his sister Henriette. In the summer of 1838 he had won all the prizes of his class at Tregiiier college, an achievement which enabled his sister, then a school-teacher in Paris, to procure him! admission without cost to the famous little boarding-school, Saint-Nicolas du Ohardonnet. Lett. Sem., 1-2. He was in his sixteenth year. After a two days' journey there were no railroads of course , he was set down among scenes as novel to him; as if he had comle direct from Tahiti or Timibuctoo. "Un lama bouddhiste on un faquir mrusulman, transporte en un clin d'oeil d'Asie en plein boulevard, serait moins surpris que je ne le fus en tombant subitement dans un milieu aussi different de celui de mes vieux pretres de Bretagne." Souv., 172. Nor was it his immjediate surroundings alone, mother, teachers, companions and playmates of which he was de- prived by this change of abode; all his habits of life were broken through. Even the church itself, Parisian Catholi- cism, was so widely different from the Catholicism of Tre- guier in which he had grown up, as to be in effect a different religion. "Ma venue a Paris fut le passage d'une religion a une autre. . . . Ce fut la crise la plus grave de ma vie." Souv., 172-3. This sharp contrast between the old and the new could hardly fail to> invite comparison and provoke criticism. The Treguier in his memory and the Paris around him, the naive sincerity of the vie spontanee and the polish and tact of the vie reflechie, were too incongruous to exist side by side in the same mind without starting the machinery of reflection, com- parison and criticism,. Up to this time his ideas and ideals had been shaped by authority, example and habit; they were now to be placed on a rational basis of his own construction. In later life Kenan saw very clearly the imtmense signifi- cance of this change. He indeed declares it to have been the primary cause not only of his leaving the church, but of all the BKAUEB, THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 335 subsequent phases of development to which, this separation in turn was to lead. "II est bien probable que, si un incident exterieur n'etait venu me tirer brusquement du milieu honnete, m,ais borne, o apologies. Nous avons trouve a Dieu un riche ecrin de synonymes. Si nos raisons de croire aux reparations d'outre-tombe peuvent semibler freles, celles d' autrefois, etaient elles beaucoup plus fortes ? Tesie David cum Sibylla! . . . L'odre social, eomme Tordre theologique, provoque la question: Qui sait si la verite n'est pas triste? L'edifice de la societe Jiumaine porte sur un grand vide. Nous avons ose le dire. Rien de plus dangereux que de patiner sur une couche de glace sans songtr combien oette couche est mince. Je n'ai jaanais pu croire que, dans aucun ordre de choses, il fut mauvais d'y voir trop clair. Toute verite est bonne a savoir. Car toute verite clairement sue rend fort ou prudent, deux chose egalement necessaires a ceux que leur devoir, une ambition imprudente ou leur mauvais sort appellent a se meler des affaires de cette pauvre humanite." Dr. Ph., 262-4. Cf. Monod, Renan^ 36-4G. 352 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. APPENDIX A: NOTES. Note 1. It is interesting to compare the view of a professional modern psychologist. Prof. James, distinguishing between "refined" or "universal" supernaturalism, and "piecemeal" supernaturalism, in- clines to affirm the latter on the identical ground on which it is rejected by Renan. "For refined supernaturalism," he writes, "the world of the ideal has no efficient causality, and never bursts into the world of phe- nomena at particular points. . . . Universalistic supernatural- ism surrenders, it seems to me, too easily to naturalism. ... In this universalistic way of taking the world, the essence of practical religion seems to me to evaporate. ... In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual taste, I believe that a candid con- sideration of piece-meal supernaturalism and a complete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to be the hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements are met." Var. Kel. Exp., 521-3. Note 2. "La notion du surnaturel, avec ses impossibilites, n'ap- parait que le jour 6u nait la science experimental de la nature. L'homme etranger a toute idee de physique, qui croit qu'en priant il change la marche des nuages, arrete la maladie et la mort meme, ne trouve dans le miracle rien d'extraordinaire." V. J., 41. "La croyance au miracle est, en effet, la consequence d'un etat intellectual oii le monde est considers comme gouverne" par la fan- taisie et non par des lois immuables. Sans doute, ce n'est pas ainsi que 1'envisagent les supernaturalistes modernes, lesquels, force's par la science, qu'ils n'osent froisser assez hardiment, d'admettre un ordre stable dans la nature, supposent seulement que 1'action libre de Dieu peut parfois le changer, et congoivent ainsi le miracle comme une derogation a des lois etablies. Mais ce concept, je le repete, n'etait nullement celui des hommes primitifs. Le miracle n'etait pas congu alors comme surnaturel. L'idee de surnaturel n'apparait que quand 1'idee des lois de la nature s'est nettement formulae et s'impose meme a ceux qui veulent timidement concilier le merveilleux et I'expgrience. . Pour les hommes primitifs, au contraire, le miracle etait par- faitement naturel et surgissait a chaque pas, ou plutot il n'y avait ni BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERTSTEST RE^AN. 353 lois ni nature pour ces ames nai'ves, voyant partout action immediate d'agents libres. . . Ce n'est pas d'un raisonnement, mais de tout 1'ensemble des sciences modernes que sort cet immense resultat: il n'y a pas de surnaturel." A. S., 45-6. Note 3. Renan's position on this question is more fully set forth in his article la Metaphysique et son avenir, 1860, and again, three years later, in a letter to Mr. Berthelot: "Si Ton entend par metaphysique le droit et le pouvoir qu'a I'homme de s'elever audessus des faits, d'en voir les lois, la raison, 1'harmonie, la poesie, la beaute . . . il y a une metaphysique. . . Mais si Ton veut dire qu'il existe une science premiere contenant les prin- cipes de toutes les autres, une science qui peut a elle seule, et par des combinaisons abstraites, nous amener & la verity sur Dieu, le monde, rhomme, je n3 vois pas la necessite d'une telle categoric du savoir humain. . . II n'y a pas de veritS qui n'ait son point de depart dans 1'experience scientifique, qui ne sorte directement ou indirecte- ment d'un laboratoire ou d'une bibliotheque, car tout ce que nous savons, nous le savons par 1'etude de la nature ou de 1'histoire." Frag., 282-4. Cf. ibid., 263, 265. C. d'Agl., 206. "J'ai nie autrefois 1'existence de la metaphysique comme science a part et progressive; je ne la nie pas comme ensemble de notions immuables a la fagon de la logique. Ces sciences n'apprennent rien, mais elles font bien analyser ce que Ton savait. En tout cas, elles sont totalement hors des faits. Les regies du syllogisme, les axiomes fondamentaux de la raison pure, seraient vrais comme les mathema- tiques, quand meme il n'y aurait personne pour les percevoir. Mathematiques pures, logique, metaphysique, autant de sciences de 1'eternel, de rimmuabie, nullement historiques, nullement exp^ri- mentales, n'ayant aucun rapport avec 1'existence et les faits." Frag., 174-5. Note 4. "II n'est pas stir que la Terre ne manque pas sa destinee, comme cela est probafrlement arrivS a des mondes innom- brables; il est meme possible que notre temps soit un jour considers comme le point culminant apres lequel 1'humanite n'aura fait que dechoir; mais 1'univers ne connait pas le decouragement; il com- mencera sans fin 1'oeuvre avortee; chaque echec le laisse jeune, alerte, plein d'illusions. . . Courage, courage, nature! . . Obstine-toi; repare pour la millionieme fois la maille de filet qui se casse. . . Vise, vise encore le but que tu manques depuis I'eternitS. . . Tu as 1'infini de 1'espace et 1'infini du temps pour ton experience. Quand 10 354 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. on a le droit de se tromper impunement, on est toujours sur de reus- sir." Souv., XX-XXI. "The universe . . obtains its object by an infinite variety of germs. What Javeh desires always happens. Let us not be trou- bled; if we are among those who are going astray, who are running counter to the supreme will, that is of little consequence. Humanity is one of the countless ant-hills among which the experiment of reason is being carried on in the midst of space; if we miss our goal, others will reach it." P. Isr., 11:454-5; ibid. vol. V, 361. Note 5. The same view is taken in his Etudes d'histoire religieuse, p. 419.: "Dieu, Providence, immortalite, autant de bons vieux mots, un peu lourds peut-etre, que la philosophic interpretera dans des sens de plus en plus raffines, mais qu'elle ne remplacera jamais avec avantage. Sous une forme ou sous une autre, Dieu sera toujours le resume" de nos besoms suprasensibles, la categorie de 1'ideal (c'est & dire la forme sous laquelle nous concevons 1'ideal." Cf. Frag., 250; A. S., 479. Note 6. "Our normal waking consciousness, rational conscious- ness, as we call it," writes Prof. James in his latest book, "is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final, which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. . . They may determine attitudes, though they can- not furnish formulas, and open a region, though they fail to give a map. At any rate they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. . . . If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. . . The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, ar- ticulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclu- sions." Var. Rel. Exp., 388, 73, 74. Prof. James explains that he is dealing for the moment with the is, not with' the ought. All he con- tends for is that the sub-conscious and non-rational does, as a matter of fact, hold primacy over reason in the religious realm. Cf. ibid., pp. 422-4, 427, 456. Note 7. "How do we know," asks Prof. James, "that conscious- ness is generated de novo in each particular brain? May not BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 355 consciousness exist anterior to the brain, behind the scenes, co-eval with the world? The production of such a thing as consciousness in the brain is the absolute world-enigma, something so paradoxical and abnormal as to be a stumbling block to Nature, and almost a self-contradiction. Hum. Im., 21. Even though our soul's life (as here below ft is revealed to us) may be in literal strictness the function of a brain that perishes, yet it is not at all impossible, but on the contrary quite possible, that the life may still continue when the brain itself is dead." Ibid., 11-12. Note 8. Compare the famous declaration of Huxley: "If there is one thing plainer than another, it is that neither the pleasures nor the pains, of life in the merely animal world are distrib- uted according to desert; for it is admittedly impossible for the lower orders of sentient beings to deserve either tfie one or the other. If there is a generalization from the facts of human life, which has the assent of thoughtful men in every age and country, it is that the vio- lator of ethical rules constantly escapes the punishment which he de- serves; that the wicked flourishes like the green bay-tree, while the righteous begs his bread; that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the, children; that, in the realm of nature, ignorance is punished just as severely as wilful wrong; and that thousands upon thousands of in- nocent beings suffer for the crime, or the unintentional trespass, of one." Evolution and Ethics, Lond., 1893, p. 12. So likewise felt Goethe: "Denn unfiihlend 1st die Natur: Es leuchtet die Sonne Uber bose und gute, Und dem Verbrecher Glanzen wie dem Besten Der Mond und die Sterne. Wind und Strome, Donner und Hagel Rauschen ihren Weg Und ergreifen, Voriibereilend, Einen und den andern. Auch so das Gliick Tappt unter die Menge, Fasst bald des Knaben 356 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Lockige Unschuld, Bald auch den kahlen Schuldigen Scheitel. Nach ewigen, ehrnen, Grossen Gesetzen Miissen wir alle Unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden. . . " Note 9. "I have said nothing," writes Prof James of his Gifford Lectures, "about immortality or the belief therein, for to me it seems a secondary point. If our ideals are only cared for in 'eternity/ I do not see why we might not be willing to resign their care to other hands than ours. Yet I sympathize with the urgent impulse to be present ourselves, and in the conflict of impulses, both of them so vague yet both of them noble, I know not how to decide. It seems to me it is eminently a case for facts to testify." Var. Rel. Exp., 524. But in the case of many people, if not most, it is the death of a loved one, child, parent, or friend, that reinforces this "urgent im- pulse to be present ours'elves," and it is very hard to see how such people can be willing to leave the hoped-for reunion "to other hands than their own." In complete contrast with these statements is the belief of Emer- son: "If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave tfie bar. Settles forever- more the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil." Lectures and Biogr. Sket., 1868, p. 186. Note 10. Compare the statement of Sidgwick, Methods, 438: "And, therefore, I should judge, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, that any attempt, such as Bentham made, to dispense with the morality of instinct and tradition, would be premature and ill-advised." Note 11. From a passage in the Souvenirs it appears that, as man is duped by Nature, so Nature in turn may be duped by man. The following story is put in the mouth of Kenan's mother, but she is plainly expressing his own views: BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAI*. 357 "Tout n'est au fond qu'une grande illusion, et ce qui le prouve, c'est que, dans beaucoup de cas, rien n'est plus facile que de duper la nature par des singeries qu'elle ne sait pas distinguer de la r6alite\ Je n'oublierai jamais la fille de Marzin. . . qui, folle par sup- pression du sentiment maternel, prenait une buche, remmaillottait de chiffons, lui mettait un semblant de bonnet d'enfant, puis passait les jours & dorloter dans ses bras ce poupon fictif, le bercer, & le serrer centre son sein, L le couvrir de baisers. . . II y a des instincts pour qui 1'apparence suffit et qu'on endort par des fictions. . . Que veux-tu! Ces pauvres folles prouvent par leurs ggarements les saintes lois de la nature et leur inevitable fataliteV' Souv., 41-2. Note lla. An interesting comparison at this point is again fur- nished by Prof. James. Commenting on the favorite utterance of Margaret Puller: "I accept the universe," and Carlyle's sardonic re- ply. "Gad! she'd better!" he writes: "At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? . . . Morality pure and simple acce'pts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and well-developed manifestations, the serv- ice of the higher never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place. . . It makes a tremendous emotional and practical differ- ence to one whether one accept the universe ra, the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happi- ness of Christian saints." Var. Rel. Exp., 41. Note 12. "The assertion that mortality is in any way depend- ent on certain philosophical problems," says Prof. Huxley, "produces the same effect on my mind as if one should say that a man's vision depends on his theory of sight, or that he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger." "If it is demonstrated that without this or that theological dogma the human race will lapse into bipedal cattle, more brutal than the beasts by reason of their greater cleverness, my next question is to ask for the proof of the dogma. If this proof is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no drowning sailor ever clutched a hencoop more tenaciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, whatever it may 358 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. be. But if not, then I verily VeltSve that the human race will go on its evil way; and my only consolation lies in the reflection that, how- ever bad our posterity may become, so long as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest depths of immorality." In behalf of the same view may be cited one of the greatest names in modern ethics, Prof. Sidgwick: "I am so far from feeling bound to believe for purposes of practice what I see no ground for holding as a speculative truth, that I can- not even conceive the state of mind which these words seem to de- scribe, except as a momentary, half-wilful irrationality, committed in a violent access of philosophic despair." Methods, 5th ed., 507. Note 13. This remained Renan's attitude, more or less con- sistently, throughout life. Nature and nurture had combined to in- oculate his childhood with a temperamental idealism which not even the rudest reverses of life were able entirely to efface. Nearly half a century later he writes of himself: "En fait, je n'ai d'amour que pour les caracteres d'un ide"alisme absolu, martyrs, he"ros, utopistes, amis de fimpossible. De ceux-la seuls je m'occupe; ils sont, si j'ose le dire, ma spe"cialiteV' Souv., 123. "Je n'abandonnai nullement mon gout pour 1'deal; je 1'ai plus vif que jamais, je 1'aurai toujours. Le moindre acte de vertu, le moindre grain de talent, me paraissent infiniment supe"rieurs a toutes les rich- j, a tous les succes du monde." Souv., 122. Note 13a. "What right have we," asks Dr. Maudsley, "to be- lieve nature under any obligation to do her work by means of com- plete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done, and the quality in the worker by which it was done, that is alone of mo- ment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other qualities of character he was singularly defective, if indeed he were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic." Quoted, with ap- proval, by Prof. James, Var. Rel. Exp., 19. Note 14. "Happiness," says Prof. James, "like every other emo- tional state, has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturb- ance. When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality, than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERXEST RENAI*. 359 from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. Var. Rel. Exp., 88; also cf., 90. But this exactly is the problem, why happiness rather than melan- choly should continue in possession. Renan has attempted himself to explain his constant cheerfulness, but as usual his explanations do not agree very well with each other. He is specially fond of attributing his temperamental cheerfulness to his descent from a Celtic ancestry. Disc., 217. "Je suis double," he writes in the Souvenirs, "quelque fois une partie de moi rit quand 1'autre pleure. C'est la 1'explication de ma gaite. Comme il y a deux hommes en moi, il y en a toujours un qui a lieu d'etre content." p., 145. The explanation offered in the Souvenirs is more serious, and on the whole, correct: "Ma paix d 'esprit est parfaite. D'un autre cote, j'ai trouve 1 une bonte extreme dans la nature et dans la sociSte. . . Je n'ai ren- contre" sur mon chemin que des hommes excellents. . . Une bonne humeur, difficilement alterable, rgsultat d'une bonne sant morale, rgsultat elle-meme d'une ame bien e'quilibre'e et d'un corps suppor- table malgr6 ses dSfauts, m'a jusqu'ici maintenu dans une philosophic tranquille, soit qu'elle se traduise en optimisme reconnaissant, soit qu'elle aboutisse a une ironie gaie. Je n'ai jamais beaucoup souf- fert " p. 374. Note 15. It would not be hard to find in Kenan's books many other passages in which the same doctrine is expressed or implied. Here, e. g., is another from the Souvenirs: "Et maintenant je ne demande plus au bon genie qui m'a tant de fois guide, conseillee, console, qu'une mort douce et subite, pour 1'heure qui m'est fixe, proche ou lointaine. Les stoiciens soutenaient qu'on a pu mener la vie bienheureuse dans le ventre du taureau de Phalaris. C'est trop dire. La douleur abaisse, humilie, porte a blasphemer. La seule mort acceptable est la mort noble, qui est non un accident pathologique, mais une fin voulue et prScieuse devant 1'Eternel. La mort sur le champ de bataille est la plus belle de toutes, etc. Souv., 376. Note 16. It is from this point of view that we must interpret Kenan's frequent suspicions that morality and religion may be nothing more, after all, than cosmic illusions. In the course of evolution only such traits of mind and character have come down to our own times as were not incompatible with the requirements of successful life 360 BULLETIN" OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. under set cosmic conditions. This is concisely and clearly expressed in the following passage: "Une humanite plus intelligente, ou tous verraient clair, ne serait pas viable; elle periraic dans son germe meme, et par consequent elle n'existe pas." Dial., 30. Note 17. The same attitude appears to have been taken by Renan during the siege of Paris, in 1870. The Journal of the Goncourts records the following scene: "Berthelot continue ses revelations desolantes, au bout desquelles je m'e'crie: 'Alors tout est fini, il ne nous reste plus qu'zi el ever une generation pour la vengeance' " "Non, non, crie Renan, qui s'est leve, la figure toute rouge, pas la vengeance, perisse la France, perisse la patrie, il y a au-dessus le Royaume du Devoir, de la Raison." "Non, non, hurle toute la table, il n'y a rien au-dessus de la patrie . . ." Renan s'est leve et se promene autour de la table, la marche mal e"quilibree, ses petits bras battant 1'air, citant a haute voix des frag- ments de 1'Ecriture sainte, en disant que tout est la." E. de Goncourt, Journal, 2 serie, I vol., p. 28. But cf. Renan's letters to M. Strauss, written at this time; aiso Seailles, E. R., 265, note 1. Note 18. Renan's progress from radicalism to conservatism can be broadly traced in his attitude towards the French Revolution at different periods of his life. In the Avenir de la science he is still a fervent admirer of that great event, as appears from the following foot-note: "L'anne 1789 sera dans 1'histoire de 1'humanite une anne sainte. . Le lieu ou 1'humanite s'est proclamee, le Jeu de Paume, sera un jour un temple; on y viendra comme a Jerusalem, quand 1'eloigne- ment aura sanctifie et caracterise' les faits particuliers en symboles des faits g6neraux. Le Golgotha ne devint sacre que deux ou trois siecles apres Je"sus." A. S., note 6. The same attitude is taken in his letters during the period between his apostacy from the church in 1845 and the coup d'etat of 1851: In a letter from St. Malo, for example, Sept., 1847, to his friend Berthe- lot, he gravely argues: If the sublimities of the Christian religion have prevailed over its narrowness and its primitive superstitions, why should the sublimity of the Revolution be unable to efface its horrors? The critic will see both sides, to be sure, as he sees them both in Christianity; but the religionist will see only the sublime, just as in Christianity. Corr., 32. With this youthful enthusiasm we may contrast what he has to say on the same subject in 1858, in his article on M. Cousin: BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 361 "Ail fond, la Revolution frangaise, qu'on prend toujours comme un fait general de 1'histoire du monde (Hegel lui-meme a commis cette erreur), est un fait tres particulier a la France, un fait gaulois, si j'ose le dire, la consequence de cette vanite" qui fait que le gaulois supporte tout, excepte" 1' inSgalite des rangs sociaux, et de cette logique absolue qui le porte a reformer la societe" sur un type ab- strait, again like himself in the A. S., sans tenir compte de 1'histoire et des droits consacres." Mor. Grit., 98-9. CT. Q. C., III-IV, 86, 380; also R6f. int., 248. From a passage in the Souvenirs it appears that his early enthus- iasm for the Revolution was caught from his mother, and that he was well aware of the inconsistency of his statements in regard to it: "J'ai pris d'elle un gout invincible de la Revolution, qui me 1'a fait aimer malgrg ma raison et malgre tout le mal que j'ai dit d'elle. Je n'efface rien de ce que j'ai dit; mais, depuis que je vois 1'espece de rage avec laquelle des ecrivains Strangers cherchent a prouver que la Revolution frangaise n'a etc" que honte, folie, et qu'elle constitue un fait sans importance dans 1'histoire du monde, je commence a croire que c'est peut-etre ce que nous avons fait de mieux, puisqu'on en est si jaloux." Souv., 105. We may note, too, in passing, that Renan's early radicalism in mat- ters of social policy was simply the application to secular institutions of that same intellectual temper of ultra-rationalism which had re- cently forced him out of the church. Indeed, we should hardly expect a young man who had just set aside the supposedly sacred authorities and traditions of the church, to show much respect for authority and tradition in secular matters. He was certainly influenced, too, in these matters, during the years immediately following his withdrawal from the church, by his intimate relations with the young Berthelol. It was in the autumn of 1845 that they first made each other's acquaintance. Renan was 22 years old, and Berthelot 18, and so completely did they stand at the same point of view, t~at friendship at once became a kind of intel- lectual partnership. "Notre ardeur d'apprendre e"tait egale; nos cultures avaient Ste" tres di verses. Nous mimes en commun tout ce que nous savions; . Berthelot m'apprit ce qu'on n'enseignait pas au se"minaire; de mott c6t6, je me mis en devoir de lui apprendre la th6ologie et I'h6breu. . . Notre honnetete et notre droiture s'embrasserent. . . Nos discus- sions 6taient sans fin. . . Nous passions une partie des nuits a chercher, a travailler ensemble. . . La crise de 1848 nous 6mut profondement. . . Notre amiti6 consista en ce que nous nous ap~ prenions inutuellement, en une sorte de commune fermentation qu'une 362 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. remarquable conformite d'organisation intellectuelle produisait en nous devant les mSmes objets. Ce que nous avions vu a deux nous paraissait certain. . . II faut que les questions sociales et philoso- phiques soient bien difficiles, pour que nous ne les ayons pas resolues dans notre effort de"sespere." Souv., 334-7. The results of this co-operative intellectual fermentation are pre- served in Kenan's Avenir de la science, that great Pourana, as he him- self calls it, from which most of his later inspirations were drawn. A. S., XI. Cf. Seailles, &. R., 40-1. Kenan's radicalism was destined to be short-lived, however. The events of 1848 had already shaken rudely his confidence in democracy, and the coup d'etat of 1851 destroyed it completely. A. S., IV. His mission to Italy, moreover, during 1849-50, besides developing new interests and awakening his artistic instinct, had taught him the valuable lesson that different peoples need different institutions, and that a government which is good for one country may be very bad for another. Within a year after writing the Avenir de la science he had so far changed his ground, he himself tells us, especially with refer- ence to socialism, that he wondered how he ever embraced the views so enthusiastically espoused in that work. It was for this reason among others that the book was not published till more than forty years later. A. S., IX. Note 19. This attitude seems at first glance to be contradicted by his unlimited admiration of all the forms of culture achieved by ancient Athens. Souv., 57-72. But Athenian democracy, as he ex- pressly admits in that famous rhapsody, was virtually an aristocracy, based on slavery. "II y a eu un peuple d'aristocrates, un public tout entier compose" de connaisseurs, une democratic qui a saisi des nuances d'art telle- ment fines que nos raffines les apergoivent a peine. II y a eu un pub- lic pour comprendre ce qui fait la beaute des Propylees et la superiority des sculptures du Parthenon." Souv., 61. Note 20. Kenan's conception of civil liberty coincides exactly with that of Herbert Spencer: "La liberte", c'est le droit qu'a tout homme de croire et de faire ce que bon lui semble dans les limites ou le droit semblable des autres n'est point atteint." Mor. Grit., 159. Note 20a. "L'me"galite est legitime toutes les fois que 1'inegalite est nScessaire au bien de I'humanite. Une societe a droit a ce -qui est necessaire a son existence, quelque apparente injustice qui en BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 363 re"sulte pour 1'individu. . . La possibility et les besoins de la so- ciete, les inte'rets de la civilisation priment tout le reste. . . Je vais jusqu'a dire que, si jamais 1'esclavage a pu tre n6cessaire a 1'existence de la societe, 1'esclavage a ete Iggitime; car alors les esclaves ont et6 esclaves de 1'humanite, esclaves de 1'oeuvre divine, ce qui ne rgpugne pas plus que 1'existence de tant d'etres attaches fatalement au jong d'une idee qui leur est superieure et qu'ils ne com- prennent pas. A. S., 378-9. Cf. ibid., notes 156 and 157: "On est parfois tenter de se demander si 1'humanite n'a pas e"te" trop tot emancipee. . . Comment fera rhumanitS, avec une liberte in- dividuelle aussi developpee que la nStre, pour conquerir les deserts? . Les grandes choses ne se font pa sans sacrifice, et la religion, conseilldre des sacrifices, n'est plus! Je me berce parfois de 1'espoir que les machines et les progres de la science appliquee compenseront un jour ce que I'humanitS aura perdu d'aptitude au sacrifice par le progres de la reflection." This doctrine was often reaffirmed by Renan in his later period, and is developed at length in his Dialogues and his Drames. The practice of vivisection, and the killing of animals for food, is justified by Renan on the same general ground as slavery: "Les animaux qui servent a la nourriture de l'homme de gnie ou de I'homme de bien devraient etre contents, s'il savaient S, quoi ils servent. Tout depend du but, et si un jour la vivisection sur une grande Schelle etait necessaire pour decouvrir les grands secrets de la nature vivante, j'imagine les etres, dans 1'extase du martyre volon- taire, venant s'y offrir couronnes de fleurs. Le meurtre inutile d'une mouche est un acte blamable; celui qui est sacrifi aux fins ideales n'a pas droit de se plaindre, et son sort, au regard de rinfini (r ), est digne d'envie." Dial., 129-30. Cf. A. S... IX, 387. But Renan himself has repeatedly asserted, both before and after writing this passage, that these transcendental ends are not known, and very probably cannot be known: "Rien ne nous indique quelle est la volonte de la nature, ni le but de 1'univers." A. S., XVI. Cf. Frag., 318-9. Taking the two statements together, it would seem that he is him- self refuting the very proposition which his arguments are intended to establish. For if the sacrifice of individual lives and liberties is legitimate only when made for certain supposedly transcendental ends of Nature, it would seem that these ends must be known before the sacrifice can be legitimate. It must be admitted that Renan's ideal- ism, in the present instance again, is more beautiful than true. 364 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Note 21. That this is not merely the doctrine of one of Kenan's- characters but truly his own, is shown by the following passages from, his article on Amiel: "Les societes de temperance reposent sur d'excellentes intentions, mais sur un malentendu. Je ne connais qu'un argument en leur faveur. M. T. . . me disaft un jour que les maris de certains pays,, quands ils n'ont pas ete temperants, battent leurs femmes. Voila qui est horrible, assurement; il faudrait tacher de corriger cela. Mais, au lieu de supprimer 1'ivresse pour ceux qui en ont besoin, ne vaudrait-il pas mieux essayer de la rendre douce, aimable, accompagnee de sen- timents moraux? II y a tant d'hommes pour lesquels 1'heure de 1'ivresse est, apres 1'heure de 1'amour, le moment ou ils sont les meil- leurs." F. Det., 383-4. In the following passage he attempts to defend this attitude on phil- osophic grounds: "Eh bien! 1'etat d'ame que M. Amiel appelle dedaigneusement. 'Te'picure'isrne de 1'imaglnation" n'est peut-etre pas, pour cela, un mauvais parti. La gaiete a cela de tres philosophique qu'elle semble dire a la nature que nous ne la prenons pas plus au serieux qu'elle ne nous prend nous-memes.; si le monde est une mauvaise farce, par la gaiete" nous la rendons bonne. D'un autre cote", si une pens6e indulgente et bienveillante preside a Funivers, nous entrons bien mieux par la resignation joyeuse dans les intentions de cette pensee supreme,. que par la morne raideur du sectaire et I'^ternelle j6re"miade du croy- ant." F. D6t, 396-7. And again: "Amiel se demande avec inquietude: Qu'est-ce qui sauve? Eh! mon Dieu! c'est ce qui donne a chacun son motif de vivre. Le moyen de salut n'est pas le meme pour tous. Pour Tun, c'est la vertu; pour 1'autre, 1'ardeur du vrai; pour un autre, 1'amour de 1'art; pour d'autres, la curiosite, 1'ambition, les voyages, le luxe, les femmes, la richesse; au plus bas degre, la morphine et 1'alcool. Les hommes vertueux trouvent leur recompense dans la vertu meme; ceux qui ne le sont pas ont le plaisir." F. De"t, 382-3. In spite of the offensively frivolous tone of these passages, and they might easily be multiplied, there is a grain of truth in Kenan's contention. This is more clearly and less objectionably put by Prof. James : "The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 365 unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of liter- ature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading and poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole." Var. Rel. Exp., 387. Note 22. "I/impossibillte" ou il se voyait de plus en plus de faire des sottises 1'autorisait a dire toute celles qui lui passaient par la tete; il se rendait cette justice qu'il n'avaft fait aucun mal; il ne songeait pas qu'ecrire, c'est agir, et qu'on a sa part des fautes de tous ceux dont on affaiblit la conscience et la volonte"." E. R. XII. Also 292. In reply one might quote from Renan: "Tout ce qui eleve I'homme et le ramene au soin de son ame I'am6- liore et 1'epure; la qualite des doctrines importe assez peu. Les lec- teurs capables de trouver du gout a un e"crit, sont capables aussi d'en decouvrir le venin, s'il y en a." Mor. Grit, VII. Cf., Dial., 32-40; Eccl., 88; F. Det., 426-7. Souv. 149-50. But such statements, even if they were quite true, would not remove the objection; and for once there can be no doubt that Renan is wrong and his critic right. Note 22a. Compare the statement of Amiel: "Juger notre 6poque au point de vue de 1'histoire universelle, 1'histoire au point de vue de periodes geologiques, la geologie au point de vue de rastronomie, c'est un affranchissement pour la pensee. Quand la dure"e d'une vie d'homme ou de peuple nous ap- parait aussi microscopique que celle d'un moucheron, et, inversement, la vie d'un ephemere aussi infinie que celle d'un corps celeste avec toute sa poussiere de nations, nous nous sentons bien petits et bien grands, et nous pouvons dominer de toute la hauteur des spheres notre propre existence et les petits tourbillons qui agitent notre petite Eu- rope." Journ., Jl. 20, 1848. Note 23. For the general question of heterogeneous personalities, the reader is referred to James, Var. Rel. Exp., 166-'88. The divided 366 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. self and the process of Us unification, and to the numerous references there given to other treatments of the same subject. Note 24. This same doctrine of objective reason as being "not merely the only legitimate source of belief, which perhaps it may be, but the only source of legitimate beliefs, which it assuredly is not," is clearly expressed also in his article UExamen de conscience phi- losophique, 1888: "Le premier devoir de 1'homme sincere est de ne pas influer sur ses propres opinions, de laisser la rSalite" se refle'ter en lui comme en la chambre noire du photographe. . . Devant les modifications internes de notre re"tine intellectuelle, nous devons rester passifs. . . Nous n'avons pas le droit d'avoir un de"sir, quand la raison parle; nous devons ecouter, rien de plus; prets a nous laisser trainer pieds et poings lies ou les meilleurs arguments nous entrainent. La production, de la verite est un phe"nomene objectif, etranger au moi, qui se passe en nous sans nous, une sorte de precipite" chimique que nous devons nous contenter de regarder avec curiosite"." F. De"t., 401-2. In accordance with this theory Renan believed that the progress of reason is inevitable and irresistible. No man can choose what he will or will not believe. "S'il y a quelque chose de fatal au monde, c'est la raison et la sci- ence. Les orthodoxes sont vraiment plaisants dans leurs coleres contre les libres penseurs, comme s'il avait de"pendu d'eux de se de- velopper autrement, comme si Ton e"tait maitre de croire ce que Ton veut." A. S., 93. Cf. F. Det, 402. In recent years this question as to the proper attitude of mind in the pursuit of truth, has been much dis- cussed, especially with reference to the role which the will and the intellect respectively play in what may be called the psychology of re- ligious belief. Hermann Lotze seems to have done more than any one else in the last century to inaugurate this reaction against the agnostic doctrine (see his Microcosmos, Eng. tr., 4th ed., 1890, vol. 2, pp. 571-8, 659, 678; also the introductory pages of his Outlines of Philosophy of Religion. A powerful impetus was given to the move- ment by Mr. Balfour's Foundations of Belie?; but perhaps the most lucid discussion in brief compass is that of Prof. James, in his well- known essay The Will to Believe. Note 25. This view of his apostacy conflicts, it is true, with his own account in the Souvenirs; but his own version, written some thirty years after the event, seems distorted by historical perspective, or imperfect remembrance: BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 367 He is certainly mistaken when he says, for example: "Ma foi a ete detruite par la critique historique, non par la scolas- tique, ni par la philosophie. L'histoire de la philosophic et 1'espSce de scepticisme dont j'etais atteint me retenaient dans le christianisme plutot qu'elles ne m'en chassaient Je me repStais souvent ces vers. que j'avais lus dans le vieux Brucker: Discussii fateor, sectas attentius omnes, Plurima quaesivi, per singula quaeque cucurri, Nee quidquarn inveni melius quam credere Christo." Souv., 258. "Dans cette grande lutte engagee entre ma raison et mes croyances, j'evitai soigneusement de faire un seul raisonnement de philosophie abstraite. . . Mes raisons furent toutes de 1'ordre philologique et critique; elles ne furent nullement de 1'ordre m6taphysique, de 1'ordre politique, de 1'ordre moral" Souv. 297-8. Cf. ibid., 286; also Mor. Cr.^ 174. These statements must be taken to represent the process as it ap- peared to his memory in the retrospect, rather than its actual char- acter. A truer account is found in his letters of the time, which are contemporary records, and addressed, not like the Souvenirs ta a promiscuous public as an Apologia pro vita sua, but to the only per- son in the world to whom he dared reveal the most intimate secrets of his heart, his sister Henriette. It is to this correspondence, where- his plans and prospects, his disappointments and his difficulties are frankly discussed, that we must turn for the real causes of his sepa- ration from the church. And from these letters it is very clear that his apostasy was not by any means due, as he insists, exclusively to historical and textual criticism, but quite as much to his readings in philosophy and natural science. For long before he was capable of wielding the weapons of textual criticism, ana before he had even begun his studies in biblical philology, he was being incessantly torn by religious doubts of the very gravest nature. Cf. A. S,. 49. As early as March, 1842, before he had begun either Hebrew or German (Lett. Sem,., 165, 229), he was already inoculated with the germs of an all-questioning scepticism. On March 23, 1842, he writes to his sister: "D'ailleurs, le propre de la philosophie est moins de donner des notions bien assurees, que de lever une foule de prejuges. On est tout etonne", quand on commence a s'y adonner, de voir que jusque-la, on a etc" le jouet de mille erreurs, enracinees par 1'opinion, la coutume,. 1'education." Lett. 87; also 122. Cf. Lett. Sem., 164, 175. 368 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Again on Sept. 15 of the same year, he writes: "On voit les choses d'une maniere si differente; on reconnait tant -de prejuges et d'erreurs, la ou Ton ne croyait voir que verite, qu'on serait tenter d'embrasser un scepticisme universel. C'est la la pre- miere impression de 1'etude de la philosophic" Lett., 96; also 100. And that it was not merely his secular beliefs that had grown un- certain, but his religious creed as well, appears clearly from another passage in the same letter, where he discusses the choice of a vocation. Declaring that he was not intended for a secular calling, he continues: "Je ne dis pas ceci par le zele d'une devotion spirituelle: oh! non; ce n'est plus la mon defaut; la philosophie est merveilleusement propre a en corriger les exces, et une reaction trop violente est seule a craindre." Lett., 100. Even in the Souvenirs itself there are passages in which the influ- ence of philosophy is explicitly recognized as an important factor in the destruction of his faith; as for example the following: "La contradiction des travaux philosophiques ainsi entendu avec la foi chrStienne ne m'apparaissait point encore avec le degre de clarte" qui bientot ne devait laisser a mon esprit aucun choix entre 1'abandon du christianisme et 1'inconsequence la plus inavouable." Souv., 247; also 251; Cf. St. Beuve, Nouv. Lund., Je. 2, 18S2; N. Am. Rev., 48-63ff. But the most glaring discrepancy appears in his attempt to account for the persistent orthodoxy of one of his teachers, the erudite M. Lehir. The question could scarcely fail to present itself to his mind: If the study of biblical criticism proved so disastrous to the faith of the student, why was the teaching of it compatible with the faith of the professor? "La verite de 1'orthodoxie," he writes of M. Lehir, "ne fut jamais pour lui 1'objet d'un doute. . . Tout a fait Stranger a la philosophie naturelle et a 1'esprit scientifique, dont la premiere condition est de n'avoir aucune foi prealable et de rejeter ce qui n'arrive pas, il resta .dans cette equilibre ou une conviction moins ardente eut tre'buche'. Le surnaturelle ne lui causait aucune repugnance intellectuelle." Souv., 274; Cf. A. S., 49. The explanation is probably correct; but does it not involve the open admission that foremost among the causes of his own defection were "la philosophie naturelle et 1'esprit scientifique," and a "repug- nance intellectuelle" against supernaturalism? Cf. Lett. S6m., 5, 15, 16, 41. The truth is, when Renan entered upon his theological studies at St Sulpice, in Sep. 1843, he was virtually a disbeliever already. From the very first the onus probandi was thrown on Christianity. That BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 369 was important. There is all the difference in the world between be- lieving a creed until disproven, and disbelieving it until proven; and there can be no doubt whatever that the latter was Renan's attitude towards the Christian creed at the beginning of his theological studies. It cannot be true then, that his faith was destroyed by textual criti- cism of the bible, for the excellent reason that none remained to be destroyed. All that was left for philology to do was to ripen the seed that philosophy and science had sown. And that it promptly did. By destroying the prestige of a supposedly infallible scripture, phil- ology dethroned the last authority which still subdued his reason and restrained his will. But even here there were powerful allies. Renan ceased to acknowledge the authority of the scriptures not merely because of errors and contradictions in the text, but also, as he very significantly observes in one of his letters of the time, be- cause an inspired book would be a miracle. Souv, 293-5; Cf. Dial. 14-22. That was decisive. To imply a miracle was to assail his most cherished conviction, the reign of law, and to assert an impossible ab- surdity. Dial., 14-22. In his mind, the impossibility of miracle had come to be more than a mere doctrine; it had acquired all the fixity of a mental category. Nothing could have prevailed at this period against his worship of reason. Had he witnessed a genuine miracle with his own eyes he would certainly have declared it hallu- cination or imposture rather than admit that the causal nexus of na- ture had been broken through. Indeed, were any specific belief to be named as the cause of his leaving the church, it would be this belief in the universality of irre- fragable natural law. In point of fact, however, no one such specific belief can be named. He is much nearer the truth when he says: "Mes doutes ne vinrent pas d'un raisonnement, ils vinrent de dix mille raisonnements." Souv., 284-5; Mor. Cr., 174. His entire disposition and method had led to this crisis. It was not so much his disbelief in any particular dogma that made it impos- sible for him to abide by the creed; it was the rationalism and the unfinality of his whole intellectual temper. Cf. James, Var. Rel. Exp., pp. 73-74. Half a century later, looking back upon this intellectual hypertrophy of his earlier period, he refers to himself humorously as "Un jeune homme, atteint d'une forte encephalite, vivant unique- ment dans sa tte et croyant fre"netiquement & la ve"rite." A. S., VI. Note 26. Renan has made repeated confession of his own disap- pointment with his labors in history: 11 370 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Je crains fort que nos ecrits de precision de 1' Academic des inscrip- tions et belles-lettres, destinees a donner quelque exactitude a 1'his- toire, ne pourissent avant d'avoir ete lus. C*est par la chimie a un bout, par 1'astronomie a un autre, c'est surtout par la physiologie genSrale que nous tenons vraiment le secret de 1'etre, du monde, de Dieu, comme on voudra Fappeler. Le regret de ma vie est d'avoir choisi pour mes etudes un genre de recherches qui ne s'imposera jamais et restera toujours a 1'etat d'interessantes considerations sur une realite a jamais disparue." Souv., 263. See also his letter to M. Berthelot, Aug., 1863, in the Frag., 153-4; also Disc., 134-5; A. S., XIV. One of his latest expressions of opinion as to the probable future of historical science occurs in his preface to the Avenir de la science 1890: "Les sciences historiques et leurs auxiliaires, les sciences philo- logiques, ont fait d'immenses conquetes depuis que je les embrassai avec tant d'amour il y a quarante ans. Mais on en voit le bout. Dans un siecle, I'humanite saura a peu pres ce qu'elle peut savoir sur son passe. . . Le processus de la civilisation est reconnu dans ses lois generales. L'inegalite" des races est constatee. Les titres de chaque famille humaine a des mentions plus ou moins honorables dans 1'histoire du progres sont & peu pres determines." A. S., XIV. For a critical estimate of Renan as an historian, see the discussion of M. Ch. Seignobos, Hist. lang. litt. fr., t. VIII, 259-267. Also the esti- mate of M. Faguet in the same volume. Note 27. This is a very interesting confession; but does it really conform to his own canon of objective reason? Des lors la Vie de J6sus etait Scrite dans mon esprit." That is to say, fifteen years before it was written the Vie de Jesus was complete in his mind. The state- ment is doubtless true, and accounts for the fact, patent to all readers, that the character of Kenan's Jesus so much resembles Renan. But how are we to reconcile this confession with his doctrine that truth must be a product of objective reason, as impartial and impersonal as a chemical precipitate Cf. F. Det. 401-2; also Souv., 274: "L^esprit scientifique, dont la premiere condition est de n'avoir aucune foi prealable." Is it not palpably plain that in this matter again Renan's theory is one thing and his practice quite another? Or rather his theory itself is many things; for a doctrine fundamentally opposed to the "chemical precipitate" theory is affirmed no less often. "La foi et I'amour, en apparence sans lien avec 1'mtelligence, sont le vrai fondement de la certitude morale et 1'unique moyen qu'a BRATJER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST BEN AN. 371 I'homme de comprendre quelque chose au probleme de son origine et de sa destinSe." Mor. Crit. II. Is not this the most subjective conceivable conception of truth? But why dwell longer on these perpetual contradictions? Is Renan alone, after all, in falling thus short of his own ideals? Let the con- sistent man, if he knows himself, throw the first stone! In the present instance, Renan is the more pardonable as the ideal to be attained is probably a mere fiction. For the truth seems to be, as Mr. Balfour and others have tried to show, that the doctrine of an objective reason, universally applied, is itself an unrealized and perhaps unrealizable subjective ideal. 372 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. APPEsNDIX B: BIBLIOGRAPHY. The number of books, pamphlets and magazine articles written about Renan is of course much too large to be catalogued here. Most of them, especially those provoked by the Vie de Jesus, are of a con- troversial nature, and give little or no help towards a comprehension of Renan and his work. Among the best are the following: I. BIOGRAPHICAL. Boissier, G: Fun6railles de M. E. Renan, 1895. Cognat, J.: Renan, hier et aujourdhui, 1883. Dannesteter, Mary J.: La Vie d'Ernest Renan, 1898. Denais, J: Du S6minaire au Pantheon, Paris, 1893. Duff, Sir M. E. Grant: Ernest Renan. In Memoriam, 1893. Espinasse, F.: Life of Renan, 1895. Frenzel, K: Renan und Henriette. Cosmopolis, Dec., 1896. Loth, J.: Renan au College de Treguier. In Annales de Bretagne, vol- VIII (1892), pp. 124-9 (the Palmares of Trgguier College for the years 1836-7). Mahrenholtz, R.: Ernest Renan. In Zeitschrift f. fr. Sprache u. Lit., Bd. XVI, 50-93. Paris, G.: Penseurs et Poetes, 1896. Platzhoff, Eduard: Ein Lebensbild von Ernest Renan, Dresd, 1900. Perraud, Mgr.: Souvenirs et impressions, 1893. Sch6rer, Melanges d'histoire religieuse, 2nd ed., 1865. Renan, Ernest: Lettres du Se"minaire (1838-1846), Paris, 1902. Let- tres Intimes de Ernest et de Henriette Kenan, 1896. Correspon- dance, E. Renan et M. Berthelot, 1898. Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, dixieme ed., 1884. Ma Soeur Henriette. II. CRITICAL WORKS. Allier, R.: La philosophic d'Ernest Renan, 1894. Bodner, S.: Mikrokosmos, vol. 2, pp. 88-190, Berlin, 1898. Bourget, P.: Essais de psych, contemp., 1883. Brandes, G.: Eminent Authors of the 19th Cent., 1887. Brunetiere, F.: Nouveaux essais litt. cont, 1895. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RENAN. 373 Darmesteter, James: Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de M. Renan, 1893. Denis, Ch.: La Critique irreligieuse de Renan, 1898. Desportes, H. et Bourmand, F.: E. Renan, sa vie et son oeuvre, 1893. Faguet, E.: Politiques et moralistes, 3e se"rie, 1900. France, A. : La Vie littgraire, vols. 1 and 2. Hutton, R. H.: Criticism on contemporory thought, vol. 2, 1894. Labanca, B.: La "Vita di Gesu" di Ernesto Renan in Italia, 1900. Ledrain, A.: Renan, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 1892. Lemaitre, Jules: Les Contemporains, vols. 1 and 4. Impressions de theatre, vol. 1. Monod, G.: Renan, Taine et Michelet, 1894. Paris, G.: Penseurs et Poetes, 1896. Pellissier, G.: Le Mouvement Iitt6raire au XIXe siecle, 1894. Platzhoff, Ed.: E. Renan, seine Entwickelung und Weltanschauung, 1900. Rod, E.: Les IdSes morales du temps present, 1891. Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis, vols. II (1&62~), and VI (1863). Samtsbury, G.: Miscellaneous Essays, 1892. ScheYer, Edm.: Etudes sur la litt. contemp., vols. IV, VII, VIII, IX, X. Seailles, G.: Ernest Renan, 1895. Verne, M.: Revue de Belgique, 1898. Vogii6, E. M. de: Heures d'histoire, 1893. Wyzewa: Nos Maftres, 1895. III. MAGAZINE ARTICLES. The very numerous magazine articles about Renan can be readily found from the following works : Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1802, to date. There is now a very convenient abridgment of this work covering the period from 1815-1899 in a single volume. Cumulative Index to a Selected list of Periodicals (for current num- bers). Bibliographie der Deutschen Zeitschriften-Lffleratur, mit Einschluss von Sammelwerken und Zeitungen, Leipz. 1897. This work begins with the year 1896. Repertoire Bibliographique des Principales Revues Frangaises, Paris, 1898. This begins with 1897. 374 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVEKSITY OF WISCONSIN. Catalogo Metodico degli Scritti Contenuti nelle Pubblicazioni Perio- diche italiane e straniere. The first volume of this work was pub- lished at Rome in 1885, but the indexing begins, for the more im- portant periodicals, with their first volume. IV. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES. The best general bibliography of Renan in existence is that of Mr. John P. Anderson, of the British Museum, which was published as an Appendix to The Life of Ernest Renan, by Fr. Espinasse, Lond., 1895. In this work are listed, in chronological order, the various editions of Renan's writings, down to 1895; and a very extensive catalogue is given of books on Renan, in the various languages of Europe, besides a large number of articles from English and French magazines. This bibliography is reprinted, with less detail and a few unimpor- tant omissions, by Hugo Paul Thieme, in his b'rochure: La Litterature Frangaise du dix-neuvieme Siecle, Paris and Leipzig, 1897; and the following books, besides a number of magazine articles, are added to Mr. Anderson's list: Brunetiere, Nouveaux Essais, 1895. Darmesteter, J.: Selected Essays, 1895. Deschamps, G.: La Vie et les Livres, 1896. Felix, C. J.: M. Renan et sa Vie de Jesus, 18~63. Guettee, F. R.: Du Discours d'ouverture de M. Renan, 1862. Hello, Era.: M. Renan et la Vie de Jesus, 1863. Lanson, G.: Hist. d. 1. Litterature Franc., 1S95. Naudet, F.: Notes sur la Litterature Moderne, I-II, 1885-8. Rod, Ed.: Les Idees Morales du Temps Present, 1891. Wyzewa: Nos Maitres, 1895. The following works should be added to the bibliographies of MM. Anderson and Thieme: 1. Renan's own works: Les antiquites egyptiennes et les fouilles de M. Mariette, souvenirs de mon voyage en Egypte, Rev. d. d. Mond., 1865. Documents epigraphiques recueillis dans le nord de 1'Arabie par M. C. Doughty, publics et expliques par E. Renan, 1884. Introduction to Book III of the "Hundred Greatest Men," by F. Max Mueller and E. Renan, Lond., 1885. Melanges d'histoire et de voyages, 1890. Lettres Intimes de Ernest Renan et Henriette Renan, 1842-5, second ed., 1896. BEAUER, THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST KENAN. 375 Same translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, N. Y., 1896. Oeuvres choisies (In Colin's series of Pages Unoisies), 1897. Ernest Renan et Marcelin Berthelot, Correspondance, 1847-'92. Pub- lished by M. Berthelot in 1898. Etudes sur la politique religieuse du regne de Philippe le Bel, 1899. (A reprint from the Hist. Litt. d. 1. Fr., vols. 26, 27 and 28.) Prire sur 1'Acropole. Compositions de H. Bellery-Desfontaines, gravees par Eugene Froment, 1899. For an estimate of this beau- tiful edition d'art of a chapter from Kenan's Souvenirs d'Enfance, see the article by: Janin, Cl.: Le livre, a propos d'une edition d'art de la Priere sur 1'acropole, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, third series, vol. 24, pp. 253-264, Paris, 1900. Another portion of the Souvenirs, with very fine illustrations, was published in Paris in 1901, under the title: Le broyeur de lin. Avec preface des Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeu- nesse. Vingt-sept eaux-fortes originales de Ed. Rudaux. Lettres du Seminaire (1838-1848), Paris, 1902. An annotated edition of the Souvenirs, with an introductory article which is the best brief treatment in print of Renan and his work, by Irving Babbit, published by Heath and Company, 1902. A catalogue of Renan's library was published in Paris in 1895, mak- ing a book of 495 pages. 2. Biographical and critical works: Aurevilly, J. Barbey de: Les Oeuvres et les Hommes au dixneuvime siecle, vol. 8, 1887. A very adverse criticism. Bersot, Era.: M. Ernest Renan. In his Essais, 1864, vol. 2, pp. 264-80; 509-24. Reviews of R's Mor. Grit, and of his V. J. Bodner, Sigm.: Mikrokosmos, vol. 2, 88-190, Berl., 1898. Boissier Gaston: Funerailles de M. E. Renan, Paris, 1895. Bonghi, Ruggiero: La "Tempesta" di W. Shakspeare e il "Calibano" di E. Renan. Reale Accademia di scienze morale e politiche, Atti, 1879, XV: 9. Bussy, Ch. de (i. e., Marchal, Chas.): Renan en famille, Paris, 1866. Cassel, Paul S.: Preussen und Deutschland. Eine Antwort an Ernest Renan. Berl., 1870. Church, R. W.: Occasional papers selected from the Guardian, the Times and the Sat. Rev., 1846-90, 2 vols., Lond., 1897. (Reviews of R's Les Apotres, Hibbert lecture, and the Souv.) Crelier, H. J.: M. Ernest Renan trahissant le Christ par un roman, etc., second ed. Paris, 1864. Cuoq, J. A.: Jugement errone" de M. E. Renan sur les langues sau- vages. Montreal, 1864. 376 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Denais, J.: Du SSminaire au Pantheon, Paris, 1893. Denis, Ch.: La Critique irreligieuse de Renan, Paris, 189s. Desportes H. et Bourmand F.: Ernest Renan. Preface par J. de Biez, Paris, 1893. Deutsch, Em.: Literary Remains, Lond., 1874. Eminent Persons. Biographies reprinted from the Times, Lond., 1892-7 (vol. 5). Espinasse, Fr.: The life of Ernest Renan, 1895. Faguet, Em.: Politiques et Moralistes du 19e siecle, 3e serie, 1900. FSlix, N. : M. Renan et sa Vie de J6sus, Paris, 1863. Frenzel, Karl: Renan und Henri ette, Cosmopolis, Dec., 1896. Furness, W. H.: Remarks on Renan's Life of Jesus. Phil., 1865. Gratry, A. J. A.: Les Sophistes et la Critique, Paris, 1864. Griswold, Hattie: Personal Sketches of Recent Authors, Chicago, 1898. Harrisse, Henry: M. Ernest Renan. Hutchison, Wm. G.: Introd. to Renan's Poetry of the Celtic Races. Hutton, R. H.: Criticism on Contemporary Thought, Lond., 1894, vol. 2. Janet, P.: La philosophie et M. Renan, Paris, 1858. Labanca, B.: La "Vita di Gesu" 9i Ernesto Renan in Italia; studio storico-critico, Roma, 1900. Littre", M. P. Emile: La Science au point de vue philosophique, Paris, 1873. (Review of R's Hist. Semitic Languages.) Loth, J.: Renan au College de TrSguier. In Annales de Bretagne, vol. VIII, pp. 121, 124-9 (1892). Mahrenholtz, R.: A carefully written article on Renan's life and work, in Zeitschrift f. franz. Sprache u. Lit., XVI: pp. 50-93. Negri, G.: Segni dei tempi; profili e bozzetti letterari. (Ernesto Renan e rincredulita moderna.) Milano, 1893. Paris, Gaston: Penseurs et Poetes, 2e ed., Paris, 1896. (Discours prononces au nom du College de France, aux funerailles d'Ernest Renan.) Pearson, C. H.: Reviews and Critical Essays, Lond., 1896. Pellissier, G.: Literary Remains in France in 19th Cent., N. Y., 1897. Perraud, Mgr.: A propos de la mort et des funerailles de M. Ernest Renan, Souvenirs et Impressions, Paris, 1393. Platzhoff, Eduard: E. Renan, seine Entwickelung und Weltanschauung. Inaugural-Dissertation der philosophischen Fakultat der Univer- sitat Bern zur Erlangung der Doktorwiirae, Dresden und Leipzig, 1900. Ernest Renan; ein Lebensbild, Dresden, etc., 1900. (Vol. 9 in "Manner der Zeit.") BRAUEB, THE PHILOSOPHY OF ElRNEST KENAN. 377 Poitou, M. Eug.: Les philosophes frangais contemporains et leurs systemes religieux, Paris, 1864. M. Renan et 1'Allemagne. Let- tre ouverte d'un Allemand, Wiesbaden, IB79. Ritter, Dr. H.: E. Renan iiber Naturwiss. u. Geschichte, 1865. Robinson, A. M. P. (Mde. Darmesteter) : La Vie de Ernest Renan, Paris, 1898. Secre"tan, Ch.: Essais de philos. et de litt, pp. 368-71, 1896. Simon, J.: Quatre Portraits, Paris, 1896. Smalley, Geo.: London Letters and Some Authors, vol. I, N. Y., 1891. Strong, Aug. H.: Christ in Creation, and Ethical Monism, Phil., 1899. (pp. 332-363.) Stuart, H.: Paris Days. Tollemache, L. A.: Essays, Mock-Essays and Character Sketches, 1898. Vattier, G.: Gale"rie des Acad6miciens, 3e sSrie, Paris, Verne, Maurice: E. Renan. In Revue de Belgique, 1898. Vogue, E. M. de: Heures d'Histoire, Paris, 1893. 378 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. APPENDIX C: ABBREVIATIONS EMPLOYED, AND EDITIONS; QUOTED. (Unless otherwise stated, the author is Renan.) Amiel, Journ. Fragments d'un Journal Intime, 7th ed., Geneve, 1897. /Ant L'Ante-christ. Apostles, N. Y., 1866. Averr. Averroes et 1'Averroisme, 4th ed., 1882. ^A. S L'Avenir de la Science, 8th ed., 1894. Cant. Le Cantique des Cantiques, 7th ed., 1891. C. d'Angl, Conferences d'Angleterre, 1880. Darmesteter, Agn. M. F. The Life of Ernest Renan, 1898. v/Dial. Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques, 4th ed., 1895. Disc. Discours et Conferences, 3rd ed., 1887. v^Dr. Ph. Drames philosophiques, 1888. Eccl. L'Ecclesiaste, 3rd ed., 1890. E. R. Ernest Renan. Espinasse, Fr. Life of Ernest Renan, Lond., 1895. Frag., see Dial. F. Det Feuilles Detachees, 9th ed., 1892. Fort. Rev. Fortnightly Review. Found. Bel. Foundations of Belief. -4list. Rel. Etudes d'histoire religieuse, 7th ed., 1864. James, Var. Rel. Exp. Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902. Job Le Livre de Job, 5th ed., 1894. /"*/ Lang. Se"m. Histoire generate des langues semitiques, 1863. Lett. Sem. Lettres du Seminaire (1838-46), 1902. (1842-5), 4th ed., 1896. Lett. Sem. Lettres du Seminaire (1838-46-, 1902. v M.-Aur. Marc-Aurele^et la fin du monde antique, 1882. Monod, Renan, Taine et Michelet, 1894. v^Alor. Crit. Essais de morale et de critique, 4th ed., 1889. Nouv. Hist. Rel. Nouvelles etudes d'histoire religieuse, 1884. Or. Lang. De 1'Origine du Langage, 3rd ed., 1859. >j> P. Isj. History of the People of Israel, Boston, 1894-5. BRAUER THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNEST RE3STAJ5T. 379 v/Peup. Se"m. De la part des peuples se"mitiques dans 1'histoire de la civilisation, 7th ed., 1875. M3. C. Questions Contemporaries, 3rd ed., 1870. Re"f. Int. La Re"forme intellectuelle et morale, 4th ed., 1884. Se"ailles Ernest Renan, 2nd ed., 1895. Sidgwick, Henry Methods of Ethics, 5th ed. v/Souv. Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse. J. La Vie de J6sus, 9th ed., 1863. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days priod to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. KEC'DLD NUV 18 70 -7PM 6 3 LD21A-60m-8,'70 (N8837slO)476 A-32 General Library University of California Berkeley LD 21A-50m-4,'59 (A1724slO)476B .General Library University of California Berkeley .