ised the thought of that school in the much-discussed words: "Might before Right."

What a tragic awakening and what an ironical turn of fate for those intemperate literary vaticinators! What disorder in their ranks! It was, indeed, as Paul Bourget has put it, an age of anguish." Flaubert remarked it à propos of the most enigmatical, elusive thinker, the most tenacious in his evasive affirmations, Renan: "I assure you that there now is in every man, something disturbing, something incomprehensible. Our friend Renan is among the most despairing."

It was the end of Realism: Reality was now too well known!

These proud lives of literary men were cut in two by the war. Scientific and doctrinal assertions now hesitated on lips which yesterday had been sure of themselves.2

Renan

Renan made a last effort to vindicate the immediate social authority of writers. He published, on the morrow of the war, his Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale, an apology for a half-Cæsarism à la Jérôme Bonaparte, the mea culpa of a dismantled bourgeoisie, an ephemeral capitulation of French intellect before the brutalities of victory. "What

1

1 Correspondance, vol. iv., p. 212. Renan had just published la Réforme Intellectuelle.

2 It is enough to recall Renan's intellectual evolution. He wrote in l'Avenir de la Science, 1848: "The founders of the modern mind are Philosophers" (p. 141), and in la Réforme Intellectuelle, 1872: "To form, by the Universities, a Rationalist leading class, reigning through Science, proud of this science and ill-disposed to allow its privilege to perish for the benefit of an ignorant crowd, to honour pedantism, etc. . . ." (p. 106). The doctrine of the élite is didactically stated in the Dialogues Philosophiques, published in 1876.

remains of military spirit in the world is a Germanic fact. Finis Franciæ. France must be reconstituted after the feudal and vigorous type of her conqueror." Renan demands a philosophy for the wise, a religion for the people." The author of the Life of Jesus addresses these words to the Catholic clergy: "Do not interfere with what we teach, with what we write, and we will leave the people to you; do not contest our places in the University, in the Académie, and we will abandon the village schools wholly to you."

1

One of the heads of the Revolutionary party, old Mazzini,' disputed this unmanly, underhand thesis. "It is," he said, the strangest, and, I will add, the most immoral compromise which ever occurred to a thinker." 3

Renan understood the blame; it is at this time that Flaubert found him so depressed. An apologist writes, "Henceforth, the consciousness of his impotence in the sphere of action oppressed Renan, and for a moment even threatened the fundamental serenity of his nature.*

1 Renan, Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale, Paris, 1872, 8vo, p. 99. Taine writes, on March 17th, 1871, to Mme. Taine: "Renan has lent me four great political articles on the situation, which he will probably not publish (evidently this was a first plan of the Réforme Intellectuelle). It is loose, abstract, and not always very good. He is not keeping himself up to the mark. There are plenty of ideas, but his thesis is objectionable; he obviously favours a restoration of royalty and the nobility, the better to imitate Prussia."-Unpublished.

2 Giuseppe Mazzini, b. Genoa 1808, d. 1874.

3 Mazzini's study (his last written work) was published one month after his death, in the Revue Politique et Littéraire of April 11th, 1874, p. 959. Renan made no answer.

Mary J. Darmesteter, La vie d' Ernest Renan, p. 222. . .

He soon drew himself together. He admitted that a Professor of Hebrew might be dispensed from exerting an immediate action over politics if the field of ideas were left to him. A delimitation of responsibilities and special capacities took place in his mind. He plunged again into the past in order to forget the present; as for the future, he dismissed it with a smile and a shake of the head. all, he had not the care of souls.1

After

He limited his patriotism to the regular accomplishment of his duties as a writer and as a professor. The contradictions of existence became a theme for his sceptical irony. This game became the elusive line of his doctrine, if not of his conduct. He henceforth spoke in dialogues, opposing Eudoxus to Philalethes, Ariel to Caliban. This was the true Renan, a son of Brittany and a son of Gascony, a son of France!

His great works, the History of the Origin of Christianity, the History of the People of Israel, stand on their solid bases according to the plan of life which he had energetically traced for himself. The Marcus Aurelius states with all the authority of science and of art, the philosophical lesson which the thinker

Then, like Zachariah, he renounced both Juda and Israel; he was tired of them. He looked upon them and said: "I will speak to you no more; let him die who will, let him perish who will, let them devour each other! And in his hand brake the holy staff, in two pieces, and the name of the staff was Fraternity" (id. p. 223).

1

1 Renan's opinion on patriotism was expressed in his lecture at the Sorbonne on March 11th, 1882. "What is a nation ?" See, especially, the end: "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. . . . It pre-supposes a past, and the tangible fact of consent. The existence of a nation is a daily plébiscite. . . ."-Discours et Conférences, 1877, 8vo, p. 306. :

and scholar had drawn from the studies in which he was an uncontested master.1

The incomparable art of the writer realises, in grace and balance, all the refined and witty emotion of the century. His philosophy escapes dispute and contradiction by the multiplicity of transformations and the iridescent imprecision of affirmations and doctrines. With his virile and charming imagination, his "insinuating and enchanting genius," as Saint Simon called that of Fénelon, he held his epoch like a young sister by the hand, or, better still, hanging on his lips by the caress of gentle words and ecclesiastical gestures.

A mellowed Voltaire, a priest and believer even in his boldness and impiety, he has no system but tolerance and indulgence. Through Voltaire, he goes back to Montaigne. Enjoying life, he expresses this happy disposition by a supreme attenuation, illumined by a smile: "Good humour is the corrective of every philosophy."

2

1 Ernest Renan, b. Tréguier (Brittany) in 1823, a member of the Académie Française; d. 1892. Works published from 1871 to 1880: La Monarchie Constitutionnelle en France, 12mo, 1870; La Réforme Intellectuelle et morale, 8vo, 1871; Histoire des origines du Christianisme : l'Antechrist, 8vo, 1873, vol. iv.; Pierre du Bois, légiste, 4to, 1873; Mission de Phénicie, 18601861, 4to, 1874; Dialogues et fragments philosophiques, 8vo, 1876; Les Evangiles et la seconde Génération Chrétienne, 8vo, 1877, vol. vi.; Caliban, 8vo, 1878; Lettre à un ami d'Allemagne, 8vo, 1879; L'Eglise Chrétienne, 8vo, 1879; Conférences d'Angleterre, 12mo, 1880.

2 "We do not know;" that is all that can be clearly stated concerning that which is beyond the finite. . . . Let us deny nothing, affirm nothing, but hope. Let us keep a place in funerals for music and incense. . . . Do not let us quarrel concerning the dose or the formula of religion, but be content not to deny it; let us preserve the unknown, the possibility of dreaming." Preface to Feuilles Détachées, published in 1892.