No More Learning

Power has something fierce and triumphant
about it, which puts ridicule to death ;--be-
sides, the men of frivolous mind respect the
wisdom of the flesh, according to the expres-
sion of a moralist of the sixteenth century;
and we are astonished to discover all the
depth of personal interest in those who ap-
peared incapable of pursuing an idea, or a
feeling, when nothing could result from
either, advantageous to their calculations of
fortune, or of vanity.
Frivolity of understanding does not lead
men to neglect the affairs of this world.
We find, on the contrary, a much more
noble carelessness, in this respect, in serious
characters than in men of a trivial nature;
for their levity, in most cases, only consists
in the contempt of general ideas, for the pur-
pose of more close attention to their personal
concerns.
There is sometimes a species of wicked-
ness in men of wit; but genius is almost
always full of goodness. Wickedness does
not arise from a superfluity of understanding,
but from a deficiency. If we could talk
upon ideas, we should leave persons at rest
if we believed that we could excel others by
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? 262 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
our natural talents, we should not wish to
level the walk that we are ambitious to
command. There are common and mode-
rate minds disguised under a poignant and
malicious style of sarcasm; but true supe-
riority is radiant with good feeling as well as
with lofty thoughts.
The habit of intellectual employment in-
spires an enlightened benevolence towards
men and things. We no longer cling to
ourselves as privileged beings, when we
know much of the destiny of man; we are
not offended with every event, as if it were
unexampled; and as justice only consists in
the custom of considering the mutual rela-
tions of men under a general point of view,
comprehensiveness of understanding serves
to detach us from selfish calculations. We
have ranged in thought over our own exist-
ence as well as that of others, when we
have given ourselves up to the contemplation
of the universe.
Another great disadvantage of ignorance,
in the present times, is, that it renders us
entirely incapable of having an opinion of
our own upon the larger portion of subjects
which require reflection : consequently, when
this or that manner of thinking becomes
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? IGNORANCE AND FRIVOLITY OF S PI RIT. 26S
fashionable from the ascendancy of events,
the greater part of mankind believe that
these words, " all the world acts, or thinks,
in this manner," ought to influence every
claim of reason and of conscience.
In the idle class of society, it is almost
impossible to have any soul without the cul-
tivation of the mind. Formerly nature was
sufficient to instruct man, and to expand his
imagination; but, since thought (that fading
shadow of feeling) has turned all things
into abstractions, it is necessary to have a
great deal of knowledge to have any good
sentiment. Our choice is no longer balanced
between the bursts of the soul, devoid of
instruction, and philosophical studies; but
between the importunate noise of common
and frivolous society, and that language
which has been holden by men of real
genius from age to age, even to our own
times.
How then can we, without the knowledge
of languages, without the habit of readings
communicate with these men who are no
more, and whom we feel so thoroughly our
friends, our fellow-citizens, and our allies?
We must be mean and narrow of soul to
refuse such noble enjoyments. Those only.
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? 264 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
who fill their lives with good actions, can
dispense with study: the ignorance of idle
men proves their dryness of soul, as well as
their frivolity of understanding.
After all, there yet remains something
truly beautiful and moral, which ignorance
and emptiness cannot enjoy: this is the
union of all thinking men, from one end of
Europe to the other. Often they have no
mutual relations; often they are dispersed to
a great distance from each other; but when
they meet, a word is enough for recognition.
It is not this religion, or that opinion, or such
a sort of study; it is the veneration of truth
that forms their bond of union. Sometimes,
like miners, they dig into the foundations of
the earth, to penetrate the mysteries of the
world of darkness, in the bosom of eternal
night: sometimes they mount to the summit
of Chimboraco, to discover, at the loftiest
point of the globe, some hitherto unknown
phenomena; sometimes they study the lan-
guages of the East, to find in them the
primitive history of man: sometimes they
journey to Jerusalem, to call forth from the
holy ruins a spark, which reanimates reli-
gion and poetry: in a word, they truly are
the people of God; they who do not yet
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? IGNORANCE AND FRIVOLITY OF SPIRIT. 265
despair of the human race, and wish to pre-
serve to man the dominion of reflection.
The Germans demand our especial grati-
tude in this respect. Ignorance and indif-
ference, as to literature and the fine arts, is
shameful with them; and their example
proves, that, in our days, the cultivation of
the understanding preserves, in the inde-
pendent classes of society, some sentiments
and some principles.
The direction of literature and philosophy
was not good in France during the last part
of the eighteenth century; but, if we may
so express ourselves, the direction of igno-
rance is still more formidable: for no book
does harm to him who reads every book. If
idle men of the world, on the contrary, are
busy for a few moments, the work they meet
with is an event in their heads, like that of
a stranger's arrival in the desert; and when
this work contains dangerous sophistries,
they have no arguments to oppose to it.
The discovery of printing is truly fatal for
those who only read by halves, or by hazard;
for knowledge, like the spear of Achilles,
ought to cjire the wounds which it has in-
flicted.
Ignorance, in the midst of the refinements
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? 266 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
of society, is the most hateful of all mix-
tures: it makes us, in some respects, like the
vulgar, who value intrigue and cunning alone:
it leads us to look but for good living and
physical enjoyments; to make use of a little
wit, in order to destroy a great deal of soul;
to boast of our ignorance; to demand ap-
plause for what we do not feel; in a word,
to unite a limited understanding with a hard
heart, to such a degree, as to be deprived
of that looking upwards to heaven, which
Ovid has recorded as the noblest attribute of
human nature.
Os homini sublime dedit; ccelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera toll ere vultus.
He, who to man a form erect hag given,
Bade his exalted looks be fix'd on heaven.
END OF THE THIRD PART.
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? PART THE FOURTH.
RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER I.
General Considerations upon Religion in
Germany.
The nations of German extraction are all
naturally religious; and the zealousness of
this feeling has given occasion to many wars
amongst them. Nevertheless, in Germany,
above all other countries, the bias of mind
leans more towards enthusiasm than fanati-
cism. The sectarian spirit must manifest
itself under a variety of forms, in a country
where the activity of thought is most ob-
servable; but, in general, they do not mix
theological discussions with human passions;
and the different opinions in regard to reli-
gion seldom wander out of that ideal world
which enjoys a profound peace.
For a long time they were occupied, as I
shall show in the following chapter, with
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? 268 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM. *
the inquiry into the doctrines of Christianity;
but, for the last twenty years, since the
writings of Kant have had great influence
upon the public mind, there have prevailed
a liberty and a comprehensiveness in the
manner of considering religion, which nei-
ther require nor reject any form of wor-
ship in particular, but which derive from
heavenly things the ruling principle of ex-
istence.
Many persons think that the religion of
the Germans is too indefinite; and that it is
better to rally round the standard of a more
positive and severe mode of worship. Les-
sing says, in his Essay on the Education of
the human Race, that religious revelations
have been always proportioned to the degree
of knowledge which existed at the time of
their appearance. The Old Testament, the
Gospel, and, in many respects, the Reforma-
tion, were, according to their seasons, per-
fectly in harmony with the progress of the
understanding; and, perhaps, we are on the
eve of a developement of Christianity, which
will collect all the scattered rays in the same
focus, and which will make us perceive in
religion more than morality, more than hap-
piness, more than philosophy, more than
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? RELIGION IN GERMANY. 269
sentiment itself, since every one of these
gifts will be multiplied by its union with all
the others.
However this may be, it is perhaps in-
teresting to know under what point of view
religion is considered in Germany, and how
they have found means. to connect it with
the whole literary and philosophical system,
of which I have sketched the outline. There
is something imposing in this collective mass
of thought, which lays the whole moral order
completely open to our eyes; and gives this
sublime edifice self-devotion for its base, and
the Divinity for its capital.
(/It is to the feeling of the infinite that the
greater portion of German writers refer all
their religious ideas; but it may be asked,
Can we conceive infinity? Do we not con-
ceive it, at least in a negative manner, when,
in the mathematics, we are unable to sup-
pose any boundary to duration or to space?
This infinity consists in the absence of limits:
but the feeling of the infinite, such as the
imagination and the heart experience it, is
positive and creative.
t^The enthusiasm, which the beautiful in
idea makes us feel (that emotion, so full of
agitation and of purity at the same time), is
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? 270 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
excited by the sentiment of infinity. We
feel ourselves, as it were, disengaged by ad-
miration from the shackles of human destiny;
and it seems as if some wondrous secret was
revealed to us, to free the soul for ever from
languor and decline. When we contemplate
the starry heaven, where the sparks of light
are universes like our own, where the bril-
liant dust of the milky way traces, with its
worlds, a circle in the firmament, our thoughts
are lost in the infinite, our hearts beat for
the unknown, for the immense, and we feel
that it is only on the other side of earthly
experience that our real life will commence^
In a word, religious emotions, more than
all others together, awaken in us the feel-
ing of the infinite; but when they awaken
they satisfy it; and it is for this reason,
doubtless, that a man of great genius has
said: "That a thinking being was not
"happy, until the idea of infinity became
"an enjoyment instead of a burthen to his
"mind. "
/In effect, when we give ourselves entirely
up to reflections, to images, to desires which
extend beyond the limits of experience, it
r is then only that we freely breathe. When
we wish to confine ourselves to the interests,
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? RELIGION IN GERMANY. 271
the conveniencies, the laws of this world,
genius, sensibility, enthusiasm, painfully agi-
tate the soul; but they overflow it with
enjoyment when we consecrate them to this
remembrance, to this expectation of infinity,
which appears in metaphysics under the form
of innate dispositions, in virtue under that of
self-devotion, in the arts under that of the
ideal, and in Religion herself under that of
divine love.
^The feeling of the infinite is the true attri-
bute of the soul: all that is beautiful of every
kind excites in us the hope, and the desire,
of an eternal futurity, and of a sublime ex-
istence: we cannot hear the wind in the
forest, nor the delicious concords of human
voices; we cannot feel the enchantment of
eloquence or of poetry; in a word, above all,
we cannot innocently, deeply love, without
being penetrated with religion and immor-
tality. AJ1 the sacrifices of personal interest
arise from our wish to bring ourselves into
accord with this feeling of the infinite, of
which we experience all the charm, without
being able to express it. If the power of
duty was confined to the short duration of
this life, how then would it have more com-
mand than the passions over the soul? Who
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? 272 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
would sacrifice what is bounded to what is.
bounded? " All limited things are so short,"
says St. Augustin; the moments of enjoy-
ment that earthly inclinations may induce,
and the days of peace that a moral conduct
ensures, would differ very little, if emotions
without limit, and without end, did not spon-
taneously spring up in the bottom of that
human being's heart who devotes himself to
virtue.
vMany persons will deny this feeling of the
infinite; and, assuredly, they have very good
ground to deny it, for we cannot possibly
explain it to them: a few additional words
will not succeed in making them understand
what the universe has failed to teach them.
Nature has arrayed the infinite in symbols
which may bring it down to us: light
and darkness, storm and silence, pleasure
and pain, all inspire man with this uni-
versal religion, of which his heart is the
sancluary^,^
A writer, of whom I have already had
occasion to speak, M. Ancillon, has lately
published a work upon the new German
philosophy, which unites the perspicuity of
French wit with the depth of German
genius. M. Ancillon had before acquired a
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? RELIGION IN GERMANY.
celebrated name as an historian ; he is, incon-
testably, what we are accustomed to call in
France a good head; his understanding itself
is positive and methodical; and it is by his
soul that he has seized all that the thought of
the infinite can present most comprehensive
and most exalted. What he has written on
this subject bears a character entirely original;
it is, to use the expression, the sublime re-
duced to logic: he traces, with precision,
the boundary where experimental knowledge
is stopped, whether in the arts, or in phi-
losophy, or in religion; he shows that sen-
timent goes much farther than knowledge;
and that, beyond demonstrative proofs, there
is a natural evidence in it; beyond analysis,
an inspiration; beyond words, ideas; be-
yond ideas, emotions; and that the feeling
of the infinite is a phenomenon of mind, a
primitive phenomenon, without which there
would be nothing in man but physical in-
stinct and calculation.
It is difficult to be religious according to
the manner introduced by some dry cha-
racters, or some well-meaning persons, who
would w1 ih to confer upon religion the ho-
nours of scientific demonstration. That which
so intimately touches upon the mystery of
VOL. III. T
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? 274 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
existence, cannot be expressed by the re-
gular forms of speech. Reasoning on such
subjects serves to show where reasoning
comes to an end; and at that conclusion
commences true certainty; for the truths of
feeling have an intensity of strength which
calls all our being to their support. The in-
finite acts upon the soul so as to exalt and to
disengage it from time. The business of life
is to sacrifice the interests of our transitory
existence to that immortality which even
"now commences for us, if we are already
"worthy of it; and not only the greater part
of religions have this same object, but the
fine arts, poetry, glory, love, are religions,
into which there enters more or less alloy.
This expression, " it is divine," which has
become general, in order to extol the beau-
ties of nature and of art--this expression is a
species of belief among the Germans: it is
not from indifference that they are tolerant;
it is because there is an universality in their
manner of feeling and conceiving religion.
In fact, every man may find, in some dif-
ferent wonder of the universe, that which
most powerfully addresses his soul:--one
admires the Divinity in the character of a
father; another in the innocence of a child;
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? RELIGION IN GERMANY, 275
a third in the heavenly aspect of Raphael's
virgins, in music, in poetry, in nature, it
matters not in what--for all are agreed in
admiring (if all are animated by a religious
principle) the genius of the world, and of
every human being.
Men of superior genius have raised doubts
concerning this or that doctrine; and it is a
great misfortune, that the subtilty of logic,
or the pretences of self-love, should be able
to disturb and to chill the feeling of faith.
Frequently also reflection has found itself at
a loss in those intolerant religions, of which,
as we may say, a penal code has been
formed, and which have impressed upon
theology all the forms of a despotic govern-
ment: but how sublime is that worship,
which gives us a foretaste of celestial happi-
ness in the inspiration of genius, as in the
most obscure of virtues; in the tenderest af-
fections as in the severest pains; in the tem-
pest a6 in the fairest skies; in the flower as
in the oak; in every thing except calculation,
except the deadly chill of selfishness, which
separates us from the benevolence of nature,
which makes vanity alone the motive of our
actions--vanity, whose root is ever venom-
ous! How beautiful is that religion which
t2
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? 276 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
consecrates the whole world to its Author,
and makes all our faculties subservient to the
celebration of the holy rites of this wonder-
ful universe!
Far from such a belief interdicting litera-
ture or science, the theory of all ideas, the
secret of all talents, belong to it; nature and
the Divinity would necessarily be in contra-
diction to each other, if sincere piety forbade
men to make use of their faculties, and to
taste the pleasure that results from their exer-
cise. There is religion in all the works of ge-
nius ; there is genius in all religious thoughts.
Wit is of a less illustrious origin; it serves for
an instrument of contention; but genius is
creative. The inexhaustible source of ta-
lents and of virtues, is this feeling of infi-
nity, which claims its share in all generous
actions, and in all profound thoughts.
Religion is nothing if it is not every thing;
if existence is not filled with it; if we do
not incessantly maintain in the soul this
belief in the invisible; this self-devotion,
this elevation of desire, which ought to
triumph over the low inclinations to which
our nature exposes us.
But how can religion be incessantly pre-
sent to our thoughts, if we do not unite it
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? RELIGION IN GERMANY. 2? 7
to every thing which ought to form the oc-
cupation of a noble existence, devoted affec-
tions, philosophical meditations, and the
pleasures of the imagination? A great num-
ber of practices are recommended to the
faithful, that their religion may be recalled
to their minds every moment of the day by
the obligations which it imposes; but if the
whole life could be naturally, and without
effort, an act of worship at every moment,
would not this be still better? Since the
admiration of the beautiful always has rela-
tion to the Divinity, and since the very spring
of energetic thought makes us remount to
our origin, why should not the power of
feeling love, poetry, philosophy, form the
columns of the Temple of Faith?
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? 273 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER II.
Of Protestantism.
If was natural for a revolution, prepared by
ideas, to take place in Germany; for the
prominent trait of this thinking people is the
energy of internal conviction. When once
an opinion lias taken possession of German
heads, their patience, and their perseverance
in supporting it, do singular honour to the
force of human volition.
When we read the details of the death
of John Huss, and of Jerome of Prague, the
forerunners of the Reformation, we see a
striking example of that which characterized
the Protestant leaders in Germany, the union
of a lively faith with the spirit of inquiry.
Their reason did no injury to their belief, nor
their belief any to their reason; and their
moral faculties were always put into simul-
taneous action.
Throughout Germany we find traces of
the different religious struggles, which, for
many ages, occupied the whole nation. They
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? PROTESTANTISM. 379
still show, in the cathedral at Prague, bas-
reliefs where the devastations committed by
the Hussites are represented; and that part
of the church which the Swedes set fire to
in the thirty years' war, is not yet rebuilt.
Not far from thence, on the bridge, is placed
the statue of St. John Nepomucenes, who
preferred perishing in the waves to revealing
the weaknesses which an unfortunate queen
had confessed to him. The monuments, and
even the ruins, which testify the influence of
religion over man, interest the soul in a lively
manner; for the wars of opinion, however
cruel they may be, do more honour to na-
tions than the wars of interest.
Of all the great men produced by Ger-
many, Luther is the one whose character is
the most German: his firmness had something
rude about it; his conviction arose even to
infatuation; the courage of the mind was in
him the principle of the courage of action;
what there was passionate in his soul did
not divert him from abstract studies; and
although he attacked certain abuses, and
considered certain doctrines as prejudices, it
was not a philosophical incredulity, but a
species of fanaticism, that excited him.
Nevertheless, the Reformation has intro-
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? 28G RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
duced into the world inquiry in matters of
religion. In some minds its result has been
scepticism; in others, a stronger conviction
of religious truths: the human mind had
arrived at an epoch when it was necessary
for it to examine in order to believe. The
discovery of printing, the multiplicity of
every sort of knowledge, and the philoso-
phical investigation of truth, did not allow
any longer that blind faith which was for-
merly so profitable to its teachers. Religious
enthusiasm could not grow again except by
inquiry and meditation. It was Luther who
put the Old Testament and the Gospel into
the hands of all the world; it was he who
gave its impulse to the study of antiquity;
for in learning Hebrew to read the Old, and
Greek to read the New Testament, the stu-
dents cultivated the ancient languages, and
their minds were turned towards historical
researches.
Examination may weaken that habitual
faith which men do well to preserve as much
as they can ; but when man comes out of his
inquiries more religious than he was when he
entered into them, it is then that Religion is
built upon an immutable basis; it is then
that harmony exists between her and Know-
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? PUOTESTANTISM.
281
ledge, and that they mutually assist each
other.
Some writers have largely declaimed
against the system of perfectibility; and, to
hear them, we should think that it was a
real crime to believe our species capable of
perfection. It is enough in France that an
individual of such a party should have main-
tained this or that opinion, to make it bad
taste to adopt it; and all the sheep of the
same flock, one after the other, hasten to
level their wise attacks at ideas, which still
remain exactly what they are by nature.
It is very probable that the human species
is susceptible of education, as well as each
man in particular; and that there are epochs
marked for the progress of thought in the
eternal career of time. The Reformation
was the vera of inquiry, and of that enlight-
ened conviction which inquiry produces.
Christianity was first established, then al-
tered, then examined, then understood; and
these different periods were necessary to its
developement; they have sometimes lasted a
hundred, sometimes a thousand years. The
Supreme Being, who draws time out of
eternity, does not economize that time after
our manner.
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? 282 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
When Luther appeared, religion was no
more than a political power, attacked or de-
fended as an interest of this world. Luther
recalled it to the land of thought. The his-
torical progress of the human mind, in this
respect, in Germany, is worthy of remark.
When the wars occasioned by the Reforma-
tion were set at rest, and the Protestant
refugees vwere naturalized in the different
northern states of the German empire, the
philosophical studies, which had always
made the interior of the soul their object,
were naturally directed towards religion;
and there is no literature of the eighteenth
century in which we find so many religious
books as in the literature of Germany.
Lessing, one of the most powerful ge-
niuses of his nation, never ceased to attack,
with all the strength of his logic, that
maxim so commonly repeated, " that there
"are some dangerous truths. " In fact, it is
a singular instance of presumption, in certain
individuals, to think they have the right of
concealing the truth from their fellow-men,
and to arrogate the prerogative of placing
themselves (like Alexander before Diogenes)
in a situation to veil from our eyes that sun
which belongs alike to all: this pretended
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? PROTESTANTISM. 283
prudence is but the theory of imposture; is
but an attempt to play the juggler with
ideas, in order to secure the subjection of
mankind. Truth is the work of God; lies
are the works of man. If we study those
eras of history in which truth has been an
object of fear, we shall always find them
when partial interests contended in some
manner against the universal tendency.
The search for truth is the noblest of em-
ployments, and its promulgation is a duty.
There is nothing to fear for society, or for
religion, in this search, if it is sincere; and
if it is not sincere, truth no longer, but false-
hood, causes the evil. There is not a sen-
timent in man of which we cannot find the
philosophical reason; not an opinion, not
even a prejudice, generally diffused, which
has not its root in nature. We ought then to
examine, not with the object of destroying,
but to build our belief upon internal, not
upon borrowed conviction.
We see errors lasting for a long time; but
they always cause a painful uneasiness.
When we look at the tower of Pisa, which
leans over its base, we imagine that it is
about to fall, although it has stood for ages;
and our imagination is not at its ease, except
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? *284 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
in the sight of firm and regular edifices. It
is the same with our belief in certain prin-
ciples; that which is founded upon preju-
dices makes us uneasy; and we love to see
reason supporting, with all its power, the ele-
vated conceptions of the soul.
The understanding contains in itself the
principle of every thing which it acquires by
experience. Fontenelle has justly said, that
"we think we recognise a truth when first
"we hear it. " How then can we imagine,
that sooner or later just ideas, and the in-
ternal conviction which they cause, will not
reappear? There is a pre-established har-
mony between truth and human reason,
which always ends by bringing each nearer
to the other.
Proposing to men not to interchange
their thoughts, is what is commonly called
keeping the secret of the play. We only
continue in ignorance because we are uncon-
sciously ignorant; but from the moment that
we have commanded silence, it appears that
somebody has spoken; and to stifle the
thoughts which . those words have excited,
we must degrade Reason herself. There are
men, full of energy and good faith, who
never dreamt of this or that philosophical
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? PROTESTANTISM.
285
truth; but those who know and conceal
their knowledge, are hypocrites, or, at least,
are most arrogant and most irreligious beings.
Most arrogant; for what right have they to
think themselves of the class of the initiated,
and the rest of the world excluded from it ? --
Most irreligious; for if there is a philoso-
phical or natural truth, a truth, in short,
which contradicts religion, religion would
not be what it is, the light of lights.
We must be very ignorant of Christianity,
that is to say, of the revelation of the moral
laws of man and the universe, to recommend to
those who wish to believe in it, ignorance, se-
crecy, and darkness. Open the gates of the
temple; call to your support genius, the fine
arts, the sciences, philosophy; assemble
them in one focus to honour and to com-
prehend the Author of creation; and if Love
has said, that the name of those we love
seems written on the leaves of every flower,
how should not the impress of the Godhead
appear in every thought that attaches itself
to the eternal chain?
The right of examining what we ought to
believe, is the foundation of Protestantism.
The first reformers did not so understand it:
they thought they could fix the pillars of
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? 286 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
Hercules of the human mind at the boundary
of their own knowledge; but they were
wrong in fancying that men would submit to
their decisions as if they were infallible;--
they who rejected all authority of this sort
in the Catholic religion. Protestantism then
was sure to follow the developement and the
progress of knowledge; while Catholicism
boasted of being immoveable in the midst of
the waves of time.
Among the German writers of the Pro-
testant religion, different ways of thinking
have prevailed, which have successively oc-
cupied attention. Many learned men have
made inquiries, unheard of before, into the
Old and New Testament. Michaelis has
studied tire languages, the antiquities, and
the natural history of Asia, to interpret the
Bible; and while the spirit of French phi-
losophy was making a jest of the Christian
religion, they made it in Germany the object
of erudition. However this sort of labour
may, in some respects, insure religious
minds, what veneration does it not imply
for the book which is the object of so se-
rious an inquiry! These learned men at-
tacked neither doctrines, nor prophecies, nor
miracles; but a great number of writers
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? PROTESTANTISM.
287
have followed them, who have attempted to
give an entirely physical explanation to the
Old and New Testament; and who, con-
sidering them both in the light only of good
writings of an instructive kind, see nothing
in the mysteries but oriental metaphors.
These theologians called themselves rational
interpreters, because they believed they could
disperse every sort of obscurity: but it was
a wrong direction of the spirit of inquiry to
attempt applying it to truths, of which we
can have no presentiment, except by eleva-
tion and meditation of soul. The spirit of
inquiry ought to serve for the demarcation
of what is superior to reason, in the same
manner that an astronomer defines the
heights to which the sight of man cannot
attain: thus therefore to point out the in-
comprehensible regions, without pretending
to deny their existence, or to describe them
by words, is to make use of the spirit of in-
quiry, according to its measure, and its
destination.
The learned mode of interpretation is not
more satisfactory than dogmatic authority.
The imagination and the sensibility of the
Germans could not content itself with this
sort of prosaic religion, which paid the
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? 288 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
respect of reason to Christianity. Herder
was the first to regenerate faith by poetry:
deeply instructed in the eastern languages,
he felt a kind of admiration for the Bible
like that which a sanctified Homer would in-
spire. The natural bias of the mind in Ger-
many is to consider poetry as a sort of
prophetic gift, the forerunner of divine en-
joyments; so that it was not profanation to
unite to religious faith the enthusiasm which
poetry inspires.
Herder was not scrupulously orthodox;
but he rejected, as well as his partisans, the
learned commentaries which had the simpli-
fication of the Bible for their object, and
which, by simplifying, annihilated it. A
sort of poetical theology, vague but animated,
free but feeling, takes the place of that pe-
dantic school which thought it was advancing
towards reason, when it retrenched some of
the miracles of this universe; though, at the
same time, the marvellous is, in some
respects, perhaps, still more easy to con-
ceive, than that which it has been agreed to
call the natural.
Schleiermacher, the translator of Plato, has
written discourses of extraordinary eloquence
upon religion; he combatted that indiffer-
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