No More Learning

Happily for him and for us, as we said at the beginning, the Bre-
ton in him has lived on under the philologue, and the bells of the
town of Is have kept on sounding in his heart. Whatever diligence
he has shown besides in reducing the religious problem to terms
of a strictly philological problem, he has been unable to make a
complete success of it. No more has he succeeded in separating
religion from the religions; that is to say, in isolating the metaphys-
ical or moral idea of the lessons that form the basis of its authority,
from the observances that are its ritual envelope, from the symbols
that are the very life of it, from the great hopes that are the poetry
of it, and from the love that is the soul of it. And something of all
this passed into his style. He could not help yielding, abandoning
himself to the attraction of that which he tried to describe or to
explain. So much so, that by a final irony which would perhaps
have "amused" him, what is best in his work, the freshest, the truly
exquisite, is what he put there, not at all unconsciously, but better
still, in order to combat it; and his most beautiful pages are beauti-
ful only because they are inspired, penetrated, impregnated, with the
sense of the grandeur and value of all that he worked forty years to
destroy.
f.
franding
чип


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12164
ERNEST RENAN
BROTHER AND SISTER
From My Sister Henriette. Copyright 1895, by Roberts Brothers
TH
HE memory of men is but an imperceptible trace of the furrow
which each of us leaves upon the bosom of infinity. And
yet it is no vain thing. The consciousness of humanity is
the highest reflective image that we know of the total conscious-
ness of the universe. The esteem of a single individual is a part
of the absolute Justice. Therefore, although noble lives need no
other memory than that of God, there has in all ages been an
effort to make their image permanent. I should be the more
guilty did I fail to render this duty to my sister Henriette, since
I alone knew the treasures of that elect soul. Her timidity, her
reserve, her fixed opinion that a woman should live in retire-
ment, cast over her rare qualities a veil which very few were
permitted to lift. But those who belonged to the select few to
whom she showed herself as she really was, would blame me if
I did not strive to bring together all which may complete their
memories.
My sister's strong liking for domestic life was the result of
an infancy spent in surroundings thus full of poetry and sweet
melancholy. A few old nuns, driven from their convent by the
Revolution and turned schoolmistresses, taught her to read and
to recite the Psalms in Latin. She learned by heart all the
music of the Church; bringing her mind to bear later upon those
antique words, which she compared with French and Italian, she
contrived to pick up a good deal of Latin, although she never
studied it regularly. Her education, nevertheless, would neces-
sarily have remained very incomplete, had it not been for a
happy chance which gave her a teacher superior to any hitherto
possessed by the country. The noble families of Tréguier had
returned from exile completely ruined. A young girl belonging
to one of those families, whose education was acquired in Eng-
land, undertook to give lessons. She was a person distinguished
alike for her taste and her manners; she made a deep impres-
sion upon my sister, and left behind a memory which never died.
The misfortunes by which my sister was early surrounded
increased that tendency to concentration which was inborn with
her. Our paternal grandfather belonged to a sort of clan of
sailors and peasants which peoples the entire province of Goëlo.


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12165
He made a small fortune by his boat, and settled at Tréguier.
Our father served in the fleet of the Republic. After the naval
disasters of that time, he commanded ships on his own account,
and was by degrees drawn into a considerable business. This
was a great mistake. Utterly unskilled in such matters, simple
and incapable of calculation, continually held back by that timid-
ity which makes the sailor a complete child in practical affairs,
he saw the little fortune which he had inherited gradually dis-
appear in an abyss whose depth he could not fathom. The
events of 1815 brought about commercial crises which were fatal
to him. His weak and sentimental nature could not resist these
trials; he gradually lost his interest in life. My sister hour by
hour beheld the ravages which anxiety and misfortune made in
that sweet and gentle soul, lost in an order of occupations for
which it was not fitted. Amid these hard experiences she gained
a precocious maturity. From the age of twelve she was a serious
personage, burdened with cares, overwhelmed with grave thoughts
and sombre forebodings.
On his return from one of his long voyages on our cold, sad
seas, my father had a final gleam of joy: I was born in Febru-
ary 1823. The arrival of this little brother was a great comfort
to my sister. She clung to me with all the strength of a timid,
tender heart, to which love is a necessity. I can still recall the
petty tyrannies which I exercised over her, and against which she
never rebelled. When she came forth bedecked to go to gather-
ings of girls of her age, I hung upon her skirts and implored
her to return; then she would turn back, take off her holiday
dress, and stay with me. One day, in jest, she threatened me
that if I were not good she would die; she even feigned to be
dead, reclining in an arm-chair. The horror which my dear one's
silent motionlessness caused me is possibly the strongest impression
which I ever received, fate not having permitted me to receive
her last sigh. Beside myself with grief, I rushed at her, and
gave her arm a terrible bite. She uttered a cry which still rings
in my ears. To the reproaches lavished upon me, I made but
one reply: "Then why did you die? will you die again? "
From this time on, our condition was one of poverty.
My sister was seventeen. Her faith was still strong; and the
thought of embracing a religious life had more than once strongly
occupied her mind. On winter nights she took me to church.
under her cloak: it was a great pleasure for me to tramp over


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12166
ERNEST RENAN
the snow, thus warmly sheltered from head to foot. If it had
not been for me, she would undoubtedly have adopted a vocation
which, considering her education, her pious tastes, her lack of
fortune, and the customs of the country, seemed to be exactly
suited to her. Her wishes turned especially towards the con-
vent of St. Anne, at Lannion, where the care of sick people was
combined with the education of young girls. Alas! perhaps, had
she followed out this purpose, it would have been better for her
own peace of mind. Yet she was too good a daughter and too
affectionate a sister to prefer her own peace to her duty, even
when religious prejudices in which she still shared upheld her.
Thenceforth she regarded herself as responsible for my future.
On one occasion, I being clumsy and awkward in my movements,
she saw that I was timidly trying to disguise a hole in a worn-
out garment. She wept: the sight of that poor child destined to
suffering, with other instinctive feelings, wrung her heart. She
resolved to accept the struggle of life, and single-handed took up
the task of filling the yawning gulf which our father's ill fortune
had dug at our feet.
I left St. Sulpice seminary in 1845. Thanks to the liberal
and earnest spirit which ruled over that institution, I had carried
my philologic studies very far; my religious opinions were greatly
shaken thereby. Here again Henriette was my support. She
had outstripped me in this path; her Catholic beliefs had wholly
disappeared: but she had always refrained from exerting any
influence over me upon this subject. When I told her of the
doubts which tormented me, and which made it my duty to
abandon a career for which absolute faith was requisite, she was
enchanted, and offered to smooth the difficult passage. I entered
upon life, scarce twenty-three years of age, old in thought, but
as great a novice, as ignorant of the world, as any one could
possibly be. I knew literally no one; I lacked the most ordi-
nary advantages of a youth of fifteen. I was not even Bachelor
of Arts. It was agreed that I should search the boarding-schools
of Paris for some position which would square me, as the slang
phrase is, that is, would give me board and lodging without
salary, at the same time leaving me abundant time for independ-
ent study. Twelve hundred francs, which she gave me, enabled
me to wait; and to supplement all the deficiencies which such
a position might entail. Those twelve hundred francs were the
corner-stone of my life. I never exhausted them; but they gave
_____


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me the requisite tranquillity of mind to think at my ease, and
made it unnecessary for me to overburden myself with tasks
which would have crushed me. Her exquisite letters were my
consolation and my support at this turning-point in my life.
While I struggled with difficulties increased by my entire lack
of experience of the world, her health suffered serious inroads.
in consequence of the severity of the winters in Poland. She
developed a chronic affection of the larynx, which in 1850 became
so serious that it was thought necessary for her to return. More-
over, her task was accomplished: our father's debts were paid;
the small properties which he had left to us were now free from
incumbrance, in the hands of our mother; my brother had won
by his labor a position which promised to make him rich. We
decided to unite our fortunes. In September 1850 I joined her
in Berlin. Those ten years of exile had utterly transformed her.
The wrinkles of old age were prematurely printed on her brow;
of the charm which she still possessed when she took leave
of me in the parlor of the St. Nicholas seminary, nothing now
remained but the delicious expression of her ineffable goodness.
Then began for us those delightful years, the mere memory
of which brings tears to my eyes. We took a small apartment
in a garden near Val-de-Grâce. Our solitude was absolute. She
had no friends, and made little effort to acquire any. Our
windows looked out upon the garden of the Carmelites in the
Rue d'Enfer. The life of those recluses, during the long hours
which I spent at the library, in some sort regulated her existence
and afforded her only source of amusement. Her respect for my
work was extreme. I have seen her in the evening sit for hours
beside me, scarcely breathing for fear of interrupting me; yet
she could not bear to have me out of her sight, and the door
between our two bedrooms was always open. Her love was so
discreet and so secure that the secret communion of our thoughts
was enough for her. She, naturally so exacting, so jealous in her
affections, was content with a few minutes out of the day, provided
she was sure that she alone was loved. By her rigid economy, she
provided for me, with singularly limited resources, a home where
nothing was ever lacking, nay, which had its austere charm. Our
thoughts were so perfectly in accord that we hardly needed
to impart them each to the other. Our general opinions as to
the world and God were identical. There was no shade of
distinction, however delicate, in the theories which I resolved


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12168
ERNEST RENAN
•
at that period, that she did not understand. Upon many points
of modern history, which she had studied at the fountain-head,
she outstripped me. The general purpose of my career, the plan.
of unwavering sincerity which I formed, was so thoroughly the
combined product of our two consciences, that had I been tempted
to depart from it, she would have stood beside me, like another
self, to recall me to my duty.
Her share in the direction of my ideas was thus a very large
one. She was a matchless secretary to me; she copied all my
works, and grasped them so fully that I could depend upon her
as upon a living index of my own thought. I am infinitely
indebted to her in the matter of literary style. She read the
proofs of everything I wrote; and her acute criticism, with infinite
keenness, discovered errors which I had not observed. She had
acquired an excellent mode of writing, wholly taken from antique
sources; and so pure, so precise, that I think no one since the
days of Port Royal ever set up an ideal of diction more perfectly
correct. This made her very severe: she accepted very few
modern writers; and when she saw the essays which I wrote
before our reunion, and which I had not been able to send her
in Poland, she was only half satisfied with them. She agreed
with their tendency; and in any event she thought that in this
order of intimate and individual thought, expressed with moder-
ation, every one should give utterance with entire freedom to
that which is in him. But the form struck her as careless and
abrupt; she discovered exaggerated touches, a hard tone, a dis-
respectful way of treating language. She convinced me that one.
may say anything and everything in the simple, correct style of
good authors; and that new expressions or violent images always
proceed either from improper affectation or from ignorance of
our genuine riches. Hence a great change in my mode of writ-
ing dates from my reunion with her. I acquired the habit of
composing with a view to her remarks, risking many touches
to see what effect they would produce on her, and determined to
sacrifice them if she asked me to do so.
This mental process,
when she ceased to live, became to me like the painful feeling of
one who has been amputated, who continually acts with a view
to the lost limb. She was an organ of my intellectual life, and
a portion of my own being truly entered the tomb with her.
In all moral matters we had come to see with the same eyes,
and to feel with the same heart. She was so thoroughly familiar


## p. 12169 (#211) ##########################################

ERNEST RENAN
12169
with my order of thought that she almost always knew before-
hand what I was about to say, the idea dawning upon her and
upon me at the same moment. But in one sense she was greatly
my superior. In spiritual things I was still seeking material for
interesting essays or artistic studies; with her nothing marred
the purity of her intimate communion with the good. Her reli-
gion of the true could not endure the least discordant note. One
thing that wounded her in my writings was a touch of irony
which possessed me, and which I mingled with the best things.
I had never suffered; and I found a certain philosophy in the
discreet smile provoked by human weakness or vanity. This
trick wounded her, and I gradually gave it up for her sake. I
now know how right she was. The good should be simply good;
any touch of mockery implies a remnant of vanity and of per-
sonal challenge which ends by being in bad taste.
Her capacity for work was extraordinary. I have seen her,
for days at a time, devote herself unceasingly to the task which
she had taken up. She took part in editing educational journals,
especially the one in charge of her friend, Mademoiselle Ulliac-
Tremadeure. She never signed her name; and it was impossible,
with her great modesty, that she could ever win in this line more
than the esteem of a select few. Moreover, the detestable taste
which in France presides over the composition of works meant
for the education of women, left her no room to hope either for
great satisfaction or great success. It was particularly to oblige
her friend, who was old and infirm, that she undertook this labor.
The writings wherein she may be found entire are her letters.
She wrote them to perfection. Her notes of travel were also
excellent. I trusted to her to tell the unscientific part of our
journey to the East. Alas! all knowledge of this side of my
enterprise, which I left to her, perished with her. What I found
on this head in her papers is very good. We hope to be able
to publish it, completing it by her letters. We shall then publish
a story which she wrote of the great maritime expeditions of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She made very extensive
researches for this task; and she brought to bear on it a criti-
cal judgment very rare in works intended for children. She did
nothing by halves: the rectitude of her judgment was shown in
everything by an exquisite taste for solidity and truth.
She had not what is called wit, if by that word we under-
stand something airy and sly, as is the French fashion. She


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12170
ERNEST RENAN
never made a mock of anybody. Malice was odious to her: she
regarded it as a species of cruelty. I remember that at a pardon
(pilgrimage) in Lower Brittany, to which we went in boats, our
bark was preceded by another containing certain poor ladies,
who, wishing to make themselves beautiful for the festival, had
hit upon pitiful arrangements of their attire, which was in very
bad taste. The people in whose company we were, laughed at
them, and the poor ladies observed this. My sister burst into
tears: it seemed to her barbarous to jest at well-meaning persons
who had for a time forgotten their misfortunes in order to be
cheerful; and who had perhaps submitted to great privations out
of deference to the world. In her eyes, a ridiculous person was
to be pitied; she at once loved him and took his part against
those who scoffed at him.
Hence her aversion to the world, and the poor show which
she made in ordinary conversation,- almost always a tissue of
malice and frivolity. She was prematurely old; and she gen-
erally added still more to her age by her dress and manners.
She was a worshiper of misfortune; she hailed, almost cultivated,
every excuse for tears. Sorrow became to her a familiar and
agreeable feeling. Ordinary people did not in general under-
stand her, and considered her somewhat stiff and embarrassed.
Nothing which was not completely good could please her. Every-
thing about her was true and profound; she could not dishonor
herself. The lower classes, peasants, on the contrary, regarded
her as exquisitely kind; and those who knew how to take her on
the right side soon learned to recognize the depth of her nature
and her real distinction.
She sometimes betrayed delightful feminine touches; she be-
came a young girl again; she clung to life almost with a smile,
and the veil between her and the world seemed to fall. These
fleeting moments of delicious weakness, transient gleams of a
vanished dawn, were full of melancholy sweetness. In this she
was superior to persons who profess, in their gloomy abstrac-
tion, the detachment preached by the mystics. She loved life;
she found a relish in it; she could smile at an ornament, at a
feminine trifle, as we might smile at a flower. She did not
say to Nature that frenzied "Abrenuntio" [I renounce thee] of
Christian ascetism. Virtue to her was no stern rigor, no studied
effort: it was the natural instinct of a beautiful soul aiming at
goodness by a spontaneous exertion, serving God without fear or
tremor.


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12171
We know not the relations of great souls with the infinite;
but if, as everything leads us to believe, consciousness be but.
a transitory communion with the universe,- a communion which
leads us more or less directly into the bosom of God,—is it not
for souls like hers that immortality is intended? If man have
the power to carve out, after a Divine model which he does not
select, a great moral personality, made up in equal parts of him-
self and of the ideal, it is surely this that lives with full reality.
It is not matter that exists, since a unit is not that; it is not
the atom which exists, since that is unconscious. It is the soul
which exists, when it has truly made its mark in the eternal
history of the true and the good. Who ever fulfilled this high
destiny better than did my dear one? Removed just as she
attained to the full maturity of her nature, she could never have
been more perfect. She had reached the pinnacle of virtuous
life; her views in regard to the universe would not have been
carried further; her measure of devotion and tenderness was run-
ning over.
Ah! but she might have been without a doubt she might
have been happier. I was dreaming of all sorts of small, sweet
rewards for her; I had imagined a thousand foolish fancies to
please her taste. I saw her old, respected like a mother, proud
of me, resting at last in a peace without alloy. I longed to have
her good and noble heart, which never ceased to bleed with ten-
derness, know a sort of calm-I may say a selfish moment
at last. God willed her to know here none but hard and rough
roads. She died almost unrewarded. The hour for reaping what
she had sown, for sitting down and looking back upon past sor-
rows and fatigues, never struck for her.
To tell the truth, she never thought of reward. That inter-
ested view, which often spoils the sacrifices inspired by positive
religions, leading us to think that virtue is practiced only for the
usury to be derived from it, never entered into her great soul.
When she lost her religious faith, her faith in duty was not
lessened; because that faith was the echo of her inner nobility.
Virtue with her was not the fruit of a theory, but the result
of an absolute disposition of nature. She did good for its own
sake, and not for her own salvation. She loved the beautiful
and the true, without any of that calculation which seems to say
to God, "Were it not for thy hell or thy paradise, I should not
love thee. "
--


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ERNEST RENAN
But God does not let his saints see corruption. O heart
. wherein perpetually burned so sweet a flame of love,- brain, seat
of such pure thought,— fair eyes, beaming with kindness,-slen-
der delicate hand, which I have so often pressed,- I shudder with
horror when I think that you are naught but dust. But all here
below is but symbol and image. The truly eternal part of each
of us is his relation to the infinite. It is in the recollection of
God that man is immortal.
It is there that our Henriette lives,
forever radiant, forever stainless,-lives a thousand times more
truly than when she struggled with her frail organs to create her
spiritual person, and when, cast into the midst of a world incapa-
ble of understanding her, she obstinately sought after perfection.
May her memory remain with us as a precious argument for
those eternal truths which every virtuous life helps to demon-
strate. For myself, I have never doubted the reality of the
moral order; but I now see plainly that the entire logic of the
system of the universe would be overthrown if such lives were
only trickery and delusion.
TO THE PURE SOUL OF MY SISTER HENRIETTE
Who died at Byblos, September 24th, 1861. Dedication to the Life of Jesus. '
Copyright 1895, by Roberts Brothers
FR
ROM the bosom of God, in which thou reposest, dost thou re-
call those long days at Ghazir when, alone with thee, I
wrote these pages, inspired by the places we had visited
together? Silent at my side, thou didst read each sheet, and
copy it as soon as written; while the sea, the villages, the
ravines, the mountains, were spread out at our feet. When the
overpowering light had given place to the innumerable host of
stars, thy delicate and subtile questions, thy cautious doubts,
brought me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts.
Thou saidst to me one day that this book would be dear to thee,
because it had been written with thy aid, and because also it was
after thine own heart. If at times thou didst fear for it the
narrow judgment of frivolous men, thou wast ever persuaded
that truly religious souls would in the end take delight in it. In
the midst of these sweet meditations, Death struck us both with
his wing; the sleep of fever overtook us at the same hour: I
awoke alone! Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near


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ERNEST RENAN
12173
the holy Byblos, and the sacred waters where the women of the
ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me,
O good genius,-to me whom thou lovedst,- those truths which
conquer death, deprive it of fear, and make it almost beloved.
MOTIVES AND CONDUCT
From the Recollections of My Youth'
<
I
HAD always had an idea of writing, but it had never occurred
to me that it would bring me in any money. I was greatly
astonished, therefore, when a man of pleasant and intelligent
appearance called upon me in my garret one day, and after com-
plimenting me upon several articles which I had written, offered
to publish them in a collected form. A stamped agreement
which he had with him specified terms which seemed to me so
wonderfully liberal, that when he asked me if all my future writ-
ings should be included in the agreement, I gave my assent. I
was tempted to make one or two observations; but the sight of
the stamp stopped me, and I was unwilling that so fine a piece.
of paper should be wasted. I did well to forego them, for
M. Michel Lévy must have been created by a special decree of
Providence to be my editor. A man of letters who has any
self-respect should write in only one journal and in one review,
and should have only one publisher. M. Michel Lévy and myself
always got on very well together. At a subsequent date, he
pointed out to me that the agreement which he had prepared was
not sufficiently remunerative for me, and he substituted for it one
much more to my advantage. I am told that he has not made
a bad speculation out of me. I am delighted to hear it. In any
event, I may safely say that if I possessed a fund of literary
wealth it was only fair that he should have a large share of it;
as but for him I should never have suspected its existence.
It is very difficult to prove that one is modest; for the mere
assertion of one's modesty destroys one's claim to it. As I have
said, our old Christian teachers had an excellent rule upon this
score, which was never to speak of oneself either in praise or
depreciation. This is the true principle; but the general reader
will not have it so, and is the cause of all the mischief. He
leads the writer to commit faults upon which he is afterwards


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ERNEST RENAN
very hard; just as the staid middle classes of another age ap-
plauded the actor, and yet excluded him from the Church. "Incur
your own damnation, as long as you amuse us," is often the sen-
timent which lurks beneath the encouragement, often flattering
in appearance, of the public. Success is more often than not
acquired by our defects. When I am very well pleased with
what I have written, I have perhaps nine or ten persons who
approve of what I have said. When I cease to keep a strict
watch upon myself, when my literary conscience hesitates and
my hand shakes, thousands are anxious for me to go on.
But notwithstanding all this, and making due allowance for
venial faults, I may safely claim that I have been modest; and
in this respect, at all events, I have not come short of the St.
Sulpice standard. I am not afflicted with literary vanity. I do
not fall into the error which distinguishes the literary views of
our day. I am well assured that no really great man has ever
imagined himself to be one; and that those who during their
lifetime browse upon their glory while it is green, do not garner
it ripe after their death. I only feigned to set store by literature
for a time to please M. Sainte-Beuve, who had great influence
over me. Since his death, I have ceased to attach any value to
it. I see plainly enough that talent is only prized because people
are so childish. If the public were wise, they would be content
with getting the truth. What they like is in most cases imper-
fections. My adversaries, in order to deny me the possession
of other qualities which interfere with their apologeticum, are so
profuse in their allowance of talent to me that I need not scruple
to accept an encomium which, coming from them, is a criticism.
In any event, I have never sought to gain anything by the
display of this inferior quality, which has been more prejudicial
to me as a savant than it has been useful of itself. I have not
based any calculations upon it. I have never counted upon my
supposed talent for a livelihood, and I have not in any way tried
to turn it to account. The late M. Beulé, who looked upon me
with a kind of good-natured curiosity mingled with astonishment,
could not understand why I made so little use of it. I have
never been at all a literary man. In the most decisive moments
of my life I had not the least idea that my prose would secure
any success.
I have never done anything to foster my success; which, if I
may be permitted to say so, might have been much greater if I


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ERNEST RENAN
12175
had so willed. I have in no wise followed up my good fortune;
upon the contrary, I have rather tried to check it. The public
likes a writer who sticks closely to his line, and who has his
own specialty; placing but little confidence in those who try to
shine in contradictory subjects. I could have secured an immense
amount of popularity if I had gone in for a crescendo of anti-
clericalism after the Life of Jesus. ' The general reader likes a
strong style. I could easily have left in the flourishes and tin-
sel phrases which excite the enthusiasm of those whose taste is
not of a very elevated kind,- that is to say, of the majority. I
spent a year in toning down the style of the 'Life of Jesus,' as
I thought that such a subject could not be treated too soberly or
too simply. And we know how fond the masses are of declama-
tion. I have never accentuated my opinions in order to gain the
ear of my readers. It is no fault of mine if, owing to the bad
taste of the day, a slender voice has made itself heard athwart
the darkness in which we dwell, as if reverberated by a thousand
echoes.
With regard to my politeness, I shall find fewer cavilers than
with regard to my modesty; for so far as mere externals go, I
have been endowed with much more of the former than of the
latter. The extreme urbanity of my old masters made so great
an impression upon me that I have never broken away from it.
Theirs was the true French politeness; that which is shown
not only towards acquaintances, but towards all persons without
exception. Politeness of this kind implies a general standard of
conduct, without which life cannot, as I hold, go on smoothly;
viz. , that every human creature should be given credit for good-
ness failing proof to the contrary, and treated kindly. Many
people, especially in certain countries, follow the opposite rule;
and this leads to great injustice. For my own part, I cannot
possibly be severe upon any one a priori. I take for granted
that every person I see for the first time is a man of merit and
of good repute; reserving to myself the right to alter my opin-
ions (as I often have to do) if facts compel me to do so. This
is the St. Sulpice rule; which, in my contact with the outside
world, has placed me in very singular positions, and has often
made me appear very old-fashioned, a relic of the past, and
unfamiliar with the age in which we live. The right way to be-
have at table is to help oneself to the worst piece in the dish,
so as to avoid the semblance of leaving for others what one does


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ERNEST RENAN
not think good enough,- or better still, to take the piece nearest
to one without looking at what is in the dish. Any one who
was to act in this delicate way in the struggle of modern life
would sacrifice himself to no purpose. His delicacy would not
even be noticed. "First come, first served," is the objectionable
rule of modern egotism. To obey, in a world which has ceased
to have any heed of civility, the excellent rules of the politeness
of other days, would be tantamount to playing the part of a
dupe; and no one would thank you for your pains. When one
feels oneself being pushed by people who want to get in front
of one, the proper thing to do is to draw back with a gesture
tantamount to saying-“Do not let me prevent you passing. "
But it is very certain that any one who adhered to this rule in
an omnibus would be the victim of his own deference; in fact, I
believe that he would be infringing the by-laws. In traveling
by rail, how few people seem to see that in trying to force their
way before others on the platform in order to secure the best
seats, they are guilty of gross discourtesy!
In other words, our democratic machines have no place for
the man of polite manners. I have long since given up taking
the omnibus: the conductor came to look upon me as a passenger
who did not know what he was about. In traveling by rail, I
invariably have the worst seat, unless I happen to get a helping
hand from the station-master. I was fashioned for a society
based upon respect, in which people could be treated, classified,
and placed according to their costume, and in which they would
not have to fight for their own hand. I am only at home at the
Institute or the Collège de France; and that because our officials
are all well-conducted men and hold us in great respect. The
Eastern habit of always having a cavass to walk in front of one
in the public thoroughfares suited me very well; for modesty is
seasoned by a display of force. It is agreeable to have under
one's orders a man armed with a kourbash which one does not
allow him to use. I should not at all mind having the power of
life and death without ever exercising it; and I should much like
to own some slaves, in order to be extremely kind to them and
to make them adore me.
My clerical ideas have exercised a still greater influence over
me in all that relates to the rules of morality. I should have
looked upon it as a lack of decorum if I had made any change
in my austere habits upon this score. The world at large, in its


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12177
ignorance of spiritual things, believes that men only abandon
the ecclesiastical calling because they find its duties too severe.
I should never have forgiven myself if I had done anything to
lend even a semblance of reason to views so superficial. With
my extreme conscientiousness I was anxious to be at rest with
myself; and I continued to live in Paris the life which I had led
in the seminary. . . Women have, as a rule, understood how
much respect and sympathy for them my affectionate reserve im-
plied. In fine, I have been beloved by the four women whose
love was of the most comfort to me: my mother, my sister, my
wife, and my daughter. I have had the better part, and it will
not be taken from me; for I often fancy that the judgments which
will be passed upon us in the valley of Jehoshaphat will be nei-
ther more nor less than those of women, countersigned by the
Almighty.
Thus it may, upon the whole, be said that I have come short
in little of my clerical promises. I have exchanged spirituality
for ideality. I have been truer to my engagements than many
priests apparently more regular in their conduct. In resolutely
clinging to the virtues of disinterestedness, politeness, and mod-
esty in a world to which they are not applicable, I have shown
how very simple I am. I have never courted success; I may
almost say that it is distasteful to me. The pleasure of living.
and of working is quite enough for me. Whatever may be
egotistical in this way of enjoying the pleasure of existence is
neutralized by the sacrifices which I believe that I have made
for the public good. I have always been at the orders of my
country: at the first sign from it, in 1869, I placed myself at its
disposal. I might perhaps have rendered it some service; the
country did not think so, but I have done my part. I have
never flattered the errors of public opinion; and I have been so
careful not to lose a single opportunity of pointing out these
errors, that superficial persons have regarded me as wanting in
patriotism. One is not called upon to descend to charlatanism
or falsehood to obtain a mandate, the main condition of which is
independence and sincerity. Amidst the public misfortunes which
may be in store for us, my conscience will therefore be quite at
rest.
•
All things considered, I should not, if I had to begin my
life over again, with the right of making what erasures I liked,
change anything. The defects of my nature and education have,
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by a sort of benevolent Providence, been so attenuated and
reduced as to be of very little moment. A certain apparent lack
of frankness in my relations with them is forgiven me by my
friends, who attribute it to my clerical education. I must admit
that in the early part of my life I often told untruths,—not in
my own interest, but out of good-nature and indifference,— upon
the mistaken idea which always induces me to take the view of
the person with whom I may be conversing. My sister depicted
to me in very vivid colors the drawbacks involved in acting like
this; and I have given up doing so. am not aware of having
told a single untruth since 1851; with the exception, of course,
of the harmless stories and polite fibs which all casuists permit,
as also the literary evasions, which, in the interests of a higher
truth, must be used to make up a well-poised phrase, or to avoid
a still greater misfortune,- that of stabbing an author. Thus for
instance, a poet brings you some verses. You must say that they
are admirable; for if you said less it would be tantamount to
describing them as worthless, and to inflicting a grievous insult
upon a man who intended to show you a polite attention.
My friends may well have found it much more difficult to
forgive me another defect, which consists in being rather slow,
not to show them affection but to render them assistance. One
of the injunctions most impressed upon us at the seminary was
to avoid special friendships. " Friendships of this kind were
described as being a fraud upon the rest of the community.
This rule has always remained indelibly impressed upon my
mind. I have never given much encouragement to friendship; I
have done little for my friends, and they have done little for me.
One of the ideas which I have so often to cope with is that
friendship, as it is generally understood, is an injustice and a
blunder, which only allows you to distinguish the good quali-
ties of a single person, and blinds you to those of others who
are perhaps more deserving of your sympathy. I fancy to
myself at times, like my ancient masters, that friendship is a
larceny committed at the expense of society at large; and that,
in a more elevated world, friendship would disappear. In some
cases, it has seemed to me that the special attachment which
unites two individuals is a slight upon good-fellowship gener-
ally; and I am always tempted to hold aloof from them as being
warped in their judgment and devoid of impartiality and liberty.
A close association of this kind between two persons must, in


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12179
my view, narrow the mind, detract from anything like breadth
of view, and fetter the independence. Beulé often used to banter
me upon this score. He was somewhat attached to me, and
was anxious to render me a service, though I had not done the
equivalent for him. Upon a certain occasion I voted against him
in favor of some one who had been very ill-natured towards me;
and he said to me afterwards, "Renan, I shall play some mean
trick upon you: out of impartiality you will vote for me. "
While I have been very fond of my friends, I have done very
little for them. I have been as much at the disposal of the
public as of them. This is why I receive so many letters from
unknown and anonymous correspondents; and this is also why I
am such a bad correspondent. It has often happened to me while
writing a letter to break off suddenly, and convert into general
terms the ideas which have occurred to me. The best of my life
has been lived for the public, which has had all I have to give.
There is no surprise in store for it after my death, as I have
kept nothing back for anybody.
Having thus given my preference instinctively to the many
rather than to the few, I have enjoyed the sympathy even of my
adversaries, but I have had few friends. No sooner has there
been any sign of warmth in my feelings, than the St. Sulpice
dictum, "No special friendships," has acted as a refrigerator, and
stood in the way of any close affinity. My craving to be just
has prevented me from being obliging. I am too much im-
pressed by the idea that in doing one person a service you as a
rule disoblige another person; that to further the chances of one
competitor is very often equivalent to an injury upon another.
Thus the image of the unknown person whom I am about to
injure brings my zeal to a sudden check. I have obliged hardly
any one; I have never learnt how people succeed in obtaining
the management of a tobacco-shop for those in whom they are
interested. This has caused me to be devoid of influence in the
world; but from a literary point of view it has been a good
thing for me. Mérimée would have been a man of the very
highest mark if he had not had so many friends. But his friends.
took complete possession of him. How can a man write private
letters when it is in his power to address himself to all the
world? The person to whom you write reduces your talent; you
are obliged to write down to his level. The public has a broader
intelligence than any one person. There are a great many fools,


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it is true, among the "all"; but the "all" comprises as well the
few thousand clever men and women for whom alone the world
may be said to exist. It is in view of them that one should
write.
THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF
CIVILIZATION
From the Inaugural Address on assuming the Chair of Semitic Languages, in
'Studies of Religious History and Criticism. ' Copyright 1864, by F. W.
Christern.
Gentlemen:
I
AM proud to ascend this chair-the most ancient in the Col-
lege of France-made illustrious in the sixteenth century
by eminent men, and in our own generation occupied by a
scholar of the merit of M. Quatremère. In creating the College
of France as an asylum for liberal science, King Francis I. laid
down as the constitutional law of this grand foundation, the
complete independence of criticism; the disinterested search for
truth; impartial discussion, that knows no rules save those of
good taste and sincerity. Precisely this, gentlemen, is the spirit
which I would fain bring to the instruction here. I know the
difficulties that are inseparable from the chair which I have the
honor to occupy. It is the privilege and the peril of Semitic
studies, that they touch on the most important problems in the
history of mankind. The free mind knows no limit; but the
human race at large is far from having reached that stage of
serene contemplation in which it has no need of beholding God
in this or that particular order of facts, for the very reason that
it sees him in everything. Liberty, gentlemen, had it been well
understood, would have allowed these opposite claims to exist
side by side. I hope that by your favor, this course will prove
that they can. As I shall bring to my instructions no dogma-
tism; as I shall confine myself always to appeals to your reason,
to the statement of what I think most probable, leaving you full
liberty of judgment, who can complain? Those only who believe
they have a monopoly of the truth; but these must renounce the
claim to be the masters of the world. In our day Galileo would
not go down on his knees to retract what he knew to be the
truth.


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So much granted, if we ask what the Semitic peoples have
contributed to this organic and living whole which is called civ-
ilization, we shall find in the first place that in polity we owe
them nothing at all. Political life is perhaps the most peculiar
and native characteristic of the Indo-European nations. These
nations are the only ones that have known liberty, that have
reconciled the State with the independence of the individual. To
be sure, they are far from having always equally well adjusted
these two opposite necessities. But among them are never found
those great unitary despotisms, crushing all individuality, redu-
cing man to the condition of a kind of abstract nameless func-
tion, as is the case in Egypt, China, and the Mussulman and
Tartar despotisms. Examine successively the small municipal
republics of Greece and of Italy, the Germanic feudalisms, the
grand centralized organizations of which Rome gave the first
model, whose ideal reappeared in the French Revolution,- you
find always a vigorous moral element, a powerful idea of the
public good, sacrifice for a general object. In Sparta individual-
ity was little protected; the petty democracies of Athens and of
Italy in the Middle Ages were almost as ferocious as the most
cruel tyrant; the Roman Empire became (in part, however,
through the influence of the East) an intolerable despotism;
feudalism in Germany resulted in regular brigandage; royalty
in France under Louis XIV. almost reached the excesses of the
dynasties of the Sassanidæ or the Mongols; the French Revolu-
tion, while establishing with incomparable energy the principle
of unity in the State, often strongly compromised liberty. But
swift reactions have always saved these nations from the conse-
quences of their errors. Not so in the East. The East, espe-
cially the Semitic East, has known no medium between the utter
anarchy of the nomadic Arabs, and bloody unmitigated despot-
ism. The idea of the commonweal, of the public welfare, is
totally wanting among these nations. Liberty, true and entire,-
such liberty as the Anglo-Saxon peoples have realized,—and
grand State organizations such as the Roman Empire and France
have created, were equally unknown to them. The ancient He-
brews, the Arabs, have been or are at times the freest of men;
but on condition of having the next day a chief who cuts off
heads at his own good pleasure. And when this happens, no
one complains of violated right: David seizes the sceptre by
means of an energetic condottiérie, which does not hinder his
-


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being a very religious man, a king after God's own heart; Solo-
mon ascends the throne and maintains himself there by measures
such as sultans in all ages have used, but this does not prevent
his being called the wisest of kings. When the prophets storm
against royalty, it is not in the name of a political right; it is
in the name of theocracy. Theocracy, anarchy, despotism,—
such, gentlemen, is a summary of the Semitic polity; happily it
is not ours. The political principle drawn from the Holy Script-
ures (very badly drawn, it is true) by Bossuet, is a detestable
principle. In polity, as in poetry, religion, philosophy, the duty
of the Indo-European nations is to seek after nice combinations;
the harmony of opposite things; the complexity so totally un-
known among the Semitic nations, whose organization has always
been of a disheartening and fatal simplicity.