The author,
prematurely
surfeited, boasts of having
studied everything under the sun, and of having found nothing
but vanity.
studied everything under the sun, and of having found nothing
but vanity.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
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
## p. 12174 (#216) ##########################################
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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
## p. 12175 (#217) ##########################################
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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
## p. 12176 (#218) ##########################################
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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
## p. 12177 (#219) ##########################################
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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,
XXI-762
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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
## p. 12179 (#221) ##########################################
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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.
## p. 12181 (#223) ##########################################
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12181
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.
In art and poetry, what do we owe them? In art, nothing.
These tribes have but little of the artist; our art comes entirely
from Greece. In poetry, nevertheless, without being their tribu-
taries, we have with them more than one bond of union. The
Psalms have become in some respects one of our sources of
poetry. Hebrew poetry has taken a place with us beside Greek
poetry, not as having furnished a distinct order of poetry, but as
constituting a poetic ideal,-a sort of Olympus where in conse-
quence of an accepted prestige everything is suffused with a halo
of light. Milton, Lamartine, Lamennais, would not exist, or at
least would not exist as they are, but for the Psalms. Here
again, however, all the shades of expression, all the delicacy, all
the depth is our work. The thing essentially poetic is the des-
tiny of man: his melancholy moods, his restless search after
causes, his just complaint to heaven. There was no necessity of
going to strangers to learn this. The eternal school here is each
man's soul.
In science and philosophy we are exclusively Greek. The
investigation of causes, knowledge for knowledge's own sake, is
a thing of which there is no trace previous to Greece, a thing
that we have learned from her alone. Babylon possessed a
science; but it had not that pre-eminently scientific principle, the
absolute fixedness of natural law. Egypt had some knowledge of
geometry, but it did not originate the 'Elements' of Euclid. As
for the old Semitic spirit, it is by its nature anti-philosophic,
anti-scientific. In Job, the investigation of causes is represented
as almost an impiety. In Ecclesiastes, science is declared to be
## p. 12183 (#225) ##########################################
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12183
a vanity.
The author, prematurely surfeited, boasts of having
studied everything under the sun, and of having found nothing
but vanity. Aristotle, who was almost his contemporary, and who
might have said with more reason that he had exhausted the
universe, never speaks of his weariness. The wisdom of the
Semitic nations never got beyond parables and proverbs. We
often hear of Arabian science and philosophy; and it is true that
during one or two centuries in the Middle Ages, the Arabs were
our masters, but only however until the discovery of the Greek
originals. As soon as authentic Greece emerges, this Arabian
science and philosophy - these miserable translations- become
useless; and it is not without reason that all the philologists,
of the Renaissance undertake a veritable crusade against them.
Moreover, on close examination, we find that this Arabian science
had nothing of the Arab in it. Its foundation is purely Greek:
among those who originated it, there is not one real Semite; they
were Spaniards and Persians writing in Arabic. The Jews of the
Middle Ages acted also as simple interpreters of philosophy. The
Jewish philosophy of the epoch is unmodified Arabic.
One page
of Roger Bacon contains more of the true scientific spirit than
does all that second-hand science, worthy of respect certainly as
a link of tradition, but destitute of all noble originality.
If we examine the question with reference to moral and social
ideas, we shall find that the Semitic ethics are occasionally very
lofty and very pure. The code attributed to Moses contains ele-
vated ideas of right. The prophets are at times very eloquent
tribunes. The moralists, Jesus son of Sirak, and Hillel, reach a
surprising grandeur. Let us not forget, finally, that the ethics
of the Gospel were first preached in a Semitic tongue.
On
the other hand, the Semitic nature is in general hard, narrow,
egotistical. This race possesses noble passions, complete self-
devotions, matchless characters. But there is rarely that delicacy
of moral sense which seems to be the especial endowment of the
Germanic and Celtic races. Tender, profound, melancholy senti-
ments, those dreams of the infinite in which all the faculties of
the soul blend, that grand revelation of duty which alone gives a
solid basis to our faith and our hopes,- are the work of our race
and our climate. Here then the task is divided. The moral
education of humanity is not the exclusive merit of any race.
The reason is quite simple: morals are not taught any more
than poetry; fine aphorisms do not make the honest man; each
## p. 12184 (#226) ##########################################
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one finds goodness in the loftiness of his nature, in the imme-
diate revelation of his heart.
In industrial pursuits, inventions, external civilization, we owe
certainly much to the Semitic peoples. Our race, gentlemen, did
not set out with a taste for comfort and for business.
It was a
moral, brave, warlike race, jealous of liberty and honor, loving
nature, capable of sacrifice, preferring many things to life. Trade,
the arts of industry, were practiced for the first time on a grand
scale by the Semitic tribes; or at least by those speaking a
Semitic language,- the Phoenicians. In the Middle Ages, also,
the Arabs and the Jews were our instructors in commercial
affairs. All European luxury, from ancient times till the seven-
teenth century, came from the East. I say luxury, and not art:
the distance from one to the other is infinite. Greece, which
in point of art was immensely superior to the rest of mankind,
was not a country of luxury: there the magnificence of the Great
King's palace was spoken of with disdain; and were it permitted
to us to see the house of Pericles, we should probably find it
hardly habitable. I do not insist on this point, for it would be
necessary to consider whether the Asiatic luxury-that of Bab-
ylon, for instance - is really due to the Semites; I doubt it, for
my part. But one gift they have incontestably made us: a gift
of the highest order, and one which ought to place the Phoni-
cians, in the history of progress, almost by the side of the
Hebrews and the Arabs, their brothers,- writing. You know
that the characters we use at this day are, through a thousand
transformations, those that the Semites used first to express the
sounds of their language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, from
which all our European alphabets are derived, are nothing else
than the Phoenician alphabet. Phonetics, that bright device for
expressing each articulate sound by a sign, and for reducing the
articulate sound to a small number (twenty-two), is a Semitic
invention. But for them, we should perhaps be still dragging
along painfully with hieroglyphics. In one sense we may say
that the Phoenicians, whose whole literature has so unfortunately
disappeared, have thus laid down the essential condition of all
vigorous and precise exercise of thought.
But I am eager, gentlemen, to come to the prime service which
the Semitic race has rendered to the world,-its peculiar work,
its providential mission, if I may so express myself. We owe to
the Semitic race neither political life, art, poetry, philosophy, nor
## p. 12185 (#227) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
12185
science. What then do we owe to them? We owe to them re-
ligion. The whole world—if we except India, China, Japan, and
tribes altogether savage-has adopted the Semitic religions.
The civilized world comprises only Jews, Christians, and Mussul-
mans. The Indo-European race in particular, excepting the Brah-
manic family and the feeble relics of the Parsees, has gone over
completely to the Semitic faiths. What has been the cause of
this strange phenomenon? How happens it that the nations who
hold the supremacy of the world have renounced their own creed
to adopt that of the people they have conquered?
The primitive worship of the Indo-European race, gentlemen,
was charming and profound, like the imagination of the nations
themselves. It was like an echo of nature, a sort of naturalistic
hymn, in which the idea of one sole cause appears but occasion-
ally and uncertainly. It was a child's religion, full of artless-
ness and poetry, but destined to crumble at the first demand of
thought. Persia first effected its reform (that which is associated
with the name of Zoroaster) under influences and at an epoch
unknown to us. Greece, in the time of Pisistratus, was already
dissatisfied with her religion, and was turning towards the East.
In the Roman period, the old pagan worship had become utterly
insufficient. It no longer addressed the imagination; it spoke
feebly to the moral sense. The old myths on the forces of nature
had become changed into fables; not unfrequently amusing and
ingenious, but destitute of all religious value. It is precisely at
this epoch that the civilized world finds itself face to face with
the Jewish faith. Based upon the clear and simple dogma of
the Divine unity; discarding naturalism and pantheism by the
marvelously terse phrase, “In the beginning, God created the
heaven and the earth"; possessing a law, a book, the depository
of grand moral precepts and of an elevated religious poetry,—
Judaism had an incontestable superiority; and it might have been
foreseen then that some day the world would become Jewish,—
that is to say, would forsake the old mythology for Monotheism.
An extraordinary movement which took place at this epoch in
the heart of Judaism itself decided the victory. By the side
of its grand and incomparable qualities, Judaism contained the
principle of a narrow formalism, of an exclusive and scornful
fanaticism; this was the Pharisaic spirit which became later
the Talmudic spirit. Had Judaism been merely Phariseeism it
would have had no future. But this race had within itself a
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truly remarkable religious activity. Like all the noble races,
moreover, it combined contrary elements: it knew how to react
on itself, and to develop at need qualities the very opposite of
its defects.
In the midst of the enormous ferment in which the Jewish
nation was plunged under the last Asmoneans, there took place
in Galilee the most wonderful moral event which history has
ever recorded. A matchless man-so grand, that although here.
all must be judged from a purely scientific point of view, I
would not gainsay those who, struck with the exceptional char-
acter of his work, call him God-effected a reform in Judaism; a
reform so radical, so thorough, that it was in all respects a com-
plete creation. Having reached a higher religious plane than
ever man reached before, having attained the point of regarding
himself in his relation to God as a son to his father, devoted to
his work with a forgetfulness of all else and a self-renunciation
never so sublimely practiced before, the victim at last of his
idea and deified by death, Jesus founded the eternal religion.
of humanity, the religion of the soul, stripped of everything
sacerdotal, of creed, of external ceremonies, accessible to every
race, superior to all castes, in a word absolute: "Woman, the
hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at
Jerusalem, worship the Father; but when the true worshipers
shall worship him in spirit and in truth. " The vital centre was
established to which humanity must for centuries refer its hopes,
its consolations, its motives for well-doing. The most copious
source of virtue that the sympathetic touch of a sublime con-
science ever caused to well up in the heart of man was opened.
The lofty thought of Jesus, hardly comprehended by his disciples,
suffered many lapses. Christianity, notwithstanding, prevailed
from the very first; and prevailed supremely over other existing
religions. These religions, which pretended to no absolute value,
which had no strong organizations, and which represented no
moral idea, offered but feeble resistance. Some attempts which
were made to reform them in accordance with the new needs of
humanity, and to introduce into them an earnest moral element,
-the effort of Julian, for instance,- failed completely. The Em-
pire, which clearly saw its principle threatened by the birth of a
new power, the Church, resisted at first energetically. It ended
by adopting the faith it had opposed. All the nations that were
under Greek and Latin influence became Christian; the Germanic
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12187
and Slavic peoples came in a little later. Persia and India alone
of the Indo-European race-thanks to their very strong religious
institutions, which are closely allied to their polity-preserved,
though much modified, the ancient worship of their forefathers.
The Brahmanic race, especially, rendered to the world a scien-
tific service of the highest kind, by preserving with a minute and
touching excess of precaution the oldest hymns of their faith, the
Vedas.
But after this incomparable victory the religious fecundity of
the Semitic race was not exhausted. Christianity, absorbed by
Greek and Latin civilization, had become a Western institution.
The East, its cradle, was precisely the land in which it encoun-
tered the most formidable obstacles. Arabia in particular, in the
seventh century, could not make up its mind to become Christ-
ian. Hesitating between Judaism and Christianity, native super-
stitions and the remembrance of the old patriarchal faith, recoiling
from the mythologic elements which the Indo-European race had
introduced into the heart of Christianity, Arabia wished to return
to the religion of Abraham; she founded Islamism. Islamism, in
its turn, appeared immensely superior amidst the debased reli-
gions of Asia. With one breath it overturned Parsism, which
had been vigorous enough under the Sassanidæ to triumph over
Christianity, and reduce it to the condition of an insignificant
sect. India in its turn saw, but without being converted, the
Divine unity proclaimed victoriously in the midst of its obsolete
pantheon. Islamism, in a word, won over to Monotheism almost
all the heathen whom Christianity had not yet converted. It is
finishing its mission in our days by the conquest of Africa, which
is becoming at this time almost wholly Mussulman. With a
few exceptions, of secondary importance, the world has been thus
conquered entire by the monotheistic apostleship of the Semites.
Do we mean to say that the Indo-European nations, in adopt-
ing the Semitic dogma, have completely given up their own
individuality? No indeed. In adopting the Semitic religion, we
have modified it profoundly. Christianity, as popularly under-
stood, is in reality our work. Primitive Christianity, consisting
essentially of the apocalyptic belief in a Kingdom of God, which
was about to come; Christianity as it existed in the mind of a
St. James, of a Papias,- was very different from our Christian-
ity, incumbered with metaphysics by the Greek Fathers and with
scholasticism by the Middle Ages, and by the progress of modern
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times reduced to a teaching of morality and charity. The victory
of Christianity was secured only when it broke completely its
Jewish shell, when it became again what it had been in the lofty
purpose of its founder,- a creation released from the narrow
trammels of the Semitic mind. This is so true that the Jews
and Mussulmans feel only aversion to this religion, the sister of
their own, but which in the hands of another race has clothed
itself with an exquisite poetry, with a delicious attire of romantic
legends. Refined, sensitive, imaginative souls, such as the author
of the 'Imitation,' the mystics of the Middle Ages, and the
saints in general, professed a religion which had indeed sprung
from the Semitic genius, but had been transformed from its very
foundation by the genius of modern nations, especially of the
Celts and Germans. That depth of sentimentalism, that species
of religious languor of a Francis d'Assisi, of a Fra Angelico,
were the precise opposite of the Semitic genius, which is essen-
tially hard and dry.
As regards the future, gentlemen, I see in it more and more
the triumph of the Indo-European genius. Since the sixteenth
century an immense event, until then undecided, has been com-
ing out with striking vigor. It is the definitive victory of
Europe, the accomplishment of this old Semitic proverb: “Let
God increase Japhet, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan (Cham ? ) be his servant. "
Till that time the Semitic spirit had been master on its soil.
The Mussulman East defeated the West; had better arms and
a better political system; sent it riches, knowledge, civilization.
Henceforward the parts are changed. European genius rises
with peerless grandeur; Islamism, on the contrary, is slowly
decomposing, in our days it is falling with a crash. At the
present time, the essential condition of a diffused civilization is
the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruc-
tion of the theocratic power of Islamism; consequently the
destruction of Islamism itself: for Islamism can exist only as an
official religion; as soon as it shall be reduced to the state of
a free personal religion, it will perish. Islamism is not merely
a State religion, as Catholicism was in France under Louis XIV. ,
as it still is in Spain: it is religion excluding the State; it is
an organization the type of which, in Europe, the Pontifical
States alone exhibited. There is the endless strife; the strife
which will cease only when the last son of Ishmael shall have
―――――
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12189
died of misery, or shall have been driven by terror into the
depths of the desert. Islam completely negatives Europe; Islam
is fanaticism, such as Spain under Philip II. and Italy under Pius
V. have scarcely known; Islam is contempt for science, suppres-
sion of civil society; it is the appalling simplicity of the Semitic
spirit cramping the human intellect, closing it against every
delicate thought, every fine feeling, every rational inquiry, to con-
front it with an eternal repetition:- God is God.
The future, gentlemen, belongs then to Europe, and to Europe
alone. Europe will conquer the world; and spread through it her
religion, which is law, liberty, respect for man,- the belief that
there is something Divine in the heart of humanity. In all
departments, progress for the Indo-European people will consist
in departing farther and farther from the Semitic spirit. Our
religion will become less and less Jewish; more and more will it
reject all political organizations as connected with the affairs of
the soul. It will become the religion of the heart, the innermost
poetry of every soul. In ethics we shall cultivate a refinement
unknown to the austere natures of the Old Alliance; we shall
become more and more Christian. In polity we shall reconcile
two things which the Semitic nations have always ignored,—
liberty and a strong State organization. From poetry we shall
demand expression for that instinct of the infinite which is at
once our joy and our torment,- at all events our greatness.
From philosophy, instead of the absolute of the scholastics, we
shall demand delicate studies on the general system of the uni-
verse. In everything we shall seek after fine distinctions,-
subtlety instead of dogmatism, the relative in place of the abso-
lute. There is the future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to
belong to progress. Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny
of man and his relations with the infinite? Shall we know more
surely the law of the origin of beings, the nature of conscience,
what is life and personality? Without lapsing into credulity, and
still persisting in its path of positive philosophy, will the world
recover its joy, its ardor, its hope, its deeper thoughts? Will
existence become again worth the possessing, and will the man
who believes in duty find in duty his reward? This science to
which we consecrate our life,- will it render back to us what
we sacrifice to it? I know not. But this is certain, that in seek-
ing out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our duty.
If truth be cheerless, we shall at least have the consolation of
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having honestly discovered it: we may say that we deserved to
find it more consoling,- still, we will bear this witness in our
hearts, that we have been thoroughly sincere.
To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts. History
demonstrates that there is in human nature a transcendent in-
stinct that urges it towards a nobler aim. The development of
man is inexplicable on the hypothesis that man is only a being
with an already finished destiny, virtue only a refined egotism,
religion but a chimera. Let us work on, then, gentlemen. What-
ever the author of Ecclesiastes may say in a moment of discour-
agement, science is not "the meanest occupation that God has
given to the sons of men. " It is the best. If all be vanity,
he who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped
than others. If all the good and true be real,-and we are sure
that they are, their seeker and lover will have unquestionably
breathed the finest spirit.
We shall not meet again, gentlemen.
At my next lecture, I
shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the greater number of
you will not follow me. But I pray those who are young, and to
whom I may be allowed to offer a word of counsel, to favor me
with their attention. The impulse which is in you, and which
has shown itself more than once during this lecture in a manner
so honorable to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good
promise; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous activity.
Direct your attention to solid studies; believe that the liberal
thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, nobleness of heart,
independence of judgment. Prepare for our country generations
ripe for all that makes the glory and the ornament of life. Be-
ware of rash enthusiasms; and remember that liberty is won
only by earnestness, respect for ourselves and others, devotion to
the commonweal, and to the special work that each of us in this
world is called upon to establish or to continue.
-
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12191
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CELTIC RACE
From La Poésie des Races Celtiques'
-
IT
F THE excellence of races were to be decided by their purity of
blood and inviolability of character, it must be confessed that
none would be able to vie with the nobility of the still exist-
ing remnants of the Celtic race. No human family has ever
lived more isolated from the world, and remained more pure from
all foreign mixture. Driven by conquests to half-forgotten islands
and peninsulas, it has raised an insurmountable barrier to all
outside influence: it has depended upon itself for everything, and
has drawn its life from its own sources. Hence this dominant
individuality, this hate of the foreign element, which even to our
day has been the distinguishing trait of the Celtic races. The
civilization of Rome hardly touched them, and left but little mark
upon them.
The Germanic invasion drove them back but did
not absorb them. At the present moment they are resisting
another and even more dangerous invasion, that of modern civ
ilization, so destructive to local distinctions and national types.
Ireland especially (and this may be the secret of her irremedia-
ble weakness) is the only European country where the native
can show the title of his descent, and can point out with certi-
tude, even as far back as the prehistoric shadows, the race from
which he sprang.
It is in this retired life, in this defiance of all outside influ-
ence, that we must seek the explanation of the principal traits of
the Celtic racial character. It has all the faults and all the
qualities of the solitary man: at once proud and timid, strong in
feeling and feeble in action; at home free and open, away from
home awkward and shy. It distrusts the stranger because it sees
in him a being more subtle than itself, seeking to impose on its
simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only
one thing, that it be left alone. It is essentially a domestic
race, made for family life and the joys of home.
It is easily seen that natures so strongly concentrated would
not be of a kind to present one of those brilliant developments.
that impress the world with the sudden ascendency of a people;
and that is undoubtedly why the Cymric race has always played
a subordinate part. Lacking in the power to reach out, strange
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to all instincts of aggression and conquest, not caring to have its
thought take the lead in the world outside, it has known only
how to retreat into the least essential space; and then, driven
into this last corner, meet its enemies with invincible resistance.
Even its fidelity has been merely a wasted devotion. Hard to
conquer, and always behind time, it is faithful to its conquerors
when the latter have ceased being faithful to themselves.
It was
the last to surrender its religious independence to Rome, and it
has become the greatest stronghold of Catholicism; it was the
last in France to surrender its political independence to the king,
it has given the world the last royalists.
Thus the Celtic race has spent itself resisting the age and
defending desperate causes. It would seem that at no time has
it had any gift for political life: the sense of family has stifled
all attempts at a larger organization. It would seem also that
the peoples of which it is composed are not in themselves open
to progress.
Life is to them a fixed condition which it is not
in the power of man to change. Gifted with but little initiative
power, too apt to look upon themselves as minors under tutelage,
they are inclined to believe in fatality and to resign themselves.
to it. To see it so submissive to God, one would hardly believe
this race to be the daughter of Japhet.
Hence the reason of its sadness. Take the songs of its bard
of the sixteenth century: the defeats they bewail are more than
the victories they glorify. Its history is but one long complaint;
it till remembers its exile, its flights over the waters.
If at
times it seems to awaken into glad life, a tear soon sparkles
behind its smile; it does not know that strange forgetfulness of
human life and its vicissitudes which we call gayety.
Its songs
of joy end in elegies: nothing approaches the delightful sadness
of its national melodies; one is tempted to call them dews from
heaven, which, falling on the soul drop by drop, sink into it like
memories of another world. One never feels more completely
the secret delights of consciousness, those poetic memories
where all the sensations of life meet at once, so vague, so deep,
so penetrating, that were they to last but a moment longer one
would die thereof, without being able to say whether it were of
bitter sorrow or of tenderness.
――――
The infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the
Celtic race is intimately connected with its necessity of concen-
tration. Undemonstrative natures are nearly always those that
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12193
feel most intensely; the deeper the sentiment, the less can it ex-
press itself. Hence this charming modesty, this something, as it
were, veiled, serious, exquisite,― equally far from the rhetoric of
sentiment, too familiar in the Latin races, and from the conscious
naïveté of Germany,- which expresses itself in so admirable a
way in the songs published by M. de la Villemarqué. The ap-
parent reserve of the Celtic peoples, so often taken for coldness,
comes from this timidity of soul which makes them think that a
feeling loses half its worth when it is expressed, and that the
heart must have no audience beside itself.
If it were permissible to give nations a sex as we do indi-
viduals, we should unhesitatingly say that the Celtic race, espe-
cially taken in its Cymric and Breton branches, is an essentially
feminine race. No human family has, I believe, brought so much
mystery into love.
No other has had a more delicate conception
of the ideal of woman, and has been more dominated thereby.
It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a dizziness. Read the
strange Mabinogion of Pérédur, or its French imitation Parceval
the Gaul: these pages are, so to speak, soft with feminine senti-
ment. Woman appears therein like a sort of vague vision, some-
thing between man and the supernatural world. I know of no
literature which offers anything analogous.
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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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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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
## p. 12176 (#218) ##########################################
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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,
XXI-762
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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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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.
In art and poetry, what do we owe them? In art, nothing.
These tribes have but little of the artist; our art comes entirely
from Greece. In poetry, nevertheless, without being their tribu-
taries, we have with them more than one bond of union. The
Psalms have become in some respects one of our sources of
poetry. Hebrew poetry has taken a place with us beside Greek
poetry, not as having furnished a distinct order of poetry, but as
constituting a poetic ideal,-a sort of Olympus where in conse-
quence of an accepted prestige everything is suffused with a halo
of light. Milton, Lamartine, Lamennais, would not exist, or at
least would not exist as they are, but for the Psalms. Here
again, however, all the shades of expression, all the delicacy, all
the depth is our work. The thing essentially poetic is the des-
tiny of man: his melancholy moods, his restless search after
causes, his just complaint to heaven. There was no necessity of
going to strangers to learn this. The eternal school here is each
man's soul.
In science and philosophy we are exclusively Greek. The
investigation of causes, knowledge for knowledge's own sake, is
a thing of which there is no trace previous to Greece, a thing
that we have learned from her alone. Babylon possessed a
science; but it had not that pre-eminently scientific principle, the
absolute fixedness of natural law. Egypt had some knowledge of
geometry, but it did not originate the 'Elements' of Euclid. As
for the old Semitic spirit, it is by its nature anti-philosophic,
anti-scientific. In Job, the investigation of causes is represented
as almost an impiety. In Ecclesiastes, science is declared to be
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a vanity.
The author, prematurely surfeited, boasts of having
studied everything under the sun, and of having found nothing
but vanity. Aristotle, who was almost his contemporary, and who
might have said with more reason that he had exhausted the
universe, never speaks of his weariness. The wisdom of the
Semitic nations never got beyond parables and proverbs. We
often hear of Arabian science and philosophy; and it is true that
during one or two centuries in the Middle Ages, the Arabs were
our masters, but only however until the discovery of the Greek
originals. As soon as authentic Greece emerges, this Arabian
science and philosophy - these miserable translations- become
useless; and it is not without reason that all the philologists,
of the Renaissance undertake a veritable crusade against them.
Moreover, on close examination, we find that this Arabian science
had nothing of the Arab in it. Its foundation is purely Greek:
among those who originated it, there is not one real Semite; they
were Spaniards and Persians writing in Arabic. The Jews of the
Middle Ages acted also as simple interpreters of philosophy. The
Jewish philosophy of the epoch is unmodified Arabic.
One page
of Roger Bacon contains more of the true scientific spirit than
does all that second-hand science, worthy of respect certainly as
a link of tradition, but destitute of all noble originality.
If we examine the question with reference to moral and social
ideas, we shall find that the Semitic ethics are occasionally very
lofty and very pure. The code attributed to Moses contains ele-
vated ideas of right. The prophets are at times very eloquent
tribunes. The moralists, Jesus son of Sirak, and Hillel, reach a
surprising grandeur. Let us not forget, finally, that the ethics
of the Gospel were first preached in a Semitic tongue.
On
the other hand, the Semitic nature is in general hard, narrow,
egotistical. This race possesses noble passions, complete self-
devotions, matchless characters. But there is rarely that delicacy
of moral sense which seems to be the especial endowment of the
Germanic and Celtic races. Tender, profound, melancholy senti-
ments, those dreams of the infinite in which all the faculties of
the soul blend, that grand revelation of duty which alone gives a
solid basis to our faith and our hopes,- are the work of our race
and our climate. Here then the task is divided. The moral
education of humanity is not the exclusive merit of any race.
The reason is quite simple: morals are not taught any more
than poetry; fine aphorisms do not make the honest man; each
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one finds goodness in the loftiness of his nature, in the imme-
diate revelation of his heart.
In industrial pursuits, inventions, external civilization, we owe
certainly much to the Semitic peoples. Our race, gentlemen, did
not set out with a taste for comfort and for business.
It was a
moral, brave, warlike race, jealous of liberty and honor, loving
nature, capable of sacrifice, preferring many things to life. Trade,
the arts of industry, were practiced for the first time on a grand
scale by the Semitic tribes; or at least by those speaking a
Semitic language,- the Phoenicians. In the Middle Ages, also,
the Arabs and the Jews were our instructors in commercial
affairs. All European luxury, from ancient times till the seven-
teenth century, came from the East. I say luxury, and not art:
the distance from one to the other is infinite. Greece, which
in point of art was immensely superior to the rest of mankind,
was not a country of luxury: there the magnificence of the Great
King's palace was spoken of with disdain; and were it permitted
to us to see the house of Pericles, we should probably find it
hardly habitable. I do not insist on this point, for it would be
necessary to consider whether the Asiatic luxury-that of Bab-
ylon, for instance - is really due to the Semites; I doubt it, for
my part. But one gift they have incontestably made us: a gift
of the highest order, and one which ought to place the Phoni-
cians, in the history of progress, almost by the side of the
Hebrews and the Arabs, their brothers,- writing. You know
that the characters we use at this day are, through a thousand
transformations, those that the Semites used first to express the
sounds of their language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, from
which all our European alphabets are derived, are nothing else
than the Phoenician alphabet. Phonetics, that bright device for
expressing each articulate sound by a sign, and for reducing the
articulate sound to a small number (twenty-two), is a Semitic
invention. But for them, we should perhaps be still dragging
along painfully with hieroglyphics. In one sense we may say
that the Phoenicians, whose whole literature has so unfortunately
disappeared, have thus laid down the essential condition of all
vigorous and precise exercise of thought.
But I am eager, gentlemen, to come to the prime service which
the Semitic race has rendered to the world,-its peculiar work,
its providential mission, if I may so express myself. We owe to
the Semitic race neither political life, art, poetry, philosophy, nor
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12185
science. What then do we owe to them? We owe to them re-
ligion. The whole world—if we except India, China, Japan, and
tribes altogether savage-has adopted the Semitic religions.
The civilized world comprises only Jews, Christians, and Mussul-
mans. The Indo-European race in particular, excepting the Brah-
manic family and the feeble relics of the Parsees, has gone over
completely to the Semitic faiths. What has been the cause of
this strange phenomenon? How happens it that the nations who
hold the supremacy of the world have renounced their own creed
to adopt that of the people they have conquered?
The primitive worship of the Indo-European race, gentlemen,
was charming and profound, like the imagination of the nations
themselves. It was like an echo of nature, a sort of naturalistic
hymn, in which the idea of one sole cause appears but occasion-
ally and uncertainly. It was a child's religion, full of artless-
ness and poetry, but destined to crumble at the first demand of
thought. Persia first effected its reform (that which is associated
with the name of Zoroaster) under influences and at an epoch
unknown to us. Greece, in the time of Pisistratus, was already
dissatisfied with her religion, and was turning towards the East.
In the Roman period, the old pagan worship had become utterly
insufficient. It no longer addressed the imagination; it spoke
feebly to the moral sense. The old myths on the forces of nature
had become changed into fables; not unfrequently amusing and
ingenious, but destitute of all religious value. It is precisely at
this epoch that the civilized world finds itself face to face with
the Jewish faith. Based upon the clear and simple dogma of
the Divine unity; discarding naturalism and pantheism by the
marvelously terse phrase, “In the beginning, God created the
heaven and the earth"; possessing a law, a book, the depository
of grand moral precepts and of an elevated religious poetry,—
Judaism had an incontestable superiority; and it might have been
foreseen then that some day the world would become Jewish,—
that is to say, would forsake the old mythology for Monotheism.
An extraordinary movement which took place at this epoch in
the heart of Judaism itself decided the victory. By the side
of its grand and incomparable qualities, Judaism contained the
principle of a narrow formalism, of an exclusive and scornful
fanaticism; this was the Pharisaic spirit which became later
the Talmudic spirit. Had Judaism been merely Phariseeism it
would have had no future. But this race had within itself a
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truly remarkable religious activity. Like all the noble races,
moreover, it combined contrary elements: it knew how to react
on itself, and to develop at need qualities the very opposite of
its defects.
In the midst of the enormous ferment in which the Jewish
nation was plunged under the last Asmoneans, there took place
in Galilee the most wonderful moral event which history has
ever recorded. A matchless man-so grand, that although here.
all must be judged from a purely scientific point of view, I
would not gainsay those who, struck with the exceptional char-
acter of his work, call him God-effected a reform in Judaism; a
reform so radical, so thorough, that it was in all respects a com-
plete creation. Having reached a higher religious plane than
ever man reached before, having attained the point of regarding
himself in his relation to God as a son to his father, devoted to
his work with a forgetfulness of all else and a self-renunciation
never so sublimely practiced before, the victim at last of his
idea and deified by death, Jesus founded the eternal religion.
of humanity, the religion of the soul, stripped of everything
sacerdotal, of creed, of external ceremonies, accessible to every
race, superior to all castes, in a word absolute: "Woman, the
hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at
Jerusalem, worship the Father; but when the true worshipers
shall worship him in spirit and in truth. " The vital centre was
established to which humanity must for centuries refer its hopes,
its consolations, its motives for well-doing. The most copious
source of virtue that the sympathetic touch of a sublime con-
science ever caused to well up in the heart of man was opened.
The lofty thought of Jesus, hardly comprehended by his disciples,
suffered many lapses. Christianity, notwithstanding, prevailed
from the very first; and prevailed supremely over other existing
religions. These religions, which pretended to no absolute value,
which had no strong organizations, and which represented no
moral idea, offered but feeble resistance. Some attempts which
were made to reform them in accordance with the new needs of
humanity, and to introduce into them an earnest moral element,
-the effort of Julian, for instance,- failed completely. The Em-
pire, which clearly saw its principle threatened by the birth of a
new power, the Church, resisted at first energetically. It ended
by adopting the faith it had opposed. All the nations that were
under Greek and Latin influence became Christian; the Germanic
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12187
and Slavic peoples came in a little later. Persia and India alone
of the Indo-European race-thanks to their very strong religious
institutions, which are closely allied to their polity-preserved,
though much modified, the ancient worship of their forefathers.
The Brahmanic race, especially, rendered to the world a scien-
tific service of the highest kind, by preserving with a minute and
touching excess of precaution the oldest hymns of their faith, the
Vedas.
But after this incomparable victory the religious fecundity of
the Semitic race was not exhausted. Christianity, absorbed by
Greek and Latin civilization, had become a Western institution.
The East, its cradle, was precisely the land in which it encoun-
tered the most formidable obstacles. Arabia in particular, in the
seventh century, could not make up its mind to become Christ-
ian. Hesitating between Judaism and Christianity, native super-
stitions and the remembrance of the old patriarchal faith, recoiling
from the mythologic elements which the Indo-European race had
introduced into the heart of Christianity, Arabia wished to return
to the religion of Abraham; she founded Islamism. Islamism, in
its turn, appeared immensely superior amidst the debased reli-
gions of Asia. With one breath it overturned Parsism, which
had been vigorous enough under the Sassanidæ to triumph over
Christianity, and reduce it to the condition of an insignificant
sect. India in its turn saw, but without being converted, the
Divine unity proclaimed victoriously in the midst of its obsolete
pantheon. Islamism, in a word, won over to Monotheism almost
all the heathen whom Christianity had not yet converted. It is
finishing its mission in our days by the conquest of Africa, which
is becoming at this time almost wholly Mussulman. With a
few exceptions, of secondary importance, the world has been thus
conquered entire by the monotheistic apostleship of the Semites.
Do we mean to say that the Indo-European nations, in adopt-
ing the Semitic dogma, have completely given up their own
individuality? No indeed. In adopting the Semitic religion, we
have modified it profoundly. Christianity, as popularly under-
stood, is in reality our work. Primitive Christianity, consisting
essentially of the apocalyptic belief in a Kingdom of God, which
was about to come; Christianity as it existed in the mind of a
St. James, of a Papias,- was very different from our Christian-
ity, incumbered with metaphysics by the Greek Fathers and with
scholasticism by the Middle Ages, and by the progress of modern
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times reduced to a teaching of morality and charity. The victory
of Christianity was secured only when it broke completely its
Jewish shell, when it became again what it had been in the lofty
purpose of its founder,- a creation released from the narrow
trammels of the Semitic mind. This is so true that the Jews
and Mussulmans feel only aversion to this religion, the sister of
their own, but which in the hands of another race has clothed
itself with an exquisite poetry, with a delicious attire of romantic
legends. Refined, sensitive, imaginative souls, such as the author
of the 'Imitation,' the mystics of the Middle Ages, and the
saints in general, professed a religion which had indeed sprung
from the Semitic genius, but had been transformed from its very
foundation by the genius of modern nations, especially of the
Celts and Germans. That depth of sentimentalism, that species
of religious languor of a Francis d'Assisi, of a Fra Angelico,
were the precise opposite of the Semitic genius, which is essen-
tially hard and dry.
As regards the future, gentlemen, I see in it more and more
the triumph of the Indo-European genius. Since the sixteenth
century an immense event, until then undecided, has been com-
ing out with striking vigor. It is the definitive victory of
Europe, the accomplishment of this old Semitic proverb: “Let
God increase Japhet, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan (Cham ? ) be his servant. "
Till that time the Semitic spirit had been master on its soil.
The Mussulman East defeated the West; had better arms and
a better political system; sent it riches, knowledge, civilization.
Henceforward the parts are changed. European genius rises
with peerless grandeur; Islamism, on the contrary, is slowly
decomposing, in our days it is falling with a crash. At the
present time, the essential condition of a diffused civilization is
the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruc-
tion of the theocratic power of Islamism; consequently the
destruction of Islamism itself: for Islamism can exist only as an
official religion; as soon as it shall be reduced to the state of
a free personal religion, it will perish. Islamism is not merely
a State religion, as Catholicism was in France under Louis XIV. ,
as it still is in Spain: it is religion excluding the State; it is
an organization the type of which, in Europe, the Pontifical
States alone exhibited. There is the endless strife; the strife
which will cease only when the last son of Ishmael shall have
―――――
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died of misery, or shall have been driven by terror into the
depths of the desert. Islam completely negatives Europe; Islam
is fanaticism, such as Spain under Philip II. and Italy under Pius
V. have scarcely known; Islam is contempt for science, suppres-
sion of civil society; it is the appalling simplicity of the Semitic
spirit cramping the human intellect, closing it against every
delicate thought, every fine feeling, every rational inquiry, to con-
front it with an eternal repetition:- God is God.
The future, gentlemen, belongs then to Europe, and to Europe
alone. Europe will conquer the world; and spread through it her
religion, which is law, liberty, respect for man,- the belief that
there is something Divine in the heart of humanity. In all
departments, progress for the Indo-European people will consist
in departing farther and farther from the Semitic spirit. Our
religion will become less and less Jewish; more and more will it
reject all political organizations as connected with the affairs of
the soul. It will become the religion of the heart, the innermost
poetry of every soul. In ethics we shall cultivate a refinement
unknown to the austere natures of the Old Alliance; we shall
become more and more Christian. In polity we shall reconcile
two things which the Semitic nations have always ignored,—
liberty and a strong State organization. From poetry we shall
demand expression for that instinct of the infinite which is at
once our joy and our torment,- at all events our greatness.
From philosophy, instead of the absolute of the scholastics, we
shall demand delicate studies on the general system of the uni-
verse. In everything we shall seek after fine distinctions,-
subtlety instead of dogmatism, the relative in place of the abso-
lute. There is the future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to
belong to progress. Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny
of man and his relations with the infinite? Shall we know more
surely the law of the origin of beings, the nature of conscience,
what is life and personality? Without lapsing into credulity, and
still persisting in its path of positive philosophy, will the world
recover its joy, its ardor, its hope, its deeper thoughts? Will
existence become again worth the possessing, and will the man
who believes in duty find in duty his reward? This science to
which we consecrate our life,- will it render back to us what
we sacrifice to it? I know not. But this is certain, that in seek-
ing out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our duty.
If truth be cheerless, we shall at least have the consolation of
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having honestly discovered it: we may say that we deserved to
find it more consoling,- still, we will bear this witness in our
hearts, that we have been thoroughly sincere.
To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts. History
demonstrates that there is in human nature a transcendent in-
stinct that urges it towards a nobler aim. The development of
man is inexplicable on the hypothesis that man is only a being
with an already finished destiny, virtue only a refined egotism,
religion but a chimera. Let us work on, then, gentlemen. What-
ever the author of Ecclesiastes may say in a moment of discour-
agement, science is not "the meanest occupation that God has
given to the sons of men. " It is the best. If all be vanity,
he who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped
than others. If all the good and true be real,-and we are sure
that they are, their seeker and lover will have unquestionably
breathed the finest spirit.
We shall not meet again, gentlemen.
At my next lecture, I
shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the greater number of
you will not follow me. But I pray those who are young, and to
whom I may be allowed to offer a word of counsel, to favor me
with their attention. The impulse which is in you, and which
has shown itself more than once during this lecture in a manner
so honorable to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good
promise; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous activity.
Direct your attention to solid studies; believe that the liberal
thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, nobleness of heart,
independence of judgment. Prepare for our country generations
ripe for all that makes the glory and the ornament of life. Be-
ware of rash enthusiasms; and remember that liberty is won
only by earnestness, respect for ourselves and others, devotion to
the commonweal, and to the special work that each of us in this
world is called upon to establish or to continue.
-
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THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CELTIC RACE
From La Poésie des Races Celtiques'
-
IT
F THE excellence of races were to be decided by their purity of
blood and inviolability of character, it must be confessed that
none would be able to vie with the nobility of the still exist-
ing remnants of the Celtic race. No human family has ever
lived more isolated from the world, and remained more pure from
all foreign mixture. Driven by conquests to half-forgotten islands
and peninsulas, it has raised an insurmountable barrier to all
outside influence: it has depended upon itself for everything, and
has drawn its life from its own sources. Hence this dominant
individuality, this hate of the foreign element, which even to our
day has been the distinguishing trait of the Celtic races. The
civilization of Rome hardly touched them, and left but little mark
upon them.
The Germanic invasion drove them back but did
not absorb them. At the present moment they are resisting
another and even more dangerous invasion, that of modern civ
ilization, so destructive to local distinctions and national types.
Ireland especially (and this may be the secret of her irremedia-
ble weakness) is the only European country where the native
can show the title of his descent, and can point out with certi-
tude, even as far back as the prehistoric shadows, the race from
which he sprang.
It is in this retired life, in this defiance of all outside influ-
ence, that we must seek the explanation of the principal traits of
the Celtic racial character. It has all the faults and all the
qualities of the solitary man: at once proud and timid, strong in
feeling and feeble in action; at home free and open, away from
home awkward and shy. It distrusts the stranger because it sees
in him a being more subtle than itself, seeking to impose on its
simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only
one thing, that it be left alone. It is essentially a domestic
race, made for family life and the joys of home.
It is easily seen that natures so strongly concentrated would
not be of a kind to present one of those brilliant developments.
that impress the world with the sudden ascendency of a people;
and that is undoubtedly why the Cymric race has always played
a subordinate part. Lacking in the power to reach out, strange
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to all instincts of aggression and conquest, not caring to have its
thought take the lead in the world outside, it has known only
how to retreat into the least essential space; and then, driven
into this last corner, meet its enemies with invincible resistance.
Even its fidelity has been merely a wasted devotion. Hard to
conquer, and always behind time, it is faithful to its conquerors
when the latter have ceased being faithful to themselves.
It was
the last to surrender its religious independence to Rome, and it
has become the greatest stronghold of Catholicism; it was the
last in France to surrender its political independence to the king,
it has given the world the last royalists.
Thus the Celtic race has spent itself resisting the age and
defending desperate causes. It would seem that at no time has
it had any gift for political life: the sense of family has stifled
all attempts at a larger organization. It would seem also that
the peoples of which it is composed are not in themselves open
to progress.
Life is to them a fixed condition which it is not
in the power of man to change. Gifted with but little initiative
power, too apt to look upon themselves as minors under tutelage,
they are inclined to believe in fatality and to resign themselves.
to it. To see it so submissive to God, one would hardly believe
this race to be the daughter of Japhet.
Hence the reason of its sadness. Take the songs of its bard
of the sixteenth century: the defeats they bewail are more than
the victories they glorify. Its history is but one long complaint;
it till remembers its exile, its flights over the waters.
If at
times it seems to awaken into glad life, a tear soon sparkles
behind its smile; it does not know that strange forgetfulness of
human life and its vicissitudes which we call gayety.
Its songs
of joy end in elegies: nothing approaches the delightful sadness
of its national melodies; one is tempted to call them dews from
heaven, which, falling on the soul drop by drop, sink into it like
memories of another world. One never feels more completely
the secret delights of consciousness, those poetic memories
where all the sensations of life meet at once, so vague, so deep,
so penetrating, that were they to last but a moment longer one
would die thereof, without being able to say whether it were of
bitter sorrow or of tenderness.
――――
The infinite delicacy of sentiment which characterizes the
Celtic race is intimately connected with its necessity of concen-
tration. Undemonstrative natures are nearly always those that
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feel most intensely; the deeper the sentiment, the less can it ex-
press itself. Hence this charming modesty, this something, as it
were, veiled, serious, exquisite,― equally far from the rhetoric of
sentiment, too familiar in the Latin races, and from the conscious
naïveté of Germany,- which expresses itself in so admirable a
way in the songs published by M. de la Villemarqué. The ap-
parent reserve of the Celtic peoples, so often taken for coldness,
comes from this timidity of soul which makes them think that a
feeling loses half its worth when it is expressed, and that the
heart must have no audience beside itself.
If it were permissible to give nations a sex as we do indi-
viduals, we should unhesitatingly say that the Celtic race, espe-
cially taken in its Cymric and Breton branches, is an essentially
feminine race. No human family has, I believe, brought so much
mystery into love.
No other has had a more delicate conception
of the ideal of woman, and has been more dominated thereby.
It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a dizziness. Read the
strange Mabinogion of Pérédur, or its French imitation Parceval
the Gaul: these pages are, so to speak, soft with feminine senti-
ment. Woman appears therein like a sort of vague vision, some-
thing between man and the supernatural world. I know of no
literature which offers anything analogous.
