It will become the
religion
of the heart, the innermost
poetry of every soul.
poetry of every soul.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
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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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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ERNEST RENAN
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
## p. 12193 (#235) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
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. Compare Genevra
and Isolde with the Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Krimhilde,
and you will admit that woman, as chivalry has conceived her,-
this ideal of tenderness and beauty set up as the supreme end of
life, is neither a classic, nor a Christian, nor a Germanic crea-
tion, but truly Celtic.
The power of imagination is almost always in proportion to
the concentration of feeling and to the lack of events in outward
life. The very limitation of the imagination of Greece and Italy
comes from the easy self-expression of the peoples of the South,
with whom the soul, spent upon the outside world, has very little
self-reflection. Compared with classic imagination, Celtic imagina-
tion is really the infinite compared to the finite. In the beautiful
Mabinogion of The Dream' of Maxen Wledig, the emperor
Maxime sees in his dream a young girl so beautiful that on
awakening he declares that he cannot live without her. For
several years his ambassadors travel through the world to find
her for him. She is finally discovered in Bretagne. This is what
the Celtic race did: it grew tired of taking its dreams for reali-
ties, and running after beautiful visions. The essential element
XXI-763
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## p. 12194 (#236) ##########################################
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of Celtic poetic life is adventure,- that is to say, the pursuit of
the unknown, a never-ending hunt after the always fleeing object
af desire. This is what St. Brandan dreamed on the other side
of the waters; this is what Pérédur sought in his mystic chiv-
alry; this is what the knight Owenn expected of his subterranean
peregrinations. This race wants the infinite; it is thirsting for
it, it seeks it at all hazards, beyond the grave, beyond hell. The
essential fault of the Breton people- the leaning toward drink, a
fault which according to the traditions of the sixteenth century
was the cause of its disasters. comes from this invincible need
of illusion. Do not say that it is an appetite for gross pleasures,
for, aside from this, there never was a people more sober and
free from sensuality; no, the Bretons sought in the hydromel
what Owenn, St. Brandan, and Pérédur, sought in their way,—
the vision of the invisible world. Even to-day, in Ireland,
drunkenness is part of all patronal feasts,- that is to say, of the
feasts which have best preserved their national and popular
character.
-
Hence this profound sentiment of the future, and the eternal
destiny of its race, which has always upheld the Cymry, and
makes it appear young still beside its aged conquerors. Hence
this dogma of the resurrection of heroes, which seems to have
been one of those most difficult for Christianity to uproot. Hence
this Celtic belief in the coming of a Messiah (messianisme'), this
belief in a future which will restore the Cymry and deliver it
from its oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok which Merlin.
has promised them, the Lez-Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur
of the Gauls. The hand which raises itself out of the lake when
Arthur's sword falls in, which seizes it and brandishes it three
times, is the hope of the Celtic races. Little peoples gifted with
imagination do usually thus take their revenge over those who
conquer them. Feeling strong within and feeble without, they
protest, they grow inspired: and such a struggle, strengthening
their forces tenfold, makes them capable of miracles. Almost
all great appeals to the supernatural are due to people hoping
against all hope. Who can say what has in our days been fer-
menting in the heart of that most obstinate and most helpless of
nations, Poland? Israel humiliated dreamt of the spiritual con-
quest of the world, and succeeded.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 12195 (#237) ##########################################
12195
FRITZ REUTER
(1810-1874)
MONG the novelists of the German realistic school, Fritz Reuter
occupies the first place. No one of them has come nearer
than he to the heart of life, nor understood with greater
sympathy the lives of the people, in whose apparently monotonous
and commonplace conditions he found endless dramatic possibilities
of humor and pathos. He is the novelist of the proletariat; his works
are steeped in the clear sunshine of the working-day world. With
the romantic moonshine of an artificial nobility he had nothing to do.
His life was favorable for the fostering
of his peculiar genius. He was born on
the 7th of November, 1810, at Stavenhagen
in Mecklenburg-Schwerin: his boyhood was
passed in this sleepy, out-of-the-way Ger-
man town, among such types of people as
he has immortalized in his novels. His
father was burgomaster and sheriff of the
place, and was also a farmer; he purposed
however that his son should study law.
Until his fourteenth year the boy was edu-
cated at home with private tutors; then
he entered the gymnasium at Friedland in
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and afterwards passed
through the higher classes of the gymna-
sium at Parchim. In 1831 he attended lectures on jurisprudence at
the University of Rostock, going the following year to the Univer-
sity of Jena, where he became a member of the Burschenschaft Ger-
mania. The government, alarmed by the revolutionary agitation of
1830, was on the lookout for undue exhibitions of patriotism among
the student body. The riot at Frankfort in 1833 served as a pretext
for making arrests. Reuter was seized, on no other evidence of guilt
than that of wearing the German colors, was tried and condemned
to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted by King
Frederick William III. to thirty years' imprisonment. Reuter was
taken from one Prussian fortress to another; in 1838, through the
intervention of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, he was delivered over
to the authorities of his native State. A two-years' imprisonment in
FRITZ REUTER
## p. 12196 (#238) ##########################################
12196
FRITZ REUTER
the fortress of Dömitz followed. In 1840, Frederick William IV.
having proclaimed an amnesty after his accession, Reuter was set
free. Severe as his experiences had been, they had ripened him and
prepared him for his life's work, though at that time he was scarcely
aware of his gifts. He went to Heidelberg to resume his legal stud-
ies; but the death of his father compelled his return to Stavenhagen,
where he undertook the charge of the farm. During this period he
gained that practical knowledge of agriculture and of the farmer's
life which he has interwoven in his masterpiece, 'My Apprenticeship
on the Farm. ' In 1850 he was obliged, however, to abandon farming:
removing to Sreptow in Pomerania, he became a private tutor, and
soon afterwards married Luise Kunze, the daughter of a clergyman.
His life at this time was full of drudgery; but he found occasion to
write a number of tales and anecdotes in prose and verse, which were
published in 1853 in a volume with the title Läuschen un Rimels'
(Funny Tales and Nonsense Rhymes). These were written in Platt
Deutsch, the Low German which is so well adapted for the expres-
sion of simple and natural feeling, and for the portrayal of the con-
crete life of the people. Reuter was possessed with the spirit of
homeliness, and he used the hearty dialect with consummate tact to
embody this spirit. The great success of his first book led him to
write and publish another, 'Polterabendgedichte' (Nuptial-Eve Stories).
In 1855 appeared 'De Reis nah Belligen' (An Account of a Journey
to Belgium), a humorous poem relating the adventures of a number
of Mecklenburg peasants, who travel to Belgium for the sake of learn-
ing the secrets of an advanced civilization.
<
In 1856 Reuter removed to Neubrandenburg, devoting himself en-
tirely to literary work. In 1858 he published 'Kein Hüsung,' a poem
of village life; in 1859 Hanne Nüte un de Lüdde Pudel,' considered
his masterpiece in verse; and in 1861 Schurr-Murr,' a collection of
tales. Soon afterwards he began the publication of Olle Kamellen,'
literally Old Camomile-Flowers,' meaning "old tales, old recollec-
tions,"
-a series which was to include his best work. The first,
'Zwei Lustige Geschichte' (Two Pleasant Stories), included 'Wo aus
ik tau 'ne Fru kamm,' a little skit of how he wooed his wife; and
'Ut de Franzosentid' (In the Year '13), a novel of the time of the
uprising of the German people against Napoleon. The scenes are
laid in Stavenhagen, Reuter's native town; and its characters are
drawn from real life. This work has had enormous popularity in
Europe and America. No. 2 of the series, 'Ut Mine Festungstid'
(My Imprisonment), was founded on Reuter's own experience as a
prisoner. Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were embodied in 'Ut Mine Stromtid'
(My Apprenticeship on the Farm); No. 6, the last of the series,
was entitled 'Dörchläuchting. '
## p. 12197 (#239) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12197
Of these novels the greatest is 'Ut Mine Stromtid. ' On it is based
Reuter's claim of being the most eminent realist of his country,
Nothing could be more true to life than this straightforward story of
Mecklenburg farmers, of their quiet simple lives, relieved by homely
fun and homely pathos. The light of Reuter's genius does not serve
as a halo to idealize lowly existence, after the manner of sentimental-
ists: like penetrative daylight it reveals the little details which make
up the picture. He is masterful in his drawing of character. His
men and women are persons whom the reader knows, and loves or
hates: so abundant is their life, so impressive their personality. The
good-hearted comical bailiff Bräsig; the twins Mina and Lina; Parson
Behrens and his bustling, loving little wife; the stripling Fred Trid-
delfitz; the rascal Pomuchelskopp,- are from the world Reuter knew
best. He paints the sunshine and shadow of their lives with unri-
valed delicacy of touch. The humor of Triddelfitz's love-making, the
pathos of the old pastor's death in his quiet home, are consummate
in truthfulness. The strong humanity of the novel places it in the
first rank.
After a journey to the East, Reuter published 'Die Montechi und
Capuleti in Konstantinopel'; but the book shows plainly that the
author was out of his element.
He died in 1874. In 1875 appeared his 'Nachgelassene Schriften'
(Posthumous Works) in two volumes, supplementing the edition of his
writings in thirteen volumes which had been published between 1863
and 1868.
THE OLD PARSON'S DEATH
From 'My Apprenticeship on the Farm›
E
VERY house in the parish had its share of happiness, each
of them after its kind; but one house formed an exception.
to this rule, although it used to have its full share. In
winter round the fireside, and in summer under the great lime-
tree, or in the arbor in the garden, there always used to be a
calm peaceful happiness, in which the child Louisa, as she played
about the old house and grounds, and little Mrs. Behrens, who
ruled all things duster in hand, had had part; and also the good
old clergyman, who had now done with all earthly things for-
Peace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth
calmly to the place from whence she came; and during that
time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there,
deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man.
ever.
He
## p. 12198 (#240) ##########################################
12198
FRITZ REUTER
did not lie long in bed, and had no particular illness; so that
Dr. Strump of Rahnstädt could not find amongst all the three
thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven diseases of which he
knew, one that suited the present case. Peace seemed to have
laid her hand on the old man's head in blessing, and to have
said to him: "I am going to leave thee, but only for a short
time. I shall afterwards return to thy Regina. Thou needst
me no more, because thou hast had me in thy heart during all
the long years thou hast fought the good fight of faith. Now
sleep softly: thou must needs be tired. "
And he was tired,- very tired. His wife had laid him on the
sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as
much as he liked; Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs
and shawls: and then they had both left the room softly, that he
might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow
were falling slowly, slowly, from the sky; it was as quiet and still
outside as within his heart: and he felt as if the blessing of
Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina
was the first to find it out. He rose, and pushing the large
arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down,
began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the
past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his
mother: they were all reminiscences of what he had loved.
This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away
whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life; and
they had become relics, the sight of which did him good when
he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels
or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf,
and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them.
When he felt low and sad, it did him good to take out these
relics and to live over again in thought the happy days of which
they reminded him; and he never closed the cupboard door
without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God
silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father
had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his
old college friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina
had worked for him during their engagement; the shell which
a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been
shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on
which Louisa, Mina, and Lina had written their Christmas and
New-Year's Day messages of affection, as also some of their
――
## p. 12199 (#241) ##########################################
FRITZ REUTER
12199
earlier bits of handiwork; the withered myrtle wreath his wife
had worn on her wedding day; the large pictorial Bible with the
silver clasps, that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth
birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had
given him on the same occasion; and down below on the lowest
shelf were three pairs of shoes,- the shoes that Louisa, Regina,
and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage.
Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories
attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes; so he took
them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and
then, placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our
Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read. No one saw
him, but that was not necessary; and his Regina knew when it
was all over. He grew very tired; and resting his head in the
corner of the great chair, fell asleep like a little child.
And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens
seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms,
closed his eyes, and then, resting her head against his, wept
silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands
on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that
were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down
the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand;
and Louisa also rose, and threw her arms round her foster-
mother's neck. They both wept long and passionately; till at
last, when it was growing dusk, Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes
in the cupboard, saying as she did so, "I bless the day when we
came to this house together;" and while laying Louisa's little
shoes beside them, she added, "And I bless the day when the
child came to us. >>>
She then closed the cupboard door.
The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the
piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last resting-
place; and any one standing by the grave which was lighted by
the earliest rays of the morning sun, might easily see into the
parlor in the parsonage-house.
The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home,
and Hawermann had also been obliged to go; but Uncle Bräsig,
who had spent the day at the parsonage, helping his friends in
every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining
for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm-in-arm at
the window, buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly up-stairs to
## p. 12200 (#242) ##########################################
12 200
FRITZ REUTER
"
his bedroom, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down
into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed dis-
tinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of
the good man who lay there, and who had so often helped him
with kindness and advice; and he swore to himself that he would
be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens.
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,
## p. 12180 (#222) ##########################################
12180
ERNEST RENAN
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) ##########################################
ERNEST RENAN
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
-
## p. 12182 (#224) ##########################################
12182
ERNEST RENAN
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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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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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.
-
## p. 12191 (#233) ##########################################
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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
## p. 12193 (#235) ##########################################
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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. Compare Genevra
and Isolde with the Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Krimhilde,
and you will admit that woman, as chivalry has conceived her,-
this ideal of tenderness and beauty set up as the supreme end of
life, is neither a classic, nor a Christian, nor a Germanic crea-
tion, but truly Celtic.
The power of imagination is almost always in proportion to
the concentration of feeling and to the lack of events in outward
life. The very limitation of the imagination of Greece and Italy
comes from the easy self-expression of the peoples of the South,
with whom the soul, spent upon the outside world, has very little
self-reflection. Compared with classic imagination, Celtic imagina-
tion is really the infinite compared to the finite. In the beautiful
Mabinogion of The Dream' of Maxen Wledig, the emperor
Maxime sees in his dream a young girl so beautiful that on
awakening he declares that he cannot live without her. For
several years his ambassadors travel through the world to find
her for him. She is finally discovered in Bretagne. This is what
the Celtic race did: it grew tired of taking its dreams for reali-
ties, and running after beautiful visions. The essential element
XXI-763
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of Celtic poetic life is adventure,- that is to say, the pursuit of
the unknown, a never-ending hunt after the always fleeing object
af desire. This is what St. Brandan dreamed on the other side
of the waters; this is what Pérédur sought in his mystic chiv-
alry; this is what the knight Owenn expected of his subterranean
peregrinations. This race wants the infinite; it is thirsting for
it, it seeks it at all hazards, beyond the grave, beyond hell. The
essential fault of the Breton people- the leaning toward drink, a
fault which according to the traditions of the sixteenth century
was the cause of its disasters. comes from this invincible need
of illusion. Do not say that it is an appetite for gross pleasures,
for, aside from this, there never was a people more sober and
free from sensuality; no, the Bretons sought in the hydromel
what Owenn, St. Brandan, and Pérédur, sought in their way,—
the vision of the invisible world. Even to-day, in Ireland,
drunkenness is part of all patronal feasts,- that is to say, of the
feasts which have best preserved their national and popular
character.
-
Hence this profound sentiment of the future, and the eternal
destiny of its race, which has always upheld the Cymry, and
makes it appear young still beside its aged conquerors. Hence
this dogma of the resurrection of heroes, which seems to have
been one of those most difficult for Christianity to uproot. Hence
this Celtic belief in the coming of a Messiah (messianisme'), this
belief in a future which will restore the Cymry and deliver it
from its oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok which Merlin.
has promised them, the Lez-Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur
of the Gauls. The hand which raises itself out of the lake when
Arthur's sword falls in, which seizes it and brandishes it three
times, is the hope of the Celtic races. Little peoples gifted with
imagination do usually thus take their revenge over those who
conquer them. Feeling strong within and feeble without, they
protest, they grow inspired: and such a struggle, strengthening
their forces tenfold, makes them capable of miracles. Almost
all great appeals to the supernatural are due to people hoping
against all hope. Who can say what has in our days been fer-
menting in the heart of that most obstinate and most helpless of
nations, Poland? Israel humiliated dreamt of the spiritual con-
quest of the world, and succeeded.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 12195 (#237) ##########################################
12195
FRITZ REUTER
(1810-1874)
MONG the novelists of the German realistic school, Fritz Reuter
occupies the first place. No one of them has come nearer
than he to the heart of life, nor understood with greater
sympathy the lives of the people, in whose apparently monotonous
and commonplace conditions he found endless dramatic possibilities
of humor and pathos. He is the novelist of the proletariat; his works
are steeped in the clear sunshine of the working-day world. With
the romantic moonshine of an artificial nobility he had nothing to do.
His life was favorable for the fostering
of his peculiar genius. He was born on
the 7th of November, 1810, at Stavenhagen
in Mecklenburg-Schwerin: his boyhood was
passed in this sleepy, out-of-the-way Ger-
man town, among such types of people as
he has immortalized in his novels. His
father was burgomaster and sheriff of the
place, and was also a farmer; he purposed
however that his son should study law.
Until his fourteenth year the boy was edu-
cated at home with private tutors; then
he entered the gymnasium at Friedland in
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and afterwards passed
through the higher classes of the gymna-
sium at Parchim. In 1831 he attended lectures on jurisprudence at
the University of Rostock, going the following year to the Univer-
sity of Jena, where he became a member of the Burschenschaft Ger-
mania. The government, alarmed by the revolutionary agitation of
1830, was on the lookout for undue exhibitions of patriotism among
the student body. The riot at Frankfort in 1833 served as a pretext
for making arrests. Reuter was seized, on no other evidence of guilt
than that of wearing the German colors, was tried and condemned
to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted by King
Frederick William III. to thirty years' imprisonment. Reuter was
taken from one Prussian fortress to another; in 1838, through the
intervention of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg, he was delivered over
to the authorities of his native State. A two-years' imprisonment in
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the fortress of Dömitz followed. In 1840, Frederick William IV.
having proclaimed an amnesty after his accession, Reuter was set
free. Severe as his experiences had been, they had ripened him and
prepared him for his life's work, though at that time he was scarcely
aware of his gifts. He went to Heidelberg to resume his legal stud-
ies; but the death of his father compelled his return to Stavenhagen,
where he undertook the charge of the farm. During this period he
gained that practical knowledge of agriculture and of the farmer's
life which he has interwoven in his masterpiece, 'My Apprenticeship
on the Farm. ' In 1850 he was obliged, however, to abandon farming:
removing to Sreptow in Pomerania, he became a private tutor, and
soon afterwards married Luise Kunze, the daughter of a clergyman.
His life at this time was full of drudgery; but he found occasion to
write a number of tales and anecdotes in prose and verse, which were
published in 1853 in a volume with the title Läuschen un Rimels'
(Funny Tales and Nonsense Rhymes). These were written in Platt
Deutsch, the Low German which is so well adapted for the expres-
sion of simple and natural feeling, and for the portrayal of the con-
crete life of the people. Reuter was possessed with the spirit of
homeliness, and he used the hearty dialect with consummate tact to
embody this spirit. The great success of his first book led him to
write and publish another, 'Polterabendgedichte' (Nuptial-Eve Stories).
In 1855 appeared 'De Reis nah Belligen' (An Account of a Journey
to Belgium), a humorous poem relating the adventures of a number
of Mecklenburg peasants, who travel to Belgium for the sake of learn-
ing the secrets of an advanced civilization.
<
In 1856 Reuter removed to Neubrandenburg, devoting himself en-
tirely to literary work. In 1858 he published 'Kein Hüsung,' a poem
of village life; in 1859 Hanne Nüte un de Lüdde Pudel,' considered
his masterpiece in verse; and in 1861 Schurr-Murr,' a collection of
tales. Soon afterwards he began the publication of Olle Kamellen,'
literally Old Camomile-Flowers,' meaning "old tales, old recollec-
tions,"
-a series which was to include his best work. The first,
'Zwei Lustige Geschichte' (Two Pleasant Stories), included 'Wo aus
ik tau 'ne Fru kamm,' a little skit of how he wooed his wife; and
'Ut de Franzosentid' (In the Year '13), a novel of the time of the
uprising of the German people against Napoleon. The scenes are
laid in Stavenhagen, Reuter's native town; and its characters are
drawn from real life. This work has had enormous popularity in
Europe and America. No. 2 of the series, 'Ut Mine Festungstid'
(My Imprisonment), was founded on Reuter's own experience as a
prisoner. Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were embodied in 'Ut Mine Stromtid'
(My Apprenticeship on the Farm); No. 6, the last of the series,
was entitled 'Dörchläuchting. '
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12197
Of these novels the greatest is 'Ut Mine Stromtid. ' On it is based
Reuter's claim of being the most eminent realist of his country,
Nothing could be more true to life than this straightforward story of
Mecklenburg farmers, of their quiet simple lives, relieved by homely
fun and homely pathos. The light of Reuter's genius does not serve
as a halo to idealize lowly existence, after the manner of sentimental-
ists: like penetrative daylight it reveals the little details which make
up the picture. He is masterful in his drawing of character. His
men and women are persons whom the reader knows, and loves or
hates: so abundant is their life, so impressive their personality. The
good-hearted comical bailiff Bräsig; the twins Mina and Lina; Parson
Behrens and his bustling, loving little wife; the stripling Fred Trid-
delfitz; the rascal Pomuchelskopp,- are from the world Reuter knew
best. He paints the sunshine and shadow of their lives with unri-
valed delicacy of touch. The humor of Triddelfitz's love-making, the
pathos of the old pastor's death in his quiet home, are consummate
in truthfulness. The strong humanity of the novel places it in the
first rank.
After a journey to the East, Reuter published 'Die Montechi und
Capuleti in Konstantinopel'; but the book shows plainly that the
author was out of his element.
He died in 1874. In 1875 appeared his 'Nachgelassene Schriften'
(Posthumous Works) in two volumes, supplementing the edition of his
writings in thirteen volumes which had been published between 1863
and 1868.
THE OLD PARSON'S DEATH
From 'My Apprenticeship on the Farm›
E
VERY house in the parish had its share of happiness, each
of them after its kind; but one house formed an exception.
to this rule, although it used to have its full share. In
winter round the fireside, and in summer under the great lime-
tree, or in the arbor in the garden, there always used to be a
calm peaceful happiness, in which the child Louisa, as she played
about the old house and grounds, and little Mrs. Behrens, who
ruled all things duster in hand, had had part; and also the good
old clergyman, who had now done with all earthly things for-
Peace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth
calmly to the place from whence she came; and during that
time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there,
deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man.
ever.
He
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did not lie long in bed, and had no particular illness; so that
Dr. Strump of Rahnstädt could not find amongst all the three
thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven diseases of which he
knew, one that suited the present case. Peace seemed to have
laid her hand on the old man's head in blessing, and to have
said to him: "I am going to leave thee, but only for a short
time. I shall afterwards return to thy Regina. Thou needst
me no more, because thou hast had me in thy heart during all
the long years thou hast fought the good fight of faith. Now
sleep softly: thou must needs be tired. "
And he was tired,- very tired. His wife had laid him on the
sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as
much as he liked; Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs
and shawls: and then they had both left the room softly, that he
might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow
were falling slowly, slowly, from the sky; it was as quiet and still
outside as within his heart: and he felt as if the blessing of
Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina
was the first to find it out. He rose, and pushing the large
arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down,
began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the
past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his
mother: they were all reminiscences of what he had loved.
This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away
whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life; and
they had become relics, the sight of which did him good when
he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels
or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf,
and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them.
When he felt low and sad, it did him good to take out these
relics and to live over again in thought the happy days of which
they reminded him; and he never closed the cupboard door
without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God
silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father
had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his
old college friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina
had worked for him during their engagement; the shell which
a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been
shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on
which Louisa, Mina, and Lina had written their Christmas and
New-Year's Day messages of affection, as also some of their
――
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12199
earlier bits of handiwork; the withered myrtle wreath his wife
had worn on her wedding day; the large pictorial Bible with the
silver clasps, that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth
birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had
given him on the same occasion; and down below on the lowest
shelf were three pairs of shoes,- the shoes that Louisa, Regina,
and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage.
Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories
attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes; so he took
them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and
then, placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our
Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read. No one saw
him, but that was not necessary; and his Regina knew when it
was all over. He grew very tired; and resting his head in the
corner of the great chair, fell asleep like a little child.
And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens
seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms,
closed his eyes, and then, resting her head against his, wept
silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands
on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that
were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down
the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand;
and Louisa also rose, and threw her arms round her foster-
mother's neck. They both wept long and passionately; till at
last, when it was growing dusk, Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes
in the cupboard, saying as she did so, "I bless the day when we
came to this house together;" and while laying Louisa's little
shoes beside them, she added, "And I bless the day when the
child came to us. >>>
She then closed the cupboard door.
The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the
piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last resting-
place; and any one standing by the grave which was lighted by
the earliest rays of the morning sun, might easily see into the
parlor in the parsonage-house.
The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home,
and Hawermann had also been obliged to go; but Uncle Bräsig,
who had spent the day at the parsonage, helping his friends in
every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining
for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm-in-arm at
the window, buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly up-stairs to
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"
his bedroom, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down
into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed dis-
tinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of
the good man who lay there, and who had so often helped him
with kindness and advice; and he swore to himself that he would
be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens.
