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Cornell University Library
PQ 2384.Q6Z7
Edgar Quinet
3 1924 027 279 466
EDGAR aUINET.
Cornell University
Library
The original of tliis book is in
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There are no known copyright restrictions in
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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027279466
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DED ICATE D
TO THE MEMORY
OF
ONE •WHO DESIRED MUCH TO SEE THIS BOOK
SHE LIVES IM ns PAGES
WITH MANY OF HER. SISTEKS
IDEALISED BY
THE POET
AS
THE ANGEL RACH EL
viii PREFACE.
reason to believe will be its readers. But knowing it to be a
work of conscience from beginning to end, knowing that I have
spared no pains to make it as perfect as possible, I offer it
fearlessly, certain that whatever its shortcomings, it must,
from the nature of its subject, be found a real contribution to
the literature of the day, a real help to the elucidation of some
most important problems.
For Quinet wrestled with the spirit of the age during a long
night, refusing to let it go until he had learnt its secret and
obtained its blessing. The man who has done this must prevail.
It matters little, as regards Quinet, whether this book effects its
object or no ; he is certain in the end to be acknowledged a
prince among thinkers. He can afford to wait, but we cannot ;
for he is the kind of teacher we need — the teacher who will
revive not only our faith in Truth, Justice, Liberty, but in the
History of Humanity, in the Order of Nature, and in that Reli-
gion which is the chief source of life and purification : — the
religion of Jesus Christ.
I do not say this in the interest of any Church or of any theo-
logy, for Quinet acknowledged neither. A man more free from
ecclesiastical ties or theologic bias it would be difiicult to find ;
to identify him, therefore, with any formulated view of modern
Christianity would be entirely misleading. But if words mean
anything, there was to Quinet no force in the history of
Humanity so pure and strong as that life lived eighteen
hundred and fifty years ago in Galilee and Jerusalem. It was
not in his nature to entertain any theological conception of that
life ; it was simply to him the expression of a soul that found
itself too large for this universe, an infinite soul from which had
sprung, as from the well-head of some mighty river, that moral
influence, that self-regenerative power which, working in the
civilisation of the modern world, has rendered it so progressive
and beneficent..
And this thought was in entire conformity with one of the
leading ideas of Quinet's teaching : that Eeligion is the forma-
tive power in history, the real substance of Humanity, the force
that moulds the life of every nation as well as every man ; and
with this other : that the nature of every religion depends on
PREFACE. ix
the nature of the soul of its founder. If, then, the soul of the
Christ was infinite, it follows that his religion is capable of
infinite expansion ; a thought borne out by several remarkable
passages in Quinet's writings, some of which will be found in
this book.
No one was more alive to the corruptions of Christianity
than Edgar Quinet ; in his more purely historical works he has
traced the development of a Catholic Brahminism and a Catholic
Buddhism in Europe, and their blighting effects on the countries
which have remained influenced by Komanism ; and in one of
his latest works he has signalled the rising in Europe, in our
own day, of a Brahminism and a Buddhism more thoroughly
Oriental than that of the Middle Ages.
I should extend this preface indefinitely were I to attempt
any delineation of Quinet as a man, a philosopher, a poet, and
a patriot. I will only refer to one point which springs out of
what has just been said, and which to my mind constitutes his
highest claim to attention. It is the possession of what he
called "philosophic intuition," but which I cannot distinguish
from what both the Hebrew and Christian Churches have
always understood by "the gift of prophecy.'' Dr. Edward
Dowden, in his essay on Edgar Quinet, has said most happily
that Quinet was one of those men that made the conscience of
a nation; may we not say that he was one of those men that
make part of the conscience of Humanity, and are not such its
true prophets 1 if there be any meaning in the word.
I shall say no more except to express my unfeigned thanks
to all who have helped me to produce this book. Conscious of
my own incapacity, I have sought aid, human and divine, and
have received it in a way quite surprising. If I were to record
the names of all who have helped me by sympathy or subscrip-
tion, it would look like self-glorification. I cannot, however,
refrain from thanking by name those who have actually laboured
with me to produce this work. To Madame Edgar Quinet for
many notes, and especially for the permission to copy some
precious family portraits ; to Professor Flint of Edinburgh, to
Monsieur and Madame Alfred Dumesnil of Vascoeil, and to Mr.
and Mrs. M. W. Moggridge of Leatherhead, for their careful
X PREFACE.
supervision of the whole work, I cannot sufficiently express my
obligation. Without the help of so constant and faithful a
friend and critic as Mr. Moggridge, the work would never have
been what it is. I have also to thank Monsieur L^on Feer, of
the Biblioth^ue Rationale, Paris; Mr. Henry Stevens, the
eminent bibliographer, and Dr. Whittemore of Sutton, for inci-
dental help tending to its improvement. Lastly, it owes much
to the skilful rendering of the portraits by my friend Mr.
Charles Butterworth.
For all the opinions, however, in this preface, or for any view
of Quinet's life and writings taken in this work, I am alone
responsible.
The letter inserted opposite p. 28 is a facsimile of one written
by Edgar Quinet from College at Bourg in the spring of 1816 ;
the portrait is probably a year earlier in date. Thus they both
belong to the most interesting period of his life.
EICHARD HEATH.
CONTENTS
BOOK I.— GENESIS.
CHAPTER I.
BouRG— Wbsel. 1 803- 1 807.
PAGE
Birth — Family — Parentage — Infancy — Army of tlie Rhine —
Petted by the soldiers ..... 3-7
CHAPTER II.
Certinbs. 1807-1810.
Ancestral home — A natural education — ^Learns to labour —
First teachers — His mother's influence — Certines — The
fever — Father Pichon . . . . .8-14
CHAPTER III.
BoURG. 1807-1814.
A French boy who had never heard of Napoleon — Militarism
— The violet eagle — Spanish prisoners — Leipsic and Mos-
cow — The Kaiaerlicks are coming — The Austrians in
Bourg — Te verberabo — A rough time — Practical joking 1 5-19
CHAPTER IV.
BODBG. 18 1 5.
Elba — A hot-headed little Bonapartist — Corpse of the deserter
—The spectre — The legend of Waterloo — The musical
Croat — A touch of character — Isolation and misanthropy
— Hiatus in the illuminations — Sent to college . . 20-27
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
BonEe — Cbrtines. 1815-1817.
The young captive— An aiigelic face — A Provenjal missionary
— A revelation of the Eternal — Enchanted by Pulcheria
— Is delivered by a flash of lightning . . . 28-34
BOOK I I. — THE VOCATION.
CHAPTEE I.
Lyons. 1817-1820.
The CoWge Royah at Lyons — The Abbe Eousseau — The bar-
ring out — Personal traits of mother and son — A den on ,
the Ehone — Fiddler in the church choir — Burst of intel-
lectual life — Voracious readings — The Bible at Mass —
Petrified history — The Italian authors by lanthorn light
— Poetry of mathematics ..... 37-45
CHAPTEE II.
Certines. 1820.
Struggle about the Scale Polytechnique — The lonely ponds of
the Dombes— What he learnt in the Desert — The
Creative Spirit — His vocation — Which path? . .46-52
CHAPTER III.
Paris. 1821-1822.
Enters a bank— Resigns— Left to shift for himself— Endures
privations— Purity of life— "Note-book of the Wandering
Jew "— Student-at-law— New Yeart prayers—" History
of the Human Conscience and Moral Personality " A
Parisian Duessa — Orestes and Pylades in love— Musi
every young man sow his wild oats ? . . . 53-61
CONTENTS. xiii
PAGE
BOOK 11/.— THE WANDERER.
CHAPTER I.
The Juea— Switzerland — Paris— England. 1822-1826.
Source of the Rhone — Shepherds of the Jura — The shrines of
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Madame de Stael — Pilgrimage
of filial piety — Struggle with his father — Compulsory-
residence at Charolles — Mr. Smith, of the "Morning
Chronicle " — Herder — Hamann — Visit to England — " In-
troduction to Herder's Philosophy of the History of
Humanity '' — Comparison between Herder and Vico —
Quinet separates himself from Herder's necessarianism —
History the unfolding of the drama of liberty — How to
understand history-^A piece of Autobiography . . 65-81
CHAPTER II.
Strasbtjeg — Heidelberg, i 826-1 829.
Introduction into literary society — Victor Cousin — Jules
Michelet — Vice's "Science Nouvelle" — "Essay on the
Works of Herder '' — Illness at Strasburg — Mental conflict
— Heidelberg University — Creuzer — German ladies — His
love of horses — Walk in the Odenwald — The Rhine —
German celebrities— His studies and literary projects —
'• Origin of the Gods " . ... 82-95
CHAPTER III.
Gbtjnstadt. 1827-1829.
The ideal and the real — "Merlin TEiichanteur"— A miisical
party develops unexpected harmonies — Minna Mord — A
German Vicar of Wakefield — Living in the spirit of the
Sermon on the Mount — Love the enchanter's wand —
Breaking another link in Nature's chain — Romantic epi-
sode — A portrait of Edgar Quinet drawn core amore . 96-104
CHAPTER IV.
Greece. 1829.
Greek War of Independence — Appointed on a commission to
the Morea — Adventures in Greece — Thunderstorm in
xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE
the Lj'cseus — Night in an Arcadian hovel — Disasters in
the Taygetus — Laconia — A people nigh to death — De-
population — Gloom of women — Desire for instruction —
Mutual schools — The child's duties — Corinth — A night
on the sea — The Piraeus— Athens in desolation — The
Bimhachi — His atrocities — Almost shipwrecked— Super-
stition of Greek sailors — Return to France — "Modem
Greece" ...... 105-114
CHAPTER V.
Paris. 1830.
Revolution of July — Quizot at home — Victor Cousin — Philo-
sophy in its relation to Political history — Cousin and
Hugo — Dazzling hopes come to nothing, and why-r-
" Revue des Deux Mondes " — Discovery in the BihlioMqw
Rnyale — " Unpublished Epics of the Twelfth Century " 1 1 5- 123
CHAPTER VI.
Paris. 1831.
Interviewing the Lieutenant-General — Tlie Republicans of
1830 — Every one at home, every one for himself — "Ger-
many and the Revolution '' — The leadership of civilisation
— French ignorance of Germany — Its political changes —
Prussia : its position, despotism, part it was to play — Bis-
marck foreshadowed — Value of the Rhenish provinces —
" Warning to the Monarchy of July " — What France ought
to do — The French Revolution — Foreshadowing of the
Revolution of 1848 and of the fall of the house of Orleans
— Between whom there will be war— Democracy must
have its day — Will consume itself and be followed by a
new order of things — Effect of pamphlet on Quinet's
fortunes ...... 124-134
CHAPTER VII.
Certines. 1831.
Cause of his mental trials — Winter at Certines — Death of his
father — Jerome Qiiinet, his character and researches —
Death of Goethe — "German Art and Literature" —
Goethe — Wieland and Herder — The Schlegel— Schiller —
Tieck — Richter — Koerner — Uhland — Goerres . 135-142
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
CHAPTER VIII.
Italy. 1832.
Cholera in Paris — Visit to Lamartine — Alps in winter — Italian
Lakes — Milan Cathedral — Italian Gothic — Bridge of
Areola — Fireflies — Venice by night — Venetian policy and
Art — Tasso's cell — Ariosto's parlour — The Austrians in
Italy — Dante and Florence — Florentine art — Are religious
epochs favourable to art? — II Penseroso — Alpine vol-
canoes — Roman Campagna — Antique Rome — A storm
in Rome — Rome of the Middle Age — The Christ meditat-
ing over his ruined church — Rome of the Renaissance —
Raffaelle— Michael Angelo— Invocation to Rome — Reli-
gious temptations — Ahasuerus — Prometheus — Ascent of
Vesuvius by night — An Improvisatore — Roman corrup-
tion — Adventure in the Grotto of Azura— Exhibiiion of
skulls — Street of Tombs — Dream at Psestum . . 143-157
BOOK IV.— THE POET.
CHAPTER I.
France, Germany, Italy, i 831-1832.
Ahasuerus — When composed— What it depicts — Legend of
the Wandering Jew — Character and form.
Prologue — In Heaven.
First Bay — The Creation. — The Solitary Ocean — Monsters,
giants. Titans — Tribes of men— Migrations of humanity
— Desire for religious unity — Jerusalem heralding the
birth of the Christ— The Magi— The Infant— The Shep-
herds.
Interlude.
Second Bay— The Passion.— The Via Dolorosa— How Aha-
suerus brings on himself the curse — St. Michel and the
horse Semehe— Ahasuerus commences his journey— The
Goths, the Huus, &o., avenge the death of the Just
One.
xvi CONTENTS.
PACK
Interlude.
Third Day — Death. — A king and a saint talk of the
approaching end of the world — Mob, the incarnation of
Death — Rachel, exiled from heaven, servant to Mob —
— Meeting of Ahasuerus with Mob and Eaehel— Love of
Ahasuerus and Raoliel — Mob destroys his faith — Stras-
burg Cathedral — Dance of Death.
Interlude.
Fourth Day — The Last Judgment. — The roar of cities and
of mankind Adying out — 11 things lose their faith —
Valley of Jehoshaphat— The cities appear for judgment —
Ahasuerus aspires to heaven — Rachel content with earth
— Transfusion of their souls — Judgment of Ahasuerus —
A glorious career given him.
Epilogue. ...... 161-176
CHAPTER 11.
Germany. 1834-1835.
Meaning of the mystery of Ahasuerus — The Christ of the
Middle Ages not the real Christ — The Epilogue — What
it foreshadows — Progress of Scepticism in Germany —
Common infidelity of Germany, France, and England —
Why Germany has not known the anguish felt elsewhere
— Protestantism and Catholicism helping each other to
perish — Goethe — The Schlegel — -Tieck — Voss — Heinrich
Heine — Marriage of Edgar Quinet — Epithalamium —
Baden — Heidelberg — A Goliah in verse — Peace and
Hope ....... 177-1S4
CHAPTER Hi.
Baden. 1834-1835.
Wishes to write a trilogy showing Man in his three great
forms — Napoleon, the second poem of the series — The
autlior's justification of his subject — The Field of the
Battle of Waterloo.
Napoleon, an epic of no less than fifty-two songs or poems.
Description of the poems, with short portions of some
rendered into English verse .... 185-2CI
CONTENTS. xvi
PAG
CHAPTER IV.
Heidelberg— Paris, i 837-1 838.
The third poem in the trilogy — Prometheus — Quinet's profes-
sion of faith — The Greek myth un3erstood in the light
of Christianity — Of what Prometheus is the type— The
struggle of Faith and Doubt.
I. Prometheus, Inventor of Fire.
II. Prometheus Chained.
III. Prometheus Delivered.
Tlie spirit of the poem given by a description of the course
of the drama, and the translation of portions into English
verse ....... 202-21 5
CHAPTER V.
Paris. 1836.
Struggle of the Infinite to escape its bounds — How man first
realised the Infinite — All emanates from the Individual
— The great individualities of history — Their importance
— The Epic poets — Has Homer ever lived? — Wolf's
hypothesis — Reasons for objecting to it — Early history
of Rome — Niebuhr — His character and that of his period
— Refutation of his system — The marvellous no proof
that history is mere poetry — Decline of Greek inspira-
tion — Latin imitation — Epopees of the Middle Ages —
Authenticity of the Gospels — Reality of the existence and
character of Jesus Christ — Justification of Quinet's pro-
phetical gift — Examination of Strauss's " Life of Jesus " —
The indictment like a legal document — Theservice Strauss
has rendered — His system conceived in advance — Its in-
tolerance — Its book knowledge — Miracles occur every day
— His analysis of the Temptation — The points yet to be
examined — Christianity an effect without a cause — Where
the grandeur of the Christ is most seen — The miracles to
which Christianity can appeal — The question one of all
personality — Is Humanity the new Christ? — Relations
between Philosophy and Religion — A Christianity with-
out Christ — Parallel between these days and those follow-
ing the Crucifixion — The faith of Edgar Quinet . 219-242
xviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER VI.
Paris — Germany — Strasburg— Lyons, i 836-1 839.
Summer.s in Heidelberg, winters in Paris — Writings for
"Revue des Deux Mqpdes" in 1836-37 — De Lamennais
and " Le Monde " — General Denibinski and Poland —
Deadness of Parisian society — Magnin — Francis Cor-
celles — A weelc's engagements — Lamartine's salon —
Guizot— Louis Philippe — Madame R^eamier's salon — A
reading at the Abbaye-au-Bois — Ohateaubriaud — Prome-
theus at Madame Recamier's — Salon of Madame Hoche
— The Princess Belgiojoso — Cousin — Odilon Barrot —
Princess Stephanie of Baden — Talleyrand — Thiers —
Hebdomadal dinners with Montalembert, &c. — Mickie-
wicz — Heinrich Heine^ — Character Sketch of Qui net by
Heine — Liszt — Armand Carrel — Ary Scheflfer — Princess
Mary of Orleans — Bas-relief by David — Stuttgart — Tu-
bingen — Uhland — Dr. Strauss — Quinet becomes literary
executor to an old Con/entionnel — Age of Louis XIV. — ■
Literary Cosmopolitanism — Unity of Modern Genius —
Political letter on Russia — Cobden quoted — University
of Strasburg — Appointed Professor at Lyons — Louis
Philippe thereon ..... 243-258 .
BOOK v.— THE TEACHER.
INTRODUCTORY.
Lyons. 1839.
Character and institutions of a country formed by its religion
— Unity of modern peoples — Genius of the Ancient Reli-
gions and Christianity and the French Revolution, one
work — Their object — Main idea of the former . 261-265
Genius of the Ancient Religions.
I. Revelation by the Organ of Nature.
1. The Spiritual Genesis ..... 266
2. The Earth considered as the first Temple . . . 267
3. The Filiation of the Human Race .... 267
4. The Religious Institution of Society . . . 268
5. The Migrations of the Human Races in their relations
with the History of the Religions . . . 269
CONTENTS. xix
pAaE
II. Tradition.
1. How Oriental Tradition has been lost and recovered . 273
2. The Oriental Renaissance — The Lusiad — Discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope — France — England . . . 274
3. Continuation— Germany .... 275-276
4. How the Eeligions of Antiquity have been regarded . 277
5. Eeligious Revolutions in their relations with Social
Revolutions — The East— Greece — Rome— Feudalism . 278
6. Religious Revolutions in their relations with Art — In what
the Ideal of Art is found and when it changes . 279-282
III. The Religions of Upper Asia.
1. Revelation by Light — The Vedas — The Religion of the
Patriarchs.
The visible Dawn exciting the Dawn of thought — Indian
patriarchal theology — Universality of the symbol of the
Burning Bush ..... 282-285
2. The Indian Genesis — Revelation of the Infinite by the
Ocean.
Second age — The people on the shores of the gulfs — Har-
monies of Brahma with the Ocean — The Indian genesis
— The Gospel prophesied by the Old Testament of the
human race — India's function in history . . 285-288
3. Indian Religion in its relations with Epic Poetry.
The Ramayana and the Maha-bharata — Their form — The
author — How published — The heroes incarnate gods —
Man and the animal creation — Civil and domestic life of
ancient India — The primitive monarch — Position of the
priest — Who the Indian heroes resemble — Love of Nature
— Meaning of Hindu asceticism — Indian epics the work
of many generations — Their style . . . 288 -293
4. Indian Pantheism in its relations with the Institution of
the Family and of Caste.
Immobility of India — Existence under a series of con-
querors — Want of great men, and of a history — Gentle
law — Polygamy and idea of the family — Caste — Why
caste is not found in China — Equality among the
Hebrews, Fraternity among the Greeks, Liberty among
the Romans — Their sanction in religious dogma . 293-29S
h
XX CONTENTS.
PAGB
5. The Indian Drama in its relations with Religion.
When the dramatic era commences in a country — The reason
of the great difference between the Indian and Greek
drama — The drama of SakoontalS, . . . 298-301
6. Philosophy in its relations with Religion — Buddhism.
Indian thought, its characteristics — Similarity in East
and West of the duel of Reason and Faith — Indian scep-
ticism — Buddhism contrasted with Brahminism — Intre-
pidity of Eastern logic — Buddhist theory of Equality —
Likeness between spiritual Catholicism of Middle Ages
and Buddhism — What has preserved Indian society . 301-304
7. The Religions of China — Revelation by Writing.
Eo-hi, the Chinese revealer — The lines of the Universe —
The basis of Civil order in China — To write, a religious
duty — Chinese philosophy in its relation to Religion —
China, rationalist — God ignored in China — Collection of
popiilar songs — Judaea and China . . . 304-308
IV. Religions of Western Asia and of Egypt.
1. The Religion of Persia — Revelation by the Word.
Persepolis — Its bas-reliefs — A people on migration — The
Zend-Avesta — Zoroaster — The luminous Word, the
liturgy of the Universe — The struggle between Darkness
and Light — The Persian wars — Religion and Industry —
Relation to Christianity — Sublime eschatology — Mithra
— The want in the Persian Religion — Hard for a Reli-
gion to die . . . . . . 309-312
2. The Religion of Egypt — Revelation by Organic Life.
Egyptian civilisation born of Asia and Africa — The foun-
dation of Egyptian Religion— An Egyptian temple— The
marvel of organic life — Incarnation the universal doc-
trine of the East — The Egyptian priesthood — Messiah
— Trinity — Human personality — Resurrection — Future
judgment — What alone overcame this granite civilisa-
tion and fulfilled its prophecies . . . 3 1 ^-■317
3. The Principle of the Religions of Babylon and Phenicia.
The sentiment of the Infinite in Pagan Love — An indivi-
dual rite of the worship of Light— Its cruel voluptuous-
ness — Its effect on the industrial arts, on the condition
of woman — What made Idolatry easy for the Jew . 317-318
CONTENTS.
V. The Hebrew Religion.
1 . Jehovah— Revelation through the Desert.
Criticism of the Old Testament — Personality of Moses —
Originality of the idea of Jehovah — The Trinity veiled
in the Old Testament — Necessity of a revelation through
the Desert — Its characteristics imprinted on every Hebrew
institution — Seen above all in the God-Spirit . . 319-321
2. The Prophets.
The Hebrew people isolated— Oppressed by the thought
of their destiny — No prophets in pantheistic religions —
Connection of the personality of God and the miracle of
liberty in the world — The work of the Hebrew prophets
— What they alone saw — Their tone — The prophecies
accomplished — When prophecy began to decline, and
why ....... 321-324
3. The Principle of Hebrew Poetry — The Psalms.
Correspondence between the Psalms and the character of
Jehovah — An echo of many generations— The God who
dwells beyond all worlds listening to the expression of
individual complaints — The Psalms compared with the
Rig-Veda ...... 324-325
4. Hebrew Philosophy — Job.
Hebrew doubt— Job a Hebrew book — The heart of Job
divided, not the poem — The friends — No solution given
to Job's questions — Incomplete without Christianity —
Period when written — Ecclesiastes, the consummatum est
of the Old Testament ..... 326-328
5. Continuation — Comparison of Oriental with General
Scepticism.
The stages of scepticism traced and compared in Job,
Prometheus, Hamlet, and Faust . . . 328-331
6. Slavery in its relations with the Eastern Religions.
Connection between polytheism and slavery, between the
independence, liberty, and unity of God, and the indepen-
dence, liberty, and unityof man — Slavery couldnotbecome
a Hebrew institution — In Islamism the slave avenged 331-333
VI. The Greek Religions.
I. The Aspect of Nature in Greece — Its ruins.
The horizon of the Greek writers — Greek genius elective
:xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
— What sentiments the Sea awakened in Greece — Cor-
rection of Nature— The Greek Temple . . 333-334
!. The Divine in Humanity— The Greek Religions in relation
to Poetry and Art.
What the Greek discovered in himself — Influence of Homer
in altering the old religion — Greek Society tended to
form itself on the Iliad and the Odyssey— Influence of
sculpture on the Greek religions — Their decline coin-
cident 335-337
j. Continuation — The Drama in its relations with the Greek
Religions.
The poets transform the Homeric gods — Pindar — Growing
spirituality of Greek poetry — Wherein tlje power of its
drama lies— Function of the Chorus — Greek comedy —
Aristophanes — Greek humour — The good reached by the
beautiful . .... 338-340
.. History.
When history develops most- — The unconscious art of
Herodotus — Greek history, its two stages — The Greek
orators — The tyranny of reason — Thucydides — Alexander
— Plutarch's lives ..... 340-343
;. Philosophy in its relations with Religion — Fall of Poly-
theism.
The one revolution in Greece — Religion and the first philo-
sophies — Second stage — Pretensions of philosophy —
Socrates — Greek scepticism — Ground of Greek philo-
sophy — Hercules — The hymns of Orpheus — Contribution
of Greece to the Old Testament of the profane world . 343-345
VII. The Roman Religions.
. Religion and Policy.
A Society founded on no religious dogma — How Rome
conquered the world — Foundation of the aristocracy —
Worship of Fear and Terror — Why all the efforts against
the patricians failed— True day of emancipation for the
plebeian — The only revolution upon which you can cer-
tainly count ...... 346-350
. Rome and the World.
Superstitious jealousy of Rome — The conquered conquer —
The art of moral extermination — Why the slave was a
cause of anxiety — Why the conscience of social life and
the peoples were welded into one — Why Hannibal failed
CONTENTS. xxiii
PAGE
to attract the Italian peoples — Why Sj'lla's work never
stood — Spiritual timidity of the Romans — The basis of
the Religion of Rome — Fall of each class of gods coinci-
dent with the revolutions in the Roman State . . 350-354
. The Cresars — The Religion of the Law — End of the ancient
city.
Policy in religion, how it ends — Deification of the Caesar
the patrician idea of the gods — Birth of idea of divine
unity — Power of the new dogma — Roman law the last
miracle of Antiquity — The greatest trial for a society —
The invasions of the barbarians, their religious sanction —
Contributions of Rome to the religion of the world . 354-357 '
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Portrait or Edgar Quinet (aged 12), . . Frontispiece
TO FACE PAGE
Portrait of his Mother, 3
The Atjsteians approaching Botjrg, . . . . 18
Facsimile of Letter to his Mother (i8i5), . . 28
Portrait of his Father, 37
Venice by Moonlight, 65
Portrait of his First Wife, 161
Certinbs, his Ancestral Home, 183
Portrait of Edgar Quinet, 261
asooft I.
GENESIS.
"If a man would truly attend to the course of his inner life he would discover
the entire series of the ages burled, as it were, in his own mind."
—Introduction to Herder.
a
VlMt U^^t/^^y^— ^VW
f
tV-^
Eugenie Quinet-JRozat (1807, c(( (Ae or/e 0/23).
To /ace p. 3.
( 3 )
CHAPTER I.
BOURG, WESEL. 1803-1807.
" Never, perhaps, was a child surrounded hy persons of a more opposite
character." — Mes IcUes.
Edgar Quinet was bom February the 17th, 1803, at
Bourg, the chief town of Ain in France, a department
bordering on Switzerland. When he came into the world
the Temple of Janus was closed. But the very next day,
the second of his life, it was re-opened, and the fiends of
war came hurrying out to desolate Europe for more than
twelve years.
The babe who thus made its appearance at so unpro-
pitious an hour was a pale-faced little creature, and it
was doubtful whether its exit would not be almost coeval
with its entry.
The Quinets were an old Catholic family established
in Bresse for three centuries. Edgar's grandfather, Phili-
bert Quinet, was Maire of Bourg, his grandmother being
the daughter of a lawyer in the Dauphiny. She was a
character. A conventual life of some years had made
her terribly hard. Her domestic discipline was more
than monastic ; once a week she employed a garde-
de-ville to whip her three children (one was a girl)
naughty or not. When- her son was only three she shut
him up in a drawer. When he was a young man she
had all the flowers he loved torn up ; and when he was
fifty years old she rebulced him as unceremoniously as if
he were still a boy. This awful old lady had a strange
4 EDGAR QUINET.
admiration for beauty. She surrounded herself with
engravings and works of art, and would have no domestic
in her employ who had not regular features. There must
have been something beautiful in the face of her new-born
grandson, since, at the sight of him, she relaxed her stern-
ness and said, " He will have mind."
The son who was treated so severely was the father of
Edgar Quinet, and his early experiences ought not to be
forgotten in estimating his relations with his own son.
Driven from home by these austerities, Jerome Quinet
enrolled himself among the volunteers of '92. His ener-
getic intellect and strong will found ample scope in the
activities of the time. Although just by nature and
principle, and really kind in heart, he inherited some-
thing of the stern and repellent manner of his mother.
If his choice in marriage be any indication, he must also
have had her appreciation of beauty ; for his wife pos-
sessed that gift in a triple degree.'
Eugi^nie Eozat Lagis was on the paternal side of an
old Calvinist family, the Eozats of the south of France,
while on the maternal, she was descended from Italian
Huguenots,, the Lagis of Verona, who, at the time of the
Eeformation, had taken refuge in Geneva. Being in the
diplomatic service, her father travelled about a great
deal, and this course of life early developed the intellect
and self-reliance of his daughter. Educated in Switzer-
land and at Versailles, she was a very unique mixture of
solid Genevan principles, with the stylish manners, bold
ideas, and restless curiosity of old French society. As a
school-girl of ten years of age, she had resisted the
attempts of certain high dignitaries to bring her into the
Eoman Church. And yet she does not appear to have
felt the slightest difficulty in marrying into a Catholic
family, or in having her children baptized into their
religion. The fact was, that she and her husband were
really of the same faith, both being ardent believers in
the principles of the Eevolution, and caring little for
HIS PARENTS. S
theological dogmas. Jerome Quinet's admiration for his
wife was unbounded, and with relation to his children
he seems to have generally yielded to her judgment.
Perhaps this cost him little, as he does not appear to
have had much sympathy for the young. His derisive
tone and the stare of his great blue eyes frightened
Edgar. Wrapt up in his own thoughts and projects,
M. Quinet permitted all the affections of the family to
centre in the mother, who was quite worthy of this
confidence.
Madame Quinet's face portrayed the character of her
mind ; great black eyes sparkling with light, yet full of
depth and feeling, a fine forehead set in a frame of long
black ringlets, a most engaging smile, its whole contour
was charming.
Edgar Quinet possessed his mother's intense, impulsive
nature. He had her gaiety and joy of heart and mind,
and suffered as she did at times, from an unreasonable
melancholy.
Another person who exercised some influence over his
childhood was his aunt, the daughter of the old lady who
believed in beauty, and in having her children whipped
once a week. Under this system Madame Destaillades
had developed into a hater of all severity, and a rebel
against every yoke. She would a thousand times rather
be unjust than unkind. She petted every creature she
came across; animals she loved exceedingly, especially
ugly ones, because they were the most miserable. Con-
ventionalism she abominated, the freedom of the country
was her delight, the wilder and more uncultivated the
better she liked it. Her chosen dwelling-place was a
little house in a wood. There was no pain she would
not endure that she might have the pleasure of spoiling
her little nephew. He might yoke her to his plough,
strike her with the goad, be as wilful as he chose, she
found it all perfectly adorable.
As a granite rock is sometimes concealed by soft ver-
6 EDGAR QUINET.
dure which the ever-changing atmosphere dapples with
alternate light and shade, so beneath her impulsive tem-
perament Madame Quinet hid the soul of a stoic. She
had such an elevated conception of life and its duties,
and such a conscientious determination to fulfil them, that
rather than arrest the development of any noble trait
of character in her son, she would willingly jeopardise
his life, showing always, and consistently, how far she
esteemed the soul above the body. Sometimes, indeed,
she appeared almost reckless about him, but it was not
so, for he was never out of her thoughts. Her one
absorbing idea was how to make a man of him after her
own heart. On the other hand, his faith in his mother's
power and goodness knew no bounds. Having heard
how true penitents mixed their bread with cinders, the
child one day tried to make a cake of ash-dust. A puff
of wind blew some of the fine, sharp powder into his eyes.
His mother, hearing his screams, ran to his relief. Edgar
thought he was blinded, and in a piteous voice exclaimed :
" If my eyes are put out, will you know how to make
me new ones ? "
Grifted with singular purity of heart, great moral deli-
cacy, much sensibility, and with a never-faUing goodness
that harmonised all his faculties, the aureole was so
manifest in infancy that an English uncle exclaimed, the
first time the child was shown him, " He resembles
Marcus Aurelius." " A delicate child, very affecti6nate,
but very roguish," such was the testimony of the nurse of
these early days, la bonne Madeleine, who lived to be the
first to welcome Edgar Quinet to Brussels, when, forty-
two years later, he came there an exile.
In 1806 Madame Quinet took her son, then three
years of age, to Paris, from whence they set out for
Wesel, to join M. Quinet, who was acting as Commis-
sioner of the Army of the Ehine. At Wesel Edgar
was allowed to be continually with the soldiers. Auster-
litz had been fought in the previous December, and some
INFANCY. 7
of the cavalry who had been in the battle were at Wesel.
They petted Edgar, would have him at mess, making him
drink their soup. When they marched he accompanied
them, with two large sheep, harnessed like horses. When
they returned he went with the regiment to the stables,
and combed and curried his sheep as he saw the soldiers
did the horses. No doubt his parents argued that French
boys were only born to be conscripts, and Edgar could
not begin too early.
( 8 )
CHAPTEE II.
CER TINES, CHAROLLES. 18O7-I8II.
" She is in love with the immortal part of me." — Flint's Letters.
At the commencement of 1807 the boy and his mother
returned to Prance, and went at once to Certines, a
country place about six or seven miles from Bourg, his
father possessing a small estate there, which had been in
the family three hundred years.
Certines was one of those out-of-the- world spots, rarer
and rarer every day, but which in the early part of this
century were not uncommon even in England. The sun
set behind vast oak forests, so illimitable that people got
lost in them for days ; it rose over a ridge of mountains,
the first step in the mighty ranges of the Jura and of the
Alps. Between the forests and the mountains lay heaths,
copses, alder woods, vast plains of grass or of corn; over
this immense ocean of broom, of heath, of rye, the sultry
summer air hung silent and peaceful, while in the autumn,
from the marshes and the dark pools in the forest arose
miasmas, bringing fever into every cottage and home-
stead. On a little hill in this vast waving ocean stood
the ancestral home of the Quinets, half cottage, half
chateau, in the midst of acacias and poplars, and of pear,
nut, and cherry trees, the latter pushing their long
branches right into its windows. The building was
very old, and Jerome Quinet had ornamented it with
two semi-circular summer houses, with slate roofs and
columns.
A NATURAL EDUCATION. 9
Here his family lived a rural life, and the little Edgar
received a natural and, for that very reason, a singular
education. In the early summer time the boy rose with
the dawn, shouldered his little hay-fork, and went to the
meadows with the mowers. In harvest time he gleaned
after the reapers, made a sheaf, beat out the corn with a
little flail, took it to the . miller, fetched the flour when
ground, and making it into cakes, baked them in an oven
he had built himself.
Although his mother believed jn the great advantage
of being well born, she was far too enlightened to
imagine its benefit consisted in being able to separate
oneself from the common herd. On the contrary, she
had faith in the inherent dignity of Humanity, and
conceived nothing could be better than to live in con-
tinual contact with it, especially under its most unso-
phisticated form. Besides, she had herself drunk at the
fountainhead of the new democratic ideas, and no doubt
thought that as her son had to find a career amongst the
people, the sooner he understood them the better. His
experiences were simple, but they revealed in primitive
and childlike language the main idea that most entertain
as to the only possible basis of society — the rule of the
strongest.
Edgar had for his playmate a peasant boy named
Gustin, three or four years older than himself, but very
much stronger. Gustin thought it quite natural that he
should always give in to the young gentleman's whims,
and act the part of a little slave. Calling the two boys
before her, Madame Quinet reproved the one for his
servility, and the other for his insolence, telling them
that they were equals, and that she expected them to
act as such in future. The young peasant understood
that there was to be a change, and that birth was no
longer to have the rule, but the idea of equality between
a boy of five or six and one of eight or nine was more
than he could comprehend. So in his turn he played
10 EDGAR QUINET.
the tyrant, and Edgar had submissively to carry Gustin's
sabots when the latter was tired of running about in
them. Gustin, however, was one of the kindest boys in
the village, and in his society Edgar not only learnt to
love human nature, but to love all nature. Thus he
came to know the birds by their notes, or by their
manner of perching on the hedges, or on the trees, and
to distinguish the many voices of nature.
When about three years of age, Edgar wanted to be
a ploughman. He y^s accordingly allowed to lead,
day after day, two oxen up and down the furrows.
For these patient creatures he had as great an affection
as they had for him. He considered them as his own,
and could not bear that any one else should drive them ;
and when tired or melancholy, a condition into which a
child might easily fall in such a languid atmosphere, a
visit to the stable of Bise and Froment proved an
unfailing remedy. In their society the boy's spirits
returned, and he felt quite consoled by the sympathetic
way in which they looked at him with their large tender
eyes.
Every winter was spent in Bourg, and then, his father
disliking the noise of children, he was sent to school.
His first master was a learned man, a professor of
mathematics. He was kind enough to his little pupil,
but very hard upon his own son, whom he wished to
make as good a mathematician as himself.
Edgar could not have been above six years old
when he came under this master, and it was he who
taught him to write and to read. For, to his mother's
serious alarm, the usual order of these accomplishments
was reversed in his case. This was no doubt due to the
method of instruction. Taking him into the garden, his
master would make him draw letters on the sand, or if
that could not be done, he would show him how to trace
them on a blackboard. The result was, that he could
not only write before he could read, but could make a
FIRST TEACHERS. ii
pen out of almost anything, as the following letter, the
earliest that has been preserved, testifies : —
"A Jasseron, le 22 Octobre (1808).
" Ma bonne Maman, — Presque toujours on dit que je suis bieii
sage. Je m'amuse bien et je pense k toi toi:ijours. Je serai
bien content de te voir. C'est Virrieu qui m'a donn^ le papier,
les plumes et I'encre. Je voulais bien t'^crire ce matin, mais je
n'avais pas pu parce que je n'avais que des aUumettes pour
plumes. Edgab, ton fils et ton ami"
Directly he could read his master commenced Latin
with him, but just as he had got his little pupil into the
verbs the unfortunate mathematician was seized with a
sudden fit of madness in the presence of Madame Quinet.
In fact, the poor man tried to strike her, and was only
prevented by a gentleman coming in, who took him
home. These two religiously kept the matter a secret,
but Edgar was removed, and allowed, to his great
chagrin, to believe that he had in some way offended
his good master.
His next teacher was an old captain in the dragoons,
and the schoolhouse — an ancient convent, used as a place
for storing forage for the passing troops. When a room
could be found a class was held, but the teacher spent
the time in going over his cavalry manoeuvres, using
the boys' primers to represent the columns in platoons.
When the convent finally became inaccessible for
such purposes, he was sent to pick up a little knowledge
from a priest who had got married, and who had been
nearly starved in consequence. This teacher was so
ignorant that Edgar learnt nothing from him ; but as a
set-off against this poor schooling, he had a music master.
This worthy had been a chorister in youth, but now his
round, bistre-coloured face was furrowed with age. He
was a universal genius, music being the least of his
cares. A great inventor, a great politician, he was the
first to enlighten the future historian about feudal rights,
tithes, and forced labour, as they existed before the
12 EDGAR QUI.NET.
Eevolution. He taught him the " Marseillaise," which
everybody else had then forgotten. This was the first
piece of music Edgar Quinet ever learnt. If from these
odd schoolmasters he obtained little ordinary knowledge,
he picked up from them facts or notions which in after-
days he turned to account.
His real teacher in these days was his mother, and
from her he was daily imbibing thoughts and ideas which
coloured his whole life. When at home he was con-
stantly with her, when away they kept up continual
correspondence ; she always playing the part of the
serious, earnest mother, ever searching out his faults, and
urging him to overcome them for her sake. She treated
him when only a small child as her confidant and inti-
mate friend. She read Shakespeare, Eacine, and Madame
de Stael to him. When he came home from the plough
she would sometimes appear on the gallery and, assum-
ing the air of a tragedy-queen, begin to recite Eacine's
"Athalie," expecting him to take up the role of Joas.
At seven years of age he was thus acquainted with
Hamlet and Macbeth, and not only with the dramas
of Eacine, but with those of Corneille and Voltaire.
Madame Quinet shrunk instinctively from Eousseau,
and had no sympathy whatever for Chateaubriand, but
for Voltaire she entertained an unbounded admiration.
His was the first name Edgar could recollect hearing.
When he asked his mother who was the cleverest
man in the world, she replied, " An old gentleman
called Voltaire." He thought that this old gentleman
lived in the town, and that it was very strange that he
never came to see them ; however, he supposed it must
be because he was so very old. It so happened that
though he was born and lived for ten years under the
Empire, he heard the name of Voltaire long before he
knew that of Napoleon. Voltaire and Madame de Stael
were Madame Quinet's literary idols, and she must have
deeply resented the exile of the latter, for Edgar always
HIS REAL TEACHER. 13
remembered it as the first thing that ever troubled
him.
But his mother's work would not have been what it
was had she only influenced his mind. It was the
ardour of her soul that really embraced him and enabled
her to hold him, so to speak, close to her heart as long
as she lived. Sometimes, when they wandered alone in
the garden at Certines, she would stop and pour out her
soul in audible prayer. These prayers were, often elo-
quent, always different, and full of feeling. But though
so truly pious in thought and action, she taught him
nothing special in the way of Christian doctrine. That
he had a Father in heaven who cared for him, and who
would listen to his prayers for wisdom, was the sum of
aU her dogmatical teaching. On one of these occasions
she told him that now he was seven years of age he was
responsible, and would have to answer for his own faults.
For several days he kept close watch upon himself, but
at last he was naughty. He was in despair; nothing
would console him. All day long he walked up and
down the outer gallery, crying in a lamentable voice, Je
suis damnd, je suis Aamni.
The atmosphere at Certines was unhealthy. Pever
prevailed so constantly that its dread was even upon
the children. The first time Edgar saw a butterfly
crawling on the ground and fluttering its wings, he
thought it had the fever. The time came when he was
stricken himself. Nine or ten children had already
died, some even in the Quinet household. As he lay in
a sort of lethargy, a companion came, looked at him,
and said, " He is not for long." However, the care of his
mother and nurse were rewarded, for he woke at last out
of his deadly slumber. In their delight they both sprang
on the chairs and sung for joy. Everything and every-
body welcomed him back to life ; even his grandmother,
terrible to every one else, actually smiled at him, and
looked quite charming.
14 EDGAR QUINET.
Though a Protestant, Madame Quinet went on Sundays
to the little Catholic Church at Certines, where an
old Trappist officiated, named Father Pichon. Poor
man ! he had fallen on an unbelieving age, so that his
only consolation in the general neglect was the con-
sideration shown him by his Protestant parishioner; in
fact, he used to go the length of publicly pointing her
out as an example to his flock. This humble village
church, with its cross and chalice of wood and its bare
unadorned walls, seemed to Madame Quinet to recall
the primitive days of Christianity.
In the autumn of 1 8 1 1 they went to live at Charolles,
a little town in the department of Sdone-et- Loire, the
centre of the district from whence come the breed of
cattle called Gharollais, well known in the markets of
Paris and Lyons.
Suddenly the gentle culture of Certines was arrested,
and the boy was thrown into the society of Charollais
cattle-folk, soldiers, and prisoners of war. Very soon he
became abrupt in manner and q^uite a tease.
( IS )
CHAPTEE III.
BOURG. 1811-1815.
" They are coming — they are coining — they are taking everything — there is
no one to help us — we are lost." — V Invasion.
The republicanism of the Quinets was so thorough that
they could never bear to speak of the man who had dared
to chain the free-will of France. Though all the world
now swore by the fortune of Caesar, the name of Napo-
leon was not allowed to pollute their home. Thus it
was that one little French boy living at the very time
of Austerlitz and Jena, and quick enough to catch up
knowledge, was some years old before he heard the name
that was on every tongue in Europe. This reticence,
where in every other matter there was so much freedom,
proved a great mistake, for Edgar was left to learn about
the Emperor from popular sources, and so learnt to admire
the man his father abominated.
It was hardly possible for any French boy to escape
from the military fever which then raged in France.
Eegiments were continually passing through the town
for the frontier, and during their stay some of the soldiers
were billeted on the Quinets. To Edgar they all appeared
heroes, but there was one especially who won his admi-
ration — a bronzed soldier, who had been taken prisoner
in the Spanish war, and had been confined on the isle of
Cabrera, a mere rock under a burning sun, sometimes
without water and without anything to eat. To while
away those dreary days the corporal had amused himself
by tattooing his arms. ISTothing would do but Edgar must
i6 EDGAR QUINET.
be tattooed as well, and the child of these stern republi-
cans bore in his own flesh the symbol they so much
detested — a violet eagle.
However, his mother did not entirely leave him to pick
up his political opinions in the stables and in the streets.
Later on she tried to read to him a book called " Con-
siderations sur la E^volution Frangaise," but the language
of liberty had so completely fallen into oblivion that she
might as well have read Hebrew or Greek to him. So
she gave up the attempt, and he became more and more
filled with militarism ; for soldiers were ever passing before
his eyes, either as heroes going to the war, or as prisoners
going to be interned, or as local levies raised for the
defence of the country, or as invaders coming after the
final overthrow. Thus the spirit of soldiering took posses-
sion of him, as it did of all his companions. Mimic war
was their one sport. In these battles Edgar constantly
took part, getting severely hurt. It was a brutalising expe-
rience, and would have made a young savage of him had
he not through it all been watched over by a mother, who
nourished his heart and mind with elevated thoughts.
One day a long column of wretched, half-starved, ragged
soldiers came into Bourg. They were Spanish prisoners,
with bloodshot eyes and tottering limbs. Some of these
poor skeletons begged alms of Madame Quinet. She threw
them her purse, and ran weeping into the house. Over
and over again she would say to Edgar, " They may
conquer Spain, but never the Spaniards." It was Edgar's
first lesson in the rights of other nations. His poem
" Saragossa " shows how this incident was burnt into
his soul.
His mother's dislike to speak of anything that con-
cerned Napoleon was so great, that he who was to become
in after-years an encyclopaedia of historical knowledge
was nearly twelve years of age before he had almost
heard of the great events in the midst of which he was
living. From the almanac of the fair he first came to
THE AUSTRIANS IN BOURG. 17
know of the battle of Leipsic, and the death of Ponia-
towski. A boy of his own age was the first to tell him
of the burning of Moscow, as they sat together perched
on some logs in a cart returning from the woods. But
it made no more impression on him than the history of
Montezuma. These events seemed so far off as to appear
fabulous.
It was not until one morning in the winter of 1814
that their real importance began to dawn upon him.
Going out, he met, returning into the town, a half-witted
fellow who carried parcels for the people of Bourg. With
hat despoiled of its wonted ornaments, tricoloured ribbons
and Easter daisies, and without the oak branch he was in
the habit of waving to and fro as a sign of victory, the
poor carrier was hurrying along, crying, " Bad news ! the
' Kaiserlicks ' are not far off ! "
The whole town seemed in commotion. On the square
Edgar found about thirty citizens collected, and their
officer dealing out cartouches to them. The last man in
the file was his quondam schoolmaster, the dragoon cap-
tain, who was brandishing his sword. Eeturning home
he found his father casting bullets. 'Not was this all,
for ere long came marching into the town a regiment
of boys, about fifteen years old, raised by an absurd
nobleman, and commanded by a terrible-looking captain.
Edgar's parents took alarm, and knowing his excitable
character and love for soldiering, imprisoned him for a
couple of days. When he got his liberty, he saw, to his
amazement, the armed citizens come back and quietly dis-
band, and the juvenile warriors march out at the wrong
gate.
Then the defence of the town was left to a hundred
Piedmontese, who, brave enough, went out like the rest,
sent a shot at the enemy for honour's sake, and then,
seeing they were innumerable, returned and followed in
the wake of the boys. The Piedmontese gone, even
children, ignorant as this little Quinet, began to realise
B
1 8 EDGAR QUINET.
the situation. The invaders were upon them, and they
were helpless. Edgar felt as if the end of the world had
come.
However, a strange fascination led him to go to the
highroad where the fight had taken place, and to watch
for the appearance of these terrible " Kaiserlicks." Not
a single person was to be seen, but on walking to a rise
in the road, he saw an interminable file of horse-soldiers
stretching to the very limits of the horizon. They came
slowly on in silence, the two ranks apart on either side
of the road. As there was nothing menacing about them,
he waited until they were close upon the town before he
went to tell his mother.
Ere long the Austrians were in Bourg. Madame
Quinet and her son watched them defiling under their
windows, she weeping at the ignominy of France, he,
catching instinctively her sentiment, feeling as if his
heart would break.
Four horse-soldiers were quartered on them. They
proved to be Hungarians, and spoke to Edgar in Latin.
To the boy's astonishment he not only found that he
could understand them, but was able to forage up a few
words in reply. Then he believed for the first time that
the ancients really did talk Latin. Communication
established, the barbarians, as the boy thought them,
could do nothing without him. Nobody else dared to
approach them, and his father was too proud or too deeply
chagrined to do so. At last, one of them fancying that
he was cheated by a man who wanted to sell him a pipe,
got angry and threatened his young interpreter. " Te
verberabo," he shouted to him. Edgar's pride was
touched, and not another Latin word would he utter,
although they coaxed and flattered him. " Te verberabo "
had changed everything ! Flying from them, and from
the hosts of foreign soldiers who passed through the
town, he sullenly took refuge in his boat at the end of
the garden.
PRACTICAL JOKING. 19
Here, with some of his young companions, he passed
his time fishing, and on one occasion was very nearly
drowned. Forbidden in consequence to go on the river,
the spirit of mischief took him again among the town
boys, who, left at this time of public calamity very much
to their own devices, spent their days in playing at war,
dividing into parties, besieging and being besieged. The
game grew too real, and Edgar had his arm broken.
While he was laid up he read a tale of knight-errantry
— " Les Quatre Fils d'Aymon." This gave him his first
ideas about the Middle Ages.
The troubles into which he thus fell were partly due
to the absence of his mother in Paris. She had there
witnessed the return of the Bourbons, and had been
touched by the dignity of Louis XVIII. But Edgar felt
no kind of interest in what she told him ; he had of late
lived so much among the people that he called the king,
as they did, " Eoi Cotillon," a mere old woman.
A favourite amusement with the little Bonapartists in
Bourg was to go into the depths of the neighbouring
forests, and there to find the whitened skeleton of some
horse that the wolves had devoured, and dragging it into
the neighbourhood of the town, to set it up when evening
came in front of the door of a royalist neighbour. ISText
morning the mischievous crew were up early, lurkiug
in some hiding-place, waiting to enjoy the enemy's
astonishment when he opened his door.
( 20 )
CHAPTER IV.
BOURG. 1815.
" Ab for this young Ali, one cannot but like him, a noble-minded creature, as he
shows himself now and always afterwards, full of affection and fiery daring."
— Heroes and. Hero-worship.
One day there was a party at Charolles. The guests
■were playing at cards. A traveller arrived from Bourg.
" Have you heard the news ? " he exclaimed. " The
Emperor has come back from Elba ! "
Hitherto Edgar had been Bonapartist because the
empire had represented to his imagination Prance in
uniform and fighting, now he began to get a distinct idea
of a great figure coming out of the pell-mell of war —
Napoleon. That figure became his ideal hero. Napoleon
had landed in France, alone ; how tremendous the dangers
he had dared to face ! Every morning the boy looked
anxiously for news. "Was his hero conquered or con-
queror ? Many persons said he was already a prisoner,
some even spoke of an iron cage. For twelve days
Edgar endured a series of hopes and fears, of shocks and
transports, all the more trying because he could not share
them with his mother. The memory of that fortnight
remained indelibly impressed on his mind ; he wondered
that he ever survived it.
An officer was billeted at his father's house. He
would neither eat nor drink, and seemed in despair. At
last Edgar heard him reveal the cause. He had taken
an oath to the Bourbons, but now the Emperor had
A HOT-HEADED LITTLE BONAPARTIST. 21
returned he felt certain that his regiment would desert
in a body. The crisis had come, for at Bourg the roads
parted ; how would he be able to prevent his soldiers
going off in the direction in which Kapoleon was march-
ing ? Edgar listened, he was sorry for the officer, but
delighted at the thought that so fine a regiment should
go to swell the ranks of the Imperial army. Next
morning, however, he saw it march in the opposite direc-
tion ; he followed, wearing a tricoloured cockade, in which
was hidden a bunch of violets. He went after the sol-
diers until they were out of sight, but ere long the regi-
ment reappeared again, returning without its officers. He
waited, and directly the serjeant-major, who was now in
command, saw him, he cried out —
" Youngster, give me your cockade."
Edgar was only too delighted, and was allowed in
recompense to march into the town at the head of the
troops by the side of the Serjeant.
With a tricoloured flag which a young lady had made,
Edgar and his companions went about the woods, the
fields, and over the heaths, singing patriotic songs.
When they came to a village they struck up a new song
of B^ranger which they had just learnt —
" II faut partir, Agnfes I'ordonne,
Adieu plaisir, adieu repos
The boys were terrifically in earnest, but no one else was.
To their surprise not a peasant left his plough, nor a
shepherd his flock, to follow their standard.
Wandering about the woods in this slightly demented
state, the boy came upon a dreadful sight. In a little
copse, among the primroses and violets, lay the dead
body of a soldier who had been shot in the back; his
mouth was wide open, his arms, tattooed with eagles,
were stretched out, while a long trace of congealed blood
marked the distance of the place where the ball had
entered his body. The man was evidently a deserter,
22 EDGAR QUINET.
probably he had thought that the little wood presented a
favourable opportunity to quit the white flag in order that
he might rejoin the Emperor.
What ! an old soldier thus to perish ignominiously !
For weeks after that bloodstained corpse haunted Edgar.
In the middle of the night he would wake, and there by
his bedside stood the figure, red and lurid, as if crying
for help. Afraid that his father would laugh at him if
he said that he had been frightened by a ghost, he dared
not cry out, but sat up in bed, his mouth open with
terror. Again and again the spectre returned, until one
night the boy threw off the clothes, groped his way out
of the, room, and went downstairs. ,He returned, and
putting his hand on the banister saw the bleeding soldier
move on before him. In horror he rushed along a
narrow passage, fancying that he felt the spectre's hot
breath over his shoulder. He ran into a servant's room,
closed the door, and rushing up to the bed, cried out,
" The soldier ! the soldier ! " The servant awoke and
tried to pacify him, but even then the awful figure did
not at once disappear.
Up to this time the boy had never read a newspaper ;
in fact, he had only seen one now and then by chance.
What was more, he did not understand that it was a
vehicle of news. He saw a retired captain every morn-
ing read to a silent group what he called "the papers,"
but to Edgar the word conveyed no meaning. AH the
news he believed in came by word of mouth, the living
word, handed on from village to village, from man to
man. Thus he heard of Waterloo. Eorty-two years later,
a hundred leagues away, he heard the story repeated in
the identical terms in which it had reached him when
a boy, and in which he had heard it again and again
in other lands. The popular legend about Waterloo
which thus obtained currency in France on the morrow
of the battle, and maintained so persistent existence, ran
thus : —
THE LEGEND OF WATERLOO. 23
" The Emperor's aide-de-camp, mounted on the top of a hill,
says, ' Sire, I see an innumerable army of Prussians ! ' Napoleon
goes to the top, and looks through his telescope. ' No,' says he,
' you are wrong, they are our own people, that is Grouchy. You
are nervous, you make a mistake.'
" ' Sire,' replies the aide-de-camp, ' I tell you it is an army of
Prussians.'
' Then,' says the Emperor, ' we are lost, we are hetrayed ! ' "
<( i '
Betrayed ! Treason ! this was the popular explanation
of Waterloo. But, however it had come to pass, the
fact that France and her Emperor were finally defeated
was soon brought home to every eye and heart in Bourg.
Disbanded soldiers in all sorts of uniforms, horse-soldiers,
and lancers on foot, mixed up with infantry, carrying
sticks instead of arms, were seen passing through the
town, each finding his way back as best he could
to his own village. T)-eason ! was their explanation
when interrogated, and the thought struck panic into
people's hearts, two hundred leagues away from the
battlefield.
This rabble-rout of a broken-down army was followed
by hordes of foreign invaders, and now there was even
less good feeling than before. The invaders were more
savage — the invaded more sullen.
Monsieur Quinet shut himself up in his study. He
was a great physicist, and had undertaken a stupendous
work on the theory of terrestrial magnetism, which he
had already identified with the principle of electricity.
While his house was invaded by all kinds of foreigners,
while the Tyrolese were beating their drums and the
Hungarians blowing their trumpets at his very door, he
sat absorbed in abstruse calculations. His wife, on the
other hand, tried to forget her chagrin in reading Tasso,
Ariosto, or Shakespeare, her son sitting at her side, follow-
ing his mother as far as he was able into the enchanted
land of poesy. But at best this was only an exercise
of the imagination ; his first real glimpse of a world,
a hidden world of celestial harmony and beauty, came
24 EDGAR QUINET.
through the sense of sound. He had learnt to play
the violin, and was so passionately fond of it that
he was scraping away at it from morning till night.
He sat up in bed with his fiddle-stick in his hand, he
jumped up before he was dressed and tortured every-
body's ears in his efforts to make the instrument talk
to him.
One morning in September 1 8 1 5 he was thus engaged,
standing in his night-shirt, at the end of his bed, when
suddenly the door opened, and in stalked a great Croatian
hussar. Before he could remonstrate the tall soldier had
seized the violin, had got it into position, and was scraping
on it himself. Edgar's arms had gone out automatically
after the rapt violin, they continued extended in sheer
astonishment at the wonderful manner in which this
strange intruder was playing. Such melodies, such
ravishing strains, had never fallen on his ear before,
He stood entranced.
Meanwhile his mother, lying awake in a neighbouring
room, noted the strange change, and marvelled what had
come to Edgar, he seemed inspired. Moved to verify
the miracle, -she sprang out of bed, and ran undressed to
his room. A domestic, smitten with the same notion,
had followed her mistress, and the two women opened
the door. Edgar saw them, and the three looked mutually
horror-struck at the contretemps. Happily the Croat
stood, violin in hand, with his back to the door, so that
they had time to rush away before he perceived the
increase in his audience. In a few minutes after, with-
out uttering a word, the invader replaced the fiddle in
Edgar's hands and stalked out of the room. He never
knew the admiration and amusement his passion for
music had evoked.
Edgar had two friends, Leon and Charles Bruys, who
also learnt to play the violin. One day Charles played
a piece so badly that Madame Bruys stopped him and
asked Edgar to play it. But he obstinately refused. His
HIS PASSION FOR THE VIOLIN. 25
mother scolded and he looked cross, until at last, finding
no entreaties would prevail, the elders shrugged their
shoulders and gave it up. When they were alone his
mother began to upbraid him. "Didn't you see," he
said, " that Charles had played badly, and that if I had
tried the same piece his father and mother and grand-
father would have thought that I played better than he
did." Some days after, being alone in his room, Madame
Bruys overheard him playing this very piece. " I see
how it was Edgar would not play that piece the other
day," and she ran into the room, and embracing him, told
him. He became very red, struggled to get away, and
ran out of the room.
Like all who are afflicted with thoughts profounder
than their age warrants, Edgar was no doubt more
reticent than he ever imagined. Sensitive of ridicule, he
said nothing to his elders of that which he could neither
explain nor defend. "Whether even his mother had any
idea that a little hot-brained Bonapartist lived so near
her heart, does not appear. If his parents knew anything
about it, they were wonderfully wise people neither to
try to argue nor to laugh him out of it. All they did
was to sow in his heart a love of liberty, belief in the
dignity of human nature, leaving it to the future to teach
him what to preserve or to reject.
It was not long before this method of education bore
fruit. He adored what the world around him adored,
but every day there grew up stronger and stronger within
him a feeling of aversion to the mental tendencies hidden
under all he idolised. Somehow or other everything he
heard outside his own home troubled him. A hatred of
thought had sprung up, an excessive reaction in favour
of the principle of authority. People seemed to take a
delight in appearing stupid, and in snubbing those
who stUl pretended to think for themselves. If Edgar
uttered sentiments such as he had heard at home, he
was answered by a sardonic, "I don't understand you."
26 EDGAR QUINET.
If he spoke of books which to him ■were as familiar as
household words, it was ever the same parrot-like reply,
" I don't understand you." This fashion of despising
all that did not appear armed with some visible force
oppressed him.^ He began to feel a desire for solitude.
A short distance from Bourg was a hill surrounded by
firs. Here he took his books, read aloud his favourite
authors, and comforted himself with the thought that, if
men would not understand them, Nature could.
His surprise and distress at the want of mental sym-
pathy he experienced were intensified by the discovery
that the world had changed its opinions as it were in
one night. Everyone had been for Napoleon, now his
name was not only despised, but forgotten. All who
were still suspected of Bonapartism, or who had shown
special enmity to the old regime, were proscribed. His
schoolmaster, the old dragoon captain, had to fly ; an old
Conventionnel, a friend of his parents and the father of
one of his companions, was put in prison. This fickle-
ness of mankind deeply impressed him, but his little
world was frightened by " the White Terror." Hence-
forth he could never throw off a certain anxiety that
nothing, would remain long as it was.
The portrait here given of him when a boy accords
very well with this period in his life. An oval face,
and the most dreamy eyes, strangely dreamy for a boy,
are its characteristic features. The head is said to be
too long as a matter of fact, and the little old mannish,
high-collared coat, with the grieved expression" amounting
almost to sulkiness, convey an impression which does not
do him justice. Nevertheless, it is most precious as
giving the only idea of him in early life.
1 These characteristics of the time were due to its militarism. Madame de
R^musat says, that having once entered into a conversation with the First
Consul about Shakespeare, she felt obliged to keep silence for several days
after, or at least only to take part in idle talk, in order to efface the sensa-
tion she had produced among the silent and attentive audience in epaulettes.
Memoirs, vol. i. p. i8.
AN HIATUS IN THE ILLUMINATIONS. 27
To return to his history; he gratified his opposition
to the world by an act which might have got him into
serious trouble, had he not been the son of a man known
to have always hated Bonaparte. CharoUes was to illu-
minate in honour of the fall of the Empire and the return
of the Bourbons. Going out into the streets, Edgar saw
his father's house sparkling like the rest. In an instant
he ran in, rushed up the staircase, opened the windows,
and extinguished the lights, throwing the lamps on to
the floor and kicking them to pieces. The result was
that the brilliant street was cut in half by a great patch
of black. Shortly after the king's procureur passed, and
inquiring the meaning of this hiatus in the illuminations,
learnt that it was caused by young Quinet. The same
evening he met Monsieur Quinet at a party at the sub-
prefect's, and told him of his son's audacity. But not a
word of reproof did Edgar receive.
Nevertheless, this adventure probably had something to
do with the determination his father took about this
time to change the method of his education. It was
decided he should enter the college at Bourg. Now
indeed did Edgar feel one with his hero. He too was
going, a prisoner to his St. Helena. Like the great eagle,
the young lark was henceforth to live in a narrow cage.
He acted as one about to retire from the world. He
bade adieu to his young friends, distributing among them
all his treasures. To one he gave his magpie, to another
his rabbits, and to a third his lame raven. His sparrow-
hawk, who had remained faithful to him through every
change, now rose in the air, and, poising itself for a
moment high above its master's head, uttered a wild
warning cry, and fled back again to freedom.
( 28 )
CHAPTEE V.
BOURG, CERTINES. 1815-1817.
" This moment is unique. Ifc has not returned, it will not return. It was at once
to eclipse all others, and to illuminate them with the true Light." — Mes Idies,
In the College of Bourg, it seems to have been thought
that the only way to keep the boys from doing wrong
was to imprison them within its walls, and never to
permit their egress except under guardianship. To one
who had breathed nothing but the free air of liberty
since he was born, such chains were doubly galling.
Between school-hours Edgar used to go to the top
of an old rampart in the outworks of the college, and
standing there, look sadly out towards the edge of the
forest. He often was tempted to run away, but the
thought of his mother stopped him.
The plan of teaching was unendurable. He felt no
interest in dry mechanical learning, of which he could
not imagine the object. However, that principle of duty
which from his earliest years had been implanted in his
soul came to his aid, and he tried to conquer his dislike.
But it only increased his discontent, for he felt his efforts
were but those of a slave.
Thanks to his industry, and the early instruction
which he had received in Latin, he found himself the
classmate of young men of eighteen or nineteen years,
he being only twelve. They appeared to him a set
of young coxcombs, thinking only of their dress. He
OUM if^nMUiA ■
^.,
<^^o- ^ :^ X^^S^^ , 4.^^,
'^' B^ ecM . <«* ^Qer-
uxoW (jMS-^y^sio cfOJisiSi -ft»-o^^{^
/vBLeLt aA^Udi^'*'^
Vcrcs^mile of « letter wriit^tn hy Edgar Quintt to hii mother from college at Bourgj
March iith, i3i6.
AN ANGELIC FACE. 29
fell into moodiness and silence, a misanthropic state
■which brought sterility into his mind and heart.
The boys never referred to their relatives, especially
their female ones. If their mother or sisters came to
see them, they avoided all demonstrations of affection,
and talked to them at as great a distance as possible
from where their schoolfellows were playing. It
happened, however, on one such occasion, that Edgar
was sufficiently near to see the way in which a com-
panion was greeted by his sister. She had the. typical
face of an angel, fair hair, and eyes of celestial blue.
She was dressed with rustic simplicity, but that was
nothing ; the smile of her innocent face, and the tone of
love in her voice, affected him like a summer's zephyr
after cold sleet. His sullen humour fled, his mind and
heart burst out in joy and praise. That sweet form was
ever by his side smiling upon him. He saw it every-
where and in everything. He never knew her Christian
name, nor did he want to know. The family lived near
Certines, and he might have been invited to the house,
but he had no desire. It was enough to love, he never
thought about being loved. It was entirely a poetical
sentiment, the bursting again into life of his mind and
heart. Things that lately looked black and wretched
now wore an air of sweetness and beauty. As the
violin had introduced him into the world of poetry
through the sense of sound, so now the apparition of
that fair young face had introduced him again into
that world through the sense of form. The violin and
the smile of Mademoiselle Genevier were the portals
through which he caught glimpses of the inner light of
the universe, and through which he felt a vibration of
the far-off music of its harmonies.
But he was to have a still deeper sense of its glories,
a momentary insight into one of those secrets in the
knowledge of which his father had said would consist
the eternal felicity of the just.
30 EDGAR QUINET.
The Easter of 1816 arrived, and his confessor was
surprised to learn that he had never made his first
communion. Living in such matters above mere
fashion, Madame Quinet had wished to put off this
solemn season until she thought that her son was
capable of understanding its significance. The priest,
on the contrary, thought that not a moment should be
lost, seeing that he was thirteen years of age. So they
set about preparing him, a task which proved very easy,
thanks to his mother's influence and the gentleness of his
director, an eloquent Provencal missionary.
This good man understood him. He saw that his
reserved nature was longing for sympathy, above all for
infinite sympathy. He saw, too, how he had been edu-
cated, and wisely avoiding every controverted point, he
spoke only of the common truths of the Gospel. Yet
because he was not quite courageous enough to throw
overboard all his clerical formulas, he fell into a grave
error, and in the confessional almost spoilt the good he
was permitted to do. Happily his penitent did not un-
derstand what he meant ; Edgar was, in fact, too much
moved by higher thoughts to notice anything of the kind.
He was living above all earthly things, and felt very
happy. All through this time of preparation he was
in constant communication with his Protestant mother,
who assisted him throughout with prayers and exhorta-
tions. She told him to look gently on the infirmities
of the Eoman Church, to pierce the earthly veil and
the corruptions of time, and to fix his gaze on Eternal
Truth.
Thus he went to the altar, supported on the one side
by his Protestant mother, and on the other by a Eoman
Catholic missionary. As he knelt in the Church of
Notre Dame de St. Nicholas de Bourg, admitted for the
first time into fuU communion with the Eoman Catholic
Church, he, a mere boy, realised in himself the unity of
Christendom, for he mingled his Protestant tod Catholic
A REVELATION 'OF THE ETERNAL. 31
prayers together, and trying to preserve a relation to
both churches, he felt most filled with the one he could
not see : the persecuted, despised church of his mother.
After the communion the missionary preached a ser-
mon, which to Edgar proved a real word of God. When
it was needful for him to rise and make the round of the
church he could scarcely stand for emotion. His eyes
were blinded with tears, not of sorrow but of joy. That
moment never returned, nor did he expect it ever would.
Often in after-years he experienced religious emotions,
but they had a literary and intellectual character. This
excelled them all, and illuminated them all with a ray
of the True Light.
From the joy of this unique hour he passed into the
wilderness of trial and temptation. The escape from
Elba, the march to Paris, Waterloo, and the Invasion, the
sudden realisation of the Napoleonic Epos, had been, to
his young mind, like the steaming manure by means of
which the gardener antedates a season, but which, bring-
ing some plants to precocious perfection, only develops
in others the worst qualities. From early childhood
Edgar Quinet so breathed the atmosphere of militarism,
that every sense had been filled with it ; but when that
sudden and marvellous apparition of the Hero of the
Hundred days flashed before his eyes, he was suddenly
changed from a mere day-fly, rejoicing in the scorching
sunshine, into a conscious idolater of its centre and
source.
But under the Eestoration the French world utterly
forgot the Emperor. Even his portrait was proscribed, so
that his very form was unknown. Thus it came to pass
that those who had merged their whole existence in the
glory of Napoleon, felt they must live at war with all
around, or change their entire nature. The first effect,
as we have seen, in Edgar was misanthropy. Under its
influence he had entered the college at Bourg, but there
in that apparently gloomy spot he had seen the aurora;
32 EDGAR QUINET.
the clouds had lifted, one rift after another of golden light
had opened to him, and a distance had appeared where
the sun shone with eternal glory. But the clouds closed
again, and he had many a weary mile to trudge before he
reached the daylight.
The glamour of the false light withdrawn, the love of
liberty, the dignity of human nature, the claims of duty —
all these ideas, planted so early in his mind, gained more
and more power over him. The writings of Madame de
Stael aroused his conscience to a sense of the servitude
of the Napoleonic rdgime. However, he did not readily
give up his hero, but rather sought to conciliate his reli-
gious admiration of Napoleon with his belief in liberal
ideas. He eagerly welcomed the report of the deathbed
conversion of the exile of St. Helena to the principles
of liberty, and imagined that the defeated tyrant had
admitted at last the ideas he had used his colossal power
to tread under foot. But when he came to compare his
ideal Napoleon with the popular one, he realised the
immense change that had taken place in his own mind.
The discovery distressed him, but he found that moral
advance is only possible to those who are not afraid to
differ from public opinion.
A deeper tendency lay at the roots of his nature, one
not so much the result of the atmosphere which he had
breathed, as inborn. We have noted how the admiration
of beauty was the one agreeable feature- in the character
of his paternal grandmother, and it is not strange therefore
to find it come out in equal intensity in her grandson.
The question was, should it be his master or his servant ?
It took him three years to settle the question, and then
he did not deliver himself.
In the neighbourhood of Certines lived a brother and
two sisters, nearly allied to Bonaparte. Although so highly
connected, they were in narrow circumstances, and on
friendly terms with the Quinet family. Edgar paid them
a visit. He found them concluding a meal, and as he
AN ENCHANTRESS. 33
entered, the young ladies rose to remove an immense
rye-loaf, almost too heavy for them to carry. He came
forward to assist them, and as he did so his eyes met
those of the youngest, and he fell conquered at the first
glance.
She had the bust and mien of an antique statue : a
Eoman profile, a rather low brow, with clusters of jet-black
hair, dressed and bound like sculptured tresses, eyes
motionless but sparkling under their dark lashes, a neck
swan-like, a Southern complexion — altogether the dazzling
look of an Agrippina. Edgar felt as if another soul than
his own had mastered him and was going to lead him
wherever it pleased. He struggled, he groaned, he reasoned
with himself, he tried every artifice he could think of ; do
what he would he could not get rid of the intruder. By
a sure presentiment he knew that he should never find
behind this finely-chiselled form a heart to answer to his
own. And yet the fascination of her beauty held him
enchained in more than iron bonds. Certines, once so
beloved, became insupportable. Its gentle rustic melan-
choly ill consorted with the classic beauty of Pulcheria.
He longed to go to Italy, to Greece, to shores lapped by
the deep blue of the Mediterranean. He made great walks
in an aimless sort of way, passing the distant hills, wan-
dering in wild and lonely spots. But all this energy was
to no purpose, until at last his struggles for freedom became
maddening. One day after a long march, gun in hand, he
was returning home through the marsh lands and by the
great ponds; tired and oppressed by their heavy vapours,
the thought of his bondage became unbearable. He felt
himself sinking beneath the load of his chain, and falling
a victim into the jaws of fate. In a moment, without
reflection, save that in some indistinct, almost unconscious
way there was a rash appeal to destiny to decide whether
he should live to be a man or not, he cocked his gun,
put the barrel in his mouth, and ran some fifty paces.
It was a moment of chaos ; never did he fall lower. The
c
34 EDGAR QUINET.
awful danger he had run woke him somewhat out of his
fevered nightmare, and he saw a streak of dawn.
Every term he came back from college to find his
sister Blanche, who was a few years his junior, growing
as himself, in knowledge and in stature. The two with
their mother formed a perfect unity. It was impossible
in the long run for Edgar to keep his secret from them ;
and when they knew it, and appreciated his struggles
to free himself, they used every art to help him, espe-
cially ridicule, in which Edgar himself joined, having
a firm belief that laughter would often overcome evils
when nothing else would. But these united efforts would
perhaps have been altogether vain, had not a circum-
stance occurred which revealed in his nature a force
stronger than that which was misleading him.
One warm September evening, at the end of a long
walk in the wood, Edgar with his mother and sister were
surprised by a thunderstorm. It was more than usually
terrible. At last a fearful flash played around them,
and, seemed to envelop them in flames. They clung
together, uttering the same cry. In that moment Edgar
realised what his mother and sister were to him. The
lightning flash had set him free.
aSoofe M.
THE VOCATION.
" Is it for human will
To institute such, impulses? still less
To disregard their promptings . .
. Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns impart !
Be sure they sleep not whom God needs ! nor fear
Their holding light His charge, when every hour
That finds that charge delayed, is a new death."
— Paracelsus.
/:
CfitoUf^
^-«tr* ^ y - -
^
■^Ji4jictJ^^^{!au.^ff2ff^
JilROME Qi'iNF.r (1807, at [!>': (itn of 38).
To face p. 37,
( 37 )
CHAPTEE I.
LYONS. 1817-182O.
"What oppressive joy was mine
Wlieu life grew plain, and I first viewed tlie thronged,
The eTerlasting concourse of mankind."
— ParaceUua,
In the autumn of 18 17 Edgar Quinet left the College
of Bourg for that of Lyons. Here he met with smgular
sympathy from the director, the professors, and even from
his schoolfellows; and being himself a different being from
what he had been two years before, the new world into
which he now entered wore a totally different hue. His
life at Lyons was the aurora of his existence. The
heavy clouds which had hung over his mind and heart
had dispersed, and the bright, warm rays of his intelli-
gence went forth, lightening up the great world spread
out before him, his heart leaping for joy as each new
vista unfolded itself.
The College of Lyons had a man of original mind for
its director. A tall, spare man, with head bent low,
pallid and severe-looking, the Abb6 Eousseau had the
sweetness and the mildness of the truly wise in heart.
That his wisdom and goodness were not always appre-
ciated, we may gather from the fact that, six months
after Edgar Quinet came to Lyons, there was a barring-
out in the college. No cause existed sufficient to have
brought it about, but a spirit of rebellion had seized
other colleges, and Lyons caught the infection. The fire
smouldered some little time, and then burst forth. One
evening the pupils in one of the halls suddenly rose.
38 EDGAR QUINET.
extinguished the candles, drove out the masters, locked
the doors, and made a tremendous uproar. Next day,
when the director tried to speak to the malcontents, his
voice was drowned in murmurs. He called six boys out,
and summarily expelled them from the college. This,
however, did not allay the trouble, for that evening the
pupils of another quarter of the college rose in the night,
took possession of their hall, barricaded it with the desks,
and, collecting all the books and candlesticks to serve as
ammunition, prepared to stand a regular siege. The
arrangements complete, they began to make a horrible
noise. The whole college was soon in commotion. The
servants got great biUets of wood, with which they battered
the doors of the barricaded hall, while others tried to
break them open with hatchets ; the besieged meanwhile
uttering cries of " No more omelettes ! " " No more haricot
beans ! " After an hour's assault and battery the doors
gave way, the desks were overturned, and the masters
entered victorious. Eight more of the boys were at
once expelled, and four others were singled out for the
same punishment.
Madame Quinet seems to have been afraid that Edgar
had lost his good sense. In his exculpatory letter he
answers her, that he is not quite such a fool as to hazard
his own happiness and hers for the pleasure of joining in
a purposeless riot. " Calm yourself, then, my good mother,"
he writes, " and be sure that the thought of the harm I
should do you will all my life prevent me from running
into the way of error, even if duty itself were not a suffi-
cient motive."
But these expressions, used in a moment of self-asser-
tion, give no idea of the admiration the young collegian
had for his mother, and the immense influence that she
exercised over him. Nearly three hundred of Edgar
Quinet's letters, the majority of them written to his
mother, have been published. Those written from college
at Lyons, when he was between fifteen and eighteen, are
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 39
Ml of lamentations at his separation from her, and of
assurances of his intense devotion. Incidentally they give
several graphic touches, which enable us to realise the
personal appearance both of the young man and his mother.
We see the latter in her " triumphant beauty," either walk-
ing in her hat adorned with a large flower, and a tightly-
fitting dress trimmed with lace, or at some evening party,
wearing a head-dress of blue velvet, " which became her
marvellously well ; " we see her exercising a charm so
peculiarly entrancing that her son can only liken it to
" an unheard-of manner,'' and especially devoting herself
to the lad, whom she consoled in strains eloquent and
tender. Then we have Edgar himself, getting dusty and
out of repair at school, wanting new clothes and new
boots, his father coming and taking him to a tailor's,
where he is arrayed in a blue cloth coat and pantaloons,
a waistcoat of goat's hair, and a hat with a very broad
brim, then the fashion, called a lolivar. Ardent, sensi-
tive, nervous, it is clear from these letters that he is
fonder of making poetry than studying mathematics ; that,
as it often happens to such minds, memory fails at the
most important moments, and the problem on which he
has spent an earnest and toilsome hour suddenly dis-
appears from his mental tablets, leaving no trace behind;
that he is nervously anxious for extra instruction ; that
he dreads the examination, eagerly deprecating the pre-i
sence of his father on the occasion ; and that when the
time arrives he does not succeed so weU as his more
phlegmatic companions.
French college life was certainly dull in the extreme.
Shut up in almost conventual seclusion, apparently only
going out under supervision and in file, or when relatives
or friends came and begged for a day's holiday, it would
not be surprising if Edgar's letters to his mother were
far more homesick than they are. But they are infinitely
more than mere unavailing regrets for her society ; they
are a really intelligent effort to supply the want by cor-
40 EDGAR QUINBT.
respondence. In them he gives expression to his inmost
thoughts, using no reserve ; he refers freely to his masters,
his schoolfellows, his relatives, his father, and above all
to himself. If there is anything in the world a youth
shrinks from discussing with his elders, it is his loves
and his rhymes, but it was just on these topics that Edgar
was most unreserved with his mother.
The way in which they work together to destroy the
remains of the chain which had once bound him to the
fair Pulcheria is quite amusing. Madame Quinet was
evidently thoroughly French in the ability with which
she used the art of killing by ridicule. Edgar is made
at last to laugh at himself for ever yielding to attrac-
tions so commonplace as those of a cold and coquettish
Celimene.
But not only the tenderest feelings of his heart are
thus laid bare for his mother's criticism, but the stiU
more susceptible emotions of his mind.
" Here, my dear mother," he writes two days before he
attained his seventeenth year, " are some bad verses, but I have
little mind indeed when I cease to think of thee. It seems as
if all my faculties reside in thy heart. If Tibullus and Proper-
tius had had such a mother as I, they would not, I imagine,
have written so many verses upon profane love."
Doubtless these lines, one hundred and eighty in num-
ber, would have appalled an ordinary mother. But Edgar
was sure of a critic at once sympathetic and unsparing.
So on another occasion he writes : —
"I find in thy sweet rebukes a thousand times more charm
than in reading a romance. Every moment I am tempted to
cry out with the prophet king, who had also loved a Pulcheria
(but had not, as I, forgotten her), ' Thy language is for me
sweeter than the honey of the valley of Jehoshaphat ' (a quota-
tion, by the way, quite patristic in its freedom). . . .
" The Jews taught their children to read out of the Bible,
the Mahometans out of the Koran, mine shall have no other
books than thy letters.
" The first sj^Uables that they learn to spell shall be those
which thou hast written, then the first tears which they will
A DEN ON THE RHONE. 41
shed over what they read will be tears of love. I will pronounce
over their heads the word of blessing which thou hast pro-
nounced over mine ; I will address to thy ' children's children '
the hymn of tenderness that I have consecrated to thee ; they
shall embrace me in pronouncing thy name. And if I am to
have evil days, where but from thy letters shall I draw strength
to cope with misfortune 1 Where othervfise shall I seek conso-
lation in sorrow ? Is it not from thee that I can learn how to
struggle against destiny? Adieu, adieu."
This tendency in Edgar Quinet to fall into idolatry
at every stage in his youth shows how deeply the
religious sentiment was rooted in his being. It was in
him, as in every great mind, the most living force ; and
it discovered itself in adoring veneration for whatever
was strong, beautiful, loving, and true. That he was
led step by step through an idolatrous worship of the
humanly strong, beautiful, loving, and true, marks him
out as one fitted hereafter to deal with the same expe-
rience in humanity, of whose history his own life thus
afforded so interesting a microcosm.
A passionate devotee of the violin, Edgar Quinet was
an acquisition to the church choir ; to enable him to
practise, the priests gave him a kind of tool-house which
had been made in the thick wall of the college over-
looking the Ehone. By heaping up the broken bricks
on the floor, and removing a few others overhead, he
was able to stand upright amongst the cobwebs which
covered the walls, and even to introduce a reading-desk
and a cane chair. The only light came through a lattice
window, overhung by a heavy roof ; but the den had a
door and a key, and here he could indulge that taste for
solitude so necessary to the born thinker.
The Abb^ Eousseau watched what Quinet would do
with his retreat, and was apparently satisfied, for although
his pupil constantly violated rules, missing his classes,
daily worship, and even his meals, he never gave him a
reprimand. During the three years Edgar was at Lyons
the only approach at fault-finding he could remember was
42 EDGAR QUINET.
on one occasion, when he presented himself at the review
held every Sunday with one of his shoes uncleaned, and
then all the Abb^ did was to smile and sigh and pass on.
Hardly anywhere but in a semi-monastic institution
could Edgar have enjoyed the advantage of such arbitrary
beneficence ; almost free to study how and what he
would, he soon felt a delight in learning equal to any-
thing that he had ever experienced in the wildest rambles
of his childhood. The classes, which at Bourg had
seemed so detestably dry and difficult, now appeared easy
and interesting. Opening a copy of Ovid, he began
to read. To his astonishment the mechanical difficulties
of translation were gone. He felt that he not only
understood the sense, but enjoyed the poetry. He began
to read not only the Latin authors, but their commentators,
Casaubon, Scaliger, Erasmus, and others, in an old Elzevir
edition which had belonged to his grandfather. The
Abb^ Eousseau, perceiving the intellectual hunger which
had seized the youth, opened his own library to him, but
not without some trepidation as to where all this reading
would end.
It was while he was thus drinking in draught after
draught of old-world lore that the historic faculty arose,
and the vision of the old Roman world began to appear
on his mental horizon. So great was his enjoyment in
this new world, that falling ill, his consolation was to
hear a schoolfellow read by his bedside the finest books
of the " JEneii." Tacitus was his favourite author, and
after him Gregory of Tours. And why ? Because they
both treated of persons and times his own experience
enabled him to . understand. His childhood , had passed
among political convulsions, and he himself had been
dazzled by the colossal form of the imperial tyrant who
bestrode the world; he himself had seen wave after
wave of invaders pouring over the soil of France ; he
had even talked with them and lived in their society :
naturally then he found a peculiar charm in histories
VOICES OF THE PAST. 43
■which related parallel events and delineated parallel
characters in a previous epoch of the world.
But he did not confine himself to the Latin authors.
In reading them he had caught a glimpse of the true
historic method : the traces of the past lying petrified in
the present, the whole to be vivified arid understood in
the light of the eternal sameness of human nature ; and
henceforth all history became to him a field of research.
Few things interested him more than the revolutions of
language. When only fourteen he would not let a word
pass without examining it closely, and searching out its
history in that of manners, customs, opinions, and laws.
Such was the freedom of the times, that every day
when he went to mass he always carried with him a
great Latin Bible, in which he read during the function.
He read it through in this way, and when he had finished
it he took in its place the Confessions of St. Augustine,
and the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," the series ending
with the sermons of the Protestant N'ecker. A word
from one of the masters would have stopped these Bible
readings, but no one spoke that word. He read on, and
made his own reflections. It shows the bent of his mind
when he teUs us that they were purely historic. If he
paused to look at what was going on, it was to discover,
if he could, the origin and meaning of the ritual, and
to consider what relation it had to the text which he
was reading. Absorbed in his book, his ear sometimes
caught the monkish monotone of the liturgy ; in a
moment he was living in the atmosphere of Oriental
antiquity or of the Middle Ages. Thus to his fine sense
of sound spoke the voices of the past, and he had but
to recall their accents, and the circumstances under
which he heard them ; and what more easy than for a
door of history to fly open, and ages apparently dead
and buried to live again in his imagination !
Such was the intensity of his enthusiasm, that after
working all day at mathematics, he would spend the
44 EDGAR QUINET.
greater part of the night in reading in the original:
Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso. His custom, in the
study of the past, was to wake up before daybreak,
light up a dark lanthorn, and begin to pore over his
favourite authors. In reading the Italian poets in after-
life he never could divest himself of a certain weird,
early-morning feeling : the first glimmerings of sunlight,
and the solemn notes of the clocks striking all over the
city.
Although read under such circumstances, the Italian
poets quite supplanted in his. affections their elder
Eoman brothers, and henceforth Italy rather than Eome
became the object of his devotion — a devotion which, after
that he owed to France, never waned as long as he lived.
He had had the notion that the study of mathematics
dried up the imagination ; his first master soon convinced
him that there could not be a greater mistake. The pro-
fessor was himself a li,ving witness to the contrary, for he
had an equal devotion to two things : the integral cal-
culus and fairy tales. M. Cachuat very soon inspired
his pupil with a sense of the sublimity of the higher
mathematics. His imagination thus fired with the
immeasurable possibilities of the science, he went on to
study it Tinder a mind of less romantic mould. M.
Clerc's severe method was of the greatest advantage to
Edgar. His pupil's habit of covering his papers with
rhymes much annoyed him ; he would not suffer a single
error to pass, but required absolute correctness.
Algebra struck Edgar's imaginative mind by its
singular language, so mysterious yet so full of light, and
by its ability to express general and universal truths,
while it refused to condescend to explain particular ones.
It suggested literary ideas, for he saw that its professors
eliminated from their problems all that was needless,
expressing the truth to be conveyed in the smallest
number of terms, thus giving him the idea of a style
brief, concise, radiant. The application of algebra to
HIS FELLOW STUDENTS. 45
geometry, the properties of the curves, delighted him.
Its equations, shining forth into an infinity of truths, all
alike indubitable, fortified his innate love of truth, and
gave him more and more a taste for light.
Though living so solitary a life, he seems to have had
not only the good-will of his masters, but also of his
fellow-collegians. All his recollections of them were
pleasant and agreeable. This immunity from the suffer-
ing which other boys of like tendencies would have cer-
tainly had to endure was owing partly to the impression
made by his genius, and partly to a powerful sentiment of
self-respect, indigenous and strengthened by his peculiar
education, but chiefly to a fineness of nature that caused
him instinctively to comprehend the feelings of others, and
to shrink from inflicting any real wound, combined with
a philosophic tone of mind and a gaiety of heart, which
made him ready to laugh over evils he could not ciire.
One of his fellow-students was a merry-faced youth, named
Jules Janin, in after-years among the most distinguished
of Parisian litterateurs. Janin, like Quinet, was in the
choir, playing the harp to the violin accompaniment of
his fellow-minstrel. However, their companionship was
cut short, Janin being one of those expelled in con-
sequence of the barring-out. Quiuet will be his fellow-
student a^ain at the £cole de Droit.
CHAPTER II.
PARIS, CERTINES. 182O.
" I am wandering in a vague infinitude stretching out around me."
— Mei Idees.
M. QuiNET appears to have designed his son for the
army ; at any rate, he determined that he should go to
Paris and enter the lEcole Polytechnique. When, there-
fore, Edgar left the college at Lyons in September 1820,
his father proceeded to carry out his plan, not expecting,
it would seem, any opposition from his son. But Edgar
had a double reason for objecting to the military life : he
did not wish to serve under the Wliite flag, and he was
already dreaming of making literature his profession.
In those days, and in Prance especially, little account
was taken of the personal desires of any young man ;
a family council was held, and his fate decided. Edgar
found himself in this position when he reached Paris,
and he inveighs, in a letter written to his toother, who
remained at home, against the cruelty of imprisoning
him again in a college, and the absurdity of the family
saying it is for his benefit and not for theirs.
" To avoid taking care of one's children, the best way is to
shut them up carefully ; so thought my grandmother when she
put my father into a drawer of the commode : so it is now
thought when they propose to shut me up in a bigger drawer."
In his anger he did not even spare his mother ; find-
ing satirical remarks did not move her, he sought to
INFLUENCE OF CERTINES. 47
work upon her feelings by a picture of his possible death
in the college, and asks her what response she will give
when called to account for his fate. But, concludes
he, with amusing bitterness —
" Those who consent during my life to see me so unhappy,
so desolate as I am, wiU not be capable of a regret after my
death."
This opposition, coming from one who had hitherto
been so dutiful, was finally successful. The women,
his mother and his aunt, exerted their influence in his
favour, and M. Quinet at length gave way. His aunt
proposed that in six months he should go into the office
of one of her relatives, who was a banker. To this
arrangement his father agreed, it being understood that
during the interval he was to study commercial law,
political economy, the English language, &c., and to learn
to write in a style suitable for a counting-house.
When he left college he passed a short time in company
with his mother and sister at Certines. Here they dis-
cussed every possible calling but the one he was to follow.
To all he found an objection, until his mother in despair
said that she saw very well that he had a dislike for
every profession by which he could live. With his sister
he wandered about the neighbourhood, sometimes joyous,
sometimes melancholy, taking long rides, reaching to the
highest ridges of the distant mountains. As they looked
down upon the scenery on either side — the one an Arca-
dian land where the light and shade scarcely moved, so
gentle was the wind that played over it; the other a
desert, full of deep shadows, of marshes, of wild soli-
tudes, of unfathomable mysteries — Edgar felt that these
two landscapes allegorised the condition of his own soul.
Speaking of this period of his existence, 1820, he
" I, who have admitted to such a degree the influence of in-
animate things over man, then felt this influence as much as
48 EDGAR QUINET.
any creature in the world, could feel it. It possessed me, it
tyrannised over me. A nature uncultured and neglected, in a
land where the deaths exceeded the births, was my nurse, my
master, my teacher.
"Even to-day I feel myself to be the child of our vast un-
peopled deserts, of our wastes, of our heaths, of our tracks of
rolling granite in the Crau, of our uninhabitable maremmas, of
our lonely ponds " (there were about fifteen hundred in this wild
land, the desert of the Dombes), " wooded lakes which no wind
ever ruffles, and of which the serenity is so deceitful. However
little I descend into myself, there again I find all these things.
" My whole youth has been embarrassed, enveloped by the
influence of this primeval nature, not yet conquered, not yet
regulated, not yet made obedient to man. It has exercised over
me a sovereign sway. jSTot knowing to whom to betake itself,
from the depth of its solitudes it has sought me, it is I whom
it has possessed with its complaints, its sighs, its m-iseries, its
inscrutable contagious desolations. It has plunged me into an
atmosphere where men can scarcely live, an atmosphere full of
aspirations without end, of hopes without body, of imaginary
beings, impossible in this present existence.
" This caressing and murderous nature did not kill me as it
did all my companions, it revenged itself in filling me at one
and the same time with enchantment and despair. For my
companions it was death ; for me worse than death — anguish,
agony of heart, irrestrainable visions, discouragements without
cause, that enervating languor which follows the vision of a
world which one had imagined one's own ; the mirage of a leafy
desert, stagnant, sighing, from whence constantly rises a vapour,
coloured like a prism by the dying light of day. When the
autumnal mists, creeping, born of the earth, arose like mournful
ghosts across a blotch of setting sun, dropping as they went
their robes on every bush, and mounting slowly towards the
light, how was it possible for the spirit not to dart forth to seize
them 1 And when to all these phantoms were joined those bom
of the hungry heart of a youthful soul wandering in these
maremmas, it was indeed too much. Nothing remained but to
bow the head and let the sweet scourge pass over it in silence."
Byron in the third canto of " Childe Harold," written
in 1 8 1 6, seems to teach that man is nothing save as he
becomes the impersonation, the incarnation of the spirit
which dwells in E"ature. He asks this question —
" Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them 1 "
WHAT HE LEARNT IN THE DESERT. 49
A question to which in a previous paragraph he had
thus replied —
" I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me ; I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee.
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
And thus I am absorbed, and this is life."
Quinet, on the contrary, felt this life by absorption to
be the slavery and death into which all are born. He
did not, of course, understand at the time the effort his
soul was making to assert its own moral personality, but
it prepared him to grasp and uphold tenaciously the
leading idea of his own life and of all his works : namely,
that the purpose of man's being is to develop the ideal
within him, and that in doing so he must assert his
liberty, must free himself from the world that enchains
him. ■ It was from the scenes of his childhood and of his
youth that he learnt that lore which gave him such an
insight into the sources of all human things. From the
dismal scenes in the Dombes he learnt to understand the
hearts of primitive men, subject all their days to the
tyranny he had himself felt so oppressive, and to sympa-
thise with their blind but heroic efforts to assert their
independence, and to become somethiug more than a
portion of that around them. Thus he was not only able
to enter into the thoughts of the barbarous Frank, of the
lonely hermit, and of the sad-hearted serf toiling on
through ages : a thrall in body and mind; but the im-
pression of these scenes gave him an insight into the
hopes and fears, the aspirations and depressions, of all
who lived among similar influences the wide world over,
so that he was able even to become the companion and
revealer of the thoughts of those whose traces have long
since passed into the dim twilight of the prehistoric
D
50 EDGAR QUINET.
ages. Every institution, every idea he henceforth traced
to the place of its birth, demanding its true meaning of
the nature which had cradled it. It was doubtless the
instinct which he even then had of being possessor of
some of the secrets of the universe, that was driving him
to rest content with nothing but a career in which he
should live to unfold them.
But how ? that was the question. He stood on the
threshold of a new world. Between the past and the
present there was the terrible gulf of the Eevolution.
And not only had the old land been ploughed and
harrowed, but the heavy tread of the imperial armies
had gone over the luxuriant shoots of the new seed, and
intellectual Europe was apparently trodden into one hard,
flat plain. How to cultivate this waste, how to drop a
seed of living thought, and when ? And yet beneath
that dead level a secret vegetation was at work. Minds
like Quinet's were everywhere, the life-throbs urging
them to effort, but despairing and self-distrustful because
they thought themselves alone called to the task. '
In that autumn of 1 820, in the midst of the Forest of
Seillon, nigh to the fifteen hundred ponds, in company with
the heron and the teal, surrounded at once by a physical
and mental vegetation, working silently and secretly, the
Creative Spirit came upon him with such power that he
felt as one intoxicated. He knew not one of those great
names who were to join in the intellectual revival, but
he already sympathised with them ; nay, his impatience
was so great that he longed to run before them and
beckon them on. His mind was uneasy as a bird about
to migrate, only the migration was to a new moral world
rather than to a foreign land, to ideas of which he had
caught a glimpse, but which had hitherto baffled his
approach. In his ardour he made the effort, but soon
learnt that his wings were not yet strong enough for
flight.
One idea summed up all his longings, the idea which
FEELS HIS VOCATION. 51
also filled the souls of his contemporaries. Prance —
France who had aimed so high only to fall so low;
France, at whom the Pharisees of Europe pointed with
scorn, as she who would free the nations, herself at last
the willing slave of a little Corsican ; France judged,
punished : — what noble heart would not feel for her,
above all among her own sons ? But in considering how
to help her at such a crisis, who could avoid feeling the
torture of a mind rent in twain, a mind which looked
back with longing towards the faith and chivalry of the
Middle Ages, and forward to the hopes and aspirations of
the nineteenth century ?
Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael were the literary
powers of the day. The first, under the guise of free
thought and poetic colouring, sought to enchant France
with the past; the latter pointed her to liberty and
the future. Although Chateaubriand had first awakened
the literary faculty in him, Quinet decided unhesitatingly
to follow the female voice. " Here," he said, " is the
side on which to advance. Here I shall find the age,
life, — the fulfilment of all my presentiments."
But when he contemplated the cynical despair which
the terrible disillusions of Leipsic, Moscow, Waterloo, and
the Eestoration had produced in the popular mind,
so that the least effort to find new paths was met
by. unbelief, sneers, and mockery, he sank back in
dismay, crying, " Who wiU dare to lead the way ? Is
there no one ? "
No answer, save astonishment in some, incredulity
in others, and anxiety on the part of his mother.
" What ! " he said to himself, " I attempt such a task !
What folly ! How could I dream of it ? These ideas of
mine, so shadowy and vain, how could I live by them ?
Is it not the most insensate of enterprises, the most
culpable, to judge by the terror of my friends ? ''
So the thought died down, and he awoke as from
a fine dream. All the lights which had shot up so
52 EDGAR QUINET.
brightly around him went out in darkness. This hidden
movement enclosed in a solitary soul gave place to stern
reality. In place of all their feverish hopes there
remained nothing but a world of emptiness, over which
the biting north wind blew in gusty squalls, upon whose
leaden sea played the lambent light of a meaningless
phosphorescence, and whose forests bent down with an
eternal moan.
( S3 )
CHAPTEE III.
PARIS. 1821-22.
" I fear that for a poor man, and indeed for every man, tlie possession of a sen-
sitive constitution and a lively intellect are decided disadvantages."
— Peasant Life in the North.
It was under the influence of such emotions that
Edgar Quinet went with his father to Paris in 1820,
not of course that he consciously realised them in the
distinct manner now described. This is the form in
which after nearly forty years more of thought and
culture he recalled them, giving their meaning and
intention as truly as was possible for human veracity.
At the opening of his autobiography, he devotes a
chapter to the question of its being permissible to
colour, exaggerate, or fill up a lapse of memory in such
works, and he rigidly decides against the slightest
deviation from truthfulness, declaring emphatically of
his own work, "All that which will be offered to the
reader will be of scrupulous exactitude." We may
therefore believe that in a way then quite undefined,
but most real, all these emotions were struggling in
his heart, prompting him to that first act of opposition
to his father's will, when he obstinately refused to be
content with the decision that consigned him to the
Polytechnic School and the military profession, working
stUl when he was in the banker's office, and driving
him at the end of six months to throw up his situation,
54 EDGAR QUINBT.
and appear for a time in a guise so contradictory to
his whole nature, that of an undutiful and disobedient
son.
For some time he was under the parental frown.
His father was so annoyed that he refused to support
him. Left thus to his own resources, he showed the
stuff he was made of by the vigour and purity of his
life. Far from yielding to the temptations of vice, he
worked away at law, mathematics, poetry, history, philo-
sophy, and foreign languages.
His poverty, however, was great, and he endured
many privations. Later on, when things were better
with him, his breakfast in Paris was only a tablet of
chocolate and a piece of bread, his dinners costing little
over twenty sous (p-g-d.) a day, a reading-room being his
refuge in cold weather, so that at this particular time
he probably lived even more economically. The trial
was the greater since he was already a favourite in
high society at Paris.
At such houses as those of his aunt and of the
Marechale Ney, he met persons of distinction. Yet
such was the independence of his spirit, that he
refused to make any use of their friendship, accepting
only the help of a yoimg artisan, whose family were
under considerable obligation to Madame Quinet. This
friend had been a companion of his boyhood, and was
then a designer of stuffs in Paris. He offered Edgar
a share in his humble lodging, and it is possibly to
this place he refers in a letter written to his father
at the end of 1821, wherein he tells him that he is
going to change his lodgings for one where he wlU
only have to pay eighty francs {£1, 4s.) a year, and
where he will have a window that looks over the trees,
so that he will be out of the noise of the city.
From October 1820 to July 1822 he was in Paris.
How much of that period he was in disgrace, it is
dif&cult to discover; probably it was only for a short
RESCUES A PRODIGAL. 55
fime that his parents entirely withdrew their coun-
tenance from him. For two months in the latter part
of the year 1821 his correspondence even with his
mother ceased. In December he wrote to his father,
seeking to appease his wrath, and to defend himself
from the charge of lightness. Learned M. Quinet
had evidently paid little attention to his son's character,
or he never would have feared that fickleness would
be its weak point. It is not too much to say that in
that winter of 1 8 2 1 it would have been difficult to find
in all Paris a young man of steadier purpose. Moreover,
the purity of his heart and manners, and the general
amiability of his character, won him the confidence of
old and young, the careful and the reckless, as the
following incident, which occurred some time in 1821,
will serve to show. Writing to his mother, he says : —
" I met at my restaurant Adrien de LatourneUe, who begged
me to come and see him in a week without fail. I went, and
what was my surprise when the landlady informed me that she
had sent all her servants to the Morgue to see if Adrien's
body had not been brought up by the drags. She told me that
he was overwhelmed with debts, had sold his watch, his clothes,
and for a week had not been heard of. Just at this moment
his uncle arrived ; he asked my name, and implored me to go to
Melun, where I should find his nephew, ready to enlist in a
regiment of dragoons. He gave me a letter for the colonel, and
authorised me to use armed force if my eloquence proved
insufficient to induce his nephew to return. A desire to
emulate my grandfather, whom you have always represented as a
great peacemaker, made me at once decide to go. The difficulty
was to unearth the delinquent in a city of 20,000 inhabitants.
- 1 went round to all the public-houses, beginning at the lowest
floor. After many useless visits, I saw at a little round table a
taU pale form, leaning motionless over the Qaotidienne. It
was the poor prodigal, without a sou in his pocket. I came
like Providence to help him to pay for the milk-posset which he
had had the audacity to order. It was only after a long fight
that he promised to return to his father.
" I gave the host half the money I had in my pocket, and
used the rest to bring us back to town. Adrien dared not
go out at first ; and my lodging served him as a refuge. Before
56 EDGAR QUINET.
going to the ofBce I prepared his meals, and I found him there
again in the evening. Happily this did not continue many
days."
M. Quinet, absorbed in his calculations, only knew that
his son had opposed his wishes, and it would appear
to have been years before he could get over the
annoyance.
In the letter just quoted, written January 1822, in
the slightly bitter vein into which Edgar Quinet fell
when much hurt, he says : " I do not forget my father,
but I so well understand my wrong doings that I do
not know what tone to take with him.''
This letter was to let his mother know of his first
literary venture. The idea occurred to him of a series of
pictures of the manners, prejudices, knowledge, and men
of different epochs ; and to link them all together, and to
catch popular interest by representing them as " The
Memoirs of the Wandering Jew." He took the idea to
a publisher, who, looking coldly at him at first, sent for
him the next day, telling him that if the work answered
to the conception he should be pleased to engage him to
undertake it. However, it would seem that in the long
run he printed the book at his own expense, selling his
mattress and chairs to do so, and looked after the publish-
ing to some extent himself. This little book, philosophic
and witty, came out eventually under the title " Tablettes
du Juif Errant." It was an equally clever and perhaps
a more original idea than the " Diable Boiteux " of Le Sage
to make the wandering Jew relate the history of the ages
through which he had lived, especially as the author had
no intention of being seriously understood, but only of
giving a few satirical ■ sketches of the Middle Age. A
jeu d'esprit in form, it came however from a soul that
never could be anything else but in earnest, and it was at
bottom as serious as anything Edgar Quinet subsequently
wrote. The romantic movement was flowing swift and
strong, a little spent perhaps in Germany, but beginnino-
THE NOTE-BOOK OF THE WANDERING JEW. 57
in Trance and England to set in with a tide which was
to carry before it many of the finest minds in both
countries. It was just the time when Chateaubriand and
Walter Scott were in the heyday of their popularity.
With a nature as imaginative and poetic as either of
these great romanticists, with a soul singularly capable
of realising the past and living in it, Edgar Quinet felt
the fascination of the movement, and feared to be
entangled again in bondage to the old superstitions.
For with that discernment of spirits which was so
specially his gift, this young man of eighteen felt
instinctively that it was an ignis fatuus, and would lead
him back into the land of shadows. Thirty-five years
later he was able, therefore, in the midst of a most
serious career and of a great literary reputation, to look
back with satisfaction on this little book and to declare
that it still expressed his mind.
His mother was evidently pleased with its Voltairean
style, which was in harmony with her taste ; strange to
say, his father also read it and enjoyed it, but without
knowing who was the author. It was such a success
with the public that the publisher suspended its sale for
two months, fearing that it would get him into some
difficulty.
In January of this year he saw Talma in the tragedy
of Sylla, and says it was the greatest treat that he had
had since he had been in Paris. " It is impossible to
conceive anything more dramatic than the proud sim-
plicity and sardonic smUe of Talma. I shall remember
him all my life, with his long purple robe, his deep voice,
and Eoman profile."
Writing in the following May to his mother, he says :
" I go every Sunday to your church, it seems to me that
I am nearer to you."
He was now a member of one of the most influential
classes in France — the Paris students. He read law
until his head was full of misdemeanours and the scaffold,
58 EDGAR QUINET.
attended lectures at the I^cole de Droit, and sought from
time to time a situation in some office, but the right
situation could never be exactly found. Literature, which
to his friends seemed only a desultory amusement, to
him was the most serious of professions. When the
legal vacation was approaching he had a schoolboy's
desire to go home for the holidays. He writes a letter to
his father, in which, after defending with manly freedom
his right to choose the literary profession, he explains the
difficulties he has had in accepting the hard terms of the
places offered in lawyer's offices, and concludes by asking
his father's permission to rejoin the family during the
holidays. As to the expense, whether he comes on
foot, as he would like to do, or joins the coach-loads of
his companions, it will be at as an economic a rate as
possible. It would appear that his prayer was granted,
for we find him spending the autumn at Certines. Then
with a free conscience he gave himself to his beloved
studies, spending the time in tracing out the designs of
some great poems, and going down pretty deep into the
metaphysics of history.
Every Ifew Year he generally wrote a letter to his
mother. These are naturally the longest and among the
most interesting of the series of the 274 letters published.
At the opening of 1823 he writes : —
" I have passed New Tear's day in deep meditation. When
I woke very early in the morning, I determined to begin my
year by writing you a few words. I then read the ' Imitation
of Jesus Christ' and 'Masaillon's Sermons.' This reading
rendered my thoughts so fervid, that I did nothing all day long
but pray to God for you, beseeching Him, asking with much
perseverance to grant me aU that I need to please you more."
Early this year he tells his mother he has been read-
ing Sir Walter Scott's " Peveril of the Peak," and thinks
it one of his best romances. In March he was pleased at
receiving a letter in acknowledgment of a copy of his
FIRST A TTEMPTS A T HISTORIC A L PHILOSOPHY. 59
" Wandering Jew " from Benjamin Constant, the friend
of Madame de Stael, and who was just then attaining
the zenith of his popularity as the leader of the Liberal
opposition in the Chamber of Deputies, and the defender
of constitutional liberty in France. Later on in the same
year Edgar Quinet is contemplating an historical work on
the Middle Ages. He hopes to show that these ages have
been misunderstood, and that they had a grand poetic and
philosophic life. But the great subject at which during
these early years he was working, was the gradual develop-
ment of the Individual in the history of Humanity.
Without a guide or a model he pursued this study
through the ages until he ended in producing a history
of the Human Conscience and Moral Personality (1823).
Then he was led to attempt a more considerable work on
political institutions in their relations with religion, each
epoch of Christian civilisation being typified by a saint or
a monument. These juvenile works were not published,
bat were doubtless the basis of others that have been.
This mental maturity in a young man of twenty-one
would be almost incredible if biography did not supply
several parallel cases. What makes it specially inte-
resting in Edgar Quinet, and indicates it to have been real
genius, is, that it was associated with a heart not a year
beyond his age.
Here is a charming little bit iu which he gleefully
relates to his mother how he and his friend Theodore
delivered themselves from the enchantments of some
Duessa, and then immediately went and again lost their
hearts : —
" I have been singing victory for days. Eeason had to be
very courageous to overconie enervated thoughts. I have escaped
her chains for ever.
"She sent word by Theodore that I was to go and see her,
that she would never pardon me if I did not come, &c. I had
the strength to remain in my hole without budging. Then,
representing to myself the necessity of being a man, of not allow-
ing my intentions to be mollified or diverted, perhaps also by a
asooft m.
THE WANDERER.
" He wanders over many lands, passes tlirougli many cities among men of many
climes. . . . His hand clasps the hands of other men, for his heart is open to beneTO-
lence and gratitude ; but in that heart is a void — a void that naught can fill, naught
but the fatherland." — Mazzini.
a
■a
'W III ' : I,i' tl f II
111 ''liiV'rV!!:!,*';.!
ill
( 6s )
CHAPTEE I.
I
THE JURA — SWITZERLAND — LONDON — STRASBURG.
1823-I826.
" What magnificence ! I was a poet, as every man would have been."
— Letter to his Mother, Dover, March 31, 1825,
That prophetic genius which Edgar Quinet possessed
discovered itself in the first symbolic character with
which he chose to associate his name. The " "Wander-
ing Jew " foreshadowed the experience of his life for the
next ten or twelve years.
In the autumn of 1823 he made a visit to the Jura
and the Lake of Geneva, accompanied by an old school-
fellow, a curious creature, steeped in Eousseau, and
incurably misanthropic. The two friends met at Nantua,
a little town in the Jura, about twenty miles from
Bourg, built at the extremity of a lake darkened by
precipitous woods. They set off in a tilted cart in com-
pany with a priest and some contrabandists. After
visiting some spots where the Ehone loses itself, and
where it darts out again between two rocks, they went
on through the picturesque river bed of the Valserine, and
the wild gorge where the river forces its way at the foot of
the ruined Port de I'Ecluse, on to Gex, where they ascended
the heights of the Jura. The tall, sombre-looking peasants
in their black shirts elevated Quinet's ideas of pastoral
life. He drank milk in their chalets, and wondered
greatly at the enormous coppers. From the summit of
La Faucille he saw the Lake of Geneva and the Alps,
K
66 • EDGAR QUINET.
and heard the tinkle of the cow-bells, with the sound of
a drum which the shepherds beat to keep off the bears.
The tour was a pedestrian one, and they reached
Ferney as it was getting dark. Quinet ran on to find
Voltaire's park and chateau, while Brun seated himself
on a heap of stones with his back turned to the dwell-
ing of his master's opponent, l^ext morning they went
to see Eousseau's birthplace, which turned out to be a
little shop where they sold tools. Brun, was disap-
pointed and cantankerous, so after a sail upon the lake
they agreed to separate for a time.
Quinet wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the early
home of his mother at Crans. On his way to Crans
he visited the park of Madame de Stael. From an
itinerary, of which only a page in pencil has been pre-
served, the enthusiasm and filial piety with which he
regarded everything connected with his mother is very
manifest.
In the following autumn he made another journey on
foot with his cousin to the Grande Chartreuse. But when
at home he was a laborious student, hardly allowing
himself any recreation. Every now and then he woke
up to the folly of this sort of life, and would permit
himself to be taken to a ball, and by a great effort of
reason he determined to learn to waltz. After the trip
into Dauphiny just referred to, he wished to go back
to Paris ; his father, however, refused, and he was com-
pelled to stay at Charolles a part of the winter of 1824.
This struggle with his father was one of the bitterest
trials of his life, and of course the pain was much in-
creased when he had to live under the same roof. How-
ever, he had already found a great literary task, and the
spirit in which he pursued it may be judged from the
following passage in a letter to his mother at the begin-
ning of 1824 : —
" My work -goes on well It brings into exercise all
that God has put in me good and upright. I am at the same
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH HERDER. 67
time interested in myself, as in an instrument which has a
passive harmony, and which only waits the outward action that
is to bring forth its melody. To write well is to live well.
And I am determined nothing impure, nothing vulgar, shall
approach my ideas."
In 1823 Edgar Quinet made a friendship which was
not without important consequences in his mental history.
His aunt in Paris had a brother-in-law, a Scotchman,
and a man of literature. Mr. Smith was no stranger to
France, for under Bonaparte he had suffered five years'
imprisoment in the Temple, for something he had said
in favour of the British Constitution ; and again under
the Eestoration he had been confined four months in
the Conciergerie, suspected of writing to the "Morning
Chronicle." Finding the young author of the " Tablettes
du Juif Errant" an ardent friend of liberty, the old
Scotchman opened to him both his heart and his library.
Among the books Quinet thus obtained was an English
translation-' of Herder's " Philosophy of the History of
Humanity,'' a work utterly unknown in France, although
regarded in Germany as a masterpiece for more than a
generation. The reading of this book proved an epoch
in Quinet's life, and exercised the very greatest infiuence
on the development of his mind, giving direction to his
thoughts, and becoming the source of many of his ideas.
He had, as we have already seen, without any guide
or counsellor, made some courageous explorations into
the metaphysics of history. In the light of the principles
he thus obtained, he examined Bossuet, and wrote a work
in consequence. But all these early efforts remained in
manuscript, for after he had discovered Herder's great
work, he decided that the best thing he could do was to
publish a translation of it in French. One difficulty,
however, presented itself: he did not know a word of
' By T. Churchill, 1800, 2d Ed. 1803, Professor Flint says, " So sympa-
thetic a translation of such a book at a time v hen Thomas Carlyle was not
yet in breeches, is as a mere literary phenomenon instructive."
68 EDGAR QUINET.
German. He had first to teach himself the language,
and he made his translation three times over before he
thought it satisfactory.
These mental efforts in the midst of so many difficul-
ties depressed a temperament always ready to run from
one end of the gamut to the other, so that the note he
constantly strikes at this time is a melancholy one : —
" Youth, in its hrightest period is not always the age when
the soul has most freshness and brilliancy ; either it sinks under
the weight of its own riches, or, possessing nothing in the world
hut a crown of flowers, it is oppressed to suifocation by vast
longings. Sometimes it exhausts itself in trying to embrace
the universe, or it languishes and fades away of itself. If, in
addition, its lot be distress, a wandering life, a bread, bitter and
soaked in tears, the more gifted it feels, the more its loneliness
breaks its heart. In this struggle, where the feeble fall and the
strong obtain fresh strength, youthful genius hides, as best it
may, a bleeding heart beneath a garland of immortelles. But,
whatever it does its accent betrays it, and proves it wounded
to the soul."
Thus Edgar Quinet commences his " Essay " on the
works of Herder, 1827, and it is doubtless one of those
autobiographic touches so characteristic of his genius.
The channel, narrow but deep, in which his affections ran,
had been partially blocked for years, so that his heart,
having nowhere to turn, fed upon itself. This to a
nature alike ardent and melancholy was intolerable. A
strong sense of moral duty, and the constant exercise of
mental energy, brought him through, but his soul was
ever agitated and desponding.
In this condition of mind he met with Herder's
" Philosophy of the History of Humanity." As he
became alive to the treasure that he had discovered,
his experience was that of the weary worshipper of Osiris,
who, in the presence of a repose "immutable through
storms and revolutions, looks into the calm face of his
god, and feels peace steal into his soul.
" For myself," he says, " this book has been an inexhaustible
HERDER AND HAM ANN 69
source of consolation and joy. Never, no never, liave I quitted
it without having obtained a more elevated idea of the mission
of man on the earth, never without believing more profoundly in
the reign of justice and of reason, never without feeling myself
more devoted to liberty and to my country, and in every way
more capable of doing a good action. How many times have
I cried out in laying down this book, my heart filled with joy,
' This is the man whom I should like for my friend ! ' "
Herder was the son of a village schoolmaster in
Prussia. His genius forced its way through the dead
weight of his father's poverty and prejudice against
learning. He became in course of time one of the
lights of the learned court of Saxe- Weimar, so -that
his name shines in luminous constellation with that of
Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. He had been a student
at Konigsberg under Kant, but though reverencing the
man, he opposed his system. Hamann was his real
master — an extraordinary personage, who, numbering
among his disciples some of the most distinguished men
of the day, was regarded by them as gifted with the true
prophetic spirit. For Hamann, after running a wild
career in early life, had fallen into its natural reward, a
state of extreme misery. In his distress he chanced to
open a Bible ; his whole being was enchained as by some
mysterious power in the book, and it led to a revolution
in his life. Henceforth he gave himself to study and
thought, arriving at last at a feeling of certainty that
there existed above everything human, a secret and im-
penetrable power. Eevelation, the history of Humanity,
and N"ature were, he taught, the three sources by which
this Divine power makes known its thoughts to men.
They mutually serve to interpret one another.
It was Hamann who inspired Herder with a passion
for Hebrew. " jSTo translation," he said, " gave the spirit
of the Old Testament Scriptures, and the spirit of a book
was the only thing truly living and imperishable in it."
The fruit came in Herder's famous work on the spirit of
Hebrew poetry.
70 EDGAR QUINBT.
Herder's works are linked together; they mutually
explain each other, the earliest containing all that is
peculiar in his way of thinking. At the outset he had
been impressed with the idea that as everything in the
world had its philosophy and science, there must also be
a philosophy and science of that which concerns us most
nearly — the history of mankind at large. He regarded
history as a living picture of the designs of Providence in
human society, a luminous witness of the destiny accorded
to human nature, and a revelation of its future. The
method which he adopted to exhibit this may be thus
summarised : — he proposed to show how, from the
operation of external causes. Humanity had reached its
present level; to develop in the nature and working of
those causes the objects the Creator had in view in
forming man, and to indicate his future destiny. Con-
sidering the magnitude of his work, and the position he
occupies in this field of labour, Quinet styles him " The
Herodotus of historical philosophy."
Since Herder's time there has not appeared, says
Quinet in his " Essay," a remarkable book' in History or
Mythology or the Fine Arts which has not more or less
felt his creative influence. What Quinet thought of the
particular work of which the above is a brief and most
imperfect summary, we learn from the introduction with
which he prefaced his translation, an introduction which
subsequently attracted Goethe's notice, and which, in his
" Art and Antiquity," the German poet recommended to
the attention of his countrymen.
A publisher at Strasburg undertook to give Quinet
two thousand four hundred francs for the work. The
first instalment he devoted to a trip to England. He
was in this country from the last day of March to the
middle of April 1825, and it was during that time
that he corrected the proofs of the first part of his
translation of Herder, together with his own preface,
dating the latter " London," as he happened to be there.
IN ENGLAND. 71
This trip across the channel was his first sight of
the sea. He was as delighted as a child, " intoxi-
cated," he says, with admiration. At Calais he ran
over the dunes, gathering seaweed, and wandering about
the shore till midnight. " JSTow," he says, " I understood
what a vessel really was." He lands at Dover, can
scarcely stand for the weather ; however, he goes up to
the Castle, and on to the cliffs. ISTothing escapes him.
Once in London, he walks all over the town, gazing at
the public buildings, visiting the House of Lords, the
Elgin Marbles, Drury Lane ; to use his own expression,
he goes "ferreting" about. He makes a pilgrimage on
foot to Harrow; takes a boat down the Thames, and,
landing at Greenwich, talks with the old pensioners,
in whose serenity and cheerfulness he discovers a
resemblance to the hermits of the Grande Chartreuse.
The evenings he passes with his friend Mr. Smith, and
is introduced to some distinguished journalists, and also
to some violent Eadicals. His admiration of the land
of liberty is so great that he thinks that he sees in
London a truer magnificence than in Paris. He passes
hours admiring the Thames and the dome of St. Paul's.
His brilliant imagination conjures up all the old memo-
ries of English history when he goes to the Tower.
He finds Hyde Park a delicious place for a walk by
moonlight. Everything in England appears to him
illuminated by the glorious atmosphere of liberty. He
breathes more freely than in France, and thinks that
he now understands how greatly generous institutions
add to individual happiness.
This favourable opinion of our country was very
much altered later on. In " Merlin I'Enchanteur " he
accuses us of the most terrible coldness and selfish-
ness. Several of the reminiscences of this trip appear
there again, but the glass he looks through is no longer
the red one, but the green.
His holiday over, he goes down to Southampton by
72 EDGAR QUINET.
the night coach. All the way he looks out of the window,
admiring the little farmhouses in the midst of the large
fields, the village churchea on the hills, and aljove all,
"the pale beauties of Albion." In fact, his intellectual
admiration for beauty makes him rather sentimental over
the English ladies, and he leaves our shores in the halo
of quite a pretty little love scene.
Before quitting Southampton Water, which, by the
way, he likens to the Hellespont, a young lady had to
be landed at Portsmouth, and as she is about to descend
into the boat the gallant young Frenchman hastens to
assist her. " She thanked me," he tells his mother, " in
the tongue of her country, and her words were so sweet
that they were quite worth the sacrifice of a life." He
watches the boat until it is out of sight, and is quite sure
that the joy he experienced in the rencounter kept him
from feeling ill during the passage. Arrived at Havre
he gets on to a rock to see the day break, and then, like
some happy schoolboy, this learned translator of Herder
spends the whole of a long day on the shore collecting
shells, picking up seaweed, and watching the changes of
the tide.
The Introduction to Herder's Philosophy of History,
which completes this chapter, though much abbreviated,
contains the whole line of argument and the principal
thoughts of the original. When it was included in his
collected works in 1857, the author said: —
"I cannot avoid seeing that all I have written since this first
sketch was included in it : Liberty conceived as the foundation
and substance of civil history ; Moral Order dominating the
chaos of events ; the reign of Conscience rising above the blind
kingdoms of nature ; Humanity represented and enveloped in
germ in each man; the Individual reflecting the destinies of
the species; the confused perception in each man that comes
into the world of the humanity that has already preceded him :
all these ideas have only got a firmer hold of me the longer I
have lived."
INTRODUCTION TO HERDER. 73
INTEODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
HISTOEY OF HUMANITY.— 1825.
I.
In old times every nation regarded itself as the centre and
end of the universe. But as one nation after the other perished,
mankind hegan to look for something more permanent. Chris-
tianity came and deepened this desire after the immutable.
Then it began to be perceived that there was a destiny to which
all things were working in the designs of Providence. The
traces of this idea, the first sign of a philosophy of history, are
to be found in the works of St. Augustine, of Eusebius, and of
Sulpicius Severus. The belief that there was a necessary course
in human affairs ever working to promote the progress of the law
of Christ appears in rude forms throughout the Middle Age, until
at last, in the hands of Bossuet, it becomes a sublime epic.
The solution of the great problem of the world's history was
accordingly found in Christianity itself. And even now, when
the spirit of scepticism and analysis appears to have changed
everything, we have no other historic belief. Only that which
was particular has become general, that which could be touched
with the finger has become impalpable, that which appeared in
such a place, in such a century, has become the work of all
creatures and of all ages.
Nothing is so misleading or so precarious as the mere facts
of the history of humanity. What we want is to discover the
eternal laws by which these facts move. If we know the
supreme law of nations, and have laid hold of the ideal types of
its various epochs, our knowledge of the history of humanity
will be more real than any knowledge drawn from ephemeral
contingencies and passing individualities, which we cannot recall
nor retain for an instant.
II.
Such a science has been unfolded by two great masters, Vico^
and Herder, representatives of the two methods which divide
the world of thought.
Struck with the principle of the identical nature of all nations,
Vico has gathered together the phenomena which are common
to all of them at various periods of their duration, and removing
^ Vico, the Neapolitan philosopher here referred to, died the very year in
•which Herder was born, 1744; and Edgar Quinet, the third in this line of
historical philosophers, was bom the very year in which Herder died, 1803.
74 EDGAR QUINET.
from these phenomena all colour and individuality, he has con-
structed from their whole an abstract history, an ideal form
■which holds good in all time, reproducing itself among every
people, without specially recalling any one of them.
That which is apparent to us of the succession of nations —
their birth, development, greatness, fall — is only the expression
of the relation of the world with this indestructible city. If
every vestige of history should disappear from the earth, the
imperishable annals of this city would exist in the fact of Provi-
dence manifesting itself on earth by the laws of human thought.
In the system of this intelligible world, at all times essentially
harmonious with itself, rest the ideas which give to the nations
their forms and their manner of existence.
No two systems can be more opposed than those of Vico and
Herder. The former takes human thought in its sublimest
essence as the basis of the series of human actions ; the latter
begins at the lowest manifestations of material being.
Herder's plan is first of all to unfold the series of organisms
which at last culminate in the blossoming of the flower of
humanity. He shows how each step in each series is the pre-
paration for the next, and how each series is linked together by
intermediate beings. In this ever ascending scale of being every
organism has its mission, and is never exhausted until it has
developed the characteristics of its sphere. Nothing rests, no-
thing retrogrades, until at last, foreshadowed and announced on
all sides, the summit is reached in man. At this point Herder's
system divides into two worlds — the natural world, changing
with the seasons, but ever the same ; the civil world, in which
man seeks to develop his being full of unexpected turns, the
thread of which it seems vain to follow. Herder makes these
two worlds to spring out of one another, or rather, he represents
them as one and the same being. As multiplex man is governed
by the same laws as individual man, so humanity in its civil
career is governed by the same laws as those of nature. And
as nature through countless modifications rises to the power of
thought, so humanity through innumerable vicissitudes is ever
tending towards a way of perfection. Thus between these two
worlds there is not only correspondence in phenomena but unity
in law.
Before he arrives at the world of history. Herder surveys the
dwelling-place of man, demonstrating how admirably it was pre-
pared to be the nursery of the different races who were to be
organised upon it. "With man on the scene, he proceeds to show
how the natural faculties of humanity are evidence of the laws
which will govern its history. In this light anatomy becomes
an eloquent prophecy. These faculties had often before been
INTRODUCTION TO HERDER. 75
tabulated and explained ; Herder's genius consists in making
them, the basis of history.
III.
Herder's system, however, does not fully resolve the problem
of history. Conscientious as he is, he is compelled, against his
will, to deviate from his own principles.
Man at first had but a confused notion of his own being, con-
founding it with that of the world around him. But the law
under which he emerged from that state, as laid down by Herder,
is one which, if admitted to be the sole law of human destiny,
would seem to render movement impossible.
" Humanity is and was everywhere, according to circumstances
of time and place, only that which it could be, and nothing but
that which it could be."
Having bound humanity so tightly to the material organisa-
tion, Herder is forced to look for the impulsion which is the
beginning of history in something outside both man and nature.
He iinds this impulsion in a primitive revelation, which, given
in a certain place and time, has been scattered among all nations.
Thus Herder teaches that there was a time when God met His
child wandering and confused in the world of nature, and gave
him a language and a religion, and this became, his first impul-
sion in the way of civilisation.
But what foUows? Directly the tradition of this first
impulsion began to prove insufficient, then it became ftecessary
that this Almighty power should return again to re-instruct
the wanderer. And if this be the case, what becomes of the
system of progressive forces that, without any foreign con-
currence, could raise the rudest forms to the highest? After
all these wonderful series of transformations, these sublime
aptitudes, the world is shown to be powerless. It stops and
calls for a power which neither comes from itself nor returns
into itself. T,o imagine such a power interposing between
the organic universe and the first acts of humanity is to
divide it at once into two worlds : inert and progressive
creation.
Here then I separate myself from Herder. Accepting the
whole order of the facts, listening to the slow argument of
the ages, it seems to me that all may be explained without
mysteries. The diflioulty as to where the first impulsion came
from, recurs a thousand times and receives the same explana-
tion. By ways not really dissimilar in principle, men com-
menced to break away from the bondage of the exterior
universe, just as they did from the bondage of the law of the
Middle Age. The heroism of Sir Thomas More and Lord
76 EDGAR QUINET.
Eussell was probaHy of a higher order than that of the man
who, first separating himself from the blind movement of the
external world, dared to face a future that was his alone ; but
it arose from the same kind of interior activity^ an activity for
which we have a name, and which we know very well is no soli-
tary gift of heaven.
History, indeed, from beginning to end, is the drama of
liberty, the protest of the human race against the world which
enchains it, the triumph of the infinite over the finite, the
freedom of the spirit, the reign of the soul. The moment
liberty failed from the earth, history would cease to exist.
Impelled by an invisible hand, humanity breaks its bonds and
advances into new ways.
The infinite shut up in the bounds of the universe, is ever
seeking to escape from it. Man, who has received the infinite,
suffers as it were from a sort of madness ; he is driven on by it,
like a traveller hastening from city to city, far from his home,
hardly knowing whither he is going. None can tell how this
strange Odyssey will end, or when this Ulysses will first catch
sight of his Ithaca.
Is there no correspondence in the sphere of human action to
the immutability we see in things 1 Do the vicissitudes of
history result from nothing but the caprice of human wills?
The same stability will be seen to reign in the civil as in the
physical world, when it is established that the action of human
wills has its foundation in the very grounds of the universe ;
that it is, in reality, the most elevated result of it ; that it was
a condition of things that, at a certain epoch, a certain form of
civilisation should be born, a certain movement of progression
take place ; that these different phenomena are in relation with
the entire domain of nature, and participate in its character.
When this is done human action will present itself as a new
kingdom, which has its harmonies, its contrasts, its determinate
sphere ; then it will be seen that the science of wills is analo-
gous in its forms to the science of things, but of a far higher
order.
History belongs so to man, that it seems a bold thing to
put him in the second rank, and to give the supreme place to
the universal thought of which he is only the docile expression.
But really this not only intensifies the interest of history, but
enables us to regard it and all things with a calm joy, conscious
that there is a majestic order in its events, leading us to commit
with confidence the few moments reserved for our individual
lives to the care of that Being who has known how to weigh
and balance centuries and empires.
Perhaps this way of regarding the past may seem to take
INTRODUCTION TO HERDER. 77
from it its life and to render it a cold atstraotion. Strange,
if it he so, that the man who has founded with such precision
the organic laws of humanity has also been the first to commence
the reform of history, in giving to each age its natural colour, its
own special charm and individuality.
Among the movements which seem to break the historic
unity of the ages, the influence of Christianity is the fact
to which Herder especially attaches himself. Lessing, in his
" Education of the Human Race," had developed a new idea
concerning revelation. He took a middle path between ortho-
doxy and scepticism, holding that revelation was a perfectible
instrument which God used to educate humanity. The truths
revealed were at first presented under rude forms, but they
enclosed Christianity, which gradually detached itself from them.
But Christianity, he affirmed, was not the final term in revelation,
for just as its doctrine had been implicitly contained in the law,
so the gospel hides truths still more profound. Its dogmas will
one day be transformed into rational verities.
Herder takes a stricter view ; his whole genius is opposed to
anything exceptional, and his precise knowledge enabled him to
throw immense light on the progress and influence of revelation.
His elevation of soul, his inspired tone, his tender spirit, the
fascination of his language, now vehement, now reflective,
always full of unction and tenderness, recall the way in
which the Savoyard vicar would have written the history of
Christianity. All our souvenirs seem to speak to us again ; even
legends and religious symbols receive in his hands a philosophic
life.
It would, indeed, be impossible to find a book which
embraces a vaster extent in the circle of experience, or one that
is more marked by the elements of grandeur, majesty, and
universality. It is an unexpected thing to meet with an author
who penetrates so far into the laws of organism in order to
discover in them the marvels of moral being, of conscience, and
of immortality. In Herder we see combined the austere spirit
of Lucretius, with inspirations like those of Plato.
In spite of the sensational basis upon which Herder begins,
the development of his moral doctrines does not lead in the end
to the egoism of Helvetius, to the despairing raillery of Voltaire,
or even to Hutcheson's principle of utility, but rather conducts
to an idea of duty more absolute than that of the philosopher of
Konigsberg. Placed between the scepticism of the eighteenth
century and the school of Kant, he partly adopted the meta-
physics of the former while rejecting its ethics, and loved the
tendency of the latter while refuting its principle.
What then is the foundation of his doctrine 1 Idealism in
78 EDGAR QUINET.
sensation, a kind ot disguised pantheism. The character of this
philosophy is to substitute presumptions for knowledge ; to cause
hope to take the place of certitude ; absolute doubt, the place of
hope. Explaining at first a certaLu number of inferior facts in
a satisfactory manner, and having above all a theory which
seems supported by an array of evidence, a theory which
embracing the material world never leaves it, but declares itself
opposed to all metaphysical abstractions, this philosophy has an
appearance of modesty and circumspection. Making alliance
with poetry, borrowing its colours from the most subtle forms, it
advances into the field of unlimited deductions, seducing minds
who worship inspiration rather than method. And further on,
when the order of phenomena rises, then the foundations totter,
the language becoming more and more poetical as the questions
which have frightened humanity in all ages have to be met.
In the face of these terrible abysses, brilliant efforts of the
imagination are only a snare.
How is it that Herder did not feel the instability of his own
philosophy 1 How is it that I can myself rest in these float-
ing ideas, these undecided forms, many of which are obscure
and others contradictory ? Because under this moving surface
there is a fixed point, an inviolable refuge,- — the conscience of
being, the sentiment of pure religion, universal as the spontaneous
conviction of genius. Present everywhere in the depth and
throughout the substance of the subject, this forms the philo-
sophic ego which should have been its point of departure,; by
this we know and recognise it. Here we find the scientific
element which sustains the whole work.
IV.
Let us take care not to lose the chain of the past, lest we
should find ourselves wandering on the earth. There are many
questions we want answered, questions which hover in the
borderland of history and moral philosophy. How far , do the
memories of the species reflect themselves in the individual?
How do such memories harmonise with his own impressions 1
"What law do they impose on his personal activity ?
He who would understand history must consent first of all to
look into himself and become attentive to the movements of his
own mind. He who truly does this, will discover buried there
the whole series of the past ages. From the narrow home of
his individual " I " he will thence be able to go forth by neces-
sary consequences, through the course of empires and peoples to
the hut of Evander, the tent of Jacob, even to the palm-tree of
Zoroaster.
INTRODUCTION TO HERDER. 79
Nothing can equal the day in which, recognising the tie that
united all the scattered images which seemed to float in dura-
tion, without order or result, I perceived, as from some lofty
eminence, a nearly infinite number of beings, like myself, who
had preceded me. I felt drawn to each of these, my brothers,
as I thought of them treading the same earth and living under
the same sun, passing through the same vicissitudes of sorrow
and joy as I was. I knew not their names nor their faces, but
I knew that whenever they had troubled themselves about their
posterity, that they had unconsciously thought of me. As I
lived in them, so I felt that they lived in me. For I discovered
that, frail and circumscribed as I may be, had any form of
humanity been wanting, I should have been other than I am.
Old Chaldea, Phenicia, Babylon, Memphis, Judea, Egypt, Etruria,
all have had a share in my education, and live in me.
Our individual life may seem circumscribed, but looked at as
forming a part of the harmony of the ages, it has a force and a
■meaning we have perhaps little dreamt of. For the life of an
individual, of a people, of the human race, are but three forms
of the same being. The same laws govern them, and what is
true of one is true of the other. Of this unity is born the har-
monious beauty of history in its vastest proportions. We have,
it is true, neither the longevity of nations nor their ancient
traditions ; but the man who, in his narrow sphere, pursues with
constancy the ideal being within him, is equal in the eyes of
the Eternal to the empire which, in its longest duration, mani-
fests the sacred laws of reason and of liberty.
The instant a man makes the law of humanity the law of his
being, at that instant he begins to live the true individual life,
to enjoy the fulness of the Ego. He has his work traced out
for him, he feels his importance in the order of things, he moves
on, his power of sympathy ever increasing, he is never deceived
in his object. If the present hour and the few objects it pre-
sents prove empty and flattering, he finds strength in the
thought of the ages with which he is in relation. The indivi-
dual arrived at this point cannot be separated from the humanity
of which he has appropriated the law. That law concentrates
itself in him, and he bears in himself the whole series of its
future destinies. As long, as this union continues he will be
strong, powerful, invincible ; he has rest and the supreme good.
From whence follows this result? The individual pursues
his career to perfection more rapidly than humanity. What it
takes ages to attain, he arrives at in a few years, it may be in a
single day. But a time comes when he dies, and humanity
still lives on, reaching stages of development beyond those given
to the individual. Has the law of development ceased for the
8o EDGAR QUINET.
individual 1 Is his tie with the race severed 1 Does one heing
go on alone while the other has ceased to be ? No, infinite God !
I cannot believe it. I conclude that, whilst the human race
pursues on earth its career of perfection, the individual continues
its parallel march in some place and in some form abeady pre-
pared for it by Providence.
From the law of humanity let us pass to humanity itself.
We ought to regard a being who appears thus tossed about by
so many chances with deep religious respect. Only the Being of
beings is without a history. Humanity is condemned to change,
but that change is progress, and marks at once its weakness and
its strength. What would it have been if, at its origin, it had
possessed the empire it does to-day ? What would it have done
if it could have foreseen the long travail it has had to go
through 1 By all within us that is stiU undecided and iudeter-
minate, we are assured that the development of humanity is yet
incomplete. These mysteries that now trouble us will become
a source of new wishes, new moral truths, such as we no more
dream of than did Sophocles of the love of Heloise or Zeno of
the philosophy of St. Paul or of St. John. But these moral
conquests have their foundations in the ages preceding them,
nay, so deeply rooted is the future in the past that, were only
one representative of our race to survive, he would recall a world
that was no more, for nature has made each of the members of
humanity the product and image of all.
Finally, I rejoice to find in the history of humanity the God
of nature, and to see that He who clothed with gold the furze of
the waste, and sprinkled with azure the wing of the humming-
bird, has arrayed Babylon in glory, and adorned with rich apparel
ancient Persepolis and Thebes with her hundred gates ; that He
who has caused the rivers to flow so abundantly, who has arranged
with such art rocks, valleys, and desert places, and who has varied
almost infinitely the attitude of plants, the voices of animals
and the harmonies resulting therefrom, has with like wisdom
distributed through the ages, generations and families, nations
and tongues.
Every city appears in the day and under the form in which
the world requires it. All forms are the expression of divine
ideas, and produce a poetry which rises full of life from the
harmonies of the ages. He who has listened to them for a single
hour will find all other strains frivolous and perishing.
If ever this philosophy was needed, it is in the present day,
when men seem on the one hand absorbed in covetousness, or
given over on the other to cowardly indifference. ISTothincr is so
assuring as the witness of the past ages ; nothing so calmino' in
the struggle, so strengthening, so productive of holy inexhaus-
INTRODUCTION TO HERDER. 8r
tible joy, as to feel ourselves sheltered under the authority of the
whole human race.
Let us not despond at finding ourselves dying and humanity
making such slow progress. Without complaining of the heat
and burden of the day, or troubling about our reward, let us
work according to our strength to live and die in that place
which the human race has confided to us.
( 82 )
CHAPTEE II.
STRASBURG, HEIDELBERG. 1 826-29.
" This sore combat lasted till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know
that by reason of his wounds, Christian must needs grow weaker and weaker.''
■ — Pilgnm's Progre^i.
Little did Edgar Quinet dream how soon his devotion
to Herder would be rewarded. The translation intro-
duced him to various persons of note, and gave him
what he needed, an auditory to whom he could unfold
his thoughts. One of these persons was M. de Gerando,
a member of the Council of State, and the author of a
work on morals. He treated the young philosopher with
great generosity, helping him by advice, and giving him
the free use of his library.
In the same month, May 1825, Herder brought him
a still more important friend. The agent of the Stras-
burg publishing house sent Victor Cousin a sheet of the
translation, and a day or two after introduced Quinet him-
self Cousin was ten years older than Quinet, and was
reputed the profoundest thinker and one of the greatest
orators in France. He was an ardent liberal in politics,
and the leader of the reaction against the sensualistic
philosophy and literature prevalent during the eighteenth
century. Plato was his model, and his doctrine the Stoic
philosophy in its most elevated form. He was just rising
to the zenith of his fame. Three years later he achieved
one of the greatest triumphs in popularity ever obtained
by any philosophic teacher in Prance since the days of
Abelard : an audience of two thousand persons attended
VICTOR COUSIN. 83
Cousin's lectures on the history of philosophy in 1828.
Perhaps this success was partly owing to his very enthu-
siastic manner, which, as it never failed him, would appear
to have been quite natural.
At their first interview he squeezes Quinet's hand, and
calls him his friend, his dear friend. " But, sir," says
Quinet, " you have never heard of me before." Cousin
replies : " Your two pages have taught me much. Two
friends of Herder cannot be strangers to one another."
He meets him soon after in the street, and seizing him
by both hands. Cousin exclaims : " We shall meet again
very soon ; shan't we ? "
Quinet wrote home to his mother in enthusiastic terms
concerning the grandeur and beauty of M. Cousin's charac-
ter. The great eclectic philosopher returned the venera-
tion of his young friend with an affection in which
father, brother, teacher were all combined. He saw
Quinet's genius at a glance. " You are made," he said,
" to shine by imagination. Do not seek to fight against
it, but father to strengthen it. Be a great writer, as you
are destined to be. Cultivate the art of uttering the
truths of feeling. Interest, touch the heart, nourish
eloquence, taking every care not to let your soul fade in
dry studies, or in that false system in which I have so
long wandered. Have an aim at once noble and severe ;
seek to be useful to men, good, consoling to all ; do not
connect your success with the present moment, with a
party, or with some circumstance of changing fashion,
but with the eternal wants of your heart. You will be
of immense service to your country. You are happy
in having a star ! Follow it, without ever turning aside.
Let all your thoughts lead you to it, by day or night.
Euin yourself for it ; you will leave a name, I assure you."
It was at Victor Cousin's house, one morning in the
spring of 1825, that Quinet first met the man who he
describes as " the brother of his heart and mind " — Jules
Michelet. Of this friendship, which lasted nearly half a
84 EDGAR QUINET.
century, Quinet has left the following singular record:
" From the first instant we knew each other, separate or
together, we have never ceased at the same moment to
think, believe, and often to imagine the same things with-
out its having been necessary to speak to each other."
Michelet was born in Paris, towards the close of the
Eevolution. His birthplace was a church ; his father a
printer, working his press within its walls. Although
very poor, the Michelets refused to sacrifice their son's
future to domestic wants. He went to the Lyc^e Charle-
magne, helping between school-hours at the press. In
after-years he recalled his mother's sacrifices with emotion,
the more profound because she never lived to see his
success, but died in a time of poverty so dire that they
could not even preserve her grave.
Mythology and the " Imitation of Jesus Christ " gave
Michelet his first thoughts of God. In the latter book
God seemed to be calling him as his Father. He became
a teacher, and must have worked very hard, for at the
age of twenty-three he was made additional professor in
the ColUge Charlemagne. Then he began to write some
elementary works on history, and at the time he made
the acquaintance of Quinet he had just translated the
" Science Nouvelle " of Vice. It is to this very work
that Quinet refers in his Introduction to Herder, as having
the same object as the " Philosophy of the History of
Humanity," but seeking it from a different point of view.
Each of these ardent young thinkers had imagined him-
self alone, neither of them had ever thought that a fellow-
mind was being prepared by a totally different expe-
rience to unite with his own, so that when the moment
came for action he would find his companion in labour,
who with him would unfurl the banner of God and the
conscience, and in those sacred names go forth to regene-
rate history. He sent them forth two by two ; is not
this constantly the method of Providence ? Earely is a
man found strong enough to do a great moral work alone.
JULES MICHELET. 85
Michelet would bring from Vico ideas wanting in
Herder, or only there in an indefinite form. Vico taught
that the Religious Sentiment was the producer and con-
servator of society ; the idea of God fermenting in men's
minds produced and sustained all its different forms ;
the various ways in which they conceived that idea deter-
mining the peculiar nature of their social and political
institutions. A Divine Providence working throughout
universal history upon a plan — this appears to be the
cardinal thought of Vico's historical philosophy. How
these great ideas fructified in the mind of Michelet's
new friend we shall see hereafter.
In September 1826 Quinet went to Strasburg, that he
might be near his publishers while completing his trans-
lation of Herder. He stopped there until December,
and then, after a few days spent at Colmar, went on to
Heidelberg towards the close of the year 1826.
Quinet's objects in going to Heidelberg were to com-
plete his studies in Herder, and to make himself better
acquainted with German literature. He was convinced
that the time had come for disseminating in France the
new ideas which that literature had so prolifically de-
veloped. Meanwhile it was an advantage to him to
review on German soil, and in daily contact with
German literati, his translation of Herder's " Philosophy
of History," and his " Introduction to its Study." He
published a further "Essay on the Works of Herder,"
and began some original efforts of his own.
It is clear from this essay, as it is from the " Intro-
^ duction," that Quinet was no passive disciple of Herder.
He could not accept as sufficient a view which repre-
sented the destiny of humanity as resulting from the
operation of external causes, all converging to a given
end, even though those causes were all providential and
veiled a power that worked for righteousness. Quinet
saw another power at work from the beginning, a power
innate in man, which he called the human conscience, or
86 EDGAR QUINET.
moral personality. This power, which works towards a
realisation of the individual and his personal relation to
God, he regards as having been at first feeble, and so
overwhelmed by external nature as to attribute to it
that which was really its own voice. It then sought to
realise itself in empires and in cities. Empires and
cities fell, and men were left individuals unsustained by
the social conscience. Then Christianity came and re-
vealed to them the full meaning of tHeir moral per-
sonality, their responsibility towards God. The human
conscience, having made a great step, recommenced on
a higher platform the same process as before. The
individual conscience became merged in the Catholic
Church, as it was at first in nature. And so, as before,
it attained strength in narrowing its base, and, passing
through various forms of church life, it again finds itself
a unit, compelled to assert its independence of all super-
imposed dogma.
Another difficulty which Quinet had found in
Herder's " Philosophy of History," and to which he
returns in his " Essay on his Works," published in
May 1827, about four or five months after his arrival
in Heidelberg, is the incompleteness of Herder's solution
of the beginnings of human things.
" How," he asked, " can we reconcile man existing for ages
in a condition next door to a beast, living in darkness in some
cavern, or on his bed of reeds, with no voice, no memory, no
desire ; with the succeeding state, in which without appreciable
interval having elapsed, of which we are able to discover the
slightest trace, we find him lost in rapture at the infinite,
which has shone out over the whole east? Who has given
the being that we just now saw slumbering in imbecility these
vast gods, of which after so many thousands of years my
thought can scarcely measure the immensity ? "
Herder's answer to this difficulty Quinet found in
another of his works — " The Primitive Archives of the
Human Eace." Man is there represented as at first
ON REVELATION. 87
existing with all the rest of creation in a torpid state.
At last the Spirit of Life appears, and God causes man
to listen to the language of the universe. His voice
makes itself heard by the organ of Nature. The first
ray of Light is the first Eevelation. As in the deserts
of Egypt the statue of Memnon resounds at the first
moment of daybreak, so the thought of man was struck
and moved by the apparition of the visible world answer-
ing to it by a sudden harmony of symbols and ideas,
worships and images, the faithful echo of its God.
" I do not know,'' says Quinet, " what name to give to
this psychology, which discovers the entire world, space, and
boundless duration, hidden and enclosed imder each of the
primitive perceptions of the human race. The external world
and the human heart act and react on one another."
f
But Herder, he thinks, is too prone to attribute all
to the influence of visible nature, not sufficiently regard-
ing another object on which Humanity fixes its gaze,
that is — ^Itself.
In the course of this essay, Quinet gives his view of
Eevelation, and of the way in which it should be
studied : —
"Nature, reason, grace, scriptures, revelation; how much
these words have been abused. If they are gifts of the same
God, they are probably far from excluding, nay, rather contain
one another. To nature you oppose the letter, but nature is a
vast book, which existed 'before anything was graven either on
stone or bronze ; and can tradition be anything else than a
commentary on these first archives ? If, taking a broad view of
revelation, we consider it as the tutor of human reason, we do
not thereby intend that endless quibbling by which reason is
overturned in order to found on reason some mystical tree
without sap or root. On the contrary, the first rule of the
Scriptures is to conform themselves, as a mother does her
language, to the intelligence of all. Eevelation wiU emanate
from on high, it will be just and true, only as far as it shall be
promptly and completely comprehended, not by heaven but by
earth, by man as he is to-day. If his faculties develop or vary,
belief will follow these changes, will increase or decay with the
88 EDGAR QUINET.
public reason. "Whatever huinamty can see at each epoch of its
life, religion will see the same, but not a ray more. A power truly
incarnate from its very origin, it will develop itself throughout
the ages, with every form of human existence — speaking,
seeing,, hearing, by the popular mouth, eyes, ears, without ever
producing anything which is not necessarily bom of its time ;
it is this exact relation which will constitute its beauty, its
verity, its divine character. The more the revelation is con-
formable to each age of the human race, the more will it be
filled with a heavenly virtue.
" If such be the nature of things, it is clear that the true
method of its study is not in its absolute type — doctrine, but
in its progressive movement — history. It must be studied as
it has appeared in history down to the present time. Nothing
will have been accomplished if the examination stops at the
actual state of thought ; it must be carried again and again from
Moses to the captivity, from the prophet of the Jordan to the
God-man, without forgetting the times that have followed.
Thus every question of theology resolves itself into a question
of history ; we can only really understand dogmas by a compara-
tive study of languages and popular traditions."
After all the enlargement of mind, all the elevation of
spirit, Quinet had obtained from the study of Herder, it
is evident that he finds his master's conclusions very
unsatisfactory. Notwithstanding the charm of Herder's
Christian v^ritings, which Quinet says are penetrating and
go straight to the heart ; notwithstanding his religious
elevation and the calm serenity of his soul, Herder was
a pantheist, and tended to represent living nature as God.
Here, then, Quinet emphatically separates himself from
Herder.
He is evidently beginning to feel the foundations
tottering beneath his feet, so that he is even casting
about for arguments on the being of God. The very
vividness of Herder's reproduction of past ages has made
him feel all the more their transitoriness ; empires, states,
peoples, religions, have gone, and the place thereof knoweth
them no more for ever. On what can he rest that is
permanent, that will not fail? Under the ever-changing
forms of nature he sees a continuity, a permanence, in the
THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 89
substance of things. In the concurrence of so many un-
certain and floating things he sees irresistible proof of a
first cause. In the transitory perishable character of all
things he sees the necessity of admitting that the Supreme
Being is above all things, different from them all.
While at Strasburg during the last three months of
the previous year, he had passed through a time of great
depression. Weakened, no doubt, by his efforts over
Herder, he had fallen ill of a fever during the first week
of his arrival. He had to keep his bed for six weeks,
and though he writes to tell his mother that he is full of
courage and audacity, he admits that he has had much
anguish of heart. It was not the loneliness of a sick
bed in a strange city, for his Strasburg friends proved
all he could desire. One especially, a young minister
named Cuvier, aroused Quinet's admiration by his lively
faith in Providence and great serenity of mind. It was
rather due to a sight of the shadow feared by the Chris-
tian soul, the apparition of the fiend of doubt, the dark
herald of the valley of the shadow of death, through
which he instinctively felt his path henceforth lay. He
thus mysteriously refers to the struggle : —
" The heartrending violence of my- troubles being appeased, I
feel, after horrible fatigue, the first impression of a repose of
soul which is not without sweetness. It seems as if I had had
a frightful dream. The sadness that remains is changing into
strength and resignation.
" All that unhappiness can teach, I know. But it is the
sadness of the human condition that I see as much as my own ;
it is the powerlessness of terrestrial things that finally strikes
me. This first effort to tear myself from myself has brought
me a sort of calm and interior greatness.
" With this I know well the old life is finished for ever ; that
no time, no season, will ever bring back that which has been ;
that it is, death that stands between it and me ; that we shall
live on without meeting again ; and that when I have left it on
the way and given it a flower, we shall each go our own way,
without again finding any trace one of the other. Thought will
remain faithful to a thought, but we are no more of this world.
Such is the truth."
90 EDGAR QUINET.
In this state of mind he arrived at Heidelberg. He
had the best introductions, and the Germans received
him with open arms. He became intimate with most of
the professors, but the principal friend that he made was
the philologist Creuzer, a man many years his senior,
since he had occupied the chair of philology almost as
long as Quinet had been in the world, continuing to
hold it down to 1848, fourty-four years in all. For
neither men nor things were given to change in the
University of Heidelberg. In the Middle Ages it had
obtained a republican constitution, and through all the
generations since its members had carefully maintained
the good laws of their forefathers. Thus at Heidelberg
liberty and stability, order and equity, seemed to be com-
bined, and all to flourish together within the reposeful
atmosphere of learning and natural beauty.
The sensitive and poetic soul of Edgar Quinet very
soon felt the charm of the place. " This," he exclaimed,
" is the country for the soul ! Here I find a peace that
I have never known elsewhere. Nowhere have I found
it so easy to concentrate my powers, to gather up my
strength." In the , society of his friend Creuzer he
experienced much delight. He found in him a mixture
of prodigious learning, with the imagination and poetry
of Schiller, of whom he had been the friend and pupil.
Creuzer's specialty was ancient mythology, which he
treated as a great system of symbolism. " For how much,"
exclaims Quinet, " have I to thank Creuzer in a science
so great, so unlimited, so unknown as yet ! "
There was a simplicity and a sincerity about society
at Heidelberg which contrasted agreeably with French
society, and especially with that in which he had spent
the winter two years earlier. His pure, melancholy,
enthusiastic nature made him everywhere a favourite in
female society. The German ladies visited him, and he
them ; they taught him to waltz, he in return taught
them French songs. The little social and domestic fetes
LIFE AT HEIDELBERG. gr
pleased him much. On his birthday, with much cere-
mony a crown of ivy is presented to him by his landlady,
her daughter, and the servant. Accustomed as he was
to cast a halo of poetry around all that pleased him, he
recognised among these German girls Marguerite, Clara,
Mignon ; and if one was specially pale, then he likened
her to the Leonora of Burger's ballad. He even begins
to pity his countrywomen.
" Without any interest in public affairs, without religious
belief, oppressed by the laws, by ignorance, worn out by the
sight of things and of times which even enervate men, what will
become of them 1 "
Edgar Quinet was fond of horse-riding. One of his first
desires when he began to earn money was to buy a horse,
and it was his daily amusement at Heidelberg to go to the
riding-school and learn the art of horsemanship. The
point to arrive at was to be able to ride with or without
stirrups, and even without bridle, and so to attain perfect
mastery over any horse that you could without moving
legs or arms or body, make him do what you would.
So indefatigable was Quinet in this pursuit, that he
thought he must have mounted every horse in the duchy
of Baden. Certainly it was a charming life — days well
spent in study, evenings in rambles over the mountains or
along the valleys, making discoveries, or reading poetry,
or joining in choral singing. In a walk he made into
the Odenwald he speaks of watching the sun set behind
its dark lines of fir, and how the scene recalled to his
imagination the " Germania " of Tacitus.
In the autumn of 1 827 he spent a few days going up the
Ehine, his object being to visit E"iebuhr and A. Schlegel.
He was evidently compelled by want of means to press
on rapidly, but the weather favoured his journey, the sun
gilding the crests of the ruined castles of the Ehine, and
making more perfect their deep shadows on its waters,
while the journey finished in the light of a September
92 EDGAR QUINET.
moon. He saw everything with the eyes of the poet and
the historian. " All the history of bygone ages," he
wrote to his mother, " seems reflected in the azure of that
beautiful river. ... I seem to understand much better
the epic times of Germany since I have seen the
Ehine."
In the summer of the next year he met Tieck.
Their discourse was Elysian in its nature and intermin-
ableness ; from the noon of one day until four o'clock the
next morning did this unrivalled dialogue continue, no
doubt amidst clouds of smoke and some needful libations
of Khenish wine. Of course his enthusiasm for the bril-
liant German was great, and he cannot avoid contrasting
his inexhaustible and audacious spirit with the pedantic
stiffness of the French academicians. He heard Tieck
read Shakespeare's " Julius Caesar,'' and was struck with
the way in which he brought out the unity of the poem,
giving his hearers the idea of a great epic in which the
whole world is struggling, but which all tended to one
supreme thought.. He was astonished at the southern
ardour the German threw into his reading, and especially
noted how he excelled in making the common people
speak. Tieck appeared to him to combine Lessing and
Talma.
Quinet now plunged deeper and deeper every day
into the study of the new ideas then flooding Germany,
and determined to make himself their interpreter in
France. He studied German philosophy, literature, art,
from morning till night, and yet found time for com-
positions of his own. He had in hand " A Theory
of History : its Eelation with Nature, Morality, and
Art ; " a treatise on " Civil Courage," and another en-
titled " Considerations on the Philosophy of Schelling
and on the Development of the Arts and Sciences in
Germany during the previous twenty years."
In 1828 he published a short paper " On the Origin
of the Gods." As the " Tablettes du Juif Errant " fore-
ORIGIN OF THE GODS. 93
shadowed " Aliasuerus," this little work foreshadows the
" G^nie des Eeligions." The influence of the thought of
his friend, the philologist Creuzer, is very distinctly
marked. It is divided into two parts : I. How the
Gods are formed. II. How the Gods are transformed
by poetry. Its leading ideas are as follows : —
Man completes the universe, and is its interpreter. History
is the gradual revelation of the universal life, each civilisation
being one of its thoughts. The new-born universe was reflected
in the first societies ; the link which thus united nature and
history was mythology. Mythology sjrmbolised nature, history
realised mythology. History fell into obscurity ; empires passed
away ; mythology remained, growing regularly, like some or-
ganised being. On the human side was sensation, spontaneity,
reflection ; on the divine, nature, mythology, history, — the three
corresponding terms forming the three progressive stages of the
universal psychology. Thus nature contains all mythology, as
mythology contains all history, and the entire course of the civil
world is 'only a series of symbols which the Eternal evokes from
His bosom. These symbols do not destroy each other ; the power
of an interior thought of an age or an empire not unfrequently
discovers itself when the age or empire has passed away. Thus
the universal mythology develops, passing through stages which
correspond to the vegetable, animal, human worlds. When,
from the bosom of the races, it shall descend at last into the
individual conscience, its career will be accomplished.
Mankind did not begin either with polytheism or monotheism.
Vast and confused, its intuitions were capable of both ideas, but
tended to pantheism as the flrst form. Only a people isolated
and inimical to the rest of the world could manifest the idea of
unity. The others, just in the degree they came in contact with
their fellow-nations, enlarged and developed their religions.
Thus the religions acted and reacted on each other, the whole
growing and developing, so that the ancient mythology may be
called the symbol of the universal life. This symbol reflected
and personified Eternity and Time, Nature and Man.
Finally, as a race forms itself and overthrows others, it
becomes to itself an object of astonishment and adoration. A
sort of fabulous history grows up, the ideal growing out of the
real, the god out of the people.
And thus, while all religions find a basis in the infinite
made sacred in space and duration, a second formation of beliefs
94 EDGAR QUINET.
marks the deification of force in time and in history. And these
two epochs, instead of destroying one another, mutually inter-
weave and hecome each other's strength and support. Thus,
■wherever we look, the antique religions express nothing but
the similitude, we might almost say the ideal identity, of nature
and history.
II.
To contemplate the epic poetry of nature, you must raise the
veil that covers its surface, and underneath you will find a
world that is always growing in silence. There, one after the
other, the ages have constructed their tomb in the rock ; they
sleep without perishing in their beds of granite, of porpliyry,
of marble, and of clay. From this beauty deprived of life the
epic idea of the universe rises with humanity to a beauty
thoughtful and reflective. But between the mysterious thought
of inorganic nature and the light, shining forth from the great
monuments of human language, comes an intermediate art which
will have the character of both. Architecture continues the
silent epic, commenced in the geologic formations of the globe.
Lastly, from the bosom of the people rises that eternal river, of
poetry which, first reflecting the sacred hills of the Himalaya,
flows on through Persia and Egypt and Judaea, through Greece
and Scandinavia, until it readies the forests of the Gauls, and
listens to the distant horn of Eoland ; no hand is strong enough,
no dyke high enough, to stop its progress.
Each national epic goes back in its germ to the first appear-
ance of a race in the human species, and presents itself under
difi'erent forms. And long before it was ever reduced to writ-
ing it had risen in song, flying from isle to isle, from forest to
forest, from mountain to mountain. Eormed thus out of the
very life of a race, these poems are more true, more profound,
than history. As nature has never yet been able to attain the
perfection written in her own immutable laws, so the nations
have never yet reached the ideal of their epics. Nevertheless, as
it is the very life of nature to make ceaseless efforts to construct
herself on these changeless truths, so the nations are ever making
efi'orts to attain approximation to the formula of their epics.
Each of these poems, representing a particular idea in humanity,
is in itself but a fragment of the universal poem. Consequently
they are always unfinished works, and each has for its explana-
tion the one that follows it. Thus all the great poems of the
world, from the " Mahabaratah " of India to the " Divina Com-
media " of Dante, are one, and in their progress develop the ever
enlarging ideal of humanity.
ORIGIN OF THE GODS. 95
It was from contemplations so vast, so elevated, that
this young poet drew comfort and hope. He who a
short time before had sunk to the deepest despondency
now rises again. " I am astonished," he says, " at the
resources there are in the human heart, since it can be
reborn in the very moment it seemed to die. Oh ! if
we could but trust a little more to time ! "
( 96 )
CHAPTER III.
GRUNSTADT. 1827-1829.
'' In feeling himself loved and in loving. Merlin became an enchanter."
" In his exile an old man gathered up the memories of his
youth. Seen in the enchanting light of a far-oflf time, he
idealised them ; forgetting all that was terrestrial in the being
that he had loved, he recalled only that which was immortal
and divine."
Thus our author, a young man of twenty-four, uncon-
sciously depicted a phrase in his own future. More than
thirty years later, in " Merlin I'Enchanteur," he gave the
world, under the thin veil of parabolic romance, some of
his early experiences. Shall we say that they were less
truthful than his previous relation of the same events in
realistic language ? On the contrary, they are a higher
form of truth, the truth of the soul. Both shall be given,
and the reader can make his selection, but if he is wise
he will accept both, transfiguring the real in the ideal.
One fine morning in spring-time Merlin wandered over the
solitary heights. On whichever side his eyes fell, he found
himself surrounded by the same immense circle that a great
magician had traced around him, a vast horizon of wastes and
woods, of fields, and yellow com, and bine mountain-tops.
Here and there a tapering fir-tree stood out like a lance-head
against the sky. Melancholy, desires unknown, aspirations
towards far-off summits, drew from him a sigh ; tired of pursuing
the inaccessible horizon, he stopped by a spring ; his tears fell
drop by drop into the fountain. In pure fretfulness he cast
a stone into it, fixing his eyes for hours on the undulations that
succeeded each other upon the surface of the water.
THE IDEAL. 97
" My life," said lie, " is more vain than these circles that
amuse me for a moment and then are lost for ever. "Why am I
here? Alas ! I aspire to aU and lay hold of nothing." . . ,
Overwhelmed hy his isolation, he cried out with all his strength :
" Am I alone in this immensity ? Thou whom I call, where art
thou V A voice replied : " "Where art thou 1 " Merlin started,
but he soon perceived that it was merely the echo of his own
voice. . . .
And he feU again into disconsolate meditation. Eaising his
eyes, however, towards the crest of the mountain covered with
hlack firs, he saw, or believed he saw, a woman seated at the
foot of a tree. She appeared radiant and plunged, like himself,
into a continual reverie. Flocks of birds came out of the woods
to peck from her hands. Her robe was green as the forest. Her
forehead was white and polished as the stony heights washed
by perpetual storms. Her eyes were of the colour of field
violets.
That evening Merlin returned pensive, his head bent. He knew
that in the land where he had wandered there were dreams and
phantoms ; he would give no credit to them ; however, spite of
his determination, his soul was full at the same time of delight
and alarm. He was like an Eolian harp, over one of whose
chords some spirit had lightly swept. It resounded long after
the instrument had been put back into its dark box under lock
and key.
Not being able to sleep, he reflected a long time on his for-
tune : two triads just sketched out, some vague prophecies, many
dreams ; this was all he possessed. What betrothed would be
content with that ? He knew how the young girls in his own
land esteemed wealth, not for the gold, but for the glitter. And
the parents 1 "Who would give him his daughter ? . . .
The next morning before daybreak Merlin was at the same
spot near the same stone. . . . He raised his eyes towards the
mountain, and great was his wonder when he saw on the same
little hill, at the foot of the same pine, the same figure that he
had seen the evening before.
It was neither an exhalation nor a phantom, but a young
girl, whose existence was very real, since she had in her hand a
golden comb, with which she quietly combed the long hair that
streamed down to her feet, and which enveloped her as with
the sparkling rays of the morning. "When she had finished,
she approached a fountain, and looking at herself in its waters,
she gathered up her tresses and bound them round her forehead
with an artless coquetry which redoubled her beauty. Then,
G
98 EDGAR QUINET.
descending the hil], she came straight towards Merlin, whose
astonishment increased.
" You called me yesterday," she said to him, " but would not
wait. I come ; what do you want with me 1 "
Merlin was too much amazed to speak. He dropped his
eyes, then, raising them, he met a long, immense, peaceful gaze,
such as I have seen, when hanging over the source of a glacier,
its waters have appeared mirroring the Alpine sky. If he had
dared to speak he would have cried out : I feel at once the pangs
of birth and of death. At last he said, . . .
" You are then, as I, a child of the earth."
" Speak plainly," replied Vivian ; " let us go and look at the
flowers."
" You have not then fallen from the clouds, you are not a
dream."
Vivian put her finger to her mouth, and said to him with
severity —
" Leave the dreams of the night, they are cold and like death.
See, the sun rises. The grasshoppers leap, the bees hum. Let
us rejoice with the bee, with the insectj with the sun that shines
upon us."
So saying, she took Merlin by the hand and conducted him
by paths that she only knew in the depths of the woods. As
they walked she taught him the history of the plants beneath
their feet. Merlin picked some flowers, and would have given
them. " What are you doing? " said she ; " you do me harm.
These are my sisters. When you tear them from their stalks
you wound me." And she showed him a little drop of purple
blood which shone on her cheek. What a loving heart ! silently
thought Merlin ; he wished a thousand times to wash away
that drop of blood with his tears.
The higher the sun rose the more dazzling became Vivian's
beauty. The moment was reached when, under the splendour
of its light, all the noise of earth grew still. The birds held
their peace ; even the flies that hang and dart in the sunshine
imitated the silence.
Then Vivian began a hymn, the like of which neither
Merlin nor any other man ever heard. The day passed in this
enchantment. . . .
Eeader, do you ask who is Vivian ? Some maintain that
she is the last daughter of the waters, the last of the druidesses ;
others say that she is a young girl more beautiful than your
well-beloved.
So far the ideal, the parabolic; now the real, the matter-
of-fact.
THE REAL. 99
Some two or three months after Edgar Quinet's arrival
in Heidelberg, he was present with his friend Creutzer at
one of those musical gatherings so characteristic of Ger-
many. The piece performed was Handel's " Samson."
Quinet and the professor sat in a window listening to
the music, and watching the sun set in the valley of
the Neckar. But amidst this feast of nature and art
a human loveliness attracted him. Among the young
ladies present, one eclipsed them all, by her Eaffaelesque
figure, and a certain sweetly solemn air which breathed
in all she said and did.
Ere long we find the ardent young Frenchman received
as a beloved brother by the family of this same gentle
girl. It was a patriarchal home. The father, Herr
Mor6, had been a Protestant minister, but then exer-
cised the calling of a village notary. Like Oberlin,
whose spirit he seems to have possessed, he was one
of those sincere hearts who remain pure even in the
most stormy times. A believer in the Eevolution, he
had been a citizen of the department of Mont Tonnerre,
and the friend and host of General Desaix, the Bayard of
the French Eepublic. After the reunion of the Ehenish
provinces with Bavaria, Herr Mor^ still preserved his
republican faith and his love for France. Edgar Quinet
likened him to the Vicar of Wakefield. A large family
of sons and daughters — there were nine or ten of the
latter — filled his house, the mother presiding amongst
them as an elder sister. The young lover's letters to his
mother afford glimpses of their simple peaceful life. We
see the younger children seated round a large table study-
ing their lessons, while one with golden plaits plays the
harp. Music was a necessity in a family whose existence
was a continual hymn of joy and praise. All share the
happiness of the lovers. Earely do they go out alone.
Their pleasures are pure and simple. We see them at a
children's party where the little ones are in masks, or in
the castle gardens watching the illuminations. On another
100 EDGAR QUINET.
occasion they make an excursicui in spring-time to the
battlefields of Kaiserslautern in company with Minna's
brother and sister, finishing the day by a walk along the
pine woods, singing. Then come solemn seasons such as
Pentecost, when Minna and her sister take the com-
munion, the sight recalling to her lover a similar hour in
his own experience. For Minna More had a deeply
religious nature, and was a Christian of so primitive
a temper that she would not have been out of place
among that band of holy women who followed the Son
of Man from Galilee to Calvary, and from Calvary to
the tomb.
Caring supremely for the things of the soul, desiring
only that which was possible and easy, anxiety had no
place in the Mord household. The spirit that seems to
ha've pervaded it was the joyful, trustful spirit of the
Sermon on the Mount. It was the deep repose, the
peace of soul, mirrored in her Madonna-like face, that
made Minna Mor6 so attractive to the restless mind, the
melancholy, sensitive soul, of Edgar Quinet. In it he
found a spring of new life, so that he might well say he
felt reborn at the very time he thought to die. It gave
a fresh impetus to his genius.
Merlin noticed that when Vivian smiled, aU things smiled
with her.
" Do you then command the universe ? " he said.
" Assuredly. Why are you surprised ? I love ; with that word
all is easy."
" But I love also," replied Merlin, turning pale. " I love, but
not a blade of grass obeys me."
" You deceive yourself. Since we have wept together, you
have the same power as I. Only try. Here is my ring ; what
do you wish ? "
" That your name may be written on the skies," said Merlin,
taking the vermilion ring.
"Well, look!"
At these words the heavens opened as a book, and they saw
written there, by seven stars, in letters of gold, Vivian.
LOVE AN ENCHANTER. loi
Thus Merlin, in feeling himself loved and in loving, be-
came an enchanter. From that moment all that met his eyes
was bewitched. The dew beneath his footsteps changed into
diamonds. He had only to touch a thing, and it became im-
mortal.
And this love, so pure and unworldly that it might
have blossomed in the cottages of Nazareth and have
wandered over the plain of Jezreel, while its espousals
might fitly have been those of Cana iu Galilee, — this
love shared the common fate, and did not run smooth.
It was too idyllic even for the noble soul of Madame
Quinet. Anxiety for her son's material prosperity, and
perhaps a natural desire to shine in his reflected glory,
made her deprecate so unworldly a match. There are
proofs that she deeply pained him by her efforts to induce
him, even after he had been two or three years engaged,
to break it off and marry a rich wife ; and that her
persistent refusal to consent to his marriage caused him
great misery.
As he had to struggle against his father in the voca-
tion of his life, so now he had an infinitely more painful
struggle against the mother he idolised. But it was a
step further in that detachment from nature, another
conc[uest of his personality, by which it was strengthened,
elevated, and rendered more god-like. Bearing in mind
the well-nigh unequalled unity of heart and soul which
had existed between Quinet and his mother, and the
strength of that forceful energetic will which had reigned
supreme in his heart for more than a quarter of a
century, the following letter must exalt our idea of his
moral nature : —
"Paeis, January 1831.
" My vert dear Mother, — "When the idea occurred to me to
have a fortnight's fresh air away from here, I did not know
of the affair of Charolles Let us, however, talk reason.
What a life is mine ; solitary, full of infinite aspirations always
increasing, and at last ending in utter abandonment and the
desert, if I do not take care. In the midst of this hfe, and at
102 EDGAR QUINET.
its saddest epoch, I have found a soul sad and profound as my
own. She has consoled and healed me, remaining faithful to
me in all my wanderings, absences, and the uncertain chances of
my future. It is the only good that invites me to life. Is this,
then, my material destruction i
"But which of these women, whom I could marry being
rich, would care for me if I were poor ? I do not wish for any
of these women on sale.
" My dear mother, if you consider my situation, you wiU dis-
cover that it is Providence who has sent me her whose work it
is to appease the storm of my life. Until she appeared, have I
not always suffered, as it were, a long agony of heart % Is it
not to her that I owe this commencement of harmony in my
soul? When I think of passed torments, of that continual
suffocation of heart which I experienced in early youth, it must
be confessed that I owe, as it were, a second life to her who
has saved me. My fate is then decided. And it is knowing it
to be decided that delivers me from that trouble and horrible
anguish of which I now have only the memory.
" If I were myself to destroy this assurance, if I myself broke
the seal that I have placed on my heart, it would reopen with
all the phantoms, all the vague griefs, all the infinite regrets,
which are not dead, but only hushed to sleep. For no con-
sideration in the world do I wish again that life of the wander-
ing bird, darting about at the approach of the storm to seek its
food in every quarter of the horizon. I cannot find better
words to express my thought ; but these suffice. There are
natures one must put up with, since in going counter to them
you destroy them. For good or ill (need it be regretted ?) it is
love, extinguishable love, that is the ground and condition of
my life. I ought, then, to thank heaven for having found a
similar being on earth.
" I need not say that I am not such a fool as to embark with
a wife until I have the means of living. But it is precisely she
who gives me courage to seek and to persist.
" There are days in which my desire to see her once again is
so keen, that my heart is as heavy as a stone. But reason and
duty keep me where I am.
"As long as my future is undecided, I have no taste for
writing. However, sometimes my souvenirs and my ardent
feelings oppress me so, that I do not know what prevents me
from writing this romance poem that is already made within
me.
" Adieu, my good mother ! Write me a kinder letter.
What does Dargaud intend to do ? "
" Edgar Quinet."
A ROMANTIC INCIDENT. 103
But this was by no means the only way in which his
love was tried ; among the lesser tests to which it was
put, was the following strange incident, which occurred
while he was in Paris in 1830. He thus relates it in a
letter to his mother : —
" You are aware that I had again met with the family ■
of Colmar. I went there to listen to music ; it was an advan-
tage to me. Everybody liked me. I was invited for the opera,
and for soirees when they occurred. '
" The other day, at noon, the mother made a sign to me that
she had something to say to me. I followed her into the room.
There she informed me that she had an extraordinary avowal to
make, but the esteem in which she held me rendered it possible.
These are the very words she said to me : 'You must have 'seen that
my eldest daughter has an inclination for you. Since she saw
you so sad and so ill at Colmar, four years ago, she has not
ceased to think of you. Seeing you again lately, this sentiment
has gained fresh strength. See if you can and wiU. marry her,
or if any tie stands in the way.'
" Conceive my stupidity in not having divined this before !
Flora was good, delightful to me, but I had never imagined her
anything more to me. She has a very remarkable talent for
painting and music. I saw her devoted to art, as I was myself
to another study ; the idea never entered my head that painting
did not suffice her. She has made of me two portraits in chalk,
perfectly like, of which I am going to send you one ; the other
she kept All this never opened my eyes.
" The avowal of the mother took me so by surprise that I hid
my face in my hands, and went out without saying anything ;
but I could not leave her long in doubt. I passed a very miser-
able night in trying to see if I had any fault to find with
myself; happdy it was clearer than hght that no reproach could
be made either by myself or others. I was afraid of the grief
that I was going to cause. Towards eleven o'clock I went up,
very moved, to Madame , whom I found alone. Then I
briefly explained how I was touched by her confidence and
the thought of her daughter ; that if I had a choice to make it
would assuredly be her, but that it was necessary not to think
of it. And I said why.
" She received this declaration calmly ; the father came in,
and both did me justice, saying that they should always regret
me ; and I quitted them more troubled than they were them-
selves." . . .
Then he goes on to tell how the young lady's married
104 EDGAR QUINET.
sister called upon him next day, and obstinately con-
tended with him over his previous engagement, as if she
supposed that he could set it aside. Finally, it was
resolved that they should say to Flora that he had
quitted Paris ; but she could not be deceived, and they
were obliged to inform her that there was an insur-
mountable obstacle.
" I cannot tell you," he continues, " how much this history
has saddened me. To think that I should have troubled the
future of a soul so harmonious, so naturally peaceable and reason-
able, with so much elevation, and of an elevation so sensible. The
thought which comforts me is that I have been what I ought,
and that not a shadow rests on my conscience."
The engraving (Book V., chapter i.) is a copy of the
very portrait referred to in this letter, and engraved for
the first time for this work. Edgar Quinet has evidently
just bloomed into manhood ; high intelligence is in his
brow, poetry in his eyes, humour and perceptiveness in
the nose, and will in that firm though kindly mouth.
( 105 )
CHAPTEE IV.
GREECE. 1829.
" A nation's sepulchre ! " — ChiVU Harold.
"All things lose force and become inert for the man
■who has never passed the boundaries of his country."
Thus writes Quinet to his mother, as he is about to
cross the frontier into Germany ; for even she who
knew very well the value of travel, and was, moreover,
unusually original in all her ideas, evidently felt the
influence of social opinion at Charolles much scandalised
by the young man's literary tastes and trip across the
Channel. Eegardless of the good opinion of the
CharoUais, he had even meditated a voyage to Brazil;
a plan, however, the success of the "Herder" and his
stay in Germany had quite set aside. Still the desire
to travel possessed him, and he could not feel his educa-
tion complete without it.
He had taken a deep interest in the War of Inde-
pendence in Greece (1827), and being informed that
it was intended at Paris to send out a commission of
savants to the Morea, he offered himself as a member.
He was chosen by the academy from among a hundred
competitors, to go out in the capacity of philologist,
attached to the department of history and antiquities.
He set sail in the " Cybele," a forty-gun frigate, from
Toulon on a glorious morning early in February 1829.
Nearly three weeks were spent in coasting the Medi-
io6 EDGAR QUINET.
terranean, and early in March the commission landed at
Navarino.
Alarmed at the state of the country, the whole party,
with the exception of Quinet, stopped at Modon. In
company with two artillery officers he set off, passing by
Coron, and going into Arcadia, as far as Megalopolis,
everywhere well received by the Greek authorities.
His military friends did not accompany him far, so he
had to pursue his journey attended only by his own
servant and some native guides.
Prom Megalopolis he penetrated into the Lycseus,
the most curious and obscure part of the Peloponesus.
The base of the mountain was covered with dense forests,
through which he had to make his way to gain its
heights. The singular adventures he met with in the
effort may be related in his own words : —
" These woods have never been. feUed from all antiquity.
Only cylinders of bark are to be seen here and there, trees
fallen from old age, casting around them a phosphorescent
light, while others appear black and burnt to the summit.
Some shepherds, who had taken refuge in the gaps of their
trunks, looked, in their grey cloaks, like statues in niches of
ebony. Numberless flocks of wood pigeons flew out noise-
lessly, and we heard the tapping of the woodpecker on the tops
of the oaks. Imagine stealthy little paths, looking as if they
had been traced out by the steps of fauns ; blocks of stone,
which the traveller kept thinking must be the remains of some
giant city ; the noise of the winter leaves shivering in the wind
like the prophetic oaks of Dodona ; the only way for our
horses being across gaps often a foot wide, the perpendicular
edges of torrents below : imagine us penetrating through such a
place in the midst of a violent storm which lit up the depth of
the valleys with the thunderbolt of the Olympians. I was to
make the acquaiutance of Jupiter Lycseus amidst the roar of
thunder. The sun, which since the morning had been very
powerful, was covered with clouds, and the flashes succeeded
each other so rapidly that the forest appeared on fire. In an
instant a destructive had covered all the heights with rime and
frost. In trying to find shelter in a monk's roofless ceU which
we saw in a bypath, we uselessly went out of our way. But
from thence we descried a village on a lower height.
ADVENTURES IN GREECE. 107
" It was just evening when we reached Dervouny, a place of
which I have never seen the name. It must, however, be near
the spot where Pan found his pipes. At our approach the
crying of children, the baying of dogs, and the banging of doors,
clearly proved that the arrival of a traveller in this place was an
event as unheard of as it was menacing. Dripping, I descended
into a hovel, where a woman welcomed me, laughing. Her long
black hair hung over her temples and cd,m6 out from under her
white scarf. On the floor of the cabin was seated the head of
the family. His tall figure, his wild features, quite different
to the Albanians ; the broken iadented line of his nose, the
little round head on a long, loosely-knit body, made me think
that I had before me the natural type of the Satyr of the
Pelasgi ; with his long cutlass shining from his waist, he seemed
the spirit of the forests and wild retreats that I had just
crossed.
" His hospitality was eager and prompt ; the first mark that
he gave me of it, was to lay hold of my pistols, to try them and
to alter the charge. Whilst I dried myself before a great fire
the setting sun lit up a group of women at the door who watched
us intently. They wore a piece of cloth that descended to the
knees and was tied round the loins with a cord. The upper
part of their bodies was nearly naked. At the least movement
on my part they ran away with fright. Several among them
represented the form and timidity of Diana Venatrix, who was,
in fact, the indigenous goddess of these mountains.
" At nightfall we divided our provisions for a common feast.
I furnished the remainder of my olives, my host adding a
gathering of wild herbs, which were boiled and served on a
platter of beeohwood. We picked up the food with our fingers.
The whole feast was crowned with a bean-cake, kneaded in a
few minutes and cooked on the ashes. A child, suspended from
the roof in the trunk of a small tree dug out like a pirogve, was
swung from one wall to the other, while his brother, standing in
the midst of the room, said the prayer aloud, mingling the
recitation with many genuflections, to which those present
responded. This retired hut had not, however, escaped the
Egyptians. Only a few days before they had had partial posses-
sion of it, and its inhabitants had not as yet cleared away the
heaps of mud lying inside. We stretched ourselves pell-mell
round the fire, after having covered ourselves with straw and rags.
The wind blew and the rain trickled in to such an extent, that the
Arcadian was obliged to warm up her child at one part of the
night by holding it over the burning brands. And yet these
are the valleys of Diana and Endymion."
to8 EDGAR QUINET.
Next day Quinet mounted to the Temple of Apollo,
guided by the pope of one of the villages. As he
reached the. summit of the mountain he suddenly caught
sight of the magnificent ruin, with thirty-one out of its
forty-two original columns still intact; its grandeur
immensely increased by its solitude amongst the rocks
and in the neighbourhood of the region of snow, without
trees, paths, or any human traces.
"A Greek temple is the pure and necessary form on which
the world of antique civilisation was modelled : in the mind of
the architect of humanity it was the ideal plan which he realised
in the entire duration of the pagan world. Beauty, abstract
and naked, it is to the movement and action of the life of
nations what the sphere of Archimedes and the formulas of
geometry are to the revolutions of nature and the irregular
curve of the terrestrial globe."
He finds the rivers of Greece petty torrents compared
with those of Western Europe ; it is the perfect lines of
its mountains, crowned with ruined temples, which give
it such harmonious beauty.
In the neighbourhood of the Taygetus, a mountain in
Laconia, he has some ugly adventures. After a twelve
hours' ride, they found themselves at nightfall following
the course of the river Eurotas. In the morning Quinet
had been pitched into the bed of a river, where he had
lain some time stupefied, and now in the twilight he had
a second accident. His horse, which he only held by a
cord tied round the lower jaw, dragged him into a little
olive wood. A branch of a tree struck him in the middle,
causing him to bruise himself on the saddle, and wounding
him in the chest. They had been on the march since
breakfast; no one knew where they were, and at sunset
one of the guides refused to go any farther.
"An intensely dark night overtook us, coming down in
torrents of rain. We quitted the Eurotas, and began to climb
in the darkness a narrow ascent which plunged over escarp-'
ments almost perpendicular. Just as we reached the summit
A NIGHT'S DISASTERS. 109
there came a flash of lightning; the horse who carried the
baggage recoiled a step. In another instant I saw him rearing ;
for a moment he stood erect above the precipice, but before
I could lay hold of him the baggage overbalanced him ; he had
fallen to the bottom of the ravine."
Quinet's servant thought it was his master. But when
the Greeks knew what had happened, one went into
a fury, while the other fell on the ground in despair,
crying out, " Panagia, panagia ! " Streaming wet, the
party groped their way to the ravine, and there found the
horse lying stretched across a little brook. Happily the
poor beast was not only alive, but had no bones broken,
the baggage having acted as a sort of buffer.
The party then set out again in defile, the guide
Yorghi leading the way, the fallen horse, dragged by its
mane, bringing up the rear. Thus they pushed on in
the darkness, fording torrent after torrent, sometimes up
to their waists in water. The traveller thus describes the
issue of this night's disasters : —
" We had already passed two streams of water, when a third,
much larger, stopped us short. The ground was quite un-
sheltered, without so much as a tree ; we could not bivouac
there ; it was necessary to disperse in every direction to look
for a ford. It was then that I perceived a crowd of lights in
motion, descending along the opposite hill. As they came near
the stream, these lights turned towards the earth, ran along the
bank, and then crossed the water at about twenty paces below
me. You might have supposed them will-o'-the-wisps. Our
surprise was great in drawing near to find a caravan of monks
who each carried a torch. They lit us up during our passage,
saluting us in Italian ; and what was worth still more, told us
where to find a mill a little farther on.
" Imagine us then gathering up anew our strength to seek
this place of refuge. At last we reached it. I struck at the
door. Our palichares cried out that some good Christians had
lost their way, and could go no further. With this cry they
mingled the name of Capo d'Istria. After several minutes the
master of the miU opened the door ; directly he saw us he would
have closed it again in our faces, but before he could put up the
bar we had penetrated into the interior. Through a place full
of mules, oxen, and goats, I reached the remains of a fire, where
no EDGAR QUINET.
I laid myself down almost deprived of sense. A part of my
tody was frozen, and I felt a burning fever coming on. I have
a confused remembrance of a group of women wbo rose from
their mats at our arrival. My guides asked for wine, then milk,
then water ; one after the other all were refused. "What I
well remember is, that we had hardly been two minutes taking
breath over the cinders before we were obliged to depart. When
our hosts, who were about ten in number, saw that we intended
to pass the night under their roof, they set about taking their
guns down from the wall, and began to harass us with loud
cries. The women said nothing. I determined to wait and see
how this uproar would end, but before I knew it, my baggage
had been put up again, and Yorghi dragged me from the middle
of a deafening noise towards the Agogiate, who called us from
outside. . . .
" On the other bank we found a causeway ; twenty minutes
later the noise of our horses' shoes, striking against heaps of
broken bricks and stones, warned us that we were in the midst
of a Greek city. Traces of walls thrown down, a long line of
houses of rolling pebbles, whose ruins resembled the bed of a
torrent, but not a living being, not a light, not a minaret, not a
hovel standing. Our miserable caravan dragged on without
knowing whither it was going, sometimes uttering a cry to which
no one responded, the scene illuminated from time to time by a
flash of lightning, followed immediately by darkness as black as
that of Taygetus. How wretched did this country of Menelaus
and of Helen appear to me then ! "
The -worn-out party finally found shelter in a wooden
shed which was used as a khan. Figs and citrons were
growing there, and before long the Demogeronte, with a
party of his friends, came to offer his services.
" Blessed be that little old man ! " exclaims the traveller.
" Directly he knew of what nation I was, and what was my
object, he came up. In his Frank jargon, he overwhelmed me
with kind attentions, and gave himself no rest until I had
accepted a lodging at his house. We climbed up a ladder into
a wooden house. A ragout of rabbit and water-fowl was brought
in on a plate."
Mistra was the name of the city where he was so
hospitably received. From thence he went to Sparta,
travelling on through Laconia into Argolis, which he
crossed to visit Sicyon and Corinth. In Laconia he was
A PEOPLE NEAR TO DEATH. ni
much struck with the depopulation among the animals.-
There were none of those noises that greet the ear on
approaching ordinary towns. It was quite an unusual
event to meet a bullock; as to asses or pigs, the last
especially, they seemed quite extinct; a few flocks of
goats and some little lean horses were all that remained.
As to birds, bands of crows might be seen on the sites
of camps, or where skeletons lay along the shore. But
in the gulfs of Calamata, Corinth, and Epidaurus he
scarcely ever saw a gull. In Argolide storks were so
tame that they would often walk by the side of the
labourers for ten steps or so. From the marshy flats of
Arcadia flocks of wild ducks rose up with a noise like
the booming of a windmill. On the mountain heights
eagles and sparrow-hawks traced their monotonous circles
round the basements of each acropolis, but no larks,
sparrows, chaffinches, or any of the birds that animate
the landscape, were to be seen. The olive forests seemed
abandoned to scorpions and large snakes. He did not
know what had become of the nightingale; the only
voice which never ceased to haunt him was the screech-
owl, with whicTi was often mingled that of the jackal.
And this scarcity of the animal creation had its corre-
lation in the human depopulation. The Psariotes, he
found, had been reduced from 30,000 to 5,000. The
women were even more diminished than the men. They
had either been sent into slavery, or were dead of sick-
ness and hunger. Old men and children were equally
rare. Quinet noted an extraordinary number of children
at the breast, but above that age scarcely any; either
they had perished in the general misery, or, as he says,
" it may be that what he heard was true, that grief and
misery had struck the women with sterility." He espe-
cially noticed their hard, gloomy look. They had a con-
stant habit of sighing, in some it had become a disease.
They refused all comfort, and answered every remark
with two words" — " It's nothing." Those that were beau-
112 EDGAR QUINET.
tifiil seemed to have a contempt for their own beauty.
AH were in rags, half clothed, bending in the sun under
heavy burdens, and seeking shelter from the rain in the
dripping grottoes, or gathered round a fire eating wUd
herbs with their children. It seemed to him that there
never had been a people who had descended nearer to
death.
And yet he says : —
" There is no land where instruction is more eagerly sought
after than in Greece. Towns are to be found where no other
noise is heard but the buzzing of a school on the mutual or
Lancasterian system. The children are seen seated in the open
air under some pine branches. A pope standing in the midst of
them keeps up the murmur, which the passers-by, sailors, sol-
diers, horsemen, all respect. Tou catch in the buzzing some
extracts from the gospel. To this is added a httle book of the
child's duties, which, in its simplicity, gives a better idea of the
land than anything I could say. According to this book, the
obedient cbdd must learn to read in order to become a good
Christian, and in time a good patriot. He must salute others
in putting his hand to his heart and bending his head a Httle.
He must not play with pistols, poignards, sabres, or fire, a spark
of which has burnt down great cities. He must suffer hunger
and thirst without crying ; he must not drink the tainted water
that animals drink. If his hands are frozen, or his feet, or any
part of his body, he must not approach the fire, but wash them
in the snow.
" These are the lessons which children spell at three or four
years of age. The difficulty at first is to preserve them alive.
They are born among the ruins of ruins. Their A B C is that
of a people of Klephtes."i
He had the greatest difficulty to find a lodging in
Corinth, it was the most desolate city he saw in Greece.
Passing Nemea, he traversed the mountains of Argolide,
and embarking at Epidaurus, crossed to the island of
iEgina. Making his way to the columns of Panhelleni,
he caught sight of Athens. This city, still in the hands
of the Turks, he courageously determined to see, so setting
1 From kXetttw, I steal ; do a thing secretly.
IN ATHENS. 113
sail in a Greek bark, he quitted iEgina one evening in
May.
" Tlie sun was setting to our left on tjie mountains of
Epidaurus. Whilst the moon rose slowly ahove the height?
of ^gina, the column of the Temple of Venus, enveloped
in its beams, seemed like a lighthouse whose light had been
extinguished by the storm. The wind had fallen, the sea was
smooth and silent, our lateen sail hung to the mast. From time
to time the noise of an oar was heard, the phosphorescent sea
shone with a thousand sparkles, drops, waves of fire, dying out
on both sides of the bark, the helm leaving after it a long trail
of light. In a low voice a sailor commenced a song which scarcely
rose above the murmur of the waves."
As he entered the harbour of the Piraeus, the sun burst
out between the Parthenon and the monument of Philo-
poppus. He pushed on to Athens with no other harm
than a few curses from stray soldiers, and was permitted
to enter Athens, making his peace with the Bey and the
Bim-bachi by a present of a dozen bottles of rum. He
was shown a field near the gardens of the Academy
covered with human heads, which the latter official had
cut off. Two French doctors that he met in Athens told
him that they had witnessed the execution of a man, an
old scribe, whom this Turkish official had first flayed
alive and then hung up to a tree by iron hooks fastened
in his breast. In this frightful condition he lived a
whole week.
The whole neighbourhood looked like a desert. The
sight of Athens in utter desolation made a deep impres-
sion on him. He considered his visit worth a whole
life. He had spent between six and seven weeks in
Greece, at a most dangerous time, without any escort ; he
had gone into the heart of the country, had seen many
of the sad remains of the war — -bones of slaughtered
men, and forests burnt to the ground.
From ^gina he visited the Cyclades, and then embark-
ing in a Greek corsair, set sail for Malta. Here the
refusal of the British authorities to allow him to land,
H
114 EDGAR QUINET.
suspecting infection, almost cost him his life. The Kttle
hoat had to return to the vessel out at sea. It was
night, and a storm arose. The tempest became so great
that the sailors gave up rowing, and there was every fear
that the boat would founder. Then the captain, who
had, been one of the most daring of the insurgents, rose
suddenly, and blowing mysteriously over the waters,
cried out, " See, my children, see how the demons fly
away ! " The rowers looked round in a dazed sort of
manner, then seizing the oars, began again to struggle
with the wind. In a few minutes the vessel they were
seeking rose on the top of the waves like an apparition
in the darkness, and the crew of the little boat were soon
in safety.
On his return to Paris he was weU received. The
rest of the Commission had done so badly that the authors
of it were glad to make the most of the only one who
had shown any spirit. During his stay at Charolles with
his mother he went to a large assembly of six hundred
persons in company with Lamartine, where he had to
read portions of his travels, while the poet recited some
of his verses. In Paris, Victor Cousin, Benjamin Con-
stant, pruizot, and Chateaubriand were all friendly to
him, while among his companions we note not only
Michelet, but Sainte-Beuve and Jules Janin. His book
on " Modern Greece, and its Eelations with Antiquity,"
was published October 1830. It was the first of a series
of most original works upon various nationalities in
Europe, in which he seeks to discover the secret of their
peculiar genius, and the reasons of its development or
decay.
( "S )
CHAPTEE V.
PARIS. 1830.
"Has all
Been undergone for this?" — Paracelsus.
" Paeis, Eub db Sobbonnb, August 1830.
" I HAVE been here, my very dear mother, since the day before
yesterday, Sunday. I will not stop to tell you all I felt at the
sight of the tricolour flag on the banks of the Khine ! But I
saw clearly that the exile to which I had devoted the best part
of my youth was ended. It is a fortunate thing that I have
persevered in my detestation of the late reigning house.
" But what a vexation to have been absent from Paris at the
end of July. I shall never be able to console myself that I did
not march with the faubourgs I Who would ever have dreamt
that all would be over in three days ? It is a humiliation for
our provinces. And then, to have no hope of ever meeting
with a similar occasion !
" Cousin sent to me to come at once. But I was already in
advance of him, and at Strasburg when the news spread in
Germany. They are drunk with joy, and all the people on the
banks of the Ehine are only waiting the signal to reunite them-
selves to France."
Thus wrote Edgar Quinet on the morrow of the Eevolu-
tion of July 1830.
" Never," said Chateaubriand, in the Chamber of Peers,
" was there a defence more just, more heroic, than that
of the people of Paris. They did not rise against the
law, but for the law; as long as the" social pact was
respected, the people remained peaceable. But when,
after lies up to the last moment, the conspiracy of
stupidity and hypocrisy suddenly broke out, when a
Terror of the ' Chateau,' organised by eunuchs, believed
ii6 EDGAR QUINET.
itself able to replace the Terror of the republic and the
iron yoke of the empire, then this people armed itself
with intelligence and courage. A whole century could
not have ripened a people like these three suns which
have just shone on Prance."
In aU probability Edgar Quinet arrived in Paris
about the time when this speech was delivered. It
serves to show at what a white heat the enthusiasm
must have been into which he entered, since it com-
pelled such an utterance from the finest mind among
the legitimists. A few ardent republicans were brooding
in disappointment over the result of all their efforts,
but the middle classes were generally delighted at a
revolution which appeared so entirely their own. The
liberal leaders in the schools and in the chambers were
pleased, but they were even more surprised, and in
trepidation lest anything should imperil the substantial
advantage gained.
This moderation was a mistake ; it demoralised the
energies of the country aroused to an unwonted degree,
and turned them into personal efforts for individual
advantage. Quinet came up to Paris, ready to do
anything for his country ; in a short time, even he
appears to be full of anxiety concerning the position he is
to fill in the new order of things. In September he
writes : —
" My vbet deab Mother, — I have been waiting to send you
certain ne^ys ; I have none yet. A public chair in one of the
great departmental towns is proposed to me. But the idea
does not please me much. It may be satisfactory to mention
that some new acquaintances, such as M. de Corcelles (de la
Seine), are of infinitely more use to me than the old ones,
such as M. Cousin, who has lost his head in his new
position."
" I have every chance of appointment as professor in the
Jilcole Normale. I think that I have suffered enough under the
Bourbons to have a right to enter the lists.
"Michelet has been placed by M. Guizot in the Archives,
with nearly three thousand francs.
GUIZOT. 117
" I have seen M. Guizot, ■who has received me with a great
deal of grace and friendliness. Although his drawing-room
was full, he came up to me on entering, and took me to a sofa,
where we talked for half an hour. He rapidly related his life
since he saw me this winter, and the events of July ; he came
, from Mmes the very Tuesday. He spoke to me of my book.
I could not have expected more kindness. His head, at least,
is not turned. Benjamin Constant has also received me very
well.
" Cousin proposes a professorship at Strashurg, but this uni-
versity is governed by the most pitiful spirit. They make no
great reform there. I should study zealously public affairs, for
this is the time in which theory and action can harmonise, and
I am sure that I should be perfect on this score. Cousin has
displayed the most miserable character during the Revolution,
especially in knowing how to avail himself of the favour he is
in, and which has turned his head. He would serve me, how-
ever, if necessary. But, for my part, all is said and ended so
far as he is concerned ; so that it is not difficult to be perfectly
calm and reasonable about him. The morrow of Wednesday,
July 28, he was shut up in his room, crying out to his disciples
that the course they were taking would make him lose his
place. However, I had a presentiment of it, and I shall not
be his dupe.
" On Saturday, the day of the great sitting of the deputies, I
saw M. Guizot at the ministry. He was playing at billiards
with his wife. A moment afterwards, in his drawing-room, in
the midst of a number of people, he said aloud, speaking of me :
' I only wait for his book. When I wish to do anything for
my friends it is necessary to have some ground with the public.
Thus, your nomination will appear the morning of your publi-
cation.' In a week I can give my volume 1 to M. Guizot.
" The ministry ought to have fallen the day before yesterday ;
it is plastered up in order to wait until after the elections ; this
will give it, perhaps, three weeks.
" This is where we are. My respects to my father.
" Edgae Qdinet."
Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction in the govern-
ment organised after the Eevolution, was already the
man to vsrhom power was naturally falling; for, although
never popular, his character and policy was the one
which answered most completely to the governing influ-
' Modern Greece.
ii8 EDGAR QUINET.
ences of the day. He was on the lookout for agents
in whom he could trust, and this was probably the secret
of the engaging familiarity of his first interview with
Quinet after the Eevolution ; but he probably soon found
that the young man was not flexible enough for his
politics. What an idea it gives of the policy of this most
austere of Protestants, — Edgar Quinet dropped as use-
less to France, Louis Veuillot engaged to write leaders
in defence of his Government !
Quinet's charge against Cousin is corroborated by
Louis Blanc, who, in his " Histoire de Dix Ans," describes
the great philosopher as protesting during the progress
of the Eevolution, in the office of the " Globe," against
the revolutionary character of the articles, and as saying
that " France only wished the White Flag." This from
such a man at such a time was terribly discouraging, for
Cousin represented the most advanced ideas in philosophy.
But the course he probably took from natural timidity,
Guizot defended on principle. Social and political truth,
he affirmed, was one thing, practical politics another.
On the 9th of E"ovember 1830, speaking in the Chamber
on the nature of the Eevolution of July, he cynically
admitted that the Eepublic was a form of government
that reposed on noble principles, and raised noble senti-
ments and generous thoughts in the soul ; he even went
so far as to say that if it was to be established they were
worthy to commence it, but that France was not repub-
lican, and that was enough. He respected theories be-
cause they were the work of human reason, he honoured
passions because they played a great and fine part in
humanity, but it was not by forces of this nature that
governments were founded.
The apparent common sense of such a mode of arguing,
couched as it always was in dogmatic and elevated lan-
guage, appealed successfully to the sympathies of the
citizen-king and the French burghesy ; its true wisdom
had to be tested by results. Meanwhile the soul of
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 119
Edgar Quinet revolted against this tendency to divorce
practical life from religious, philosophic, and political
truth. He was especially disgusted with what seemed
to him the terrible fall of Cousin ; and there can be little
doubt that the pamphlet, "Philosophy in its Eelations
with Political History," which he published in the month
Guizot made this speech, indicated his want of faith in
the new regime, and had direct reference to his old
patron.
It was a severe exposure of the weakness of the
Eclectic philosophy in time of trial, as manifested by the
manner in which its most brilliant exponent cast aU his
iine ideals to the winds for the sake of certain tangible
results, subordinating his philosophy to political exigencies,
rather than trying to lift popular politics to the .ideal
that he had so long been preaching. Paith, Quinet
declared, faith in thought which had been aroused with
so much difficulty, was anew destroyed, and the country,
believing itself deceived, would fall back into the tumult
of action. All those grand ideas Victor Cousin had for
two years past enlarged upon with such eloquence —
eternal laws, historic harmony, an infinite world visible
to thought alone — all had proved empty words, and it
would cost more effort to restore this spiritualistic philo-
sophy to public confidence than to bring back the
Bourbons.
"Let us speak out boldly," he says; "philosophy has abdi-
cated its mission as soon as a revolution can occur without its
taking part in it. When a philosophy thinks so cheaply of itself
that it can barter its very principle and its high ambition on the
first chance the world offers it, what respect can it have among a
people who have only just given it toleration ? After having
seen a religion commit suicide, it remained for us to see a philo-
sophy destroy itself in the same fashion ; thus the contempt we
have for dogmas will be extended to ideas, now that both bear
the mark of a recent apostasy."
Cousin would have been more than mortal if after this
he had not been inclined to take an acrid view of the
I20 EDGAR QUI NET.
works of his dear friend. Nor were people slow in
bringing Quinet news of Cousin's ill-will. In this very
month he hears of a great dispute between the two
Victors, Cousin and Hugo, in which, to his satisfaction,
the latter praises his " Greece " to the skies, declaring it
to be superior to Chateaubriand's " Itindraire."
But Quinet was entirely out of his element in the
worldly and intriguing atmosphere into which he had
plunged. If he had had any practical knowledge of the
world he might have saved himself much trouble and
bitterness.
The Ministry of Public Instruction dazzled his eyes
with all sorts of fine things. Would he like to be
appointed professor of philosophy in some great city ?
Seven were named, he could have his choice. Or
possibly he might like a sub-prefecture in Alsace. Such
an embarras des richesses made it difficult to decide. He
must consult Minna ; he writes to her, inclining to the
sub-prefecture, because it would give them an oppor-
ttinity to interest themselves in moral reform. " They
would thus have a serious and profound aim in life, and
devote themselves as far as in them lay to the cause of
the soul and to noble thoughts."
Meanwhile he did not understand that what the
ministry required was some pledge that he meant to
support its policy, or, at least, that he did not mean
to oppose it. Had he sought his own interest this
would have been obvious. He imagined that his intense
devotion to his country, combined with his acknowledged
abilities, would be enough. For some two or three
months he fed on these illusions, finding them daily more
and more worthless. M. Guizot's bitter words and com-
pressed lips on one occasion showed that Quinet could
not expect anything from the Ministry of Public Instruc-
tion if he was praised in opposition newspapers. But just
then there was a change in the ministry, and his hopes
revived. So he writes in November to his mother : —
COMMENCES AHASUERUS. 121
" We have more chances than under the last ministry. I
assure you that I am dismayed to tliink how little I care for
these evanescent enjoyments, that I could now have cheaply if I
wished. Beneath them all I only see you and Minna to whom
my life is bound. If I were appointed soon, I should not have
to wait much longer for her. Without her and without you, I do
not know, indeed, how I could go on heing interested in myself.
With what eagerness I formerly desired the approbation or
commendation of a strong man and a master in art. But now I
have it, I would give aU. possible praises for the least thought of
a heart that I love. So heaven has made me."
In December he writes : —
" It is irrevocably decreed that I shaU be appointed to a
chair of history ; the Minister of Public Instruction has written
to M. de Corcelles that I am about to receive my nomination.
As soon as I have a sufficient shelter I shall not wait long to
tell my father where I am. Prolonged solitude would be too
sad. My good mother, how I desire to be happy for your
sake ! . . . the more so as I have perhaps deserved it."
Meanwhile he was not idle. About this time he
published an article " On the Future of Eeligion " in
the " Eevue de Paris."
In January 1 8 3 1 the Provisional Government of
Belgium were proposing to found a faculty at Brussels,
and to obtain the services of three or four French
professors. Overtures were made to Quinet, and he was
offered the chair of history. He was very much inclined
to accept it. He thought that the Belgian Govern-
ment attached a social and political plan to this object,
and that therefore he would have a serious mission in
undertaking it. However, as we hear no more, it is
evident that it shared the fate of the vast majority of
projects.
In the same month he commenced " Ahasuerus.'' When
Jules Janin heard that he was engaged on a work of
imagination, he supposed it a romance, and wished to
join him, but Quinet refused, and that without giving
him an idea of what it really would be.
At this time, too, he read the "Memoirs of Lord
122 EDGAR QUINET.
Byron,"—" the only thing," he says, " that I have read with
pleasure for a long time. The further Byron advances
the more he gives up affectation. At the end he was
really strong." Quinet wished much to see the Countess
Guiccioli.
In the following May (1831) he is engaged with
MM. Odillon Barrot, Cormenin, De Tracy, Victor Hugo,
Lerminier, and Francis Corcelles, in discussing the
foundation of a new journal. The result was the
" Eevue des Deux Mondes."
It was during this month that he unearthed a number
of ancient manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Royale. They
proved to be epic poems written in the Middle Ages,
founded more or less on the Celtic traditions. While at
Heidelberg in 1828, he was engaged in studying the
traditions found in the popular epics of various nations,
and he had prepared the necessary materials for a col-
lection of the principal remains of the French heroic
cycles when he was sent out to the Morea. On his
return his attention was again directed to the subject,
and his researches were rewarded by the discovery of
these unnoticed treasures in the Eoyal Library.
He found there at least seventy most important manu-
scripts of romance epics, varying in length from twenty
thousand to seventy thousand vexB&s, and filling seventy
volumes in folio. In his ardour he determined to devote
himself to their study, and addressed a letter to the
Government, calling upon it to publish these literary
monuments of ancient France as a work of national im-
portance. He was appointed to draw up a report, which
he did, little dreaming of the tremendous storm it would
raise.
His crime was twofold, he was a new man, and he did
not follow the authorities ; on the contrary, he dared to
advance some extraordinary opinions of his own. He
affirmed the Celtic basis of the poems of the Arthus ; the
priority of the metrical to the prose versions ; the differ-
FRENCH EPICS OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 123
ence of the cycles to be marked by difference of metres ;
the importance of the epic monuments of Charlemagne
and of the Eound Table to the literary history of France,
the origin of which, he contended, these romance epics
proved to belong to the twelfth or even to the eleventh
rather than to the fifteenth century.
These points, since confirmed and accepted, were so
disputed that Quinet withdrew from the subject, but
without giving up his intention of editing one of these
poems himself " Parceval " was the one he had chosen,
and he intended to precede it by a work on the sources
of Celtic traditions and their relation to the East and the
North. He believed that these poems attach themselves
by many links to the universal traditions of humanity, it
being evident that they are a natural succession and de-
velopment of the doctrines of the East. Every part, for
instance, of the " Holy Graal " leads back incessantly to
the history of the Hindoo, Persian, and Pelasgic religions.
The article, " Unpublished French Epics of the Twelfth
Century," in vol. ix. of Quinet's Works, first appeared
this year (1831) in De Lamennais' Journal, "L'Avenir.''
The impetus he gave to the study of the romance poetry
in France met with but scant acknowledgment.
( 124 )
CHAPTER VI.
PARIS. 1 83 1.
** A man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life ; which in their seeds,
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured."
— KiTig Henry IV.
On the evening of the third day of the Eevolution of
July, six young men might have been seen moving rest-
lessly about a large hall, lighted by lamps, in the Palais
Royal, rive of them were advanced republicans, brought
there by the sixth, a very short gentleman with a big
head, in order that the Duke of Orleans might feel the
pulse of the republican party. The Lieutenant-General
was far from punctual, and his visitors were getting exas-
perated, when all of a sudden he entered, smiling gra-
ciously. As he appeared not to know why they were
there, one of the company pointed out the short gentleman
as the person who had invited them. M. Thiers, for it
was no other, looked a little embarrassed, and the speaker,
turning on the Duke, said bluntly —
" To-morrow you will be king."
This remark was met by an incredulous look, and the
Lieutenant-General said something about not aspiring to
the throne.
" But supposing you become king,'' "persisted his inter-
rogator, " what is your opinion about the treaties of
1 8 1 5 ? This is not a liheral revolution, it has been
made in the streets, it is national. It is the sight of the
THE REPUBLICANS OF 1830. 125
tricolour flag that has caused the people to rise, and it
certainly would be easier to push Paris to the Ehine
than to St. Cloud."
The Duke of Orleans answered that he was no partisan
of the treaties of 1815, but it was of importance to keep
within bounds in the presence of foreign powers, and
that there were some sentiments it would not do to
express too loudly.
After listening to a like oracular utterance on the
abolition of the peerage, the young republicans retired,
very dissatisfied, one of them going so far as to reply
" Never " to the Duke's closing remark —
" You will come round to me, you will see ! "
This story, which we have on the authority of Louis
Blanc, is interesting, since it exhibits in its earliest
manifestation the vital difference between Louis Philippe
and the heart of France.
These young republicans represented a political prin-
ciple which had become with them, and others like them,
a religion. It had once raised France to the highest
possible position in Europe. No nation in the modern
world had ever approached her position under the
Eepublic and the Empire. Far from being worn out, it
had just produced results which even legitimists had
been compelled to admit were unexceptionable.
On the other hand, neither Louis Philippe, nor the
ministers he trusted, believed in the Eevolution. Some
of the earlier ones, as Lafitte and Dupont de I'Eure, might
have sympathised with it, but none of them dreamt of
affronting any foreign perils on its behalf The great
idea of their foreign policy was so to conciliate mon-
archical Europe as to get the revolutionary government of
July not only admitted into the European concert, but
into the confidence of the great powers. They argued
that by so doing France would obtain repose for the
development of her interior resources, and securely found
her liberties. They boldly proclaimed the doctrine of
126 EDGAR QUINET.
non-intervention. But in practice they only adhered to
it so long as it suited their own interests. Thus they
supported an armed attempt to. revolutionise Spain
because Ferdinand VII. had delayed recognition of the
new king, withdrawing their countenance from the insur-
rection as soon as the threatened monarch gave the
required guarantees. But where the great powers were
concerned, they were most resolute in applying the
doctrine, as in the case of Poland.
Thus the foreign policy of the governments that
sprang out of the Eevolution of July appears to have
been dictated by no other principle than a short-sighted
view of what was for the interest of Orleanist France.
As M. Dupia axiomatically put it, " Every one at home,
every one for himself."
The repxiblicans maiatained the revolutionary tradition
in their clubs. There is no sign in Quinet's letters to
show that he frequented these clubs, but there can be
little doubt that he shared the opiaions they upheld, and
that he felt at every turn an increasing disgust for the
government. Every ministry proved alike, for it was
Louis Philippe himself who gave the keynote. He was
the incarnation of the juste-milieu policy.
All this yea,r (183 1) Quinet is brooding over the
course of events, giving vent from time to time to his
indignation in the newspaper called the " National," and
at last bringing out some political writings so directly
opposed to the policy in favour among the French states-
men of the day, as completely to destroy all hope of
any preferment from the government. His ideas were
thoroughly original, but their most striking feature is
their prescience; a prescience that in February 1848
caused him to be acclaimed as the prophet by the students
of the College of France, and which was still more mani-
fest after the Franco-German war.
In his first pamphlet, entitled " Germany and' the Eevolu-
tion," Quiaet commenced by asserting that, as every country
GERMANY AND THE REVOLUTION. 127
had some point in which it was superior to all others, that in
which France took the lead was the worship of Legal Eight in
human affairs. On the maintenance of this zeal for justice he
considered that the moral unity of France depended; it was
this gave a sense to her history and a soul to the country.
Take it away and she would hecome contemptihle to herself.
This civilising force, this necessity for exterior influence, was
the very life of France.
He complains, then, that on the morrow of a decided victory
of this very principle, France should resign her position as the
leader of civilisation in Europe, under the mistaken notion that
she must do so to preserve her own liberties. If France thus
proved recreant to her calling, Germany, he went on to show,
would take her position.
Laughing scornfully at the antiquated notions of his coun-
trymen concerning their Teutonic neighbours, Quinet told them
of a Germany disgusted with dreamy metaphysics and literary
cosmopolitanism, regarding France with unbounded bitterness,^
and bent only on realising its own unity. The power designed
by its own peculiar characteristics and the popular feeling of
Germany to take the lead in this great movement was Prussia.
Its despotism, he said, unites whatever is most practical and
most ideal, and proves that the care of material interests can
exist in connection with brilliant theorising and a transcendental
philosophy. He thought it far more menacing than that of
Austria, for it is not only in the government but in the people,
in the manners ajxd parvenu tone of the national spirit. Prussia
never loses sight of the destinies of the German nations ; at the
^ In the latter days of July 1830 Stein was at Nassau. One day his friend
Bodelschwingh went over to Ems, and returned about eight o'clock to
Nassau. Stein was sitting under the chestnuts in his garden drinking
coffee. As Bodelschwingh approached he called out, "What news?" The
answer was, " Eevolution in Paris." He was visibly moTed, listened to all
the details Bodelschwingh had been able to collect, and then said, " And so
the wicked nation is to throw Europe into confusion a second time ! Well,
if they must and will break loose, all I can say is, I wish that they had
waited till I was dead."
He afterwards writes : —
" In France the party struggles continue ; people are tired already of the
present ministry, and want one more democratic, a more democratic chamber,
&c. It is a vain, heartless, selfish people ; irreligious — the devil take them/ "
In August of same year Niebuhr, writing to Stein, says : —
*' A fearful future close at hand now threatens us. The monster is loose,
and for the second time no power can bind it. The Eevolution seems to me
all the more irresistible now, because it is accomplished without enthusiasm,
without Utopias, as a mere matter of course, and no courage withstands it."
— Seeley's " Life of Stein," vol. iii.
128 EDGAR QUINET.
present time it invades tliem by its intelligence, later on it will,
if it can, do so by force. All this restless, enterprising despotism
wants is tbe man who clearly understands its destiny.
When this remarkable forecast was written and pub-
lished Bismarck was only eighteen years of age, and it
was twenty years before he had any idea of the part he
was to play.
This prophecy about Prussia and its coming leader
may seem easy enough now that the fulfilment is so
complete as to make it difficult to imagine how Germany
ever existed otherwise than it does ; but its real poli-
tical insight can only be measured when w-e recall that
many years later one of the most experienced statesmen
in Europe, and, as it happens, the very man who, above
all others, represented the policy against which Quinet
was contending, M. Guizot, thus wrote in reference to
Prussia in that part of his " Mdmoires " where he treats
of these times, and refers to the foreign policy of the
party he calls the Eevolutionists : —
" Prussia, a nation stiU uncertain of its future, and probably the
only power at present in Europe which really encourages an
uneasy desire for aggrandisement, can never expect to raise by
herself any European question whatever. Her government also,
beset internally by liberal exactions, is little inclined to encounter
the risk of great enterprises, and makes no external movement
beyond what it considers indispensable to satisfy the national
pride." 1
Thus while Quinet, thirty-five years in advance, indi-
cated with such precision the objects at which Prussia
was aiming, the character she had formed, and would
further develop, G-uizot more than a quarter of a century
after this warning was uttered, was still persisting in the
opinion that Prussia was a power disinclined for great
enterprises, and one that could never hope to take a
commanding position in Europe.
' M^moirea pour servir i, I'histoire de mon temps par F. Guizot. Tom iv.
p. 80. 1859.
PROPHECIES ABOUT GERMANY. 129
Many other interesting things did Quinet say in this
pamphlet upon the cause and effect of the great move-
ment in Germany towards national unity.
The original destruction of that unity he traced to the Eefor-
mation ; the causes that led to a revival of a desire for it, he
declared to be two — the intellectual unity produced by the rise
of a great national literature, and the moral unity aroused by the
invasions under Napoleon ; finally, he explained how its imme-
diate effect was to cause indifference to everything that stood in
the way of its realisation, even political liberty.
Yet in realising it political liberty would make conquests ;
noiselessly the work would go on, but none the less surely.
Patiently and slowly would the German people work to sap each
little monarchy until one after the other fell peaceably into the
bosom of a state constitutional and national. The principal
monarchy in Germany, the Austrian, was thus crumbling away,
had been crumbling away ever since the sixteenth century ; the
ancient Germanic Diet was on the road to quiet dissolution.
One fine morning it would be transformed into a constitutional
representation of all the local sovereignties. ^
How much, he exclaims, do the Germans owe to their Luther !
He has made it unnecessary for them to have a Mirabeau, a
Convention, a Terror, or a Robespierre. Tradition, monarchy,
aristocracy, he has undermined them all, he has wounded them
to the heart. And now, as religious discord produced political
disunion, the coming political unity is foreshadowed in the aspi-
rations of Lutheranism and Calvinism after ecclesiastical unity.
He notes that material interests are working in the same great
cause, for everywhere the restrictions caused by the artificial fron-
tiers are regarded with sullen anger, the people of Germany
asking for nothing better than to be driven out of their natural
slowness to demand the abolition of the customs, and a treaty of
commercial union between the States, the immediate result of all
such movements being to confer on Prussia the protectorate of the
rest of Germany.
And we, he goes on to say, who are constituted to understand
the power of ideas, we have allowed ourselves to imagine that this
movement of intellect and genius would be an exception to the
general rule, and would never be ambitious of passing from con-
science to will, from will to action, and would never lust after social
power and political force. And now, those ideas which we thought
would remain unfathomable and incorporeal, prove to be just like
' Tliia actually took place in 1848.
130 EDGAR QUINET.
all those that have appeared before them, and rise up as the genius
of a race of men, and that race ranged under the dictatorship of
a people, not more enlightened than the rest of Germany, but
more greedy, more ardent, more exacting, more used to business.
Ever since the close of the Middle Age, the initiative in the
German States has been passing from the south to the north,
and the instrument the north is occupied in making is Prussia.
Leave her alone, and she will press slowly on to the murder of
the old kingdom of France.
The Treaty of Westphalia and the cession of Alsace and
Lorraine is the wound at the bottom of all German projects and
rancours, one of the complaints of the popular party being that
no more territory was taken from France in 1815; that, to use
their own words, " they did not keep the fox when they had
caught it." Thus that which they dared not do in 181 5 has
now become the commonplace of their ambition. ^
But it was not a mere commonplace patriotism that
made Edgar Quinet think it so vital to France that she
should preserve the Ehenish Provinces. Historically he
found that they had always been used as the fortifica-
tions of the country that most brilliantly represented
civilisation.
To resist then this power, thus organising itself in the north,
he said in a second pamphlet, called " Warning to the Monarchy
of July," France ought to entrench herself in her historical posi-
tions, and place herself at the head of the political system of
Southern Europe ; but instead of doing this, he complained
that the whole policy of the Government of July, in Italy, in
Greece, and above aU towards Poland, had tended to give Ger-
many material aid.
The French Revolution, he argued, just as the English, has
its system of facts to accomplish : from its origin its natural
bent has been to end, sooner or later, in the present form of the
American Revolution. If the Orleanist Government had had
the discernment to see this simple truth they would have been,
careful to associate the cause of constitutional liberty in Prance
with the liberties of Europe. To attempt to detach France from
the society in which she has her roots, to isolate her from those
she has already led, and who still look to her, is to commit
political suicide.
But who, he asks, will perish ? Will it be France ? No ;
' See Professor Seeley's "Life of Stein," toI. iii. p. 344.
PROPHECIES ABOUT FRANCE. 131
his patriotism forbids him to believe that the country will suffer
more than a temporary depression, but upon the monarchy which
has inaugurated this policy will come all its perils. For every-
thing it loses abroad it will have to redeem at home : placed
between two opposite forces, whatever it yields to one, it will
have to yield to the other, until it only survives in the rival
forces that it has enlarged and strengthened out of its own
being.
To those who always supported a timid or a reactionary policy
by appealing to the fear that a general war would result if the
principles of the Eevolution were pushed too far, he replies :
Do not imagine a European war will follow even upon such a
catastrophe as the downfall of the monarchy of 1830. All the
possible causes of war which could arise out of the Revolution
were taken up by Napoleon and exhausted.
Monarchy and democracy will be left in France to fight it out
alone. The popular power will have no help from without, but
neither will the royal power ; and when the time comes for the
latter to perish, Europe will not trouble herself to gather up its
remains, even if she were allowed to do so. Finally, he asserts
the democratic power, destined to supplant both monarchy and
aristocracy, will consume itself in its turn, so that when all the
facts of modern society are accomplished, and all its solutions
worn out in the ruins of every form of government, the new
order of which the world is in travail, and which no one can
define, may establish itself.
The ardour of Edgar Quinet's patriotism and the entire
unworldliness of his character will be apparent when it
is remembered that all his hopes of marriage and settle-
ment in life depended on his obtaining a professorship,
an office entirely in the hands of the government. His
friends tried to prevent him from thus compromising his
future, his publisher going so far as to suppress the
most dangerous passages in the pamphlets ; but he went
up to Paris expressly to see them re-inserted and printed.
The resiilt was that seven years elapsed before he re-
ceived any appointment, and even then the king was
annoyed.
But patriotism and disinterestedness do not explain
the extraordinary fact that a young man of twenty-
eight saw the political situation, not only of the moment,
132 EDGAR QUINET.
but for fifty years to come, with an infinitely clearer
vision than any statesman of the age. To have seen
clearly half a century ago that Germany was the one
enemy France had to fear ; that Germany would never
rest satisfied until she had recovered Alsace and Lor-
raine ; that her one object was consolidation, unity, the
concentration of her force under one- leading power ;
that that power was not Austria, which was crumbling
away, but Prussia ; to have exactly traced the character
Prussia has since developed, and to have said emphati-
cally that all she wanted was the man who wotdd know
what she ought to do ; and not only to unfold all- this,
but in the same year to reveal as distinctly the future of
Prance, to have foretold in the very hour of its strength
the downfall of the Orleans monarchy, and the coming
of the republic of 1848, adding, what was contrary to
the universal opinion, that when this revolution should
occur, it would not be followed by a general war, but
that Europe would leave the two principles of monarchy
and democracy to fight it out in France, iintil democracy
conquered, had its turn of power, to fail at last, like all
previous forms, in order that the new order of things
might be inaugurated; — to have seen all this clearly,
and to have announced it in a manner so public, so
thoroughly historic, must for ever establish Quinet as a
prophet among the nations — a prophet in the real, the
biblical sense.
What was the nature of this gift, how was it he pos-
sessed it, and, possessing it, how did he preserve it?
The name he gave it was philosophic intuition, and he
described it as the application of moral ideas to human
affairs. What the moral ide^s were which specially guided
him in his study of history and of politics we may learn
from his " Introduction to Herder," and from his " Genius
of the Ancient Eeligions " and " Christianity and the
French Eevolution." In the first-named work they appear
in germ and in their most abstract form : Moral liberty
WHAT MADE HIM A PROPHET. 133
working freely in a grand necessity of things ; human
wills controlling and directing the course of events, but
themselves the subject of law ; universal history mirrored
in the individual soul ; obedience to the law of humanity
the condition of the full realisation of the individual
life ; a Supreme Will overruling all things — personal,
free, all- wise. In the last two, really forming one work,
the great moral ideas that formed Quinet's philosophy
are applied to universal history. Though worked out in
infinite detail, they have become simple, more easy to
grasp than in the " Introduction to Herder," the great
leading thought being that the moving forces in every
nation are its ideas, and that its ideas spring out of its
religion, that is, out of its relations with the Eternal.
It was this habit of never separating the material
from the spiritual, the temporary from the eternal, the
real from the ideal, that gave Quinet such marvellous
insight, not only into the history of the past, but just
as much into the practical politics of his own day. His
greatness consists in showing in every page of his
writings, and in his own personal history, that there
can be no divorce between time and eternity, between
politics and religion, between man and God. The
statesman, the philosopher, the diviue, who attempts
to act or to teach independently of the plan of the
universe, becomes a blind leader of the blind. That
plan, Quinet evidently came to believe, was infinitely
more simple than was supposed, and he who in any
real degree grasps its idea, and lives in it, becomes
thereby filled with the true prophetic spirit, understood
in its highest, its biblical sense. " For," said Quinet,
speaking of the Hebrew prophets, " all the thoughts of
God, as weU as His works, are enveloped in one supreme
thought; and the men who have been the first to
possess this idea, have really possessed the science of
all times and of all forms to come." The application
of these great moral ideas was, no doubt, aided in
134 EDGAR QUINET.
Quinet's case by peculiarities of principles, tempera-
ment, experience ; all combined together to produce this
philosophical intuition, or, as I have called it, prophetic
insight. But, after all, is such insight only possible in
the rarest cases ? Was no one in Quinet's day gifted
with an intellect as penetrating as his, with human
sympathies as profound, with experiences as varied,
with principles as noble and as pure ? Doubtless
there were many such, certainly Edgar Quinet thought
he knew one. What prevented them, then, seeing
historical and political truth as clearly as he did ?
( 135 )
CHAPTEE VII.
CERTINES. 1 83 I-I 832.
" At Hirsau, 'midst the ruins
There waved an elm-tree tall,
Its coronal of verdure
High o'er the convent-wall.
Its roots were deep emburied,
In cloister gray it grew,
And like a roof its arches
Spread in the azure blue.
I've seen it ofttimes glowing
In the first morning ray,
I've seen it still in sun-light,
Steeped was the vale in gray.
In Wittonberg*a old cloister
There grew a tree as well.
Stretching giant boughs to heaven
Forth from its cloistered cell,
O beam of Light I thou piercest
The deepest, darkest night,
O soul below I thou strivest
Upward to air and light."
— Uhland, translated by W. C. Sandaes.
In comparing the happiuess of his old age with the sad-
ness of his early life, Edgar Quinet conceived that the
latter arose from his feeling himself too near the bounds
of his intelligence ; he felt oppressed by a certain void in
his intellect, by the many difficulties he could not solve ;
his thought was still chaotic, his whole being far below
that which it was to become. Out of this chaos he was
unable to extricate himself. Overwhelmed at once by
thick darkness and an overpowering desire for light, he
questioned all things, but without having any answer.
136 EDGAR QUINET.
until at last such an intolerable grief took possession of
him that he could find no rest night or day.
"How could I enjoy anything ? " he goes on to say. "I did
not see, I did not hear. What was I to do then 1 I waited.
But for what? A thing that never came, and which I don't
know how to name. Wherever I was I felt homesick. For
what home ? you will say. For a home unknown, that I should
never see, hut which attracted me with an invincible attrac-
tion. People asked me, ' How is it you do not feel weU heif ?
Why do you go away ? ' I did not know what to reply, but I
went."
This state of depression was overwhelming during the
summer of 1 8 3 1 ; accordingly he left Paris, and when
" Germany and the Eevolution " was published, he was at
Certines. Here he stayed until the middle of January
1832. He had never seen Certines before during the
winter. The grey forests all laden with hoar frost pleased
him, and the repose of nature communicated itself to his
soul. It was just the quiet that he wanted, for a poem
was forming itself out of the agitations through which his
mind was passing.
On quitting Certines he made a trip to C^lignat, where
he remained six days, going up into the mountains at all
times, day and night. Some friends accompanied him to
Nantua, spending some time on the road at the Grotto
of Corveziat.
Towards the end of this month his father died. Sym-
pathy between father and son does not appear to have
at any time existed. Jerome Quinet's cold, satirical
manner, and entire absorption in his own pursuits, had
killed it in the bud. Though a man of the Eevolution
he had old-world notions concerning his own autho-
rity, leading him blindly to oppose the wishes of his
son. Yet he was, as no one can doubt who looks
at his expansive brow, a man of great intellect. On
certain points, notably in his genius for mathematics,
he was even superior to his son. Independent, proud,
HIS FATHER'S RESEARCHES. 137
and of stern republican principles, he was not likely
to attain to honour under the Empire or the Eestora-
tion. Accordingly he lived in obscurity in Bourg, giving
himself up to scientific research and to the drainage of
the neighbouring marshes. His researches resulted in
one important discovery. He interested himself very
deeply in the deviations of the magnetic needle, and he
came to the conclusion that its actual inclination would
be found at zero on the Equator, five or six degrees of
longitude east of Paris. He communicated his calcula-
tions to the Geographical Society of Paris, and to Eear-
Admiral de Eossel, the President, begging that observations
might be made on the coast of Guinea. His calculations,
made in solitude, in an obscure town, were subsequently
confirmed by actual observation ; for Captain Sabine,^
being at the island of St. Thomas, lying directly on the
Equator at about five degrees eastern longitude, proved
the truth of Jerome Quinet's calculation.
" Who would have thought,'' saj's his son, " that such ardour
for discovery, joined to an original and penetrating spirit, would
have ended without making him a name in science 1 However,
he had none, so greatly Were circumstances against him. His
labours, continued for forty years with unequalled perseverance,
must remain buried. All that can be drawn from them is
a confirmation of the striking fact, that men gifted with the
most unusual, the most energetic abilities, die unknown, for
want of some favourable circumstance to bring them into notice.
Isolated, they become entangled in ways where no one follows
them. They make discoveries ; but their discoveries remaining
hidden, they draw no honour from them, better-placed men
rediscover them and rise to fame. Some men always come
too soon or too late for renown. On the other hand, how many
fools attain an easy triumph ! Talent, genius even, are only
1 The Captain Sabine here referred to is, without doubt, the President
of the Eoyal Society, Major-General Sir Edward Sabine. In his " Report
on the Variations of the Magnetic Intensity," &c. (Lond. 1838), he gives
a table of points at which the magnetic intensity is below zero, and those
which came under his own observation are as follows ; — St. Thomas, 0.25
lat., 6.45 long. — Sabine— 1B22, 0.931 intensity. There are two other points
lower, but the difference is infinitesimal. The longitude here is from Green-
wich,
138 EDGAR QUINET.
promises. Destiny is needed; without that, everything must
fail."
Thus Jerome Quinet was not among those chosen to
be renowned on this planet. Being one day asked by
his wife in what he thought would consist the future
felicity of the just, he replied: "In a knowledge of the
secrets of the universe.'' He began to obtain the reward
he sought after, even in this life.
Jerome Quinet died, nominally at least, a Catholic,
for Madame Quinet had masses said at Certines for him
in the usual way.
It was no doubt the decease of his father that kept
Edgar Quinet in the neighbourhood of his early home
during all the spring of 1832.
In the March of this same year another death
occurred, one in which he must have felt a peculiar
interest, since it was that of the greatest genius of the
age in his own order of talent, one who, moreover, had
honoured him by a few words of unsought praise.
Goethe died on the 2 2d of this month, an old man of
eighty-two. It would appear to have been this event
that led Quinet to publish a paper in April on " German
Art and Literature." It is divided into three parts.
In the first he brings out very forcibly the fact that the great
age of German art and literature which the death of Goethe
closed, had been one in which art manifested itself without con-
ditions and without limits in a universe of its own construction.
The littleness of human events, even those that make the most
noise and seem almost terrific when placed in contrast to the
world of thought, is powerfully brought out in this part of the
paper.
Every one, he says, knows the portentous meaning of
the date '89, of such names as Mirabeau, the Convention,
Napoleon ; yet the tremendous cataclysm that these names
signify might as well not have happened, so little trace has it
left on the contemporary literature of Germany. We might at
least have supposed that in its great poets we should find a
reflection of such times. But if we turn first of all to the
man who conceived the great German epic, we find that while
GERMAN ART AND LITERATURE. 139
Goethe has personified in the characters of Faust and Mar-
guerite the two spirits ever at war in the bosom of his own
people — extreme reflection and extreme ingenuousness — his
poem only indicates by its singular character that something
unheard of was going on in the world. But whether it was
progress or fall, good or evil, are questions which do not
trouble the poet. The serenity of Wieland and Herder is even
greater ; neither of them conveying the least impression of
their time. They might just as well have written in the midst
of oriental repose, where nothing is heard but the rustle of a
palm leaf, or the wind sighing through the gate of a city in the
Delta. And the same may be said of the critical works of the
brothers Schlegel. The only one who shares the torment and
fever of his epoch, who seems possessed by its ceaseless in-
quietude, is Schiller. His words make you feel that a storm
is shaking the earth beneath his feet, he is the only one that
betrays any terror ; and his contemporaries, calm and serene,
reproached him for it.
During the Convention there awoke, as it were from a sleep
of ages in the enchanted castle of Barbarossa, one of the
old medicBval minstrels. No one in reality could be more a
stranger to the modern world than Tieck. He is the Ariel of
poets, the frolicsome sprite who sports with himself and others,
the true buffoon of the universe, the inheritor of Hans Sachs
and the meister-sanger. And yet even in him German art did
not reach its limit of separation from the contemporaneous
world. The mysticism of Jean Paul Richter invented another
earth, another heaven, a mingling of supernatural colours,
creative dreams in which phantom worlds moved in the bosom
of a night that never knows a dawn. From the height of this
unknown firmament the angels stretch their white wings to
hide and stifle the cries and distress of the real universe.
Here, then, is a literature in which not a single echo is found
of political society. Such a degree of abstraction could be
attained only by the German race. That race appeared about
the same time as the gospel, to spiritualise the world. At
each of its ages its mission has been to perpetuate the miracle
of thought without form : a paganism without a victim, an
epic without the wonderful, a Christianity without an altar, a
law without a code, an art without a country.
In the second portion of the paper, the change from this
calm repose to the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of the German
war poetry is traced. Germany became discontented with
leaders who were careless of mundane affairs, even when the
soil of their country trembled with the shock of battles.
I40 EDGAR QUINET.
Even Goethe lost his popularity in his old age ; many felt that
his cosmopolitan genius had frost-hitten much sincere enthu-
siasm, and that he had given Germany the bitter gift of the
knowledge of good and evil.
The change was visible in all things. The echoes of the
human race, numerous and nameless in Mozart and Hadyn, give
place in Weber and Spohr to a music peculiarly indigenous ;
while in painting the German school of the fourteenth century
supplants the Greek art of Winckelmann and Goethe. The
study of the frescoes of the cathedrals almost inaugurates a new
religion. There is a rage for mediaevalism. Everything must
wear the forms of Albert Durer and Holbein.
A still greater change came over poetry, for under the impul-
sion of the new epoch it threw itself headlong into the fight.
In 1814 and 1815, songs, terrible and bloody as the time, rained
thick. The poets, with official mission to exalt the courage of
the armies, resembled the ancient bards. What hymns charged
with powder ! what joyous ballads flamed forth in the grape-
shot ! what intrepid iambics rose erect, all blazing in the throat
of the cannon ! Then whistled the enchanted balls like spirits
in the air ; the sabres glittered in the sunlight as the sling of
a Hartz fairy ; the breasts of the horses smoked as a black wave
of the Danube ; the streamers of the lances bathed in the dew of
the sun of Leipsic ! Who can ever say this poetry wanted
reality 1 Say rather it was intoxicated with too much of it.
Itself a clarion in the midst of the battle, it was at the mercy of
events. The ball that struck Koerner in the forehead just as he
had finished his " Song of the Sword," gave art its baptism of fire.
Uhland is the Beranger of Germany. Although belonging to
this epoch, there is a change in the character of his inspiration.
The noise has vanished, the sword is wiped, the struggle finished ;
pious, he kneels in victory like the angel of Novalis at the bivouac ;
he celebrates the freedom of the soil, the joyful harvest that ger-
minates in blood. His originality is consummate, for he veils
the national pride in his soul under the humility of an ancient
popular ballad ; he conceals the sentiment of liberalism under
the forms of the Middle Age. This so-called demagogue of 1 8 1 9
is in reality a vassal of Eudolph, who sings his song under the
wild plum and beneath the ruined castle of his lord. He is in
poetry what Cornelius is in painting ; they represent, each in his
way, the actual state of Germany, hiding new sympathies and
a destiny just beginning to unfold under venerable institutions
and antiquated forms.
The third part is entirely devoted to a name little known, as
Quinet says, in France, and certainly stiU less so in England,
ON GOERRES. 141
but belonging to one whom very diverse thinkers agree in regard-
ing as a Titanic genius. The mission of Goerres, according to
Quinet, has been to arouse this great impassive Germany, just
as a toreador excites the bull in order to render him furious
for the fight. Goerres he describes as at once the apostle and
martyr of pantheism. Jacobin, absolutist, priest, demagogue,
papist, ultramontane, patriot, he wears out in his soul all social
and cosmopolite passions as others do individual ones. No man
in his country has ever suffered more in the name of liberty.
To his heroic imagination, the movement of the invasion
seemed as the signal of a new era in the human race. But
when he found it brought forth only the prosaic plagiarism of
constitutional monarchy, with so many ephemeral sovereignties,
he repudiated these half liberties, and threw down the glove to
burgher conquests that he thought impeded and turned aside
the true mission of the country.
In order to bring about the unity of the German races, he
urged them anew into history. But what should be the tie that
links all these peoples and tongues into one body ? A religious
principle could alone effect the work. Goerres believed that he
found that principle in a Catholicism renewed at the source of the
traditions of the human race. Henceforth he declared war against
the present. He attacked the Reformation which had divided
the people, the Liberalism which completed the Eeformation.
He conceived for the profit of Germany a revolutionary papacy,
which, seated on the body of Austria, should exercise in the north
that cohesive power that the papacy of the Middle Age had
exercised over the south; he would have a national dictator-
ship, a religious restoration with a mitred Napoleon at its head.
Thus liberty was to lose itself in faith, as among the French
it was lost in glory. After the manner of an Asiatic legislator,
Goerres proposed to immure Germany, that she might be dis-
cipHned before going forth to the conquest of the future.
Goerres is of all the writers of his country the most entirely
German. The disordered vegetation of a primitive forest can
alone give any idea of his style. Educated in the philosophy
of Schelling, he applied it to history. In his orthodox pan-
theism, he gathered up the traditions of all times, Christian or
pagan, in order to make a new Bible. His history of the reli-
gions of the East is a work of art and divination rather than of
science.
Nature, which has opened in the wide horizon of Germany
a field where modern societies may decide their political dif-
ferences, has also used this same horizon as the arena in which
opinions and human philosophy may be put to the test. Young
and inoffensive as yet, they live together without quarrels, and they
142 EDGAR QUINET.
believe that under the standard of pantheism this will long con-
tinue. But in the degree they develop, each wiU follow its own
humour and walk in its own fashion. In this land of repose,
there is nothing to-day but struggle. Protestantism against
Catholicism, pietism against protestantism, rationalism against'
pietism, form the "fatal circle within which you cannot take a
step without treading on a corpse.
All human opinions have their rendezvous there, and have
come there to enter upon their last combat. Arrived at its
highest point, the entire spiritual edifice of old Germany is
silently perishing. Germany is itself engaged in dispersing its
dust to the four winds of heaven — dust not of death but of life ;
not of matter but of thoughts ; dust of ideas which the God of
humanity gathers together to form a new world.
( 143 )
CHAPTEE VIII.
ITALY. 1832.
" Wrecks of anotller world, whose ashes still are warm."
— Byron.
It was a fortunate thing for Quinet that he was in the
provinces during the early part of 1832, for it was just
at this time that the cholera made its first appearance in
Paris, raging with great severity, and exciting intense
dismay by the terrible nature of the symptoms. The
panic culminated when the head of the Government fell
a victim to the plague.
Casimir Perier died on the i6th of May, and it must
have been within a day or two of this event that Edgar
Quinet paid a visit to Lamartine at Saint-Point, where
he found him preparing for his voyage to the East.
Within a few days after he left Bourg for Lyons, intend-
ing to go on to Italy. He seems to have gone by the
Lake of Geneva through the Simplon. Winter was
hardly over in the Alps, and the intense silence of the
scene was broken only by the deadened sound of ava-
lanches falling from distant peaks ; the snow, glitter-
ing and rose-coloured in the May sunshine, forming a
fitting vestibule to " the garden of the world."
The Lakes Maggiore and Como appear to him of the
same colour as the Mediterranean, perhaps a little less
blue, the Borromean Islands like a creation of Ariosto.
Of Milan Cathedral he says : " The mysticism of Gothic
architecture seems out of its element in this land of
Saturn." He wonders why, in Italian Gothic, the spire
144 EDGAR QUINET.
is either suppressed or separated from the main body of
the church, and suggests that the Italian cares less about
cloudland than the German, or that perhaps the temerity
of the spire was repugnant to the Eoman tradition.
Every scene connected with Napoleon's campaign in
Italy had a fascination for him : Castiglione, Lodi, Eivoli.
In the amphitheatre at Verona he determines on a pil-
grimage to Arcole. He is astonished to find the bridge
so little — only five paces wide and about thirty long —
and so weak that a goat might have made it tremble.
The stream it crossed turned out to be a muddy canal
not more than four feet deep, the neighbourhood a mono-
tonous plain. There was everything in the scene to
depress enthusiasm, but the poet-patriot sees in its
melancholy fresh causes of devotion to France, -to Prance
who is always so holy and so good, the victim of rulers
who restrain her noble passions. A star or two had
appeared before he quits the battlefield, and the gates
of Vicenza had been long closed when he reached that
city.
As he travels over the swampy flats on his way to
Venice he sees myriads of fireflies, lighting up, then
going out, and lighting up again, like little wandering
lamps in the land of the dead. The clock in the cam-
panile of St. Mark struck eleven as he entered the Italian
Tyre. The moon was just emerging from the clouds,
gondolas glided past him, while on both sides of the
Grand Canal the shadows of the palaces fell on the
water, confusing themselves into an architecture fantastic
as a dream.
At break of day he is at the cathedral, and has poetic
thoughts about the flocks of pigeons that alight on every
statue and pinnacle in the building. St. Mark's recalls
an old Byzantine legend, and looks like St. Sophia, trans-
ported to the West. He has no enthusiasm for the stones
of Venice. Venetian architecture appears to him to be
oppressed with the weight of the Byzantine theology ; a
VENETIAN ART 145
precocious decrepitude is seen through its gUding ; it has
the ornate graces of the Greek Church, and nothing of
the wild sublimity of "Western Catholicism.
Of the council chamber in the Arabian-like palace of
the Doge, he says : —
" The Venetian senate sat between two tortures, the leads
above, the subterranean dungeons below. The grand hall itself
is radiant with the magnificent paintings of Veronese and Tin-
toretto ; you see in them patrician Venice arrayed in all its
glory. Thus voluptuousness mingled itself with terror. The
Venetian oligarchy were quite at home in a building which was
at once a palace, a gaol, and a museum." He was shown a
helmet of studied beauty, constructed to crush the beads of the
accused. " Thus," he remarks, " Venice was artistic even in
her tortures."
At perpetual war with nature and the world, secrecy
was for the Venetian state the first condition of its con-
tinuity. It was not the place for poets, orators, historians,
or philosophers. A mute art was the only one possible
in a mute society. Yet the sombre severity of Venetian
policy did not communicate itself to its painting. Titian
and Paul Veronese have the sumptuous sensuality and
the aristocratic character of the Council of Ten, but not
a touch of its terrible profundity. A reflected ray of the
Levant shines from their canvas, their imaginations have
been partly formed in the bazaars of Cyprus and
Byzantium.
These cuUings from his notes, published four years
after his return from Italy, give rather his matured
thoughts than his immediate impressions. These impres-
sions, at least with regard to Venice, were far more enthu-
siastic, as his letters show. In them he speaks of its
being impossible to tear himself away from Venice. He
wandered from morning to night over its mysterious
bridges, going about when it got dark in a gondola, and
stopping on the water far into the night.
" If," he says, " it is possible to die of happiness, I should
die here. I write volumes of notes. Venice has the originality
K
146 EDGAR QUINET.
of Spain, tut of a Spain softened and rendered more beautiful
■fay its fall. I am enamoured witli it, and I can say nothing
else. I should like to remain here and die." Again, " I have
made a large study of the architecture of St. Mark, and of the
palace of the Doge. I inwardly devour, like Saturn, all these
stones, and it really affects me as if I had eaten the food of the
gods. The women here are intoxicating ; they have a grace and
a seriousness fuU of mystery, of which nothing but their city
gives any idea. I have seen admirable pictures of the Venetian
school which will be valuable for my poem. My whole ambi-
tion as a writer would be to belong to this school."
In the following picture of Venice he seems to be
making the effort : —
" Violet clouds, such as those that float over the canvas of
Tintoretto, often mass themselves above the city, in lines so
straight that they might have been drawn with a square. Then
the light concentrates in a narrow belt on the horizon. Every
object stands out upon this zone with incredible distinctness;
masts, cordage, yards, oars, all is engraved on a sky of copper.
From a ground of bronzed waves emerge the palace of the Doge,
the campanile of St. Mark with its golden angel ; and then, in
the isles, the domes of San Giorgio, of the Redentore, and the
Citelle. The entire city rises from this empurpled sea like a
creation of one of its painters."
Perrara, with its " wide and grass-grown streets," was
the next city at which he stopped. Quinet shared
Goethe's and Byron's view about Tasso's madness, and
nothing so interested him in Ferrara as a visit to the
cell where Leonora's brother immured the poet. He
found the prison at the bottom of a little court. The
vault was so low that in some parts it was impossible to
stand upright. A heavy hailstorm, followed by a biting
wind, seemed to be in harmony with the painful memories
of the place.
From Torquata's prison he went to the house where
Ariosto dwelt, and found the scene equally in harmony
with Ms prosperous life.
" A brilliant sun irradiated the chamber of Messir Ludovico.
A glossy cat snored at the threshold. Pigeons beat their wings
against the glazing of the ogive window. Through the doors of
ART AND RELIGION. 147
the apartments I heard the wind whispering and sighing like
the agitated phantoms of the poet. His writing-case was on a
table. I went down into the garden. It was then in full
bloom. I picked some carnations and narcissus. Diapered
butterflies rested on the Spanish grasses ; a number of fowls
were clucking. All proclaimed the dwelling of a happy man."
From Ferrara lie went on to Bologna, where the appear-
ance of the Austrians in the square excited his rage and
grief. He hastens on to Florence, where he stops a
week. Florence he calls the living commentary of
Dante. Its architecture, painting, and sculpture of the
fourteenth century have close resemblances with the
" Divina Commedia."
He thinks it impossible to live at Florence without
occupying oneself with the history of. art. There the
antique tradition met with Christian idealism, and
from the union came forth a serenity of form unknown
in the Venetian school. As the emblematic city of
Dante, Florence rises with each age from circle to circle
in art, until it reaches supreme beauty. A new Italy,
more beautiful than the ancient one, came out of the
tomb of Etruria.
He notes the singular fact that Eome, which has given
its name to the greatest school, has never herself pro-
duced poet, painter, or sculptor. It is often said that
religious epochs are favourable to art, but he thinks Italy
tells a different tale. As long as faith was profound the
painters left their works in a sort of divine infancy,
whereas it is during the time that dogma is being
attacked, during the era of the Eeformation, that the
greatest masters of the Venetian, Florentine, and Man-
tuan schools flourish. In the ages of faith religion
moulds the painters, in the ages of art the painters
mould religion.
In the Church of S. Lorenzo the monuments of the
Medici made a deep impression on him. That of Lorenzo,
son of Piero di Medici, is called II Fenseroso, because it
148 EDGAR QUINET.
represents in so perfect a manner its subject seated in
deep thought. This figure, meditating in the tomb,
seemed to him to figure dead Italy dreaming over her
past.
After he left Florence the wanderer passed on through
Foligno and through Umbria, moving on towards Eome.
On his road he went into the Apennines all alone during
the night to see two little volcanoes, with a table knife
in his pocket to defend himself from the bandits, who he
was told made their pots boil on the sides of the crater.
When he was still at some distance from Eome he quitted
his vetturino and mounted a horse, that he might see the
city more plainly. It was hidden to the last moment
by the Monte Mario.
In his description of the Eoman Campagna, he states,
on the authority of an English map of 1834, that there
were parts in it not then explored, and which remained
white on the map as if they were in the centre of Asia.
Another curious thing he mentions is, that at one of the
gates of Eome — it would seem to have been the Porta
Angelica, the one leading directly to the Piazza of St.
Peter's, and the nearest to the Vatican — he saw a number
of skulls heaped up in iron cages.
He arrived in Eome on the i ith of July, and seems
to have remained there a considerable time. His most
intimate friends were Chenavard and Gleyre, two artists.
Por ancient Eome he has little sympathy. He thought
that there was a character about its ruins that accorded
well with the monstrous nature of its empire. He
instances as an example the baths of Caracalla, which
in their formless masses reveal the kind of madness that
had seized the people under the Caesars. From their
walls he looked down on the antique city, and felt that
it had the Babylonian character of the prophecies and
lay under sentence of eternal condemnation.
The retributive vengeance of Providence is the one
thought that strikes him in all he sees of old Eome. Its
A STORM IN ROME. 149
most fitting aspect is in a great storm, for then outward
nature seems in accord with the divine judgment.
" The first sign of such a storm is the Sirocco on the Campagna.
Every creature becomes silent as at the approach of a bird of prey.
A burning vapour swims in the atmosphere. The crests of the
tall pines of 'the Villa Pamphila sway to and fro on the horizon.
Bands of gulls and sea-birds rise from Ostia, alighting under the
arches of the ruined bridges. The Tiber changes colour and
looks like an infernal river. Sighs are heard coming up in
puffs out of the rockwork of the Eoma Vecchia. When the light-
nings begin to flash, they surround as with an angry dawn the
summit of the colisseum, the tower of Nero, the battlements of
Adrian's mole, and the taU obelisks in the squares. You might
fancy an invisible hand was opening and shutting the sepulchre
of the old world. Then the ruins become pale as ghosts ; the
nettles on the Thermes emit a faint odour; and the piled-up
clouds becoming the colour of blood, end in bursting over the
devoted city.
" If the bell of S. Onofrio should at this moment happen
to toll, its feeble sound is quickly repeated by a thousand others,
and scarcely has the last sound died out when an immense
murmur exha,les from the earth. The confraternities of the
dead raise their mournful chants on the declivity of the Aventine,
Christian Eome kneels on the sepulchre of pagan Eome ; all
repeating far into the night, Miserere ! miserere ! "
He studies Eome of the Middle Age in the Byzantine
cloisters, in the basilicas, and in the mosaics. In the
latter the impression of the early ages of Christianity is
most complete. There is in them the same barbarism
and the same sublimity as in the fathers. Their natural
relation is with the catacombs, the Lombardian cupolas,
the Gregorian chant, with the old organ of Byzantium,
and the poetry of the litanies and of the Dies Irm.
The mosaic in the ruined church of S. Paolo fuori le
Mura moved him deeply. This church, one of the
earliest in the neighbourhood of Eome, and supposed
to contain the bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul,
was burnt down in 1823. Fortunately the apse of the
cathedral escaped, and this contained a colossal figure
in mosaic of Christ. When Edgar Quinet saw it, the
ISO EDGAR QUINET.
figure stood among ruins, with workmen in all directions
cutting stone and preparing for a new building. In the
midst of all these distracting influences
" The religion which reigned in. the features, the attitude,
the gesture of the figure was," he says, " so profound, that I was
affected as if by a liturgio portrait sketched by the hand of
a martyr. The Christ of the first ages seemed to be there,
pensive over the ruins of His church. Under His feet grew the
briers of the Campagna, the tired grasshoppers cried around Him,
and my heart, a thousand times more tired than they, rose by
bounds to the impression of the lost faith to which the stones
around bore witness. I was glad to move away, for the great
eyelids seemed to open and the eyes always rested on me. I
saw the clouds pass over the city, and at some distance shadow
the walls. All recalled the legend of the travelling Christ at
the gate of Rome. . . . Since then I have seen the masterpieces
of the Vatican, but nothing has so laid hold of me, nothing has
appeared to me so apocalyptic, as that Christ of the fourth
century standing on the ruins of His church, amidst the brush-
wood and the buffaloes of the Eoman Campagna."
The feature that gives Eome its character, that, rising
above all its ruins, combines its various periods under
the visible domination of the papacy, is the dome of St.
Peter's. It is the manifest emblem of the triumphant
Church. For the Eome of the Eenaissance is in some
sort Eome restored to life again on the tombs of the
martyrs. This new Eome of the sixteenth century
realised on earth the ideal city of the future, which the
Christians of the Middle Age had imagined. Compre-
hending all forms and all times, it became the image of
the city of God and of universal history. Two great
artists completed the work ; one had the inspiration of
the Old Testament, the other of the New. The paint-
ing of Eaffaelle is not the work of a single mind, sum-
ming up all that preceded ; it is so tied to tradition as
often to seem independent of the will and choice of the
artist. Under the full-orbed sun of the Eenaissance
you see the asceticism and the sadness of the Middle
Age. In Eaffaelle there is something of Perugino, of
RAFFAELLE AND MICHAEL ANGELO. 151
Masaccio, and of Fra Angelico. His frescoes are the
epic of the Christian tradition.
Michael Angelo is quite otherwise. He has neither
master nor past. If a real relationship to Dante and
the Pisan sculptors can be seen in him, there is also
something of the harshness of civil discord, of the
vehemence of Savonarola, of the tumultuous spirit of the
Guelphs and the Ghibellines ; he has, above all, the
spirit of infallibility, which owes nought to any but to
himself. He makes, he increases tradition; he does
not receive it. He governs, he reigns, in the same way
as the Pope. In his biblical platonism he has glimpses
of ideas, forms ; he alone perceives them, yet he im-
poses them on the world, and the world submits. His
works are decrees, his God is the God of excommuni-
cation, his madonna that of vengeance, his heaven a
menacing one. In Michael Angelo there is something
of Gregory VII., just as there is something of Leo X. in
Eaffaelle.
But what gives all its life to modern Eome are the
f^tes of Catholicism. Eome, Quinet says,
" is artistic in matters of faith at least as mucli as it is devotee
by profession. When at Christmas the peasants come down
from the mountains, their rustic rites recall the primitive times
when the people took part in the liturgy. The women harmonise
well with the candelabra, the statues, the pictures, of the Eoman
Church. It is this resemblance between the monuments of art
and this people of pilgrims that contributes so much to the
magic of the ffites of Eome."
Then, after a graphic description of the Pope blessing
Eome and the world on Easter day, the wanderer bursts
out in admiration —
" city great and glorious ! since in thee is still found the
question which occupies the world, the only one that is worth
debating, — shall thy ruler remain ruler of the world 1 shalt thou
remain queen of queens 1 will it happen to thee as to all the
cities built by men ? wilt thou have thy rising and thy setting ?
or wilt thou, as the city of God, etemaUy repair thy ruins ?
152 EDGAR QUINET.
" If lie -who blest thee yesterday should die to-morrow, and
disappear without a successor, where would be a solitude like
unto thine 1 Then thou, the city of ruins, wouldst know_ what
it is to be desolate ; for so long as that old man dwells in the
same tomb with thee, thy desert is filled ; he is thy bridegroom,
thou art his bride. If he is dying, thou art dying. If he
should be reborn, thou wilt be reborn.
" Pilgrim of doubt, I have done as the pilgrims of faith ; I
have visited the tombs, in the catacombs I have touched the
bones of the martyrs. Passers-by looking on, might have said,
' There is a faithful believer.' But while they prayed, I only
listened ; while they adored, I tried to adore ; and when I knelt
a.s they did, my rebellious spirit stood up in the midst of .the
church in the face of what they believed to be God.
" I might, like others, have taken for a sign of faith the
amusements of my fancy or the commotions of my imagination.
But this snare, to my mind more impious than blasphemy, has
in nowise seduced me. Between the poet who dreams, and the
faithful who believes, there is, whatever may be said, a whole
abyss. Eather than only half believe, half love anything, I
prefer to believe nothing, to love nothing."
" I am emerging," he writes to his mother from Rome in the
autumn of 1832, "from a trouble so frightful that I dread aU
things, and can give my confidence to nothing but the stones
and trees of the villas."
The quotation just given explains wliat this " trouble
so frightful" was. Clearly the temptation of religious
minds in all ages. Only make a little obeisance in the
heart to the spirit of falsehood, and all shall be yours,
all the joys of faith, of hope, of peace !
" Ahasuerus " was the book he was writing while in
Italy. This book is precious indeed, because it was
wrung out of the agonies of an honest soul.
Upon leaving Eome, Quinet went to the south of Italy,
and one of his adventures was the ascent of Vesuvius by
night. The volcano was in a very irritable state. From
December 25th, 183 1, to February 1832, streams of
lava had been pouring forth at intervals, and on the i 3th
of August in the following year three streams descended
on the Torre del Greco, so that probably the sight he
saw was unusually grand. There can be no doubt that
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS BY NIGHT. 153
the second scene in the first part of " Prometheus " was
moulded on this night's experience. In his notes he thus
relates the actual facts : —
" At eight o'clock I set out from the little town of Torre del
Greco. After an hour's walk I reached the hermitage. The
night was pitch dark. I lit my torch, the hermit wished me
good luck ; I went on my way with my guide, and very soon
attained the foot of the cone.
" At this distance I was too near the volcano to see it : I only
heard ahove my head explosions, which the echoes increased in
a formidable manner, and a rain of stones that rolled down in
the darkness. From this tempest came out a great sigh as if a
giant was being stoned. The wind extinguished my torch ; I
finished by climbing the mountain in complete darkness. But
at the moment I reached the summit, an infernal glare lit up the
sky. The soil trembled under my feet ; it was warm to the
touch. Through its crevasses shone the fiery veins of a hidden
furnace. In the midst of the crater where I had come, a new
one formed itself which appeared all in flames. The mouth of
the abyss exhaled an immense and long-continued breath. This
aspiration and respiration, profound and regular as that of the
bellows of a forge, rose from the bosom of the oppressed moun-
tain. A terrible detonation followed them. The flaming stones
were whirled out of sight and fell with a tremendous noise on
the edges of the cone. The precipitous sides and the interior of
the abyss were lit up as in full daylight.
" In the distant openings of the crater the lava sprang from the
soU. It ran sparkling from four mouths : very soon the moun-
tain uttered a gigantic groan At the moment of the explosion,
looking towards the sea, I saw distinctly the little boats at
anchor.
" The mountain trembled exceedingly, but the waves were not
moved. It was fine to behold the sea thus slumbering peace-
fully at the base of the exasperated mountain. The bay of
Naples resembled the Angelica of Ariosto under the extended
wings of the chimera.
" I sat down on the trembling earth ; nature was seized with a
dizziness to which I abandoned myself with delight These
intervals of noise and silence, of light and darkness ; the calm
of the night, the calm not less great of the sea ; the mountain
starting with emotion : all these contrary eff'ects strengthened one
another. Without reflecting upon it, I found in this sight a
crowd of images applicable to the moral state in which I then
was, and which had got so much worse since I left Rome.
154 EDGAR QUINET.
" I passed the night on this height. When the day appeared
I was able to satiate myself at leisure with a view of the famous
gulf that stretched at my feet. In the distance the isle of Capri,
in form like an ancient galley, shut out the open sea. The sun
rose on the other side of Pompeii ; it rested some time on the
tombs like a funeral torch. It was the signal for a multitude of
little vessels to quit the shore and hoist their sails. I heard at
the same moment the noise of the towns and villages waking
up. The vines entwined among the poplars began to shiver in
the sea breeze, a moment after the light sparkled on the wrinkled
water ; a golden vapour, like the dust of stars, rose on the
horizon ; the air was loaded with perfumes. All nature appeared
drunk as at a pagan fite ; and as long as the volcano continued
to be agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the sybil
muttering on the tripod."
In Naples, the city of the senses, he remarks that the
most important monuments are tombs, and that those
tombs nearly all belong to the epoch of the Spanish rule.
He makes the observation that from this careless people,
whose hero appears to be Polichinello, have arisen men
of the highest spiritual type, or of boundless energy —
Pythagoras and his school, Thomas Aquinas, Vico, Spag-
noletto, Salvator Eosa. He describes an improvisatore
reciting his stories to a crowd of the " noble public " —
nohile publico — seated in a circle beneath the shadow of
a sail-cloth on the mole. He moralises over the difficulties
of a young monk of the Camaldoli in the midst of the
attractions nature spreads around him.
The siren character of nature in this neighbourhood
leads him to speak of the scenes of Eoman voluptuous-
ness. When the Eomans began to grow corrupt and to
become disgusted with the grandeur and severity of their
city, they sought this nature intoxicated and monstrous
as themselves. The mixture of voluptuousness and terror
characteristic of the times of Tiberius, Nero, Caligula,
had its natural counterpart in the promontories of Capri
and Misenum. Here, hard by the lakes Avernus and
Acherusia, the entrances to the infernal regions, Eoman
society planted its villas and held its insolent feasts.
ADVENTURE IN THE GROTTO AZURA. 155
Visiting the isle of Capri, he finds the abode of the
emperor hidden among tufts of wormwood. A hermit
dwells among its ruins. In front is the open sea, on the
left the gulf of Sorrento and the peaks of Amalfi. From
thence the old emperor, with the instinct of his successor,
the osprey, could look down upon his empire, and see
coming from afar the tempest which no ship could avoid.
" At bottom the antique world was disgusted with itself, and
tried to escape from itself by every open road. Those at the
head of affairs vaguely felt that a great change was preparing
against which it was impossible to contend. Despair seized
them, but they did not know whether the evil was in their own
hearts or in that of the people, in the great or in the gods, but
they knew that they must perish, and that the whole universe
was in the plot. Hence this prodigious fright, this ceaseless
suspicion."
While in Capri he very nearly got shut up for a week
in the grotto Azura. In company with two others, a
doctor and a painter, he had entered the grotto in the
usual way; lying down flat in the boat, the entrance
being only three feet high. The extraordinary beauty of
this azure cavern is well known. Quinet calls it " the
sapphire shell of the siren of Naples."
The painter commenced a sketch, and none of them
perceived that the wind was freshening without. When
they did, it was too late, the storm was up. From the
sides of the mountain came roarings like a herd of sea-
bulls, and at times explosions like the battery of a fort.
The waves quickly blocked up the opening. The basin
of the gulf, so tranquil an hour before, rose in its turn,
and the visitors remained plunged in livid obscurity.
When the flood withdrew they could see the ravines hol-
lowed out in the gulf After one of its returns they
tried to follow the wave, but just as they reached the
opening it rose again and broke over them with fury. It
raised their boat perpendicularly, forced it against the
side of the cavern, and finally threw it into the centre.
156 EDGAR QUINET.
Quinet proposed to try and swim out in order to get
succour, but this was impracticable, owing to the violent
way in which the surf beat against the entrance.
They made up their minds that they should have to
pass the night in the place, and got on to the ledge of a
rock. At sunset the sea fell. About an hour afterwards
they thought that they heard voices. Some inhabitants
of Capri, who had seen them leave in the morning, had
divined their embarrassment. They attempted to tug them
out, but could not succeed until night had closed in and
the wind had fallen.
On All Saints' day in Naples he saw the skulls of the
dead brought out from their tombs and placed in the
middle of the vaults of the churches between lighted
tapers, each having its name written on the forehead.
The crowd came and looked, but betrayed no horror, either
because it was a traditional custom, or, as Quinet suggests,
because there is in the soil of this country a mixture of
asceticism and sensuality which time cannot efface.
Of the street of tombs in Pompeii he says : —
" You come here in too close proximity with the vulgar details
of life in antiquity. The caricatures on the walls take away all
seriousness from the past ; you are in the midst of the gossip of
the dead of a little provincial town. Pompeii is not a Sodom
condemned by celestial fire, it is only the Epicurean sarcophagus
of a courtisan of Campania."
Pffistum was the extreme point of his travels in Italy.
In the neighbourhood of " The Three Temples," he went
into a dilapidated locanda, that contained a sick peasant.
The hut recalled one of those bewitched dwellings he had
read of in the feverish book of Apuleius. It had the same
destitution, the same magical memories and surrounding
names. He asked some food ; his miserable host set before
him curdled milk and bread. But what with the excessive
heat and the miasma of the maremma he fell asleep, and
had a dream that he could not forget.
" Italy appeared without inhabitants ; by degrees, however, all
A DREAM OF ITALY. 157
the art forms that I had seen and admired in my route awoke
from the cold marble, or came out of the picture-frames, becoming
real beings, and ■sv'alking about instead of the inhabitants who
were no more. The Venetians were the first to throw off the
dust which covered them. They assembled with light steps
on the Lido, and murmured together in a tongue flowing and
coloured as the waves of the Adriatic. Leonard! da Vinci's
Mona Lisa bent over the bank to look at herself in the Lago
Garda. Michael Angelo's sybils seated themselves in the
Campagna of Eome, and day and night from the Chapel of San
Lorenzo rose up shivering, like celestial Bohemians. £1 Giotto's
campanile, without a moment's rest, the blessed anachorites of
Fiesole, quitting their cells and their frescoes, ran up and down,
unrestrained by fear of mortal man.
" Along the coasts, how many angels and archangels came down
from the old heaven of Byzantine art, folding their golden wings
as they rested near the shore ! From their tuscan viols they
drew forth ineffable sounds, such as those I had imagined in the
forest of the Dombes ! They chanted entire poems of which I
had babbled the first syllables as I wandered along the damp
meadow paths. Finally, I saw EaffaeUe's Virgin with the veil,
passing with her two children into the garden of the Csesars :
there she gathered fresh flowers, and she smiled, for no human
doubt had yet communicated itself to these daughters of man's
spirit. They alone had kept the faith of the bygone ages, and
that eternal love of which the earth was deprived. I heard a
voice that said, ' Holy, holy be for ever this land of Italy,
this land that has nourished us with her paps, and clothed us
with the summer's sun.' "
Bo oft IV.
THE POET.
" Where is the man who does not need an inward ablution before accomplishing his
task? Where is he who has not bathed in the flood of human griefs before receiving,
according to the oriental expression, the new life, that is, the life of inspiration?
Where is the philosopher, the artist who, once at least, has not washed the dust off
his dreams on the shores of the immaculate lakes, and cooled his brow in the
unfathomable abyss? Does not every poet, before commencing his work, commune
with himself in the secret of the forest, or in the secret of his own heart? The
painters of the Middle Age, more poets than painters, knelt down before taking up
their pencils ; they began by worshipping within themselves the image they were
about to represent. What is this but to say, that no one can enter the kingdom of
poetry, of philosophy, of reason, without passing through a trial of some kind ? "
—Genius of the Religions.
»-»» "<---<:..»« ^2v
'7?'^
Minna Quinet-MuuiS (1827, iit the age of 25).
To face p. t6i.
( i6i )
CHAPTEE I.
FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY. 183I-I832.
' ' When will this wandering life end ? Whatever you may say, 1 was made for a
more peaceful life and less troubled affections. "
— Lttttr to Ms Mothei'f September 1826.
The wanderer now became the poet. The pilgrim
through many lands now sought to depict a pilgrimage
far more tortuous than the one his actual feet had trod,
the wanderings of his soul found their reilection in this
pilgrim life. It is, in fact, the image ever consecrated
by Christian thought and feeling to man's interior
travail. Many before had spoken of the believer, the
saint, as a pUgrim ; no one had thought of depicting the
sceptic, the accursed, under such an emblem. But is
it less true ?
Bunyan's Pilgrim wandered by faith through the
wilderness of this world to the celestial city; Quinet's
pilgrim wanders in doubt through the whole visible
earth until he reaches his final bourn, — the day of
judgment. The one is a picture of the struggling soul in
the seventeenth century, the other of the same internal
conflict in the nineteenth. In the iirst it is the
individual soul, purely and simply ; in the last it is
stUl the individual soul, but that soul mingled with
the idea of the soul of Humanity; the personality is
strong as ever, but the boundary between it and the
universal soul is undefined. In the first the salvation
of the individual soul is the absorbing thought; in the
last the effort after salvation is lost in a sense of
i62 EDGAR QUINET.
reprobation, the soul wanders guideless, but impelled
by an eternal restlessness towards a goal which always
seems distant and unattainable. In the first the soul
is ascetic, it quits even wife and children, that it may
itself escape from destruction; in the last destruction
would be welcome, nought seems worth existence until
it finds its partner. Woman to the first appears a
siren beckoning the soul to perdition, woman in the
last appears the sole link with heaven. Peace, joy,
praise — these are the objects after which the elder
pilgrim sought, and in which he found his rest ; sadness,
weariness, a sense of treachery in all things, a feeling
that creation regards him as an outcast, and drives
him from every joy, as one branded with the mark of
Cain — this is the tone of mind in which the modern
pilgrim treads the weary journey from Jerusalem to
judgment.
An evangelist arouses the elder pilgrim, the Scriptures
have furnished the impetus which has filled his soul
with a longing after heavenly things ; an angel of wrath
commands the unhappy pilgrim of the nineteenth century
to leave the home of his childhood, to mount the black
steed of care, to bid adieu for ever to quiet rest, and for
what? — because he has rejected the Christ.
Thrice unhappy soul, thrice unhappy age, that has
bid farewell to all joy, all hope, yet preserves a con-
science, a faith below all doubt, a love stronger than
death, shall its pilgrimage be less interesting than that
of the pilgrimage of the struggler after righteousness
in the age of puritanism ? Soul of the mighty dreamer,
thy mantle hath fallen on one who, like thee, not only
pondered but fought; on one who, like thee, wrought
out of his own inner consciousness, his own sad experi-
ences, the parable of his age. Like thee he lay in
prison, but his prison was an intellectual one. He
wandered bound and tied through many lands, writing
his allegory, piece by piece, in Italian cities, in German
THE SHADOW OF A COMING EVIL. 163
cathedrals, in French villages, in Greek deserts. The
pilgrim of faith spun his divine allegory in a cell in
Bedford gaol; the pilgrim of doubt needed to be re-
minded how empty were the noblest works of human
genius in the presence of an eternal void, before he
could wring out in full measure the agony of despair
that had seized upoQ him and upon all his contem-
poraries.
"To-day a strange malady ceaselessly torments us. How
shall I describe it ? It is not like yours, E^nd, mere decay ; it
is far more poignant and severe. Day by day it reanimates the
heart only that it may feed itself. It is the shadow of future
evil — evil most bitter, which, never slumbering, stands hour by
hour at your bedside, saying to you, as to the little Capet, ' Can
you sleep ? As for me, I wait and watch ! ' From the bottom
of our souls we already feel what is going to happen. That
nothing is already something which makes us pant with terror.
We see it, we touch it, although the world is stiU unaware of
it. What kills us is not the feebleness of our own thought, it
is having to support the weight of the future in the void of the
present. In order to cure our fever, we put to our mouths the
cup in which to-morrow human lips will drink, but it is not
ours. What are these pains that agonise humanity? Is it
about to give birth to a God ? "
. When this work first appeared, a French critic^ thus
expressed himself: —
" There is in this work, so unexpected, so poetic, so likely to
disconcert routine, all that can excite admiration and sharpen
sarcasm. Its ground and form, thought and language, are alike
marked by force arnd quite dazzling in their novelty. Indeed,
the colours are too vivid, the effects too intense, the disdain for
half-tones too absolute. Everjrthing hastens on, sparkles, gushes
forth. At the sound of this lyric torrent, thought, even when
most accustomed to the boldest flights of the imagination, starts
back, unwilling to cross the voitex. Instead of flowing majes-
tically along, restrained, reposeful, poetry here overflows its
banks, rushing on, devouring its bed, aind hurrying us with the
rapidity of lightning to the last limits of the unknown. In
this voyage beyond time and the world, very few among us are
clear-sighted enough not to be troubled with vertigo. Moreover,
there is nothing in contemporaneous art which will prepare us
1 M. Magnin in the "Kevue des Deux Mondes."
l64 EDGAR QUI NET.
for such an experience. Byron, Goethe, Chateaubriand, have
dug deep into the human soul, but none of them has any-
where attempted the infinite beyond the heart and brain of man.
Edgar Quinet specially seeks it in nature ; it is the secret of
creation that he pursues. His spiritualism stops nowhere in
the scale of beings. He interrogates the soul of the ocean, the
thought of the stars, the song of the flowers, the silence of the
desert, with as much love as the spirit of the races, the voice of
the ages, the murmurs of the crowd, the thought of the cathe-
drals. His vocation is to decipher the great letters that the
finger of the Eternal has printed on all things, and to translate
in poetic vibrations the secret music that the world exhales from
the bosom of each of its elements, and from all its creatures."
The form in which Quinet has thrown his drama is
that of the ancient mysteries, that form so free and
universal, harmonising in many ways with the nature of
the legend. The Mystery takes four days to unfold itself,
with an interlude between each, a prologue and an epi-
logue enclosing the whole.
AHASUEEUS.
Heaven is the scene of the prologue. Nearly three thousand
years have elapsed since the day of judgment. The world that
then ceased to exist had been dominated by evil ; that which God
is about to create will be a better one. St. Michael, St. Thomas,
St. Bonaventura, great St. Hubert of Liege, Pythagoras, Joseph
the Just, and Marcus Tullius,i are chosen to keep watch over
this new universe ; and, in order to fit them for their ofiice, they
are made to understand the mystery of the old by a dramatic
representation in eternal forms of its history. Every epoch, all
ages ; everything, in fact, great and small, from the hoary ocean
to the flower of a day, finds a voice and reveals the secret of its
being. There is silence in heaven, and the spectacle commences.
The first day, called the Creation, covers the whole youth of
the world, and extends to the birth of the Christ.
It opens with the ocean, as yet the sole creation, complaining
to its Lord of only seeing Him in its immensity. Ere long
Leviathan, the bird Vinateyna, the serpent, the fish Macar, people
the waters, the earth, and the skies. Lately emerged from
nothingness, these new creatures examine their dwelling-place.
Finding no other beings but themselves, they imagine that they
are its masters, and with one voice they cry, " It is we who are
1 The representatives to the mind of the Middle Age of the idea of law.
AHASUERUS. 165
God ! " The hoary ocean reproves their folly, and bids them
make another search, for there is One who hears them — One
the stroke of whose sword resounds louder than the scales of
Leviathan, whose wings are larger than those of the bird Vina-
teyna, whose wounds are more terrible than those of the serpent
with a thousand heads.
Another epoch, and giants and Titans awake in the caverns of
the earth, and speak dreamily to each other. To the foreboding
of one of their number, these sons of earth reply by throwing
themselves with ardour into their work, and, breaking up the
stones and the clay, build gigantic walls, and set up sharp rocks
which they cover with runes and hieroglyphs. The Eternal
causes His faithful ocean to efface beneath its floods this rough
sketch of life as something with which He is not satisfied.
Next comes a scene in which a great despot has set up a high
tower and defies the universe. The story of King Knut and
his courtiers here takes the form of a gigantic legend of the
flood.
The human tribes appear assembled on the Himalayas. Saluting
day and night, the sea, the rivers, the everlasting hills, they ask
each object in nature to tell them of their Creator. The time
comes for them to depart. Who will show them the way 1 One
tribe chooses the Ganges for guide ; another, the griffin ; a third,
the ibis. The people are quickly tired and want to rest, but
their chosen leaders, imperturbable, hurry them forward to their
predestined home, prophesying in symbolic language their future
history.
Next is seen a cloudless night in the East. The moon, the
stars, a flower of the desert, the floods of the Euphrates gently
murmuring beneath the willows ; all appear possessed with the
mystery of the universe. A concert rises sweetly sad — a sigh of
a slave, a word of a king, a quire of priests. The history of the
ages that have no annals is related by the mouth of the sphinx.
In this strange song are mingled the voices of Thebes, of
Nineveh, of Persepolis, of Palmyra.
Babylon proposes to make of all their gods only one God.
Jerusalem appears, proclaiming good tidings ; she has seen a
God lying in the manger of a stable. Three kings, the oldest
and the wisest, are deputed by the East to go and adore the
new-born God. They offer the Christ a cup of ruddy gold from
which all the kings of the earth have drunk, and a heavy crown
garnished with nails made of rubies. The virgin mother is
frightened at the gifts, and the Infant shows more pleasure
at the presence of the shepherds. The kings turn from Him
weeping. The sun of the old East is obscured, the dawn of the
West arises. Above the roof where the Christ sleeps sing the
1 66 EDGAR QUI NET.
small birds, then, comes a song from the shepherds, after which
the angel Eaohel sings to her viol, and the scene concluding hy
a dialogue between the mother and child concerning their return
to their eternal home.
To the iirst day succeeds a dance of demons, Beelzebub,
Lucifer, Ashtoreth, criticise the heavenly drama.
The second day, the Passion, commences by a lamentation of
the desert. Its favourite palm-tree has caught sight of the
Christ toiling up the rugged path that leads to Golgotha. For
the love of Jehovah and the palm-tree, the desert strains itself
to overwhelm the streets of Jerusalem with clouds of sand before
the Christ can arrive at Calvary, but its course is too slow.
Already the crowd follow Jesus staggering beneath His cross.
Ahasuerus stands before his door, a partaker in their cruel
delight. The Saviour turns to him ; asks him for a little water.
He begs him to help Him to carry His cross, but Ahasuerus
turns away with contempt. He asks him to let Him rest
at his threshold, and Ahasuerus cries out : " Sorcerer, get out
of my way. Move on, move on." Then the Christ replies :
" Why hast thou said this, Ahasuerus 1 Thou it is who
wilt move on until the last judgment. Wherever thou goest
thou shalt be called The Wandering Jew. Thou it is who
shalt never find seat on which to rest thyself, nor mountain
stream at which to slake thy thirst. Thou shalt bear in my
stead the burden I go to lay down on the cross. In thy
thirst thou shalt drink the dregs that I shall leave at the
bottom of my cup. Others shall have my vesture, thou alone
shalt inherit my endless sorrow. From thy staff shall bud the
hyssop, from thy flask shall flow nothing but wormwood and
gall ; despair shall grasp the girdle of thy reins. Thou art the
man who shall never see death. . . . I go to Golgotha, but
thou, thou shalt go on from ruin to ruin, from kingdom to king-
dom, without ever reaching thy Calvary. The gate of thy city
shall say to thee, 'Further on, my bench is for others ; ' the
river where thou wouldest rest thyself will say to thee, ' Further
on ! my bank is my own, it is fuU of briers.' And the sea, too,
will say, ' Further on, further on ; art not thou that eternal
traveller who goes from people to people, from age to age, drink-
ing nothing but tears, who sleeps not, day nor night, and who
can never return by the way that thou hast had to ascend V . . .
Thou art the man who shall go from temple to temple asking
for me, but without ever meeting me. Thou art the man who
shall cry, Where is He 1 until, guided by the dead, thou shalt find
thyself on the way to the last judgment. When thou seest me
AHASUBRUS. 167
again my eyes will be as a flame of fire, and my finger will be
raised to beckon thee into the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
At the voice of the Christ a Roman soldier throws away his
arms and returns to his wife and little ones in Calabria, while
the crowd fall back in dismay. Let Ahasuerus be the scape-
goat of Juda, they will remain peacefully on their own thresholds
and drink the wine of Carmel.
The condemned man is as one thunderstruck. Coming to
himself, he would go back into his house and ask his sister
Martha to sing a hymn, hoping thus to get rid of the terrible
voice which still rings in his ears. But on turning to the
door of his house there stands an angel of woe, leaning against
the black mane of a horse. It is St. Michael with Sem^hd, the
horse that has wandered night and day since the beginning of
the world. Ahasuerus must mount and depart as soon as the
night is come.
Inside the house his little brothers are playing, and his father
Nathan rejoicing over the fate of the false King of the Jews,
and even indulging the hope that perchance one of his own sons
may prove the true Messiah. Embracing his family, and bidding
a last adieu to the seat at the door and the paternal threshold,
Ahasuerus sets out for the West, calling on the birds of the
night to precede him and to prepare for him a resting-place.
After a first tour of the earth the feet of his horse strike the
dead leaves of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The weary traveller
would rest there and drink one drop of water from the muddy
spring, but the valley refuses to allow him. The answer to
each of his prayers is only an echo of the malediction pronounced
by the Christ.
To avenge the death of that Just One, the Eternal launches
the barbaric hordes against the old Roman world, as formerly
He launched the waters of the deluge against the young world
of the East. The Goths, the Huns, the Hericles, rush together
to the spot where the Roman mare has fallen, in order to trample
her to death with their hoofs.
Then a second interlude intervenes. The horses of Attila
recall the battle-horses of France, and give occasion to the poet
to arouse the flagging patriotism of his countrymen.
The third day. Death, introduces us to the Middle Age.
Erom a battlemented tower that overhangs the Rhine, is heard
at midnight a melancholy voice talking with the watchman.
The voice is that of a Christian monarch. Their conversation
awakens St. Eloi, and he explains to King Dagobert the mani-
fest signs of the approaching end of the world.
l68 EDGAR QUINET.
In the next scene Death, under the guise of an old woman
called Mob, appears seated by some ashes; Rachel, a young girl,
lives with her. Once an angel, Rachel has fallen from heaven,
and now lives with Death as her servant. Her sin — pity for
Ahasuerus, in whose miserable fate she forgot the suffering God.
Mob continually reminds her of her former blessedness, and
ridicules her for longing after it. " What dost thou, seated on
thy chair, gazing aU day long through one pane of the window
at a corner of the heavens ? Thou wilt never more re-enter
that world of dreams."
Panting, exhausted, imploring death, Ahasuerus draws nigh
to the city where Mob and Rachel live. His faithful steed is
not proof against the approach of Mob, it falls and dies at the
gate of the city. Ahasuerus only feels faint. The neighbour-
hood of Rachel seems already to have lightened the curse, his
sentence begins to receive a less literal execution. He has been
everywhere, but one place remained — a woman's heart : that
place he has found ; he has for one day, at least, found rest. It
will no longer be his feet, but his heart and his mind, that will
have to traverse this new universe. But it will be a new
anguish, for she who loves him will die, and he will continue to
exist. More solitary, more cursed than ever, he will have to
move on in the road that knows no end.
Rachel is strangely troubled by the arrival of this stranger.
Everything seems to speak the very word she wants to avoid.
When she sleeps the fairies sing to her of love ; between each
verse of her prayer they distract her with terrestrial thoughts.
She asks Ahasuerus from what country he comes ; she imagines
him the son of a king, then she thinks him a holy man ; she
beseeches him to pray for her; she wanders with him in a
garden, her questions and her answers sounding like half-
memories, echoes of another state of being.
Meanwhile Mob penetrates with her icy breath the heart of
Ahasuerus, that heart which longs to open to faith and to dilate
with hope. She hears him sighing, offers him a drink that wiU
cure his pain, advises him to travel, suggests that in place of
dreams he should occupy himself with realities, he should study
science. Science, he complains, is too dry, it can never fill his
heart. Ah ! he is unhappily organised ; why not try the trade
of the warrior ? nothing better to kill time. That he has tried,
and found in it no relief. Try politics, suggests Mob ; only be
sure to make interest, properly understood, an infallible guide.
But Ahasuerus will not hear her to the end; so, remarking that
he is terribly hlase for a man of his age, she tells him that his
best plan is to throw himself into the arms of religion. What
does she mean ? Well, she favours method in religious matters.
AHASUERUS: 169
" Imagine that you have reduced the whole of life to five or
six little maxims, so nicely calculated that they hold together
like an egg-shell. All that can enter into the shell is the
universe, all that cannot is the nothing. This division is easy
to remember, and it is extremely convenient thus to possess at
every hour all the secrets of life, all the mysteries of the soul
and of heaven, a complete knowledge of the heart and of nature,
on a bit of paper just big enough for a recipe against the
megrims."
Ahasuerus replies that if she is not mocking the idea is hope-
less; what he is seeking is a new religion, one that shall satisfy
the infinite thirst that devours him. Mob would like this
also, but until heaven declares itself, would it not be wise to
make a god of oneself ? Ahasuerus breaks out into a passionate
account of his painful travail, from hope to hope, from religion
to religion. How he has interrogated waves, shores, cities,
trees, valleys, mountains, and has had no answer but a sigh.
Mob says that it is a great foUy of the age to believe nature has
any sympathies or antipathies whatever; nature has atoms, that
is all. If Ahasuerus is honest he wiU see that all his evils are
in himself. If he must have a religion, love, when pure, is one,
after a fashion. Yes, he replies, if he could find one friendly
heart in which he could lose himself, he could bear the scorn of
the world. That is not enough, Mob insinuates ; the senses
must not be sacrificed. Of course she would respect life's pro-
prieties ; a man has a rank, a name, a position, to keep up. Yes,
he admits it : a thousand things separate those that love, but
then comes a moment in which the secret of the heart escapes the
lips, and that moment is sufficient to embalm an eternity of ages.
Embalm ! What ? a mummy 1 You exaggerate. Women
are all alike, the best wiU dupe you. If you amuse them, you
are quits with them. They were made for the pleasure of men,
they think so themselves ; nothing is easier than to make them
adore you.
No, he cannot play at love ; if this is so, better destroy this
hope at once. Exaltation again ; no, he needs love and much of
it ; without it life is nothing, nothing. One has only tasted the
half of things, yet it is folly to deceive oneself with sentimen-
tality, and Mob proceeds to draw a loathsome picture of the too
certain future of beauty. She expresses surprise that Ahasuerus
should be shocked, she thought reason had more power over him.
Is not death the true remedy for all miseries, the only lover worth
having ; and, in any case, are there not extraordinary positions in
which suicide is excusable ?
As that solution, however, is impossible to Ahasuerus, he sees
nothing before him but endless despair. But still Mob is not
lyo EDGAR QUINBT.
disconcerted, and she sets herself to find consolation for the man
who cannot commit suicide ; but Ahasuerus will not be consoled.
He feels dazed, he sees nothing but darkness. Ah ! says Mob,
'tis midnight ; and so, shaking her dark robe and unfolding her
long black wings, she takes her sombre flight, rising in the light
of the moon, above the shuddering cities, just as Orcagna has so
well painted her in the frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa.
But if the progress of a universal scepticism, reducing to
nothing all poetry, religion, and love, is thus admirably sketched ;
with equal delicacy does the poet trace the growth of love in the
heart of a woman. Rachel at first repels the admiration of
Ahasuerus as profane ; she then finds it only an echo of his own
perfection ; finally, she finds no impiety in it, but only a proof that
he is more profoundly religious than she is, since he has such a
much grander idea of love. All she fears now is the death that
must separate them, and here in trying to console her Ahasuerus
reveals his scepticism. Life, death, who knows their difference ?
Eachel is troubled that she cannot comprehend him ; she fears
that he will not love her enough, because she has so little soul.
Again, Ahasuerus breaks out into thoughts so materialistic that
he seems to deny existence apart from the body, so spiri-
tualistic that he is not sure that she is more than a spirit for
which his spirit thirsts, more than a shadow to refresh his shade,
more than a thought to engulph his thought in a nothing broken
by perfumes and sighs.
Eachel is shocked, her crucifix seems to bleed. Ahasuerus
kisses it, but the more he does so the more the stains appear.
She fancies that his very breath is on fire. He is in despair,
and reproaches the Christ. Eachel falls at the feet of Ahasuerus,
beseeching him to pity her. Has He had pity on me? the
agonised man exclaims ; and with a blasphemous defiance, ex-
pressive of the intensity of his love for Eachel, the scene closes.
A chorus of fairies intervenes, calUng on Sodom and Gomorrah
to cover with their darkness this evening's blasphemy. Their
horror, however, gives place to the thought that the good who
dwell in bliss see far beyond these gloomy skies, and have no fear
when they behold a woman weeping at the foot of the Cross.
In the next scene Eachel has lost her senses ; she raves of hell,
and thinks Ahasuerus a demon, who has come to carry her away.
At times she laughs, recognises him, and thinks that they are
married, and then lapses again into a state of horror in which she
tries to exorcise the demon by pronouncing the sacred name.
Meanwhile Ahasuerus bathes her temples, and as she is recover-
ing. Mob enters. Ahasuerus, recognising Mob as Death, fears her
not, but Eachel is in terror lest she should kill him. Mob, know-
ing that it is impossible, makes a virtue of necessity, and only
AHASUERUS. 171
professes surprise to find Ahasuerus in Rachel's chamber/demand-
ing that propriety should be respected, and their wedding rites
solemnised at a church. Ahasuerus is entirely in her hands, and
■will go with her whither she will. Suddenly she places them
both on her horse, and flies with them to the cathedral of
Strasburg.
How is it possible to describe the extraordinary scene that
follows, or to give any idea of its power ? The cathedral appear.s
as an animated being, the perfection of beauty, of mystery, the
work of ages, the representation of eternity visible upon earth.
All its wondrous art, all its marvellous forms, all the toil going
on here through many generations, is depicted in a series of poems
in prose. AU at once these forms are living, moving ; the marble
is uttering loud cries, the wipdows are shivering, the tombs open,
and the kings, the women and the children, Attila, Sigefroy,
Arthur, Charlemagne, Gregory the Great, arise, all accusing the
Christ of having deceived them. A thousand years have passed
away and the Father's house has not opened to them. They lie
still in their cold tombs, and the spider weaves over them its
"web ; they hear nothing but the gnawing worm beneath them.
" Dance ! dance ! kings and queens, children and women !
Take each other's hands ; go the round of the nave ; and with
your waltzes mix songs." Loud knocks are heard at the cathe-
dral door, and Mob enters with Ahasuerus and Rachel. The
dead welcome Mob as their queen, and she exchanges salutations
with the great. Ahasuerus seizes the opportunity to beseech the
dead to tell him if they have seen the Christ. No. Have they
not seen Jesus of Nazareth with the flaming eyes 1 No. Have
they not heard if He has inquired after a traveller from the
Holy Land ? No, no. He has asked nothing of us, it is we who
have sought Him without finding Him. Do you not know it 1
There is no Christ, no Jesus of Nazareth. Go, if you will, and
mock the living.
Ahasuerus is delighted, for then he is free. He will go and
proclaim the good news to the world, and bid them rejoice and
be free also. Rachel implores him not to rejoice ; believe if he
win that this cathedral is heavep, that these cold flags are the
carpet of the firmament, but not to rejoice that it is so.
For every word he says breaks her heart. Why is he so
afraid of the Christ ? but that is a secret he will not disclose.
Mob comes to conclude their espousals. Pope Gregory himself
stands at the altar to pronounce the nuptial benediction. But
when he asks Ahasuerus his name, the unhappy man gasps, he
cannot pronounce it. The crowd of dead gather round, watching
him, jeering him. The Pope is about to excuse him, when the
Christ on the great eastern window suddenly cries out : " It is
172 EDGAR QUINET.
Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew." At the sound of this awful
voice St. Mark starts in fright, the dead fall as dust, the very-
cathedral leaps like a horse, and the whole host fly to their
tombs, crying, " Cursed be thou, Ahasuerus." " Blessed be
thou, Ahasuerus," replies Eaohel. " Pardon him, Lord ; open
heaven to him," — and with this prayer for mercy the act con-
cludes.
One of those personal confidences so characteristic of the poet
now intervenes. It resembles the plaintive purling of some
rivulet in the depths of the woods. After the extraordinary
scenes of the last act, the monotonous melancholy of this inter-
lude calms the mind, and prepares it for a fresh effort.
The fourth day, the Last Judgment, is devoted entirely to
the future. The roar of cities and of mankind begins to grow
feeble. The ocean itself begins to dry up. Doubt, that long
has frozen the hearts of all living, has at length penetrated into
the very soul of creation. The cry comes, not only from men,
but from the flowers, the rivulets, the mountains : " There is
no God." Ahasuerus is himself arriving at the last agonies of
unbelief. Immortal, he sees himself slowly marching on into
the empty nothing. He beseeches Rachel to leave him, and to
return to her own home. She refuses : though all lose their
faith, she still believes ; though all cease to pray, she stiU prays,
and helps Ahasuerus to drink his cup of grief to the dregs.
Finally, the last hour of the world sounds. The dread sum-
mons of the angel of judgment is heard everywhere. Awake !
awake ! The cities are summoned from their tombs. Athens
is ready at once, but Eome cannot make up her mind in which
dress to appear ; she would fain crave an hour's delay, and can
hardly believe her time is come. Finally, preceded by the black
eagles of the Abruzzi, the vultures of the Apennines, and the
wolves of Calabria, and followed by her popes, by the children
of her church, and the virgins of her paintings, she wings her
way to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Babylon the beautiful is
even more tardy ; she would remain for ever sleeping beneath
the coverlet of her desert. Paris at the sound of the celestial
trumpet wakes joyous, and, imagining she hears the clarion of
new battles, calls on all the hosts of France to arise, from those
of Bouvines and Agincourt, to those that fought at Austerlitz
and Waterloo.
Meanwhile human science still goes on revolving its insoluble
problems. In the depths of his laboratory, Albert Magnus does
not perceive that both the world and his thought have come to an
end. Yesterday he fancied that he had hit upon the true method,
AHASUERUS. 173
to-day it has proved a delusion, but he still helieves that he is on
the eve of discovering the last word of science. The angel of
judgment arrives to tear him from his reverie, and to close his
book for ever.
And now the poet himself revives, but it is not the voice of
the archangel that awakes him, but those of a choir of women.
He sees Sappho, Heloise, Beatrice, the Countess Guiccioli and
the like, followed by souls more dream-like — Desdemona, Juliet,
Mignon, Virginie, Atala ; these pass, and more unsubstantial
still come mere voices, but voices of hearts, women's hearts, and
among them it is not impossible to detect the voice most dear
to the poet, but which he had once feared he should never hear
again. That voice pierces, him ; those tears, falling on his ashes,
put life into his heart. His resurrection is perfected.
In the next scene the world is seen in ruins, but the lovers
appear to have changed souls. It is no longer Rachel who
aspires, but Ahasuerus. Eachel is content to stay on the
dying earth if only Ahasuerus is at her side, but not so he.
She weeps over the thought of his waning love ; he assures
her the evil is not one he can cure, it is a soul malady.
" When I am most thine, then it is that I hear a voice
crying in my ears, ' Further on, further on ; thou must
plunge into the ocean of love. Further on, further on ; thou
must go to its very source.' Beneath aU my joys there is a
pain so bitter, that no kisses can take away its sting. I have
thought it would pass away, but it only increases." Rachel
tells him his desires are too boundless, it is her fault that
she has not known how to satisfy them. No, it is not her
fault. To get rid of it, he has adored her in all things,
making for himself an eternal Rachel, who should only be
his beloved, Rachel still, Rachel always, Rachel everywhere,
but he could not delude himself. On the other hand, her
highest aspirations now centre alone in him ; so completely
has he become to her all her heaven and all her paradise,
that she would willingly enter hell itself with him. But
such devotion has no power to satisfy him. " If, but for an
hour, I knew what it was to be loved of heaven, I should be
more calm. A thousand chimeras about divine love possess
my imagination; if I could but taste it, they would all be
dissipated ; for it is an overpowering madness that impels me
to love something more than love, to adore that of which I
do not even know the name. This very evening I could
wish to plunge with thee into that infinite sea, to die with thee ;
yes, that is all I wish : lead thou me to that shore."
Rachel — My Christ is that sea ; come, lose thyself there with
me.
174 EDGAR QUINET.
Ahasuerus — Is His rock very high, is His ocean deep enough,
to drown two souls 1
Rachel — Yes, and every one of their memories.
Ahasuerus — Are you quite sure that I shall never more feel
disgust, never more feel this desire that everything inflames,
that my heart will at last rest at this bourn ?
Rachel — I am sure of it.
Ahasuerus — And that thy God, in this abyss, will for ever
suffice me, so that to-morrow I shall not need a greater one to
satisfy a profounder desire 1
Rachel — No ; come, thou wilt never wish any other.
Ahasuerus — Never any other, that is the only thing I
doubt.
Rachel — Ah ! come then ! my God ! The earth has no more
water, but my tears shall baptize thee. Kneel as when thou
didst adore me.
Ahasuerus, falling on his knees, cries : " More tears ! thine
are too lukewarm. Weep, weep upon my heart ; it is there,
it is there that I feel the thirst."
And Eachel says within herself : " There, there .also it is that
thou makest me to die, so that I can never rise again."
In the next scene the dead are heard rising, followed by
Mob. Meeting Ahasuerus, she offers him a tomb, where he
may rest at ease. But he has no desire for sleep now, and
why? He has hope. Mob mocks at the word as that with
which she amuses the dying. For what does he hope ? A
future life ! Very modest ; and what more ? That his Master
may pardon him. Mob will hide him under her shadow.
But his soul, where will she hide that? Bitter is the scorn
she pours on the words soul, spirit, life, love, hope. Life is
not possible to those who indulge such reveries. He possesses
nothing but what he can see with his eyes. She even sneers
at the day of judgment — a little smoke, some ashes, and that
will be alL
After this chUl from the icy touch of death, comes a scene
full of mystic sunshine. The flowers, the birds, the mountains,
the ocean, the stars, the women, are all hurrying to judgment.
The flowers and the birds are consoled by the mystic rose, the
Mater sanctissima, the Virgin Mary. The mountains, the
ocean, the stars, have doubted, and lose their place in creation ;
but the women, who have wept, who have toiled, who have
loved on without hope, willing to lose their very all for a look
from those they love, they are consoled by the Eternal Father
Himself, who tells them that they alone have preserved His
memory. The earth has been the place of their betrothal,
their nuptials shall be in the skies.
AHASUERUS. 175
Tlieii when all the dead gods, all the dead cities, all the dead
peoples, have passed in procession hefore the Eternal Father ;
when all have disclosed the secret of their being, and have
received from the Judge a word, gentle or severe ; when of
all that was good in the old universe He has composed his
New City, there remains no one to be judged but Ahasuerus
and Eachel.
Standing before the judgment seat, the Christ asks Ahasu-
erus if he is sure that he has gathered up all the sorrow
that remained in the world. Yes ! Eachel, in sharing his cup,
has helped him to drink it to the last drop. Since his task
is finished, would he return to his own home ? " No," replies
Ahasuerus, "I ask life, not repose; instead of the steps of my
house on Calvary, I would, without stopping, ascend even
with Thee the steps of the universe. Without taking breath,
I would make my shoes white with the dust of the stars ;
ascending, ever ascending from world to world, from heaven
to heaven, so that I might see at last the source from whence
spring the ages."
The Christ — But who would follow thee ?
Voices in the Universe — Not us
Rachel — I ! I would follow him ; my heart is not wearied.
The Christ — That voice has saved thee, Ahasuerus ; I bless
thee, pilgrim of the worlds to come. Give me back the burden
of the sorrows of earth. Let thy step be buoyant ; the heavens
shall bless thee as the earth once cursed thee. . . . Thou
shalt open up the way for the universe that follows thee.
The angel who accompanies thee shall never quit thee. If
thou art tired, thou shalt sit down on my clouds. Go from
life to life, from world to world, from one divine city to
another ; and when, after eternity, thou shalt, passing from
circle to circle, arrive at last at th« infinite summit to which
all things tend, towards which souls, peoples, stars, and the
ages are ever climbing, then thou shalt cry to the star, to the
people, to the universe, should they wish to stop : Else, ever
rise, for It is here !
The world promised by the Eternal, created, the mystery
finished, nothing more is heard but a sweet harmony of voices
and instruments in the new city. The Lyre, whose part it is
to chant the future, concludes with an epithalamium celebrating
the eternal union of Ahasuerus and Eachel. They are absorbed
into one another, and the two lives become one being.
Here we would fain rest, but the poet does not permit us.
He has filled our hearts with infinite hope, he has made us see
the horizon that Christ sees. In the epilogue the clouds of
earth cover it once more, and the future that modem scepticism
176 EDGAR QUINET.
offers is traced in a few bold, remorseless Strokes, though, not
without the presence of a great hope.
The new city has existed a long time ; Mary is dead, the
angels one after the other have folded their wings ; Eternity
has closed the eyes of the Father : Jesus remains alone on the
firmament. An immense weariness oppresses Him ; He wishes to
rejoin His Father ; He bequeaths the worlds to Eternity, that it
may love them in His place : but Eternity knows neither love
nor hatred, neither joy nor grief ; impassible, it receives the
adieus of Jesus, and predicts for Him a new Incarnation, a new
Passion, a new Aceldama. In dying once more Jesus will find
again, through a greater tomb, a better world, a new heaven.
Having buried the Father and the Son in a frozen star, which
moves on in solitude and without light, Eternity is for the
second time alone. Yet not sufficiently alone ; for, weary of the
worlds that each day wake it with a sigh, it destroys them.
Finally, all things are annihilated, and Eternity remains in its
solitary grandeur.
How sad the author felt in thus concluding this powerful
work, and how deep the wound was in his own soul, is manifest
by its last lines —
" Ici finit le mystfere d'Ahasverus,
Priez pour celui qui I'ecrivit."
( 177 )
CHAPTEE II.
GSUNSTADT, BADEN. 1834-1835.
" The true rest of man's spirit Is in love. When it can find an object that it can
really embrace and delight in, then indeed it may forget itself — then it may lose the
miserable restlessness of consciousness, and yet live only the more for doing so."
— Mwitrice,
Evert age has found its voice, and where, in this latter
half of the nineteenth century, wiU the people of Europe
and America find a voice more truly expressive of the tra-
vail of their souls than this mystery play of " Ahasuerus " ?
The Wandering Jew is, indeed, an emblem of Humanity
through aU time, and especially since the Christian era,
but never more so than in the present age. The nine-
teenth century has repeated the sin of Ahasuerus, and
its punishment is simUar. Moving on at a speed utterly
unparalleled, it presses forward, never resting for a moment,
but without hope. Its enthusiasms have died out, its
illusions have vanished, yet change has become its law :
all are drawn into the vortex ; institutions and parties,
supposed to be most conservative, proving the most
revolutionary of all.
Never in the long history of humanity did woman
exercise such an influence for good as she has done siuce
the Christian era, but never in all the eighteen centuries
past has that influence been as great as now. The angel
Eachel has really taken upon herself to share man's
bitter cup. In every so-called Christian land it is
women who show the most courage, who probe the
M
1/8 EDGAR QUINBT.
wound to its depth, who reanimate the sufferer by their
sympathy and enthusiasm.
Men call the age impious; but what age ever more
intensely felt the want of the divine, ever more intensely
longed after God ? And this the poet makes more and
more the characteristic of his hero, until it swallows
up every other. Even in the epilogue, in the midst
of what may be called the final word of scepticism, there
is profound faith and hope, and that faith and hope
centre, after all, in the Christ, and moreover in a revived
Christ, that is to say, in a truer, nobler idea of the
Christ. For it must always be borne in mind that the
author of " Ahasuerus " does not attempt to display the
real Christ, the Christ of the Gospels and of St. Paul,
but the Christ of the Middle Age — the awful, unlovable
Christ of judgment. It is the vision of that Christ that
he represents as passing away, and to be replaced by
this truer, nobler idea.
Nevertheless the epilogue is a terrible passage, and
must chill every heart. But let not the reader accuse
Quinet of impiety. He is not the first who has sought
to make men comprehend the madness of their course
by forcing them to realise, without any intervening
steps, the horror of the final catastrophe. And this
method Quinet no doubt felt was peculiarly needed in
dealing with German scepticism, for it was its character-
istic to lead men on by such a number of imperceptible
steps, that they became as completely oblivious to the
condition iato which they had fallen as any victim of
Comus after he had quaffed the luscious draught.
" The knot of beliefs in Germany," lie says, " has been
slowly untied, poetry having for a long time held the place of
religion. The Church has fallen, but the hymn remained. By
continually putting Art in the place of Faith, the image in the
place of the Idea, a shadow in the place of God, Germany has
been able, without a single shock, to lull its past into forgetful-
ness, and to bury it without a sigh."
GERMAN SCEPTICISM. 179
In his treatise on the " Progress of Scepticism in
Germany " he traces the steps in this decline.
" Before arriving at indifference to every creed, Germany had
tried them all in turn. When the letter hegan to wear out, she
re-estahlished it hy accepting the creed in its spirit ; but the
spirit, already ruined by mysticism, went the same way as the
letter. When the end of her faith had come, she was recon-
verted by philosophy. Then this hollow earth broke down in
the nihilism of Hegel, and another god had to be made. For a
time patriotism became a religion ; faith was retempered in
blood, and Te Deums rose to the God of battles, but this faith
was quickly dissipated. Then Art became worship, untU. Goethe,
its high priest, himself destroyed its altar.
" It was Goethe," he says, " who made Germany conscious
how far she had gone from the old faith. Attacking nothing,
defending nothing, admitting, affirming all things ; under this
universal belief was hid a universal doubt. Goethe's philo-
sophy, apparently the very opposite to that of Voltaire, led to
the same result. For a long time men refused to see in Goethe
anything more than the revelation of the interior state of an
individual soul ; time and rude shocks have been necessary to
show that he really represented the entire nation.
"For years Germany was in a magnetic sleep; the writings
of the brothers Schlegel threw an appearance of calm over the
surface of things, disguising the evil. Germany tried every-
thing in order to avoid looking at its wound. Some of its
thinkers fled into the cloister, or were converted to the Church
of Rome ; others tried to get rid of their new-born scepticism
by playing with it, forgetting that it would grow and sting
them to the heart. But if Tieok thus helped to popularise
doubt, Voss did infinitely more to overturn old German
beliefs by the way in which he attacked the principle upon
which all German thought rested, Voss, he says, did not see
that, in destroying the principle of symbolism, he destroyed at
the same time the very ground of German life. This learned
peasant took from the past its poetry, little dreaming that in so
doing he killed the present. He did not perceive that the
cathedrals in which Protestantism worships to-day had their
foundations in the Greek basilicas, the basilicas in the temples,
the temples of Greece in those of the East, and that, therefore,
it was not possible to overturn one of these stages without the
whole edifice of human faith at once breaking down. However,
Voss was successful in gaining over the philosophy of the day,
and so captivating the heart of Germany. Schelling's philosophy,
i8o EDGAR QUINET.
until then in the ascendant, took refuge in Catholicism ; and from
the bosom of the papacy came the boldest attempt in appear-
ance to preserve life. But the efforts of Baader and Goerres
were useless, for what they sought to reanimate was neither a
religion nor a philosophy. Then the idealistic philosophy dead,
as its greatest leaders Hegel and Schelling, the German people
were left to that real world for which they had become so
hungry.
" And now," he goes on to say, " in the degree that Germany
becomes more sensual, she forms codes of ostentatious severity.
A hard methodism has arisen in place of the lost serenity of
faith, which pretends, by force of maxims, to get rid of the
danger, troubling the pure souls of which the country is still
fuU. Nothing shows more the disintegration of the old beliefs
tlian the rise from time to time in the public conscience of these
sect-phantoms."
Finally, he notes how, during the War of Independ-
ence, it seemed as if faith might once more be reanimated
by a breath from heaven ; but the kings in their selfish-
ness dashed this gleam of hope, and now Germany has
sunk to the last stage of unbelief, and jeers with Heinrich
Heine at all it once loved, while it loves all that it once
hated. For the poems of Heine he sees a significance
truly social.
" Careless and frivolous in form, these charming flowers of
poetry, fresh as wild roses, possess a venom that it has taken
centuries to distil. For it is Heine's peculiarity to hide the
dregs of our age under the sweet and innocent forms of primitive
times, the age of Byron under that of Hans Sachs. It is this
mingling of innocence and corruption, this dressing out despair
in the language of hope, this death that speaks like life, this
honey and gall, that makes these poems little masterpieces of
art, whimsical, original, immoral.
" The earliest of them dates from 1817. Each year the sting
grew sharper and pierced deeper. Written in various lands, the
only songs that bear the impress of the climate are those com-
posed on the shores of the North Sea. There his irony becomes
colossal like the genii of the place ; from the clouds of the Baltic
he makes a winding-sheet in which he wraps all the gods, Uving
and dead, and mocks them in their grave. He quits you there
with an epigram, so that you feel in closing this book so' appa-
rently frivolous, that all nature is empty, heaven a desert, and
THE NEW COLUMBUS. i8i
that all tte fruits of the tree of life have been spoilt by a poisoned
sting; the -worm consumes them."
It was the sight of this great descent from Luther to
Goethe, from Goethe to Heine, that weighed so heavily on
Quinet's soul, and, stirring within him the prophetic fire,
compelled him to portray the religious future of Germany
and of all Christendom in this awful epilogue.
However, Quinet is no pessimist; he still has un-
bounded hope.
" The ideal," he says, " still lives, notwithstanding the in-
stability of the real. We live in the thought of what ought to
be and what will be. The conscience of the human race is
forming itself. Its ideals are passing away ; from being many
and merely national, they tend to become one, and that one
universal. The leader in this great work will be the poet of the
future. He will have to be the mediator of the coming peoples.
His word will belong exclusively to none. He is already the
legislator of the great European confederation that is to be.
Yet he will as ever demand faith, and that faith will have to be
strained to the uttermost. The Columbus of the new ideal
world, he goes forth alone upon the ocean of thought. On-
ward he sails, only to find the infinite ever increasing. Still he
pursues his way, though what seemed land prove cloud, what
hope, mere illusion. To the popular cry, ' Let us turn back,' he
will only answer, ' To-morrow ! ' and to-morrow will prove an
age. Tempest-tossed he may be, but he will not furl his sail until
he has touched that shore where life has its source, and which is
called Eternity."
How these last words remind us of the -final destiny
of Ahasuerus, in which for ever rising until he reaches
the summit whither all are tending, he cries to the
stars, to the peoples, to the universe : Eise ! for ever
rise ! for it is here ! And if the poet represents among
us the Eternal Man, forerunner of the universe, the role
was never more conscientiously played than by Edgar
Quinet.
Like his great antitype, the pilgrim of the worlds to
come, before he commences his task he becomes one with
his good angel. Our poet found repose at last in union
1 82 EDGAR QUINET. •
with her who had been the model of the angel Eachel,
that perfect type of the feminine nature. Yet, as in
the play itself, there had been a time when, in spite of
all her love, his betrothed had been herself driven to
add to his wounds. Of a faith, childlike and sincere,
when she found upon what a sea of doubt he had
set sail, she shrank from linking her fate with his, and
began to think that she must sacrifice her lover to her
God. But as the mystery closes, so ended this trial, and
Edgar Quinet was married to Minna Mor6 in a Pro-
testant Church, near Grunstadt, on the 21st of Decem-
ber 1834.
Early in the same month he published what may be
called his " Epithalamium." The Church of Brou, the
sole object of artistic interest connected with the poet's
native town of Bourg, was erected at the moment when
Europe was breaking away from the asceticism of the
Middle Age, and is itself a striking monument of the new
tendency.
"It may be affirmed," says our author, "that in no other
place does architecture so lend itself to purely personal senti-
ments. It has succeeded in translating the tongue of Petrarch,
and so giving a form in stone to the most melodious part of the
love of the Middle Age. Prom the depth of the sanctuary the
prayer of Heloise goes forth from the lips of the Church with
a thousand memories of love and a thousand terrestrial regrets
which have taken a body in the stone and in the marble.
" It is no longer the cathedral, sad and cloud-capped, upon
which the storm has beaten for ages, and which for ever remains
kneeling before the empty sepulchre of the Lord. It is rather
a Beatrice or a Laura who seats herself on the road to heaven,
thinking of the perfume of her terrestrial love. The Church of
Brou is architecturally the expression of the ideal holiness of
love and marriage, as poetry and dogma had consecrated them in
the Middle Age."
It is a domestic epic containing the whole private life
of the time. The title of this paper is : " On the Arts of
the Eenaissance and the Church of Brou."
It was in the neighbourhood of this church, so pecu-
HIS MARRIAGE. 183
liarly dedicated to holy matrimony, that Edgar Quinet
intended to bring his wife and fix his home. Certines,
the ancestral home, was not more than five miles, as the
crow flies, from Brou; and during the summer of 1834
he was here preparing the old place for the reception of
his bride.
It was a little retreat, poetic enough, very simple and
very humble. The lower part was occupied by some
country people, who had lived there from father to son,
and who were ever ready to give a helping hand. The
upper part looked over a balcony upon a scene full of
repose, with the mountains in the distance. In the stable
was a carriage and a pair of horses; no sign, however,
of the poet's wealth, but an absolute necessity in such
an out-of-the-way place. However, the scheme was
given up. Nothing but the smallness of his means could
have ever made him think of living there ; for, as he con-
tinually says, it was a most unhealthy district, a district
in which the deaths exceeded the births. Two years
later the place was sold, and Edgar Quinet and his wife
took up their abode at Baden, chiefly because it was suit-
able for foreigners and a cheap place to live in. Subse-
quently they went to live at the foot of a mountain in
the neighbourhood of Heidelberg.
At Baden he is writing " Napoleon," a work he calls
his " Goliah in verse." He had commenced it some
time before his marriage. In the February of 1835 the
work is about to be published, when the whole impres-
sion was destroyed by fire. However, this is nothing
more than a vexatious delay ; " Ahasuerus " has sold
well, and another edition is called for. Learned M.
Eauriel wants Edgar Quinet to supply his place at the
Sorbonne, with the idea of succeeding him in his pro-
fessorship. Altogether, things begin to look prosperous.
The life he now leads is so different from the wandering,
unsatisfied existence that he had led for so many years,
that he is quite surprised at his own happiness, and feels
'^"^ EDGAR QUINET.
like a man raised from the dead. His mother is recon-
wife — ^^^^^^' ^"^^ ^^ ^^^*^s ^ ^er concerning his
wwl^^ T^ ^ T *^? ™°''^ ^ venerate and cherish her virtues
which are those of a saint. I thank heaven every day for hS
given her to me. It is she who has cured the infinite p a^urj
my heart ; my hfe is entirely changed by her. My only desire
ni° T'^J ^' K^^^^' '^'^ day confirms the sentiments of
love and affection I entertain for her." e^t-iments oi
( i8s )
CHAPTEE III.
BADEN. 1835-1836.
" I have a right to answer all yotir complaints by an eternal I, I am a person
apart ; I will not be dictated to by any one."
— Naipolio% to Josephine {vide " Memoirs de M. de R^musat ").
The thought that was in Edgar Quinet's mind at this
time was to produce a Trilogy : three poems bearing
relation one to the other, and showing Humanity in its
three great forms — general, individual, religious. As
" Ahasuerus " represented the race, — the Eternal Man, —
" Napoleon " was to represent the individual — the hero ;
and " Prometheus," which as yet was in petto, the
martyr. If, he said, the tie that binds these three poems
together could have been made plain from the beginning,
many attacks might have been repelled, especially those
accusing the earlier one of an irreligious tendency.
In no character, ancient or modern, does the indi-
vidual come out more completely than in that of
Napoleon. Arthur and Charlemagne have both become
the subjects of epics, but in neither of them was the
individuality so overpowering as to obscure their con-
temporaries. Arthur's glory is inseparable from that of
his knights, as is Charlemagne's from that of his pala-
dins. But who speaks of Napoleon and his marshals ?
Napoleon has long ago absorbed all the military glory
of his age; and not only its military, but its political
and legal glory. It may be perfectly true that this, as
much else in his career, is a prodigious usurpation, but
1 86 EDGAR QUINET.
it only proves how overpowering was the individuality
that could thus blot out from the minds of men the
unparalleled devotion of his armies, the ability of his
generals, and the sagacity of his statesmen and legists.
" The peoples slept, and in a night the deed was done.
Day broke, a single man stood up before the sun ;
His shadow covered all, the glory fell on him ;
Behind him lay the world, a mass obscurely dim.
A thousand names are lost that one may fill the skies,
A thousand waves have sunk that one alone may rise." ^
But in addition to a poem manifesting the individual
in Humanity, Edgar Quinet wished to write the epic of
the democratic period in French history. And of this
period ISTapoleon was as distinctly the hero as Charle-
magne was of its feudal period.
In his " Field of the Battle of Waterloo," Quinet asks,
" Was it only the cause of a man that was defeated on
that occasion ? " No, he replies, " it was the Eevolution
that was beaten at Waterloo." The Eevolution brought
France into such a condition of antagonism to all the
powers of Europe, that to preserve her independence she
was obliged to create a dictatorship. The old and the
new world could not coexist. War was a necessity of
national existence ; the Convention, the Directory, the
Consulship, the Empire, were mainly military machines.
National independence, Quinet ranks before everything.
A naked tyranny born of the soil is preferable to liberty
imported into a country by the foreigner. Napoleon began
as the servant of France fighting for the national cause ;
in the struggle that cause becomes the cause of Hu-
manity, the cause of the new world against the old ; then
he began to feel vaguely his new position, to regard him-
self as the champion of a new civilisation, and he
sought to make it triumph with all the energy of a new
Mohammed even in the East itself Whatever his faults,
he represented the Eevolution ; and when he fell, the
Eevolution fell.
1 The First Consul.
HIS GOLIAH IN VERSE— ITS MEANING. 187
If, then, the poet discovers a certain enthusiasm for the
giant-man, we must remember that he sees in him the
hero of the French Eevolution, and the spirit of France
incarnate. This does not, however, in the least affect
Quinet's conscience. ISTo one could describe more power-
fully the heartless nature of his hero's ambition, or the
world-wide misery it caused ; no one could raise a more
stirring note of national indignation against his tyranny,
or make the Nemesis which pursued his career more
strikingly manifest.
Besides, there were peculiar reasons why Quinet should
feel intensely about this epoch in French history. Its
close in disgrace and ruin was coincident with that period
in his life when impressions are stamped indelibly on the
imagination ; the Invasion was burnt into his brain and
heart. Moreover, we have seen how his residence in
Germany had forced him to comprehend the depth of the
animosity against France, and the sure and certain end
to which it was tending. To awaken his countrymen
out of the fool's paradise into which he believed the
temporising policy of the citizen king was leading them,
was then not a small part of his aim.
In his criticism of this poem, Sainte-Beuve says : " In
an epic on Napoleon, the Napoleon of Talleyrand ought to
appear as well as that of the Champagne peasant; the
part due to popular imagination should be kept in its
place, coming to light here and there, but without hiding
the real events and the historic situation." But he is not
correct if he means that Quinet has been careless of the
latter ; for while preserving throughout the popular legen-
dary impression of his hero, he brings out clearly enough
Napoleon's cynical indifference to right, his towering
selfishness, and cold-hearted disregard of everything else
in the world but his own glory. To prove it, nearly the
whole series of poems would have to be named, but it is
specially manifest in The Desert, The First Consul, Auster-
litz, Montebello, and The Letter. From The Fete one might
i88 EDGAR QUINET.
suppose the poet had read the revelations of Madame de
Eemusat, so vivid an idea does it give of the selfish,
vulgar, masquerading despot in private life.'
" That which," Sainte-Beuve considers, '' constitutes the
merit, the life of the poem, is, after the greatness of the
enterprise and the length of the course it runs, the moving
powerful poetry that circulates through it all as the air
over vast elevated places, or as the spirit upon the waters,"
and above all, a certain number of very fine pieces which
seem to secure to Edgar Quinet a style of his own.
The form into which he has thrown his poem, and the
variety of the versification, preserve it from that heavy
monotony into which the greatest epic poems tend to fall.
Instead of being one long poem, each subject is complete
in itself, one object being that they might readily be
recited or sung.
The italics in the following summary mark the titles of
the various poems.
NAPOLEOlSr.
A POEM.
The Cradle (i.) refers to the Isle of Corsica. Madame Letitia
(ii.) describes the mother of the young Napoleon. She grieves
over the domestic misfortunes, and is wondering what career
awaits her son, in whom she already sees extraordinary character.
She consults a gipsy who comes to the house by moonlight. In
a series of oracular utterances the Bohemian (iii.) foretells the
future history of the boy. His hand feels to her " like aii hon
weight," and in the entangled lines she sees " battles stern, and
deeds of awe." In what Sainte-Beuve calls a veritable ballad,
true, natural, powerful in design, and under a tone of lamenta^
tion still noble, touching, and grand, is dimly foreshadowed the
campaign in Italy, the bridge of Arcole, the triumph of ambition
in the East, the Empire, the subjugation of all the monarchs in
Europe, the Nemesis at Moscow, the pursuit of the Cossacks,
the Abdication, Elba, the Return, Waterloo, and, finally, the
grave at St. Helena.
The Adieu (iv.) represents the future hero departing from
Corsica in a storm, joyfully bidding farewell to his mother and
sisters, welcoming the wind that fills the sail, and the sea-horses
NAPOLEON— ARCOLE. 189
that chafe to carry him away. In the dark night the young
voyager sees a single star. The Star (v.) is his ; it shines only for
him, loving to touch with its golden fingers the long hair hanging
over his shoulders, through which the breeze passes and sleeps.
The metre changes with the next poem. In it the poet recalls
the vigour, the disinterestedness of the men of the Republic
(vi.). France as an immortal Thebes, a popular Sion, is besieged
night and day by the whole world. , Of her long-haired heroes,
Joubert, Desaix, Hoche, Marceau, she asks who is the most
valiant, the strongest amongst them, that he may become her
master, little dreaming that over the high Apennines a young
Corsican is passing who will be the Caesar, not only of herself,
but of the world.
A battle under the Eepublic, and the sentiment that animated
the troops, is well given in the song of the bridge of Arcole (vii.).
On a morning in November the trembling marsh wakes up at
Eonco ; its willows casting sad shadows, its reeds bending their
grey heads in the north wind. A little stream, crossed by a
narrow bridge, separates the popular army from that of the
king's. Over the narrow bridge the peoples rush breathlessly,
untn a great crowd of dead bar the way. Then they spring
into the water, and soon its wan floods are streaming over
blu^ coats pierced in a hundred places. On the field of hope
the new standard has lost its lance, and the waters of Arcole
recoil on their bed. Then a pale horseman darts from the melee;
leaping oS his saddle, he takes the tricolour in his arms, and
rushing on to the bridge, waves it above the creaking planks.
The sabres glance from his forehead, the cannon lick the dust
at his feet. On his path the trembling nations follow, and from
the midst of the reeds of Eonco the standard of liberty has cast
its shadow over the world. At this sign the peoples recognise
their master. Before they had feared him, now they loved him.
But the kings weep, for their long past flies away, the abyss is
bridged at Arcole, and the path opened to the human race.
The next poem is a cry of those who have fallen in Italy. In
this So7ig of the Dead (vm.) the poet is urged with the wine of
their combats to intoxicate Prance. The stern remorseless con-
queror now begins to show himself. A silent messenger is seen
approaching Venice (ix.). Who is this messenger, paler than
the night ? with eyes like an antique lamp in an alabaster vault,
with mouth that never smiles, with heart that neither loves nor
hates, but like some great fire hides itself at daylight under the
half-warm cinders. The sea smiles at this piessenger of death,
but the beautiful city of twenty centuries knows that her hour
has come.
Two letters in verse now follow. The Message (x.) is from
I90 EDGAR QUI NET.
Josephine to Napoleon, upbraiding him for his neglect, and
entreating him to give up the phantom — glory. Napoleon in
the Answer (xi.) declares that, far from returning, he has only-
just commenced his career. God has put His hammer into his
hands that he may strike the earth. He must go to the East ;
there his eagle shall make its nest. To depict the ■wonderful
fascination that the name of Bonaparte already exercises in the
East, is the intention of the three poems that follow. The
Pyramids (xii. ) await their master ; they ask all things of his
coming — the wind from Italy, the stormy sea, the storks that
rest on their summits. In a dream the Pacha (xiii. ) of Damascus
sees the head of the Sultan Kebir at his saddle-bow ; he is in
sunny Provence, scaling old chateaux, where the Christian dogs
keep their treasures, and then sailing home with their women
bound to the masts of his vessel. Leading his cainel in the
night, the driver (xiv.) sings of Bonnaberdi, the lion without a
mane, the sultan without a turban, whose wives are forty battles,
whose black eunuchs, with their shining poignards, are more
than a hundred combats.
A Mohammedan Imaum (xv.) proclaims a holy war. Allah
is greater than the Sultan Kebir. He knows how to lead these
lions of the desert to a dry source, and to overwhelm them under
the Simoom. But in the next poem a doleful cry (xvi.) rises
up from the Mamelukes after their defeat at Embabeh.
And now the poet arrives at a great crisis in his hero's life.
In the Desert (xvii.) Napoleon decides his future, deliberately
preferring the Evil to the Good. Power rather than Duty is
henceforth to be his object.
Come thou, my soul, into this silent land ;
Forget all thought of fame and kneeling crowds.
And here, alone, let us debate this point, —
What shall my future be 1 But first of all
Tell if thou canst why everywhere my foes
Fall at a breath, submissive at my feet ; —
Who am I then 1 a man, or more than man ;
A prophet, or perchance a demi-god
Who of his ruins builds himself an altar
And makes a worship. Solve the mystery,
Jupiter Ammon, god of these arid sands,
Am I divine as thy renowned son,
Great Alexander ? Like to him in will,
Like him the phantom glory here I seek.
The world has lost its way, and in its night
It wants a guide to hold it by the hand ;
From Ehine to Nile it follows all my steps,
Until at last behind these moving sands
I fade from sight ; then like a child it cries.
Where has he gone ? My master ! is he lost ?
NAPOLEON— EGYPT. 191
The hour with issues infinite, now strikes.
Rise up my fortune, rise my genius, rise !
And here, in this oasis, look around thee.
Who is it says : Thou, thou shalt be a king 1
Spealts the oasis 1 No ! Go, look within
Thyself, there shines the coming diadem.
How oft in my own mind have dreams been crowned.
How oft my glory rose upon those floods
And soon made shipwreck ! What is then that voice
That rises in my heart and dies away ?
Is this the voice that men call destiny 1
Two worlds appear, as in all else I see ;
Caesar or Brutus t here the question lies.
Brutus loved right, but Caesar filled the world ;
Brutus was stainless, Cssar stood alone ;
Brutus, a victim, fell slain for his faith.
While tyrant Caesar gave the world his law.
Caesar means Power, Brutus only Virtue.
Conclude, my soul, the balance kicks the beam ;
Brutus being mortal, may but chance to live ;
1 will be C^sar — Caesar, god on earth !
General Bonaparte has known his hour, and has leapt on the
horse Opportunity. He is named the First Consul (xviii.), and
his triumph is celebrated with old Koman pomp and circum-
stance. One man has become all, the rest nothing. Oh, for
the old consul with the tawny eye ! His work has always to
be redone. Slavery is for ever reappearing. The peoples have
become gladiators, sold to amuse their Caesar; and running
before his car, they shout ; " Ave ! great Ctesar, those about to
die salute thee I "
Yet the first consul appears as one truly great. He watches
as a sentinel over the new society, and spends his nights in
preparing for it a new code, astonishing old legists by the ease
v^ith which he sees his way through their entanglements.
Moreover, his military glories are still unexhausted. St. Bernard
(XIX ) celebrates the passage over the Alps, and contains some
fine descriptions of Alpine scenery.
In the old cathedral a bloody Te Deum (xx.) is chanted, but
it is not from the living that it arises, but from the dead, who
sing to Sabaoth, Lord of Hosts. " Nothing," says Sainte-Beuve,
" could be better imagined or felt than such a pacific, compas-
sionate, and pious chant from the mouth of the dead, while the
living ignore the miseries of the past, believe in nothing, and
are going anew to tear each other in pieces."
The next poem describes how the Pope is brought to France,
and the part that he plays in the Coronation (xxi.) of Napoleon.
The ceremonies over, the organ begins to sound, and from its
192 EDGAR QUINET.
strains bursts forth a solemn warning. Belshazzar's feast is
recalled,! and the proud Imperator is asked if he does not fear
to see the hand upon the wall ; let him drink his brimming
cup, and in the dregs he shall find the bitter taste of Waterloo ;
let him set sail on the vast sea of human hope, defying winds
and waves, and yet shall he ever hear, like some distant sigh,
the waves falling on the shores of St. Helena.
The Coronation is the prelude to a new series of battles.
They open with a fine poem called the Bivouac (xxii.). Men
and horses appear swarming over the snow like a flock of larks
in January. A voice says "halt ! " and the iron host lie down
with the silence of a funeral. The fires of the bivouac redden
the horizon ; all sleep — it is a night of strange dreams. In a
furrow the Emperor rests on some straw, wrapped in the folds
of an immense cloak. In the early hours of the morning a great
battle passes through his brain. He awakes his marshals ; he
promises his soldiers rest on the ' morrow ; never indeed shall a
heavier slumber weigh on their eyelids. Austerlitz (xxiii.) is the
battle promised. The Emperor, mounting his horse, reviews his
army. He speaks to the men individually. What is your
name 1 your number of fights 1 An enthusiastic hurrah arises
from the troops. Then the battle begins, while he, as some
giant, stands stirring the fire in the plain below, takes up his
people by handfuls and casts them into it. The fire spreads,
the hamlets all round are in flames, and their roofs crackle on
the monster's hearth.
One messenger arrives after another. The rear-guard has
fled. " Sire, cover your flanks ;" " Sire, your wing gives way ; "
" Sire, all is lost ! Lannes is drowned in his blood ! " Then,
like a water-snake. Napoleon moves under the grass and crushes
the Muscovite serpent at the bottom of the lake. Finally,
Murat appears, followed by an army of prisoners, their heads
drooping as they think of their homes, of their little ones, and
of their wild horses in the steppes of the Ukraine.
The only being that watches upon a battlefield the Day after
(xxiv.) the fight is the Vulture. But the Emperor passes, and
looking upon the dead, he places his hand on their bodies; Then
their spirits wake up, and kissing his garments they wonder
whether they are in the desert, or in the skies, or under the
willows of Arcole. What is this aureole which hovers round
^ " Some years later, at another fMe given by the city of Paris to the
Emperor, . . . over the throne which he was to occupy were placed in letters
of gold the following words from the Holy Scriptures: 'lam that I am.'
And no one seemed to be scandalised ! " — Memoirs of Madame de Bimusat,
vol. i. p. 336.
NAPOLEbN—AUSTERLITZ. 193
their brows ? But suddenly they catch sight of the gaping
wound, and fall weeping on the grass. None see these spirits
save the masterless horses, who with manes bristling with terror
fly in the night from the beasts of carrion.
Yet one arises to do better than blindly adore. It is Lannes,
Due de Montebello (xxv.), the Emperor's friend. He expostu-
lates with his master, representing to him the wretchedness
of the peoples. Ifapoleon has attained the impossible, why
torture Europe any longer ? Like a vicious horse it may one day
pitch him out of the saddle. The nations lick his hand, but in
secret they curse him. He is depopulating his own land ; he
win at last find himself alone in the midst of its emptiness.
The Emperor smiles, he possesses the world ; Lannes shall
have what he wilL But Montebello cares for none of his
honours ; all he desires is a grave, a grassy mound where the
wind sighs. But Napoleon will give him a monument of bronze
cannon, a high column from whence he shall look down smiling
under a heavy crown. The hero turns away weeping, and with
slow steps seeks his tent.
From his camp at Wagram the Emperor pens a Letter (xxvi.)
to the Empress. God, he says, has had him in His holy keep-
ing ; so now he orders a Te Deum to be chanted at NStre
Dame ; then he proceeds to give a list of the arms, the standards,
the cannon his armies have taken, and to describe how Europe
is in chains and peace signed. The standards and the flag, still
damp with the blood of Lannes, are to be hung up in the In-
valides, and a bronze column is to be set up in his Place Vendfime,
beneath which are to repose the ashes 6f the Due de Montebello.
On its sides all Napoleon's battles are to appear climbing up to
the feet of their great general, who will stand above all, watch-
ing the world as countless ages roll away. All is to be of
bronze, even the tears of the soldiers. In remarkable keeping
with its subject, the poem itself seems to rise like a bronze
column, every line and every word falling with a metallic
monotony like the hammer of some military builder.
The news of Napoleon's glory bring Dona Letitia and her
daughters from Corsica. The Emperor will see that the Sisters
(xxvii.) are married ; they shall each bear the name of one of his
battles ; his brothers shall be kings, each one shall have a
leaden sceptre dripping with gore. Napoleon, with pale brow,
leans pensive. He feels that he has come to the edge of the
precipice where every man in his turn plants his feet and glides.
He sees the gulf below, but Vertigo (xxviii.) has seized him,
and he must follow. May he not have an hour to enjoy the
height of his prosperity ? No, the path is too slippery. Then
at the same moment he must receive the welcome of prosperity
N
194 EDGAR QUINET.
and its adieu. Yet what wonders has he wrought for the human
race ? He has closed chaos, closed its night profound. But,
after all, was he its master ? did another WiU than his direct
his power, or was he the chance which men call Providence ?
Yes, he will amuse himself by his dream. He is tired of mono-
tonous happiness ; he would taste misfortune, know what it is
like. Is it, after all, so bitter ? As high as he has mounted he
would now descend, and sound the depths of the abyss. For
by his fall his glory woidd be increased ; the world without its
guide would cry, ",I am lost ; " the orphan peoples would not
know how to clothe themselves or to find their destiny.
The Pope, standing with his cardinals on the balcony of St.
Peter's, his shining mitre rising above the Eternal City, pro-
nounces, in the name of the thrice holy One, an Anathema
(xxix.) on Napoleon Bonaparte of Corsica. He, the scourge of
the jealous God, yesterday but dust, shall again become dust
to-morrow. Since he thinks to set himself above all law, to
close his ears to the cry of the world, he shaU be cast down
from his high Babel. A curse shall fall upon him, upon his
tent, his treasure, his palace, upon his bed and his dreams,
upon his sceptre, his name and his inheritance, upon his house,
and even upon his grave.
The next poem opens brilliant as the last has closed severe
and terrible. It is called the Fete ^ (xxx.). In a palace
under floods of light, upon a blue carpet beneath a canopy, sit
the Emperor and the Empress. Charming in her rubies and
ebony tresses, she is yet sad and ready to weep. Turning to
her husband, she entreats him not to leave her for the daughter
of a king. " Josephine," he coldly replies, " it is necessary.
I must have an heir to my empire." " Have you not sons ?
children of your thought — Austerlitz, Friedland. Daughters ?
Montenotti, Eivoli, Lodi." But he is inexorable, and she is
ready to die. "They see you, Madame; smile, Madame,
smile, in the name of God."
Saragassa (xxxi.) is a stirring national poem. It is one of
the finest of the series, recalling by its spirit, its enthusiasm,
and its whole tone, Macaulay's noble baUad, " The Spanish
Armada." Saragossa besieged, calls on all its sister cities, by
name, to hasten to her relief ; and not only the cities, but all
else, animate and inanimate, in Spain. Then the deserts, landes,
sierras, gorges, defiles, grottoes, lakes, seas, forests, houses — yea,
1 France was given up at this time to files and merry-making (Memoirs
of Madame de lUmusat, vol. i. p. 337). Then follows a description of one at
the Opera House, that accords so closely with this poem that Quinet might
himself have vritnessed it.
NAPOLEON— MOSCOW. 195
even the broken walls, as well as all tlie Hidalgoes and tlie
saints of Spain — all, all unite with the cities, and come crying,
" Death ! Death !" The old kings of Spain rise in their graves,
and the bishop of Grenada, quitting his shroud, hurries, pale and
wan, along the road of the Sierras, until he reaches the highest
peak in the Alpuj arras, where in a grand litany he calls upon
all the saints to pray for Spain.
And now, having got the Corsioan bull in the arena, thej*'
sorely wound him. At last the toreador cries out, " Shall I
kill him, Hidalgo 1 " Then from the vast amphitheatre in
which the peoples have watched the fight, from Mount Ural and
Mount Carmel to Valentia, a great shout comes, gathering force
as it runs from the Caspian to the Atlantic, " Let him die ! let
him die ! "
Napoleon has come to Moscow (xxxii.) to make a last throw
for fortune ; he will rule and reign in this new land, and it may
be that on the pillow of the Czars he will sigh away his soul.
But at the sound of his footsteps entering the holy city, its
high towers shiver with anger and its golden cupolas howl as a
panther insulted in its lair. Ere long the catastrophe develops ;
the minarets, the domes, are wrapped in flames ; all the roofs
come crashing in at once, and the city appears a vast lake of
fire. Then, by a series of powerful images, the poet makes his
reader a spectator of this unique horror. Sainte-Beuve has
especially noted this poem : —
" The picture of semi-oriental barbarism, the prey of the roaring
flames ; these tottering minarets, which the evening before, under their
snowy turbans, dreamt of the Bosphorus ; the great tower of Saint-
Ivan, which, as it burns and melts, contorts itself like a witch over
her immense cauldron, — these," he says, "are recognisable images,
solemn marks that consecrate the brow of the poet."
The work is done, — a kingdom passed away ;
A silent night succeeds a furious day.
Among the ruins vast, but one alone,
An Emperor, stands up ; without a groan
He on the wonder looks, while in his ear
Thus speaks the voice of God these words of fear :
" Thus into smoke shall fade thy best-planned schemes.
Thus fall thy empire, thy ambitious dreams ;
Thus tumble down the Babel of thy glory.
Thus come to nothing all thy wondrous story,
Thus heaven will dissipate thy name in gloom —
Thy work a wreck, thine end an exile's tomb."
Near the Sea of Azov a Hettman wakes at break of day ; he
seeks his horse and his arms, but he knows not whither he is
going. Led by the winds of the Ural, and followed by his
196 EDGAR QUINET.
brothers, he passes mountain and plain, and comes into a land
so cold that his very sabre shivers. The vs^anderers pass Kief,
Moscow, Borodino, Smolenski, and arrive at the banks of the
Beresino (xxxiii.). Here they see a strange sight : a great
number of horsemen in cloaks, covered with snow, are sitting
motionless; waggons loaded with recumbent figures seem stopping
the way, fixed in the deep ruts by the river side. Cannon are
there, but all covered with rime, and as they approach nearer
they see many dead fires with grenadiers stretched around.
Why do these soldiers sleep in the cold and tempest ? It is
too late to awake them now, they have reached their journey's
end. Of their sufferings, ere they did so, a terrible picture is
drawn.
Pale by the roadside, in the fading light,
The crowd was seated, — came another night,
And paler still it there remained. Anew
The day broke, and of yet more pallid hue
It now appeared, while ghastly lay around
Half-eaten horses, frozen to the ground.
In the following poem a solitary traveller (xxxiv.) is seen;
his horse neighs not, neither champs the bit, but horse and
rider pass on like a shadow. He is the harbinger of the ship-
wreck. When this pale fugitive enters his own kingdom, the
guards who watch the frontier do not recognise him. What
seek you 1 What is your name 1 And the horseman replies,
" I am Napoleon."
But again the Emperor is in Paris showing his infant, " the
King of Rome" (xxxv.), to the gaping crowd. Their noise, and
that of the swords drawn from their scabbard, frightens the
child, and it clings to the neck of its father.
The terrible poem called Leipsic (xxxvi.) is a companion one
to that of Saragossa. It sings the rising of a hundred nations,
a whole people, — the Germans, — who unite as one man to crush
the giant of armies. It is a veritable song of blood ; its refrain
is, " Hurrah, the sabre thirsts ! list to its rage ! " The three
days of Leipsic, when without food or sleep the struggle con-
tinued, is depicted with immense power ; and the intensity of
the whole is heightened by the dreamy stanzas that open the
, poem, in which a solitary sentinel of the French army in the
Rhine country is again and again interrogated as to what he
sees and hears. Nothing at first ; then the distant sounds are
but a dream ; finally he wakes up to find the world upon them.
Leipsic is followed by a lament over Poniatowsid (xxxvii.),
and the hopes of Poland drowned with him in the Elster. In
Champ-Aubert (xxxviii.) aU EuTope appears combining against
NAPOLEON— LEIPSIC— ELBA. 197
France. The flood is rising, it grows into a lake; the lake
hecomes a sea, a sea of immense grief for France. This dolorous
state of things arouses the poet to lash the flagging patriotism
of his countrymen in a poem called the Sting (xxxix.). It is
this poem that has caused Quinet to be spoken of as the
Uhland and Koerner of France.
But the course of events now hurries on from one ruin to
another. Napoleon, pallid and uncovered, stands at the door of
his palace of Fontainehleau (xl.), and bids adieu to his battle-
fields with their braying trumpets, their flags, their eagles, their
soldiers. He no longer has a kingdom, he is now only a name ;
and to-morrow his story will be told in every cottage in Europe.
And now France has to endure the degradation that she had
inflicted on other lands, and to feel herself the miseries of an
Invasion (xli.). They are dead who would have defended the
country — dead in Egypt, in Russia, by the Rhine, and in Spain —
and their leader is discrowned and mute. In their place arrive
pale horsemen, speaking a strange tongue, their swords dripping
with blood, and the manes of their horses white with the hoar
frost. They enter the houses without salutation; they seat
themselves \>j the firesides and empty every cup. Woe ! woe !
beneath the invaders' feet all things dry up ; they may grow
again, and the nightingale once more sing among the willows,
but the traces of their footsteps can never be effaced.
The melancholy of the last poem is relieved by the bright
and joyous character of the one that follows, the Isle of Elba
(xLii.). It opens with a picture of the Mediterranean in spring-
time. A white sail is seen mounting on the waves, a corsair
with three masts. Another vessel follows its path, as the sparrow-
hawk, the swallow. Your name 1 Isle of Elba. Your port %
France. Wbat do you carry 1 A man. Who is he ? Silence !
Your flag ? The tricolour. Adieu ! go on your way. The
voyager lands ; as one shipwrecked, he has nothing but his name.
Yet at that name the kings are terrified. At that name a hun-
dred gates open, a hundred iron eagles fly to meet him ; and from
belfry to belfry, even to the towers of Notre Dame, the welcome
sounds forth : 'Tis he ! 'tis he ! who returns in glory and wiU.
reign over us again. Let us give him back his crown, and we
will give him our blood. We will weave for him robes of vic-
tory, and he shall nourish us with his glory. And the demi-god
says, " Clothe yourselves in might, soldiers and people, for
to-morrow I lead you once more to battle."
That battle is Waterloo, and to this great crisis in his epic
the poet devotes four songs. The Shepherds (xliii.). The
Storm (xLiv.), The Trumpets (xlv.), and The Horsemen (xlvi.).
In the following attempt to give an idea of the scope and spirit
198 EDGAR QUINET.
of this portion of the work, a stanza or two containing its lead-
ing thoughts have heen turned into verse, with a few words
showing their connection : —
The bluet mingles -with the yellow corn
At Waterloo, and up at early dawn.
Before the labourers come, those saucy thieves,
The larks, a meal have stolen 'mongst the sheaves.
Who will the reapers be to-day, what sort
Of harvest- work will in this field be wrought ?
Within the vale is hid from all above
A silent farm.^ Save when the rustic dove ^
Coos o'er its brood, or when its stones are ground
Beneath the loaded waggon,^ else no sound
Disturbs its peace. How that long line of trees*
In the pale distance trembles in the breeze !
In Hougoumont the eglantine's in flower.
The hawthorn still is white, but at this hour
The heifer's loose and treading all things down.
The kid, a stray goat 's butting, crown to crown.
Shepherd, return, your cattle needs your care,^
There's mischief brewing in the very air,
That bull will break your hedge, tread down your com.
And ruin all your harvest ere the morn.
But in place of the shepherd of Hougoumont comes one from
Caledonia, sounding his bagpipes and leading into the burning
plain the Highlanders of Glencoe. And as in Flanders, when
a storm is rising, the shepherd whistles, and all the cattle come
1 If we are to accept the opening of tlie Field of the Battle of Waterloo
literally, Quinet did not visit that spot until after this poem was published.
It is difficult to understand how his pictures are so remarkably true in all
their details. Was he gifted with second sight ? Thus he describes his visit
to " the silent farm " : — " Half way up a hill of stubble land I heard the
tinkling of sheep-bells, and the clucking of fowls in a f.irmyard. These
rustic notes came from the courts of a great isolated farm, of which I could
only see the slate roofs. I went down to it, and had hardly reached it when
I read on one of the brick buildings on the roadside, 'Farm of La Haye
Sainte.' " — Le Champ de Bataille de Waterloo, p. 370.
2 " These pigeons of the farm Papelotte, near where Ney was stationed."
—P. 376.
' "On the causeway you hear the wheels of some unseen team groaning."
—P. 377.
^ " The forest of Soignes is about eight miles in the rear." — P. 370. "The
horizon is heavy and sinister. The slightest wind that rises and plays through
the foliage of the tall trees in the neighbourhood makes you fancy you hear
souls murmuring and spirits passing over the face of the earth." — P. 377.
^ " Now look on the road where that child is driving that herd of cattle
belonging to La Haye Sainte." — P. 377.
NAPOLEON— WATERLOO. 199
from the meadows, so now many peoples are gathering together
at the shrill notes of the piper.
The storm "breaks. Thunder is heard, but it is neither
thunder nor hail, only some squadrons crossing the plain. In
the distance the wood of Hougoumont looks livid and its foliage
withered. "■ Its owner will never again see his roof or his fire-
side. The shock of the battle is thus described : —
Advance, advance, they're on us now in hordes ;
Drums, sound the charge, draw sabres ! unsheath swords !
Forward, brave Ney, and sap these living walls,
Their iron squares are giving 'neath our balls ;
Nearer, get nearer yet, fight face to face.
Our cannon for your swords will win a place ;
Nearer, get nearer yet, fight breast to breast,
Take life for life, let slaughter know no rest.
Flash upon flash, the bullet to its mark
Flies swiftly on ; the iron rain makes dark
The heavy day,^ and down in deadly showers
Upon the foe it falls. The distance lowers
With bomb-shells, lurid. Not a man will live
If but the sword another hour should give
To finish all its task. Then will these hosts
Have passed away in throngs of pallid ghosts.
On a little hiUock the Emperor sits caressing the flank of his
charger, whose hair is smeared with blood. He smiles like a
king of the tomb to see how fast the fruit is ripening, and how
Tictory is inclining to him.^ Already his troops shout as if it
were gained, and he knows that if the reinforcements only
arrive it will be secure. In the stormy sky he looks for his
star, but the belfry on the horizon veils it.* Another hour and
1 "The skeleton of Hougoumont whitens under a grove of ash trees.'' —
P- 371-
2 "Who would believe that the empire of the world depends sometimes on
such a circumstance as rain or sunshine ? Nothing, however, is more true.
Suppose that, instead of raining, it had been a bright day on the i8th of
June 1815, the battle would have commenced with dawn; according to
the view of all military men, it would have been gained by two o'clock in
the afternoon. On the contrary, clouds cover the skies, they turn into rain,
the soil gets broken up, the wheels stick in the mire, a morning is lost, and
this means an Emperor sent to die beyond the equator and the ruin of a
nation otherwise invincible." — Pp. 373, 374.
3 "from an eminence, his first position, the Emperor dictated the order of
attle. He was then justified in saying, ' We have ninety chances for us,
and ten against us. ' " — P. 374.
* ' ' From his second position, a lower eminence, across the bronzed foliage
of a copse, he could see the belfry of Saint-Lambert stand out in white on
the hill as a phantom making some sign in the distant horizon. "
200 EDGAR QUINET.
his empire will be saved. With, what anxiety does he scan
the horizon. " Marshal, what do you see ? " "A black cloud."
" No, it increases." " Sire, it is the dust of your long-expected ,
army." " No," replies the Emperor ; " no, this is not Grouchy ;
it is a flock of vultures, messengers of destiny, horsemen more
numerous than the sand, more prompt than the storm."
Now from afar, along the plain, a cry
Is heard, a voice of terror rising high :
All ! all is lost ! save ! save himself who can.
Then panic seizes every horse and man, —
And now the hour strikes ! . . . Sudden ends the strife.
Silence and death ! . . . where all was hope and life !
Beneath a breath invisible, a host
Joyous, exulting, like some empty boast,
Melts in the air ; all, all in terror yield.
And panic-struck have vanished from the field.
Can that be he ? across the sombre night.
In the deep shadow, flying from the light,
Desperate he gallops on, his crown to save ;
But all is phantom now, except the grave !
See now with brow serene the night arise ;
The moon is at its full, and in the skies
Seems sweetly dreaming. The flowers of the vale
Envy its whiteness, murmuring their tale
Unto a worm, that 'neath the influence blest
Is happy as the bird in her warm nest.
Nothing now is left to France but humanity's last refuge —
Prayer (xlvii.). The poet commits the charge of the frontiers
and the strong places of France to God.
The real end having come, the remaining poems may be
summed up in a few lines. St. Helena (xlviii.) is a song of
grief, in which the most is made of Napoleon's sufferings in
exile. Poor England, who had the belling of the cat, comes in
for a fearful scourging. While in Longwood (xlix.) Napoleon
is represented as brought to a sense of the meaning of his life ;
stiU he remains the intense egotist, comforting himself with the
thought of the power he has wielded and the great things he
has done.
Slowly a cofiin passes over the hill. The dead giant is carried
to his grave. No name is engraved on the Tomb (l.). In place
of mourners and funeral, trumpets invisible are heard ; and at
their sound ghostly horses neigh, drums beat, and cannons roar.
Over his tomb his only true widows (li.), his battlefields, weep.
In the final poem the poet raises a Column (lii.) to his hero's
NAPOLEON— ST. HELENA. 201
glory. Although Quinet's genius compelled him to portray the
whole career of Napoleon with a judgment almost apocalyptic in
its fidelity, it took much bitter experience before Quinet as a
patriot wholly believed as Quinet the seer. How unerring must
hare been his prophetic insight when a subject intended to
arouse the flagging patriotism of France, and written amidst the
galling insolences of her expected foe, proved such a powerful
exposure of the evil results of that mania for military glory,
ever the temptation of France.
( 202 )
CHAPTEE IV.
HEIDELBERG, PARIS. 1837-I838.
" Verus Prometheus." — TertuUian.
" 'O juapTv? 6 TTtoTos.'' — S. John.
Writing to his mother in July 1837, Edgar Quinet
tells her that he is engaged upon a new work of
imagination. His aim is to touch the foundation of
human life, to be at once correct and audacious, classic in
form, and fresh in ideas and sentiments, above aU clear;
to enclose a whole world in a luminous circle. He has
a fine subject, and one, moreover, truly religious. He
has bid adieu to the literature of despair.
" Up to the present," he continues, "I have been always
struggling, struggling with everything — with language,
with art, with tradition, with myself. Now for the first
time I live upon harmony instead of contention, and am
happy in my thoughts. Possibly this new condition
arises in great degree from my subject, but I think
that I have myself something to do with the change,
and that it will survive. As Ahasuerus tended to drive
to despair, so its successor should bring back peace.
Not but what there are still in it strange and divine
sufferings, but they lead in the end to immutable repose,
— a vast difference. I pass from heroism and from the
struggle with the impossible to the sentiment of Pro-
vidence, from the demon to the archangel, from Aha-
suerus to . . . (permit me to keep the name a secret,
except to say it is a truly grand one, and makes the
meaning clear at once).''
PROMETHEUS— A PROFESSION OF FAITH. 203
In another letter he says : " At all events I have ex-
pressed some of the dearest thoughts of my heart, and
this already is enough. If the poem speaks to your
soul, awakening there some profound echo, then I am
sure that after I am gone something will remain of
' Prometheus.' It is my profession of faith, the sign of
my hope in the future life."
Thus wrote Edgar Quinet to his mother, to whom he
expected his new poem would prove specially interesting.
He had, in fact, dedicated it to her.
The story of Prometheus is one of the most ancient
of the Greek myths. Quinet gives it the highest possible
antiquity, since he believes the Greeks borrowed it from
the East. Both in the ancient and modern world great
poets have found in it materials for their art. ^schylus,
Sophocles, Goethe, Byron, Shelley, have in various forms
made Prometheus the subject of poetry. Quinet has
seen the myth from a point of view different to them all.
He considers that it can only be understood in the light
of Christianity ; that as long as the prophecy of Prome-
theus remained unfulfilled and he himself a captive, the
story wanted completeness, and was therefore an enigma
to the ancients.
Prometheus had revolted against the gods, had made
men, and had stolen the sacred fire. Zeus had bound
him with everlasting chains to Caucasus, and sent an
eagle to feed upon his liver. Prometheus had prophe-
sied the fall of the gods, refusing to submit, although
Hermes tried his best to persuade him. How was
Prometheus to be delivered from this horrible position,
and the honour of the gods preserved ? The Greek
poets got out of the difficulty by a compromise and
a legal fiction. Prometheus was in some sort re-
pentant, and Hercules was permitted to deliver him,
the letter of the Olympian decree being maintained by
bits of rock remaining attached to his hands and feet.
This method of getting out of the difficulty proves.
204 EDGAR QUINET.
Quinet thinks, how utterly insoluble the myth was to
paganism.
By regarding Prometheus as the type of Eeligious
Humanity, and so giving the myth a world-wide char-
acter, Quinet is not only able to justify the prophecy of
the aspiring Titan, but to show him delivered.
The unity of civilisation has become, he says, one of
the dogmas of the world. One sole God gathering to-
gether into the same family the brother peoples separated
from each other in time. This view of the world's
history suggests its likeness to a great drama, of which
all the threads in the hands of its author are working
to a predetermined end. If we can realise this to be an
undoubted fact, we must have passed the point in the
drama in which its action all centres.
No one, it may safely be affirmed, ever took a wider
survey than Quinet of universal history, or ever more
completely kept himself in relation with all its parts.
A cosmogonic genius in his inmost nature, he sympa-
thised in a peculiar manner with prehistoric man,
yet at the same time^ he took the deepest, most active
interest in all that concerned his own generation. No
one can read his " Gdnie des Eeligions " and deny that
he not only understood but entered profoundly and
lovingly into the spirit and struggles of Eeligious
Humanity in every age and every clime. With a vast
historical knowledge, the widest human sympathies,
joined to that poetic nature which enables a man to see
the simplest truths of the universe, who better able than
Quinet to realise this great historical drama in all its
poetic harmony 1 who better able than he to show the
point in which the action all centres, and which will give
the key to its solution ? That point Quinet has, no
doubt, is the Advent of Christ. Is there, then, an
enigma in the universe, a point in the universal drama
which is obscure ? Bring it into relation with this great
fact, and see what light it throws upon it. Quinet has
INTERPRETS THE GREEK MYTH. 205
done this with the story of Prometheus ; and he declares
it enables him to justify the Titan, and bring the myth
to a natural and therefore glorious termination.
It may be objected, as a matter of fact, that Christ
has come, and Prometheus or Religious Humanity is
not delivered. To this it is sufficient to reply, The
drama is not over. As long as man remains what he
is, he wiU. be ever aspiring heavenwards, ever making
daring efforts after his birthright, taking heaven by
storm, and using the spoil in spite of all sacred forms,
institutions, or dogmas. A Caucasus must follow, a
devouring eagle must feed on the soul that thus acts.
It is his fate to act thus, his fate to suffer.
But a world-wide problem has another point of view
besides. There is the view outside here, such as presents
itself to the Eternal, to whom past, present, and future
are alike visible. Incomprehensible as this divine view
is to us, we may gather some idea of it by conceiving how
a dramatic author must regard his work. Before it is
even written, the denouement is present to him, and is as
if it had taken place. Thus if he intends to deliver his
hero out of a series of apparently inextricable difficulties,
to him his hero is already delivered. So a poet, taking
the dramatic view of the history of the world that
Quinet does in " Prometheus," must look at it from its
divine author's point of sight, or be involved in inex-
tricable confusion, offering possibly a splendid poem, but
only adding to the general bewilderment.
The means, also, by which the poet sets forth this
eternal view, must be the divine one'— symbolism.
Nature and human life are admitted on all sides to be
full of this symbolisin of spiritual truth ; why should a
work so divine as the history of our race be less the
subject of it ?
If, then, Quinet takes the historic fact of the Advent
of the Christ as the solution of this old pagan myth, he
uses it symbolically and means it to be understood in its
2o6 EDGAR QUINBT.
eternal sense ; that sense which, beneath all its theology,
the spirit of Christianity has declared with consentaneous
voice to be the meaning of the history of the Incarnation,
Passion, Eesurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ —
namely, that the Eternal therein pledges Himself to
deliver man, that here in time He is delivering man,
while in the light of Eternity He has already delivered
him.
" Prometheus '' was, moreover, as the opening of this
chapter intimates, another " grand confession of the
author's life."
"In the Story of this Titan," he says, "I have found a place
for all the principal sufferings, anguish, hopes, and chimeras of
my own life. My idea is that this struggle is the one that goes
on in each of us, for every man has his Caucasus. Still more,
the subject covers all the religious thoughts of the age; its
doubts, its revolts, its struggle with the invisible God."
For Quinet wished his readers not only to regard
"Prometheus" as a type of Eeligious Humanity histori-
cally considered, but as including that interior drama of
God and man, of faith and death, of the Creator and the
creature, which goes on in every individual when once
the spiritual life is awakened. It is in vain, he thinks,
to seek to avoid the thoughts it contains ; under one
form or another, they are incessantly returning, being, so
to speak, the element that eternally underlies aU poetry.
Whatever may be the occupations of an age, the ardour
of present interests, the conflict of doctrines, the collision
and fury of parties, there comes an hour at last when it
is necessary to meet God face to face. In that moment
the old questions, of which we thought ourselves for ever
rid, resound anew. Who art thou ? what believest thou ?
what awaits thee ? In vain we turn away the ear ; these
questions retain their hold on us even when we have made
our reply.
" How much more striking this is when we belong to one of
those epochs in which Eeligion submits to an incontestable
PROMETHEUS— INVENTOR OF FIRE. 207
change. It is then that the great enigmas, proposed by pre-
ceding societies and never resolved, awake again. In the igno-
rance into which we feel that we have again been plunged, such
an emblem of the curiosity of the human soul as this ancient
myth of Prometheus appears as if made expressly for our own
time. The fundamental differences that separate the ages
having disappeared with positive faith, all the generations of
humanity find themselves drawn together in one community of
doubt and moral anguish. There are no longer either Greeks or
Barbarians, Gentiles or Christians, ancients or moderns, but one
same human society gathered round the same abyss, asking
each other the same questions in nearly the same terms."
Thus Quinet's " Prometheus " has the double meaning of
all great human emblems ; it is at once universal and indi-
vidual, applying alike to the ever- continuing struggle of
Humanity, and the comparatively momentary one of the
solitary soul; having an especial interest for an age in
which that struggle turns on elementary and imiversal
truth.
The form in which the poem is thrown is epic. It
suits the grandeur of the subject ; and, moreover, Quinet
was ambitious with that noble ambition which forced
him always to the most difficult tasks, to remove the
reproach that " Frenchmen were wanting in the epic
mind."
The action of the poem is divided into three parts :
Prometheus, Inventor of Fire ; Prometheus chained ;
Prome'theus delivered.
PEOMETHEUS.
Pbomethbtjs the Invbntoe op Fire.
The earth appears just emerging from a deluge. Prometheus
is on the shores of the ocean ; he has taken up a piece of clay,
and has formed human beings of all ages from it. On the
shore, in his cavern, and in the neighbouring forest, numberless
figures appear, as yet motionless. His final work is a female
of gigantic proportions. When he has completed her, he
2o8 EDGAR QUINET.
breathes into Iter his own soul ; she lives ; and then ensues a
beautiful dialogue between Hesione and her maker, in which
she asks who she is, where she is, and what fate awaits her.
She rejoices in life, and is content to suffer with Prometheus.
II.
Prometheus is here seen advancing over the cold cinders at
the foot of a volcano. From its crater two tongues of red
flame ascend, resembling the forked tongues of two enormous
fiery serpents. As he approaches, the clang of the hammers of
the Cyclops is heard below. Night falls, and the chorus of the
Cyclops ceases, the noise of their hammers dies out. Then
Prometheus, leaning over the side of the crater, looks into the
abyss. Taking up some of the fire, he puts it into a vase, and
redescends the mountain, calling all the various forms of nature
around to witness that their soul now belongs to him, that he
has it in his possession, living, palpitating, that it wUl pro-
pagate itself, and go on increasing, able to set world after
world ablaze.
III.
Hesione meets him. Prometheus gives her the urn, and
explains the properties of the wonderful element it contains.
Prom it she lights a heap of dead leaves from the wood. A
feast is made, and to celebrate this the primal fire of the
world, an ancient oak, is sacrificed. Then Prometheus calls
his clay men to warm themselves ; they come forth from the
caverns, from the valleys, from the woods, as yet knowing
hardly how to speak. Yet they come murmuring a chorus,
the burden of which is, a wondering and a questioning from
whence are all the things they see. Following the men, come
the women uttering another chorus, more beautiful, expressive of
the maternal instinct. Prometheus then evokes choirs of kings
and prophets, who each utter characteristic notes. The kings
complain of an arid way in which there is no guide, of the
weight of the sceptre, of the happiness of those whose lives
flow noiselessly on as the river among the reeds. The chorus
of the prophets is grand but vague ; bursting out like a flame,
it seems to promise much, then suddenly it sinks and dies out.
Finally all the men join in a chorus of sad foreboding.
Hesione approaches, and offers them the cup. Prometheus
welcomes his guests, bidding them partake of the bread of
life, and mark the gifts he has bestowed on them, chief of
all—" Fire, parent of arts, strong son of liberty ; " " Brothers
PROMETHEUS CHAINED. 209
of Hesione," he concludes, " what would ye more t " The new-
born of earth reply, as the supreme want of those who have
just received a soul : " Give us, oh, give us gods ! "
IV.
The Cyclops waking, find fire has been stolen ; they sing the
vast results. Above all they say —
" This arrow shot, all things have lost their shield ;
To thought at last th' immortal gods must yield
An open gate.
Like music 'midst the reeds, heaven's breath awakes,
Then mightier grown than any Cyclops, breaks
E'en changeless fate.
" The world, coniided to these men of clay,
From its old bondage quickly breaks away,
And soon it flies
In a new orbit. Thunders, lightnings, hail.
Gather your storms, earth's vessel now sets sail
For other skies !"
Pbometheus Chained.
I.
Prometheus is seen dragged by the Cyclops to the top of
Caucasus, and there by order of Nemesis he is fastened to the
rock by a double chain forged in the fires of Lemnos, and so
strong that eternity cannot wear it out, or all the gods together
break it. His hands are nailed to the crest of the rock, while
the tempest howls round his feet. Yet this is not enough, for
Nemesis would have his spirit bound. But the Cyclops declare
this impossible. The soul would set itself free, its proud
thought would break adamantine chains. But with thought
free, nothing is accomplished, the gods will be in terror. Urged
to try at least to destroy one memory, one of the Cyclops
replies, "From its poles far easier could I move the world." This
Cyclops looks back with regret to the indulgent reign of Saturn,
and deprecates the new Olympus, even going so far as to deny
the free-will of Jupiter ; whereupon he is loaded with curses by
Nemesis and sinks into the earth. Nemesis quits Prometheus
mocking him.
II.
Alone, bound to the rock, Prometheus is far from despairing.
He consoles himself with reflections such as must have been
present to the martyrs of thought in all ages.
2IO EDGAR QUINET.
worlds ! winged winds, bringing from far the storm !
Sources of briny floods ! hills cloud-capped wanting form !
And thou, sun, beholding all things 'neath the sMes,
See on earth's altar bound, a god in anguish lies !
Is not the victim with the temple rightly paired ?
The universe, the shrine ; the victim he who dared
To stand alone against the gods. The cruel priest.
The tyrant Jupiter, whose tortures ne'er have ceased
Since on this peak they chained me, binding hands and feet.
But strong in my own will, with joy the thought I greet —
1 suffer thus to staunch the tears of human kind.
Let grief then pierce my soul, my heart let tortures bind.
Let all those evils come which from afar I see.
Pour down upon my head, and endless, rage round me,
I am content to make that which I would arise.
The works will speak aloud, though still their maker lies.
Dull gods ! in this same thought I can contemn all pain,
For from these bleeding hands, which now your fetters chain,
Has sprung a living world, — that hating you, loves me :
Peoples and tribes, kings to whom earth will bow the knee.
Thoughts that aspire with boundless hope, that nought can chain ; —
Is this too dear to pay for still increasing pain ?
Make your chains tighter yet, your nails drive deeper still,
Insatiate at my heart your vulture take his fill, —
I fear ye not. Olympians, nor ask your grace,
Prometheus shall arise, you sink to your own place.
Envy, vulture, my distress !
Thy every wound my soul shall bless.
Eternal cross ! eternal life !
Eternal joy shall end this strife !
III.
Ocean visits the Titan, seeking in pity to induce him to submit.
He tells him that his very name is already forgotten on earth, and
that the men he created are worshipping his enemies. Prome-
theus confesses that it is hard to hear this, but is immovable
in his determination not to yield. " Are there any signs of the
gods growing old?" Ocean replies, "Happy is he who rests
upon them, for as they were yesterday so are they to-day. The
gods possess all." "Save the unknown," says Prometheus.
Ocean combats this as a chimera, asserting that the present alone
is real, the future nothing ; the gods are all powerful, yet they
listen to the cry of the smallest bird ; Prometheus ought to
pray. Then, in a beautiful passage, Prometheus relates how he
once did pray, but that Olympus had repelled his too credulous
spirit. He is tired of praying to dull phantoms ; sometimes he
doubts, even in spite of the vulture which feeds upon him,
w^hether he does not dream, whether Jupiter himself is more
than a name, a false veil extended before eternity. Ocean re-
PROMETHEUS CHAINED. 211
Irakes him. for theoriaiBg, and asks him why he alone struggles
with the gods when all else submits. Prometheus tries to make
Ocean understand the difference between their natures, how
impossible it is for thought to submit to any bonds. Ocean
departs convinced that his misery has driven him mad.
IV.
Another trial now awaits the tortured Titan. Hesione appears
in the valley below. In attempting to scale the rocks to reach
Prometheus, she sinks exhausted in a ravine. She feels about
to die, and calls upon her maker to save her from the tomb ;
she entreats him to find her a remedy against death. When he
tells her that he cannot, she asks him at least to teach her its
secrets, that she may not go there in the dark ; but here again
Prometheus is obliged to confess his ignorance. It is all a
mystery to him, and he can only bid her hope. Then Hesione
dies.
V.
A choir of Sybils surround Prometheus, seeking from him the
knowledge of the future. He first of all calls upon them to tell
him what the nations are doing, what gods they adore, whether
the world still deceives the hopes of the sages, what is the state
of men's hearts, what, in fact, are the omens of the future. The
choir reply : — ■
Omens that float across the breeze,
Or rustle through Dodona's trees,
Or wake on Memnon's sandy plain,
'Twere easy for us to explain ;
But to unfold the woes that agonise the heart,
Display its wounds incurable, describe its smart.
Chimeras, visions, tortures never-ending.
Who can reveal whereto such plagues are tending ?
All have their Caucasus, consumed by love or hate
As thou : a vulture at his heart is each man's fate,
Nor will he cease to smile, e'en when its talons tear.
Long time the human heart has lost the power of prayer,
Fragrant with heavenly dew, at morning light
No more its praiseful hymn ascends. The dead with fright
Shrink back from Paradise itself. Know'st thou the face
Of Doubt, haggard and pale, running its weary race
By chance ; a serpent binds its heart and ceaseless stings.
While on a throw of dice the fate of worlds it flings.
Know'st thou th' illusive void, making all knowledge vain.
The Nothing, on a word basing its empty reign.
The cold but eager eye that follows on Despair !
These auguries affright thee, worse are in the air, —
212 EDGAR QUINBT.
I see on thrones of gold the careworn monarchs weep,
I hear the people sadly sighing in their sleep.
Far from the fertile fields where ripen living corn,
Souls seek their nourishment in desert wilds forlorn.
The mind, man's newest idol, tott'ring to its fall.
Comes crashing in ; its ruins cover like a pall
The worshippers, blaspheming ! None know what they seek ;
The very skies are like a tomb, and seem to reek
With clouds of doubt. All is at once affirmed, denied ;
In place of God, men seem to have the Fiend for guide.
Greedy, yet wasteful, the age with loftiest hrow
Doubts its own creeds, will not at its own altars bow ;
What presages are these t Say, has the world grown old
Thou prophet-god, to us the oracles unfold.
Prometlieus announces at last the approaching fall of the
gods. The Sybils cannot understand the possibility, but Pro-
metheus assures them that at that very time, in the desert, the
new God has revealed himself in a flaming bush — the God of
an innumerable tribe of shepherds. Then in a further vision
he beholds another Caucasus, an inconceivable sacrifice. To the
sorrows which he foresees, what are his sorrows ! Who on that
holy hill, with face divine, is that other Prometheus 1 What
his crime 1 Is he a Titan slave or a crucified God ? Oh,
wonder ! he blesses the world which oppresses him. The choir
ask where is this other Caucasus, that they may turn their steps
thitherward. Prometheus, without answering their questions,
prophesies that this God of gods will be his Deliverer.
VI.
This prophecy having reached Olympus, the gods send one
of their number to question Prometheus, but he will say nothing
save that the child of the future will be the inheritor of the
skies. Not even promises of deliverance can extract more ; so,
with threats of terrible sufferings, the god leaves him. The
choir of Sybils console Prometheus ; but the threats are quickly
verified, for the twelve Olympians, descending like eagles, pre-
cipitate themselves upon their prey.
VII.
Prometheus now enters the last stage of his trial. It is no
longer the vulture that causes him agony : it is his own heart.
He is no longer able to believe even in his own prophecy.
Black doubt is come, sole torment that I dread, —
Doubt, like the plague-struck with his hands of lead,
Cares not for cure, but easy takes death's snare, —
Black doubt is come, the ill I cannot bear ! "
PROMETHEUS DELIVERED. 213
VIII.
A chorus of Sybils concludes this part of the poem. Song
after song rises from the inspired ones in various metres, until
finally a prayer to the new God bursts from Prometheus.
long-expected God, the oracles are Thine ;
Come as the swallow comes, in the sweet harvest time ; ^
The corn is ripe.
The world prepares Thy cradle, why delay Thy birth ?
Thy infant cries alone will fill the silent earth,
Of heaven the type.
A cry goes up for Thee, man tears his aching heart,
He thirsts for God, he strains in every part
To catch Thy view.
Wilt Thou the uprooted tree shall bloom once more
And yield the blessed fruit it erst- while bore ^
Then faith renew.
Peomethbus Delivered.
The archangels Michel and Eaphael descend at sunrise from
heaven. Michel glows with ardour at the beauty of creation,
and its glories declare to him Jehovah's praise. To Eaphael
the sighs of human hearts seem to overpower the morning
hymns of the universe ; he feels the tremor that is passing over
the great cities, and the start the dead are making in their
graves. For the Lord has come, and new life is springing
everywhere. Michel expatiates on the glory of the Father,
Raphael on that of the Son.
Resting on Mount Caucasus they experienced a sensation of
horror.
II.
Prometheus is discovered by the archangels bound to the
Rook. They imagine him a fallen archangel, and are full of
compassion for his unhappy fate. The Titan is so wrapt in
admiration of the pure beauty of his celestial visitors that he
forgets his own misery, and hardly recognises their repeated
inquiries as to who he is, and how he came there. At last he
relates to them his history in a passage of surpassing beauty.
" Ask me not where I was born, for perchance ye know better
than I ; all I know is —
1 The scene of the poem is in a latitude the same as that of the south of
France and Spain.
214 EDGAR QUINET.
That long I cried, ' My Father,' while the prayerful earth
Ke-echoed with the cry, but never from my birth
In the clear daylight have I seen that gracious form,
Though oft 'twas said it stood from eve to early dawn
Touching my brow with heavenly poppies.
I felt His presence all around, but touched Him not ;
His love to me was sweet, mine was a happy lot ;
I thought He thought on me. I listened everywhere
For His sweet voice, to Him I raised my heart in prayer.
So blessed I Him, that of His sword I kissed the gleam,
How happy was I then. . . . But was it not a dream 1 "
For as age advanced this state of innocence and of faith,
departed. He lost the memory of his heavenly Father, and
wandering on a high place, met the gods. Majestic in form,
their beds perfumed, breathing incense and living on phantoms,
he was so fascinated with them that he gladly consented to share
their purple and ride in their car. Soon he began to think of
carving an idol himself, and of being admitted into the divine
ranks. But when he commenced to make an altar he found the
stone so icy cold that he shrank from it. As he sat with gods
and, laughing, lifted the cup of nectar to his lips, it flashed upon
him that it would leave his heart drunk with its bitterness and
its dregs.
Quitting the gods, he sought the earth and found it a desert ;
man did not yet exist. The lions ranged it, but mute, with
heavy steps, and sleep still in their eyes. The spiders alone
seemed busy. Often he heard voices from the depths of the
wood, saw lovely forms in the clouds, but they proved nothing ;
and long days passed in this arid silence. Yet was there in his
soul a hope, a desire, a presage of an unknown but glorious
future. Sometimes, as he crept to the entrance of his cave, he
would hear the bee murmuring in the woods, and would say,
" Lo, here it comes, the long-dreamt-of joy ; " but again it was
nothing, and in his agony he smote his breast, and in despair
could have torn out his dull heart.
Thus his days passed, despondency increasing as the years
rolled on, when one evening he watched the sea sleeping in the
light of a wan star, and envied the calm repose of the reeds upon
the shore. Suddenly a thought entered his mind (whence came
that flash sublime ?) ; the inward tempest ceased and morning
broke. He took up some of the wet clay and made from it the
figure of a demi-god.
" Man formed, he needed soul ; I poured within him mine.
I stole for him the sacred fire, that source divine
Of living things. He drank my cup, his sorrows went,
T made his future seem with golden promise blent ;
PROMETHEUS DELIVERED. 215
Within my cave he sat, looking, but seeing nought,
Listened, but heard no sound, he moved, but nothing sought ;
I loosed his tongue, music I woke within his soul,
And taught him how in cadence all its notes should roll;
For him from starry spheres the secret lore I caught.
While in the forest depths the augury I sought ;
Earth's hidden wealth I taught him to obtain ;
Laws, marriages and funerals, the feast, the game,
The scudding sail I made, cattle I yoked to carts.
Gave him all customs, and created for him arts.
Thus step by step man onward went making advance.
And hand in hand the nations moved in solemn dance.
But I had little done, since man was but a shade.
In spite of all my care, but one short hour he stayed ;
Too late within his soul I poured celestial truth.
Too late he learnt the laws that make eternal youth ;
Yet spoke his open brow of life beyond the grave.
Of soul immortal, that eternally might lave
In bliss supernal, and with ardour long to know
The secrets of the universe, above, below.
Searching within himself, man found, with much surprise,
Another universe in his own being lies.
Plunging into the dark abyss, his light went out ;
He wandered through its caves, lost in a maze of doubt.
One darksome night within a grave he chanced to fall,
An empty skull declared how nothing endeth all.
Breathing upon the ash, its soul I bid man mark.
How in a fire that seems extinct, still lives a spark.
Then from Sybilline books eternal questions rose.
As nation after nation lives the trouble grows.
Death's dark enigmas, with those darker still of life,
And that of liberty, the cause of all the strife.
Who now can say the gods these lower skies sustain ?
'Tis I, Prometheus, guide of men, the gods are vain !
Too much I love, to love too much is still my fate.
Behold then why the vulture is insatiate ;
And why, perhaps, upon this peak, twice deified,
By Jupiter's decree I have been crucified."
Jupiter has fallen, say the archangels ; the Eternal has
reconquered the skies. Prometheus for a time refuses to credit
the good. news. Suffering, and hope long deferred, render him
suspicious. Eaphael asks him if he is of those spirits who live
on illusions, who prefer their own dreams to all the gifts of
heaven, who, enamoured with the impossible, are displeased
with everything. Prometheus knows the evil, fears it is too
late, he has expected too much.
Then the archangels, in the name of their Father, deliver
him with a word. • His chains drop ; Prometheus rises by
degrees and remains motionless. Michel draws his bow and
slays the vulture.
/
2i6 EDGAR QUINET. j
Now Prometheus enters into a peace which he can hardly /
explain. The angels, to strengthen his faith, bid him listen to /
a distant muttering. It is the cry of the false gods, who are |
coming to entreat him to carry their prayer to the Eternal. \
III. /
The suppliant gods appear. Prometheus refuses their prayer.|
They ask that at least they may be permitted to exist as slavei
gods, with just room enough to crawl. Michel tells them thai
since Jehovah fills the universe, so that there is no abys
where He is not, there can be no place for them, and thef
must re-enter the nothing. They depart cursing the archangels,
and prophesying that a like fate will come to them.
Stanzas prom Choeds of ^Departing Gods. I
Earth's ancient masters pass away, I
Their winged coursers all are fled.
Their names are numbered with the dead,
And heaven's doors are closed for aye !
Happy the broom and mountain heath,
Arrayed in purple and in gold,
From age to age they ne'er grow old.
They wear each year their pristine wreath.
But to destroy divinest thrones.
To ever veil a godlike brow,
A human thought availeth now.
The sighs of men, their sobs or groans.
As day to day, dark night to dawn,
Spring to winter, joy to sorrow.
So each heaven has its morrow.
When priests and worshippers are gone.
In temples thick with autumn leaves.
In empty hearts where love is dry,
In minds that doubt without a sigh,
Its restless ghost for ages grieves.
O'er altars left alone,
O'er fallen stock and stone.
The tides will flow and ebb.
Or spider weave its web.
The morning star has set.
Life fades without regret,
Everywhere was light —
Everywhere is night.
PROMETHEUS DELIVERED. 217
From shoreless seas,
From stricken trees,
From dull, dark minds,
Borne on the winds.
Come useless cries
And mournful sighs.
The gods have fled, —
The gods are dead !
IV.
Prometlieus is left alone with the archangels ; the despairing
notes of the dying gods still ring in his ear ; he cannot get rid
of the thought that the same fate will one day befall his new
companions. They bid him cast aside doubt. He teUs them
sorrow everywhere gives birth to doubt, and asks them if they
are not afraid to take him to their heaven, lest there by chance
a drop should fall from his cup, stain their robes, and, the spot
always increasing, infernal doubt should fill heaven itself with
grief. Eaphael replies that they tread all fear under foot as
they would a serpent, and bidding Prometheus spread his wings,
they fly from heaven to heaven. Prometheus asks whither they
carry him, and the archangels reply to the bosom of Jehovah.
V.
The deliverance of Prometheus is finally celebrated by a
celestial concert, which opens with a chorus of seraphim.
The holocaust of time is o'er.
And we the lustral waters bring,
Now from the desert, fountains spring.
Let canticles of praises soar !
For now through grace has gained release
Another arid, broken heart.
The prey of doubt's devouring smart.
But now rejoicing in God's peace.
Thus the poor, captive soul, and blind,
Shall rise at last to skies unknown,
Since to the righteous light is sown.
Such must the Eternal Father find.
A seraphim asks when the groaning nations, bound to their
fiery Caucasus, shall be delivered. To which the chorus replies,
that every vulture of injustice must end by devouring itself ;
but they also promise that the Supreme Archer shall deliver the
future from the talons of the past.
Hesione appears ; she has come forth from a tomb. She
2i8 EDGAR QUI NET.
Titters some beautiful thoughts on the advantage of death, liken-
ing it to an invisible sculptor who has struck off from her soul
the memory of sorrow.
The chorus celebrate the resurrection. Such is the power of
life that even if a God were to bury himself He would be reborn.
Life may seem lost in the sand, to have perished with death,
but strike it with the rod of fire and God will burst forth as at
first. Yet to draw men out of a snare in a sacrilegious age, God
often hides Himself, and then, sudden as a lion, darts forth upon a
terrified universe. So, too, as an Eagle He remounts at times to
the higher heavens, the abode of spirits ; then the young of the
viper think He is dead, but in a moment, emerging from the
thundercloud. He strangles the brood in their nest.
So the chorus, in a final hymn, invoke the Eternal, beseech-
ing Him, as Eagle, Dove, or Lion, to come out of the clouds
that hide Him ; not to allow Himself any longer to be miscon-
ceived under vain images, nor to prolong the night, nor the
heavy chains which weigh on human hearts, but to come
speedily and permit His forehead to be crowned with joy.
( 219 )
CHAPTEE V.
PARIS, HEIDELBERG. I836-1838.
" Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like. this last, dim, weird battle of the west."
— Passing of Arthur.
Edgak Quinet was not twenty-one when lie attempted
a History of the Human Conscience and of Moral Per-
sonality. His object was to trace the gradual develop-
ment of the Individual through Time. This work was
never published, but his ideas on the subject come out
in various works, especially in his writings about
Herder. While admitting Herder's view of the perfec-
tion of the Universe as a system of progressive forces,
able to rise from the rudest to the highest manifesta-
tions, he conceived that the motive power which impelled
it was the struggle of the Infinite to escape its bounds.
This Infinite found itself most fully in man, the highest
form in nature. It drove him restlessly on, making him
that eternal traveller through the ages, unable to make
his final home in any empire, city, or civilisation.
Nothing can satisfy the Infinite within him, since it is
from the visible universe itself that that Infinite seeks
to escape.
Man realised this Infinite for the first time in the
Eevelation of the Universe by the first ray of light. As
the Universe disclosed itself, man found something in
himself which corresponded to the Universe, but was
not the Universe. He began thus to realise his dis-
tinctness from the Universe, but it was not until the
220 EDGAR QUINET.
Infinite had become overpowering in some individual
man that the first distinct break from nature was made,
and man set out on a separate career. The first effort
made, the race follow, and from the new order thus
created another Individual Will showed the way to the
next platform, and so on through the ages.
To Quinet the human race was a collection of indi-
viduals ; he refused to believe in the idea of an Universal
Being called man, as real a person as the Individual.
The Individual was his unit, and it was his opinion that
" all life, all greatness, as well as all misery, emanates
from the Individual." Not that he pushed his doctrine
of the will so far as to put it in opposition to a perfect
organisation of the universe, for he conceived that it
might even be possible to arrive at a science of human
wills showing that they too followed certain laws. But
this being admitted, nothing was more contrary to his
idea of all history and of all progress than to despoil the
individual in order to enrich the species. In the
attacks, therefore, made by the popular criticism of his
day on the great Individualities of History, he felt that
the very principle of all personality was involved.
It was this belief that seems to have moved him to
write a series of papers in 1 8 3 6, on the Epic poets, for
the " Eevue des Deux Mondes," in which he refutes the
Homeric theories of Wolf and those on early Eoman
history advanced byMebuhr, and which no doubt had much
to do with the adverse criticism he subsequently published
of Strauss's " Life of Jesus." His work on the Epic poets
is of course not confined to the theories of Wolf and
Niebuhr ; but as it is these portions of his work that best
illustrate his views, and, at this particular period to
which we have arrived, appear to be the next links in
the chain, I shall dwell on them chiefly in the fallowing
sketch of his articles on the Epic poets.
ON THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY. 221
THE GEEEK EPOS— HAS HOMER EVER LIVED t
"The question of the existence of Homer," he commences
by remarking, " is not a mere amusement for the curious ; on
the contrary, it contains the whole origin of poetry. No system
of literary criticism can dispense with a solution of this enigma.
Eor, according as that solution is determined in one sense or
another, the very foundations of Art are changed ; 'whatever is
admitted as regards Homer, can be applied to other names and
to other times ; and can become by extension the rule of the
Epic ; so that this question is one rather of a general law than
of a particular accident." He then proceeds to trace the rise of
the question, and to place before his readers Wolf's hypothesis,
and the arguments by which he supports it. Finally, he says,
having run through all its phases, the new hypothesis was
obliged to pull up, its difficulties being found insurmountable.
The question then returns, How have the Homeric poems
been composed 1 It is clear that before reaching us they have
passed through a number of vicissitudes. Then having re-
ferred to the various agencies through which the poems have
been transmitted, he says ; —
Now, if we imagine the alterations of all kinds to which
these poems must have been submitted in passing through so
many hands, instead of being astonished at their want of
harmony in some parts, we shall rather wonder that such
incoherences are not more numerous.
If the Iliad and the Odyssey are really only a collection of
the works of several poets made by Pisistratus, then we must
say Pisistratus was himself the greatest and most incompre-
hensible of all these poets. For to unite a number of fragments
of this,, sort in such a manner as to produce an illusion of
beauty, so perfect as to mislead the judgment of Antiquity,
required more genius than has ever been attributed to Homer
himself. Moreover, if the works of Homer are such a collection,
how is it that we have only the two episodes of the Iliad and
the Odyssey, when in the times of the Alexandrians it appears
that there was a series of poems embracing all the traditions of
the Trojan war ? How was it that Antiquity had only eyes and
ears for those attributed to Homer ; why did Pisistratus, if he
wished to make one complete whole of the traditions of the
war, abandon them all for the two poems of the Iliad and the
Odyssey? What makes it more strange is that these two
poems are foreign to the local traditions of Athens. What can
explain such a selection except his agreement with the general
opinion of antiquity, that these poets of the Homeric cycle all
languish at the feet of Homer ?
222 EDGAR QUINET.
The diflSoulty from wliich tlie doutt mainly proceeds is, that
these poems of Homer are too long to have been produced with-
out writing. But it is forgotten that song being an element
inseparable from poetry in Antiquity, it answered as a means of
preservation to writing in the Middle Age, and printing in this.
We are too apt to imagine these old poets according to the
fashion of our own day, gloomily hiding their secret until it was
finished. Far from this, they were never separated from the
people ; scarcely had they uttered a rhapsody before it was
caught up by a thousand voices and published to the world.
Thus the Homeric poems were indeed composed in fragments,
each fragment becoming in itself a public tradition to which
the poet himself recurred when he wished to refresh his
memory. In this sense Vico's idea that the Iliad and the
Odyssey were the work of the Greqk people may be admitted.
The poet invented, the people recollected. One was the voice,
the other the echo. The entire people of Greece, — this was
the book always open, in which the poet wrote day by day his
imperishable work.
In this manner the Koran was published ; and in modern
times there have been poets, Beranger for instance, whose poems
could have been thus preserved without the aid of writing or
printing.
It is not doubted by any one now that "Wolf put the origin of
writing in Greece at too recent a date ; but apart from that,
there was in the institution of the rhapsodists a guarantee for
the preservation of the works of the poet. They learned the
Homeric poems just as a profession is learned in the present day.
The memory of the lines was a family heritage. The rivalry of
the singers helped to preserve the text ; for each made it his
pride not only to declaim better than his competitors, but to
possess the finest, most complete, most correct version.
But how, it is asked, could the rhapsodists find audiences
capable of listening to such long poems ? It is not necessary
to suppose that they ever sung an epic through in one day.
Poetry with the ancients was a necessary condition of life ; their
interest in it was inexhaustible. I have seen in the Morea a
Klephte who continued to recite during a whole spring, at the
same place, the popular songs of modern Greece, his audience
never failing him ; and again, on the Mole at Naples, impro-
visatores, who carry on their profession the whole year round,
never finishing their story in one day, but sometimes keeping it
up for a week, the crowd assembling in advance, undeterred by
wind or sun. If, then, we only suppose in the ancient Greeks
the same poetic curiosity that we find now in Southern Europe
amongst the ragged lazzaroni, the rhapsodist might easily have
ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME. 223
recited a thousand lines in a day, and hardly more than a month
would have been necessary for him to get through the whole of
the poems of Homer.
These poems are clearly bom of the popular inspiration, but
they wear the crown and bear the seal of a studied art. And
not only does Homer belong to cultured poetry, but everything
demonstrates that a long tradition of art existed before him.
His predecessors will remain for ever unknown. Doubtless
there were great poets among them, but Homer's grandeur con-
sists in his having absorbed into his work their passed glories,
just as Ferdousi, the Persian poet, has gathered up in himself
all the traditions that preceded him.
Thus the Iliad and the Odyssey do not come at the beginning
of the life of the Greek people ; they are rather the testament
of a past epoch, a monument that closes a forgotten antiquity.
Their most striking characteristic is that they for ever seal and
consecrate the unity of the Greek people. No scattered songs,
without arrangement or plan, could have produced this miracle.
Had the poems emanated solely from the people, they would
have reflected the tumultuous genius of the Greek states ; we
should have had rhapsodies Dorian and Ionian, the aristocracy
struggling with the democracy, a poetry of contrasts, but not
the poetry of Homer. After Orpheus, Homer was the Moses of
the Greek world, leading them out of Chaos into Unity.
THE EAELY HISTOET OF EOME— EEFUTATION
OF NIEBUHE'S SYSTEM.
Sixteen years after the hypotheses of Wolf had appeared they
were applied stiU more brilliantly to Eoman history by Mebuhr,
a man who to ardour of proselytism added such gravity, such
heroism of intelligence, that it is very difficult for his adver-
saries to pronounce his name without veneration — in intellect,
soul, and imagination, a true Northern. He belonged to that
period when Germany struggled, the sword in one hand, the
trowel in the other. He was in everything a noble, a coura-
geous, an implacable enemy.
He published the first part of his Eoman History in 181 1.
It is important to remember this, because it was just the epoch
when the Songs of the Nations had suddenly obtained unex-
pected importance. The air was full of these national melodies
— Spanish romances, Scotch and Irish ballads, Tyrolese, Eussian,
Servian songs. Above all, it was the reign of the Nibelun-
genlied. Under the influence of this state of literary opinion,
Niebuhr conceived his theory of the early history of Eome.
224 EDGAR QUINET.
This at least explains how he came to transport the harp of
Siegfried into the Pomerium of the Latins, and how it was
that he came to attribute the ideal genius of the Scandinavians
and the poetic instinct of the Burgundians to the common
people of Rome.
Quinet then proceeds to relate the process by which Niebuhr
destroyed the credit of early Roman annals, and how he resolved
what had been supposed to be veritable history into the lays of
Romulus, of Tarpeia, of ISTuma, of Ancus, of Servius, of Lucretia,
and of Tarquin, poems completed many centuries after the
events had happened, being sometimes of popular, sometimes of
aristocratic origin.
" In considering," Quinet then goes on to say, " this hypothesis
of a plebeian epic, the first question that occurs is. By what
organs it had been expressed, and by what means has it been
transmitted and perpetuated ? If in Rome the national memo-
rials bad been transmitted by means of song, there would have
been a class analogous to the Greek rhapsodists, families devoted
to the work as a profession ; but we find no trace of such a class,
and nothing at all like what we find amongst the modems, —
bards, minstrels, meistersdnger. Far from this, the very name
of poet is wanting in this language of patron and client ; they
know at first only the prophet and the diviner, vates. But,
supposing the poet to have existed by some other name, we
should at least expect to find that the profession tbat had pre-
served the annals of the city would be treated with honour.
But we find that when the poet is first spoken of he is regarded
with contempt as a mere stage-player, a parasite. Cato re-
proaches a proconsul for having connected himself with such
an one, and that one was the great Ennius himself. These are
singular contradictions in a society which owed all to the poet.
The sole foundation upon which the theory rests are a few
words of Cato in his work "Origines," in which it appears that
he mentioned the custom in old times to sing verses during meals
in praise of the virtue of great men. But this tradition proves
nothing beyond the existence of some table-songs, which might
have been only copies from the Greeks and not of popular
origin. In the frugal society of the early Romans, it is not
likely that they indulged in anything more than a war-song, a
sacred prayer, or a funeral dirge ; slow rhapsodies at a banquet
of Cincinnatus are more than one can imagine.
It is nothing to the purpose to say that the first three
centuries of Roman history are fuU of the marvellous. The
marvellous is not necessarily conveyed by poetry. Moreover,
under fabulous accessories very real history is often conveyed.
During the war between Turkey and Greece any one might
ROMAN GENIUS NOT POETIC. 225
have seen a mythology in process of being born. To nearly
all the patriot leaders, superhuman actions have been attri-
buted. They were said to have conversed with their sabres,
with the river that they crossed, or the mountain they
ascended ; the very birds, with their golden wings, spoke to
them in a magical language. According to the tradition, one
alone among them has accomplished prodigies which would
suffice for a whole army.
Now I have seen with my eyes and touched with my hands
these men, and know that they are beings within the scope of
reason ; but if we allow Niebuhr's line of argument, we ought
to conclude that they only exist in virtue of a poem invented
by popular pride.
But if, leaving these extrinsic considerations, I examine tlie
reigns of the seven kings of Eome, not only do I fail to per-
ceive about them this character of popular poetry, but I find
something quite the contrary. A judicial genius is much more
evident than a poetic and spiritualistic genius. This sad
Roman people is fonder of writing than singing. Annals, com-
mentaries, a fecial ^ law, a Papirian law, writings on the bark of
the ruminal fig-tree ; are these the things to be found about the
cradle of a rhapsodist 1
It does not follow. because the Capitol was burnt that all
tradition was destroyed, since no one denies that several monu-
ments of the old time were saved from the flames, and one
would have been enough to prevent the merely arbitrary in
tradition. Besides, popular songs cannot be re-made three or
four centuries after the event. Written books may be falsified
at any moment, but it is otherwise with the popular song ;
time alone alters, develops, transforms it, but not at a single
stroke, or for the benefit of another age. And if this popular
legend had arisen, would the priestly body have so lost all
memorials of the past as not to be able to correct it? As
history is preserved from confusion concerning the characters
of Attila and Charlemagne by the monastic chronicles, so there
would have been some contradiction to the popular legend in
the annals of the Eoman pontiffs.
No, Rome has not risen from the earth, like the cities of
Greece, to the sound of the flute ; a ruder origin has prepared it
for a more austere manhood. The Eoman plebeian has not
wandered, like the Siegfried of the Nibelungen, in a vague
country to the song of the swans on the Rhine, or the sound ot
the harps of the Valkyries. He is a debtor in the hands of a
1 Feciales among the ancient Romans were a college of priests whose duty
it was to declare war or make peace.
P
226 EDGAR QUINBT.
creditor, a jurisconsult, a Gaius, a Papirius, not a Homer. If
lie stammers out a poem, it is a litany of labourers, or of arval
priests, or rather some shred of the horrible poem of the twelve
tables, lex horrendi carminis. The patrician rules, the secret name
of the city, the ceremonies, the ruses, the dramatic spectacle of
the laws ; this rather than ideal adventures excited the imagina-
tion of the Eoman, and early enchained his materialistic spirit.
At three leagues from the city was the enemy. Slavery pre-
vailed within and without. We must either, therefore, suppose
that the patricians sung at their banquets songs composed
against themselves, or that the people in secret made and pre-
served their poems, and that in a masterly manner : it is
difficult to say which hypothesis is least admissible. More-
over, if the plebeians in a barbarous age could produce this
poetry, how is it that it disappeared in a moment ; how is it
that not the least fragment of an attempt to imitate it has been
found ; and how is it that when the patrician poets, formed on
the Greek models, began to appear, that there was no struggle
between the two schools ?
You cannot, in fact, find the least trace of the popular song
in Roman poetry. The most ancient of all the Roman poets
commences with a translation of the Odyssey. After him
Nsevius and especially Ennius, in relating the most familiar
histories of old Rome, are under the yoke of Euripides ; ascend
higher and you find priestly liturgies, but no rhapsodies, no
heroic poems, no epic.
To give birth 'to a series of poems, a people is needed who
enjoy a certain degree of idleness or poetic liberty ; like that
of the German in the Hercynian forest, or of the Gael in his
clan, or of the Arab in the desert, or of the troubadour in his
joyous home in Provence. To reduce, on the one hand, the
rights and moral personality of the Eoman plebeians to such a
degree as to make them a sort of pariahs or outlaws, and then to
attribute to such a people that most manifest result of an
enthusiastic sentiment of existence, the epic and heroic poem,
is a contradiction that cannot long be maintained.
These papers on Greek and Latin poetry are carried
on historically much farther. Quinet traces the decline
of the Homeric inspiration in Greek poetry. He shows
how imitation was the rule of Latin poetry. Its lirst
poets copied the Greeks, the later ones copying those of
the Augustan period. There was no growth, and in its
decline it showed how different it was to the modern
genius, since it had no sense of the interior evils of men
ARTHURIAN AND CARLO VINGIAN ROMANCES. 227
or of the country. His writings on the Epopees of the
Middle Ages are even more interesting than on those of
Greece and Eome. For here, instead of battling with
popular theories, he simply has to give the results of his
own researches.
He devotes separate chapters to the poems of the Arthurian
and Carlovingian cycles, contrasting the religious character of
the former with the heroic and feudal character of the latter.
He commences with a reference to that eternal fount of poetry
which rose again with the Christ. Christian Art, as Christian
Society, was born in a tomb. What poetry has since been
thrown over everything, even over the ruins of the pagan mytho-
logy ! By the twelfth century a new society had come into
existence — a new society and a new poetry. For at that time
compositions of thirty, forty, and even a thousand lines broke
out in the new-born dialects. What thus enchanted the land of
barbarism ; what thus set free the tongue of the mute peoples 1
Christianity in alliance with feudalism. He points out how
these poems contain no allusion to the events which were
happening in the age in which they Were written, although
those events included the Crusades, the Albigensian wars, and
the siege of Constantinople, and poetic personages such as
Innocent III., Coeur de Lion, and Dandolo. "This," he says,
" proves irresistibly that men are never struck with the poetry
that develops under their own eyes." Their own age is always
prosaic compared with some earlier period. He traces the
gradual change from the intensely religious tone of the earlier
romances to their worldly character in the later, showing how,
from the absorbing Ideal of Divine Love, from the pursuit of
Wisdom and Holiness, they sank to the romance of human
passion ; and he attributes this change to a change in dogma,
to the Apotheosis of Woman in the person of Mary. The
hymns of this epoch, the Ave Regina and the Salve Mater, begin
to take the place of the Psalms of Jehovah, the Madonna of
Italy to be substituted for the sad images of the Christ of the
catacombs. In place of the quest of the Holy Graal, the poems
are filled with adorable phantoms, a series of beautiful creations
of female character.
The German poems, however, still preserve the pious tone 'of
the originals. This is especially true of the " Titurel," in which
poem, at once gigantic and childlike, Quinet finds a flow of
adoring Love that seems but a variation of the famous stanza of
St. Francis of Assisi on Divine Love.
In his chapter on the poems of the Carlovingian cycle, he
228 EDGAR QUINET.
remarks that their subject was the struggle between Christianity
and Mohammedanism. The Ilion of the troubadours was the
Catholic civilisation. Although they completely distort the
character of the hero around whom they gather, they yield
perfect pictures of feudal life, and in giving the genius of the age
in which they were written, are more true than history. That
genius he describes as " the spirit of untamed force, the lofty
pride which seized man in the solitude of donjons, from whence
he saw nature at his feet, prostrate and bound to labour for him.
A poetry not of Olympian eagles, but of the kites and sparrow-
hawks of Gaul."
Finally, he dwells on the splendid opportunity there was for
a great poet in the twelfth century, who, out of these scattered
poems, and with such a subject, might have made a grand epic :
but, probably for the good of the world, such a man did not
appear ; besides, with the rise of the third estate, a new public
was created that felt little interest in poems in which it had
only played the roll of serf.
The foregoing views of Quinet on great poems and
great individualities prepare the way for his treatment
of the most important question of the age, or of any age,
— the Authenticity of the Gospels, and the reality of the
Existence and Character of Jesus Christ.
In 1835 Strauss published his "Life of Jesus," critically
treated. Three years afterwards Edgar Quinet published a
criticism of the work. In the preface to the edition of 1857,
he connects the effort to turn the Gospel narratives into a myth
with that made to efface Homer, and he expresses his strong
conviction of the importance of great individualities in sustain-
ing the reason, the intelligence, and virtue of the human race.
That he felt the issues to be infinitely the most im-
portant yet approached by the new criticism, none will
doubt after reading " Ahasuerus," " Prometheus," and this
Examination. We recall here those terrible forebodings
in the preface to "Ahasuerus," in which the poet feels a
dark Horror approaching his bedside and putting its icy
hand on his heart. " Can you sleep ? " he says. " As for
me, I watch and wait ! From the bottom of our souls
we already feel what is going to happen. That nothing
is already something which makes us pant with terror.
ON STRA USS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 229
We see it, we touch it, although the world is still un-
aware of it." And, again, the startling Epilogue in which
Eternity engulfs all things, and there is no hope save
through a dread future, in which Jesus is to pass through
Death to a new Incarnation, a new Passion, a new Acel-
dama. We rememher that this was all published a year
before Strauss's book had appeared, and when he was
hardly known even in Germany. We remember all this,
and are constrained to exclaim with the students of the
College of France : The Prophet ! the Prophet !
As the years rolled on the worst forebodings of Quinet
were fuUy realised. In 1872 Strauss published "The
Old Faith and the New," in which he openly joins the
crowd who mocked at Jesus as he hung upon the cross,'^
and denied both the existence of God and a life after
death. Ai;id this, he intimates, is by no means the
bottom of the abyss, as he claims to be optimist com-
pared with Schopenhauer, the philosopher at present most
popular in Germany.
In the condensation given of these criticisms in the
next few pages, the reader must bear in mind that they
refer to Strauss's first book on the subject.
EXAMINATION OF THE "LIFE OF JESUS."
The questions recently raised by German theology do not
merely imply the denial of the supernatural in Revelation ;
they spring from quite another order of thoughts, one for which
we have no exact expression in French, so that the first difficulty
in treating the question is to define its object. It can only he
done by showing the way in which it has come into existence.
The great effect of Dr. Strauss's work is owing to the fact
that it is the mathematical consequence of all the works pro-
duced beyond the Khine during the last fifty years. Each
author has brought a stone to build this sorrowful sepulchre,
and now Germany is quaking and recoiling at its own work.
When the German philosophy replaced that of the eighteenth
century, it was thought that what Voltaire had destroyed Kant
1 "The Old Faith and the New," translated by Mathilda Blind, p. 90.
230 ■ EDGAR QUINET.
and Goethe would restore. The result has been quite the oppo-
site, and we now see the philosophies of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries embracing each other over the ruins of the
same faith.
For if we trace the course of modern German philosophy, we
shall see it always tending to this issue. According to Kant,
the sacred writings were but a series of moral allegories, a sort
of popular commentary on the law of duty. Christ was only an
ideal in the conscience of Humanity. The resurrection being
left out of this imaginary Christianity, there remained nothing
but a religion of death, a Gospel of pure reason, an abstract Jesus
without cradle or sepulchre. Later on, pantheism undermined
more and more the old banks of orthodoxy. According to the
half mystic, half sceptic school of Schelling, the Gospel revela-
tion was only an incident in the eternal revelation of God in
Nature and History. Finally, Hegel saw no more in Chris-
tianity than an idea, of which the religious value is independent
of the testimonies of tradition ; which comes to the same thing
as saying that the moral principle of the Gospel is divine even
if its historical basis is uncertain.
But the man who, above all others, has affected modern
German thought is Spinosa. His spirit is at the bottom of all
its poetry, criticism, philosophy, theology. In his treatise on
Theology, and in his letters from Oldenburg, may be discovered
the germ of all the propositions sustained later on in German
exegesis. He is the author of the idea of interpreting the Bible
according to natural phenomena. " AU," he said, " related in the
revealed books happened conformably to the laws of nature."
It would require the pen of the author of the " Provinciales "
to give an adequate impression of the absurd results produced in
Biblical history by the school which formed its system on this
principle. The shapeless skeleton of Christianity it produced
did not long retain its hold on German thought.
To convert Germany to doubt, a system was necessary which
hid scepticism under faith, made a long round to reach its object,
bent on imagination, on poetry, and on spirituality, seemed to
transfigure while it rejected, to build while it destroyed, to affirm
while it denied.
All these characteristics are found in the system of allegorical
interpretation, or, to speak in the language of the severiteenth'
century, in the method by which the mystical sense is sub-
stituted for the literal. The introduction of this system into
the Church is chiefly due to Origen ; it dominated throughout
the Middle Age, and even had a powerful influence over Pascal
and Fto^lon. The axiom of the method is, " The letter kiUeth,
but the Spirit giveth life ; " but the danger is that the Spirit
ON STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 231
may so increase as finally to kill and entirely substitute itself
for the letter. In 1790 Eichorn only admits the first chapter
of Genesis as emhlematic. In 1 803 Bauer extended the prin-
ciple, in his Mythology of the Bible, to the whole of the Old
Testament. Very quickly the system leaps over these bounds
and is applied to the New. All that relates to angels, demons,
or miracles is thus explained; after a time the narratives of
the Infancy of Jesus are treated in a similar manner; finally,
nothing is left but his birth and ascension, and these at last
are metamorphosed into fables.
Here, again, we see the influence of Spinosa. He had said,
" I accept according to the letter the passion, death, and burial
of Christ, but the resurrection allegorically." This principle
set afloat, there was very soon not a moment of the life of Christ
which was not metamorphosed into symbol, or emblem, or type,
or myth by some theologian or other. Every one used it, satis-
fied that at the worst they were only giving up the mortal part
of Christianity, while they the better preserved that which was
essential — the soul of the doctrine. An instance of what is
meant may be found in Hegel's Lessons on Religion, where
he speaks of analysing the Son.
Thus these divines accomplished in Germany, with perfect
tranquillity of conscience, what in France was the work of philo-
sophers. Each day they effaced a word of the Bible, but with
the least possible disquietude as to what in the end would
become of their faith. However, Schleiermacher, the greatest
among them, had a presentiment that a crisis was at hand.
To this system of substituting the letter for the spirit was
joined habits of criticism imbibed from the study of profane
antiquity. Heathen wisdom was so much exalted that it was
easy to confound it with the wisdom of the Gospel. If Chris-
tianity was ancient mythology in embryo, Christianity itself was
a perfected mythology. Moreover, the ideas of Wolf on the
Iliad, and Niebuhr on Ancient Eome, were soon applied to the
Bible. The denial of the personality of Homer naturally led to
the denial of the personality of Moses.
De Wette is the first to enter this path. According to him
the Pentateuch contains no more truth than the Greek epics.
As the Iliad and the Odyssey were the works of the rhapsodists,
the Pentateuch, with the exception of the Decalogue, was the
continued and anonymous work of the priesthood. He urges
that his method should be applied to the New Testament.
Others carried the same sort of criticism farther, depriving
Moses not only of the authorship of the Pentateuch, but of the
Decalogue and of the idea of the Unity of God. Finally, the
God of Moses shares the same fate as Moses himself.
232 EDGAR QUINET.
The only relief in the midst of this universal negation is that
the critic who denies one book wiU defend another. Every
hypothesis gives itself out as a truth acquired by science until
another hypothesis equally clever comes to overturn it. And
so each theologian in turn casts away a page of the Bible.
The strange ardour of these clergymen to sacrifice the body and
the letter of their belief recalls that night of the Constitueiit
Assembly, when one aristocrat after another came forward to
bum his patent of nobility.
After treating the Old Testament thus, it was not to lie
expected the critics would stop at the New. To explain tlie
literal agreement of the synoptists there were theories upon
theories, ending in a tendency to deny that they were ocukr
witnesses, and to admit them only as expressions, more or less
vague, of tradition. The debate at last seemed to concentrate
itself on the authenticity of St. John. " This is henceforth the
great question for us," said Dr. Strauss to me, after a long coii-
versation on these matters.
IL
" The Life of Jesus " was, then, exactly the work that might
have been expected from the bent of things. Though obscurely
published, the sensation it caused was so alarming, that the
Prussian Government, contrary to their wont, consulted the
clergy on its suppression. Neander, deputed to answer, declared
that though the book attacked all his beliefs, he would not have
its liberty interfered with, as discussion was the sole judge of
truth and error.
How was it that, in a land full of theological novelties, this
book disconcerted the most audacious? Because, as before
stated, it was the legitimate consequence of all that had been
going on for half a century. The author brought together for
the first time the most contradictory doctrines and schools —
materialism, spiritualism, mysticism ; the admirers of symbols,
of explanations, natural, figurative, or dogmatic ; of visions, of
animal magnetism, of allegories, of etymologies — and expounding
them, placing them in difficulties, and breaking them up one by
the other, he forced them all, by an untiring dialectic, to the
same conclusion. Tearing down the metaphysical veil which
threw a haze over these doctrines, he led the question to the
simplest terms ; so that every one saw uncovered for the first
time the extent of the destruction accomplished. Like Mark
Antony, he raised the robe of Csesar. All could see the wounds
that had been made in the dark.
From the pantheism of the modern schools. Dr. Strauss bor-
ON STRA USS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 233
rows the art of depreciating and diniinisliing historic indivi-
dualities. All personal existence annoys him, and seems a
■usurpation. Thus, while he does not totally deny the existence
of Jesus, he reduces that existence to a shadow. Jesus, he
admits, was baptized by John, gathered together disciples, and
succumbed in the end to the hatred of the Pharisees. This,
joined to a few details, is the sole basis on which, according to
him, men have built up the life of Christ.
His theory is that the people of Palestine, under the influence
of the Messianic hope, clothed by degrees the true form of Jesus
with all the characteristic features attached to that hope in the
Old Testament ; popular tradition, accepting as real the actions
which were there attributed to the coming Christ, fashioning,
increasing, correcting, rendering divine the person of Jesus of
Nazareth, after the type conceived by the prophets.
Quinet then proceeds to give a very careful analysis of
Strauss's criticisms. Of his method he says, it resembles
that of Voltaire and the English school; of his style he
says, it is cold, hard, and geometric. And nothing seems
to astonish him more than the tranquil way Strauss
proceeds with a work which, if successful, would prove
one of the saddest ever effected. Yet for fifteen hundred
pages, and in the same tone in which he might treat of
an interpolation in Homer or in Pindar, he disputes with
the Christ his cradle and his sepulchre, leaving him only
his cross.
Quinet's candour, as a polemic, may be judged by the
remark with which he concludes a most careful analysis
of this now famous work. He declares that it would be
most unfair to judge of the book by his account of it.
The spirit of a work cannot thus be reproduced in a few
lines. Nor is it possible for me to do justice to the author's
many fine qualities. He has rendered the painful service of
probing and laying bare the sensitive wound of our time with
more vigour, logic, and intrepidity than any one else ; and he
has done this work so perfectly, that indifference itself has
started up from its couch and uttered a cry of pain.
With a desire like his own to keep to the truth, I must
recognise that it is clear that his system is conceived in advance
and not necessarily born of the facts ; but that, determined to
compel everything to support it, he has not allowed himself to
234 EDGAR QUINET.
he turned aside by any obstacle, so tliat, drawn on by a logical
intolerance almost amounting to fanaticism, he emulates witli
perfect sang froid tbe exterminating spirit of Dupuis and
Yolney.
Anotber objection I make is, that the author's book-know-
ledge is so prodigious as to stifle every sentiment of reality. In
this absolute negation of all life, you are tempted to question
yourself, to know if your most personal impressions, if your
breath and your soul are not by chance a copy of some wander-
ing text of the book of fate, and if you may not one day find
your own existence unexpectedly contested as a plagiarism on
some unheard-of history.
However naturally a story springs from the ordinary course
of things, Dr, Strauss declares that it contains no historical
truth, and can only be a myth. But thus to measure Nature
and Thought on the bed of Procrustes is to weaken and destroy
them both. To accept the impressions of an inert society only
so far as they accord with those which would be made iu the
present day, is a strange limitation of the human heart. Are
we quite sure that we are living within the bounds of every-
thing possible ? doctor ! how many miracles pass in souls
which book-knowledge wiU never teach us. What enthusiasm,
what love, what revolutions occur beyond even the ken of our
greatest masters ! And in them men are taught things which
they could not learn from all the libraries in the world.
For example, our author, noting how, with a word, Jesus is
said to have captivated his apostles, makes this apparently
judicious reflection : first, that it is strange that the Christ
should not have wished to prove them ; second, that it is in-
credible that they should have been willing to quit their houses
and families and to follow him, without having learnt more of
him by experience, — objections which he considers supported
by the manifest contradiction between this easy obedience and
the doubt into which they subsequently faU. For this and
other reasons he considers the calling of the apostles a symbo-
lical story forged thirty years later in imitation of Elijah calling
his servant Elisha.
But why, I ask, ascribe to imitation and pharisaic erudition
what is so natural ? Who does not see, on the one hand, the
authority of Jesus, the power in bis looks, in his voice, in his
mysterious word; and on the other, the fishermen under the
power of that word carried away, subjugated, fascinated by the
greatness which had appeared in their midst? Is it in any
other fashion that enthusiasm lays hold of souls, or that men
give themselves to one another 1 Is it not by a sudden rapture,
by an unreflecting transport, by an entire abandonment of itself
ON STRA USS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 235
to the ■will, the looks, the thought of another, rather than, as
the German doctor supposes, by slow and successive experiences
of the superiority of the master ? Who has not known examples
of this kind, not only in public but in private life, even the
most obscure, where a day or an hour, or even less, rarely passes
without its being lit up by one of these wonderful illumina-
tions ?
Is it experience, is it temporising which effects these miracles
of friendship, of heroism? Is it not rather the work of a
supreme moment in which all is lost or gained ? " The disciples
have doubted shortly after," you say. Another proof that you
are here in the domain of truth, of reality, of history. What
more natural than falling away after excess of enthusiasm?
These are traits invented neither by poetic tradition nor mytho-
logy. It is men, not myths, we have met here.
To such an extent has this enthusiasm been experienced and
proved to be real, that, for my own part, I cannot read this
beginning of the Gospel without hearing once again the echo of
that most real voice, saying to us as it did to the fishermen of
Galilee : " Else up and walk, go ye into all the world." It is
the Fiat Lux in the genesis of Christianity ; the movement that
originates all the others. At this word you see the disciples
rise up and compel the old society to move before them, the
Roman Empire in its turn rise up and obey the impulsion, then
the Church, then the councils, then the Papacy, then the
Eeformation, and so this movement propagates itself from age
to age, from generation to generation, until without one inter-
mission it reaches us.
Another example. I choose it because it furnishes an excel-
lent abridgment of the accustomed method of the author. It
is the scene of the temptation. Strauss begins by showing the
difficulties, the improbabilities, the fictions which are found in
the accounts of the evangelists : a fast of forty days, the appari-
tion of the devil in a palpable form, Jesus transported to a pinnacle
of the temple, then on to a mountain from whence he sees all the
kingdoms of the world, the legion of angels who bring him food
from heaven. In dealing with the natural explanations hitherto
given of these circumstances, Strauss has the best of it ; he proves
that the scene is neither a vision, a dream, nor a parable.
This refutation eifected, he opens the Old Testament. He
finds there all the traits of the scene related by the" New.
Moses, Elijah fasting forty days in the desert ; Satan tempting
the people, who call themselves the Sons of God, forty years in
the desert ; the angels bringing Elijah food ; and he asks, Are
not these the models from which, later on. Christian tradition
copied its story of the temptation ?
236 EDGAR QUINET.
Complete as this analysis seems, it is wanting in a most
important point, — a consideration of the interior life of Christ.
Jesus comes to receive baptism. He publishes for the first
time his mission. About to reveal himself, he gathers up his
strength in the desert. Who can know the pangs, the struggles,
the inward enemies that assailed this new Jacob wrestling with
an unknown angel ? Before declaring war with all visible nature,
before casting humanity into the future as a world into a new
orbit, who knows if the revealer ^ did not hesitate in his own
heart ; if the entire past did not spread itself out before him as
a snare ; if the mute universe, clothing itself in borrowed
splendour, did not by a hundred voices call upon him, instead
of struggling with it, to prostrate himself before it and to adore
it ; if, borne on the wings of his thoughts to the pinnacle of the
temple and on the holy hill, he did not from thence behold, on
the one hand, the kingdoms of the world with their peoples
bowing down and submissive, on the other, the immeasurable
empire of minds with ever-suffering love, and the cross of Cal-
vary in place of the sceptre of Judah t Who knows if in this
moment he did hot feel in advance the bloody sweat of Geth-
semane, and if, in the height of all this anguish, he had not
already cried out at the sight of the earth risen up against him :
" My Father, my Father, why hast Thou forsaken me ? "
If the doubt could approach him then, there most assuredly
was Satan on his throne of darkness. Thus this history is by
no means so illusory as is pretended. On the contrary, it would
depict that which was most private, that is to say, most real, in
the life of Jesus. Eecovered from this deadly depression, the
inward light reappears. The heavens re-open. From this
moment until Calvary the Christ regains possession of himself.
Legions of angels descend into his heart. They finish by
strengthening with heavenly nourishment his spirit fatigued
with the combat. In all this, where is the impossible ? Where is
the imitation 1 Where is the fable ? And how can we have an
idea of the Gospel if we do not see in it a continual transfigura^
tion of the inner history and of the thoughts of Christ ?
How many other questions remain to be thus more closely
examined : if, for instance, the epoch of Christ was a likely one
for the invention of a mythology ? in what way the science of
Alexandria could control imagination in Jerusalem t And this
question would lead to an inquiry into the critical spirit of the
Eoman world : if thirty years is sufficient for the establishment
of an entirely fabulous tradition ; if the tone of the canonical
books is not quite distinct from that of the apocryphal ; if the
1 The revelation of thia experience could only have been made by him who
endured it.
ON STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 237
Acts of tlie Apostles does not present similar narratives to those
of the Gospels ; if in the latter the parables are not expressly-
separated from the narrative, showing that the evangelists
observed the demarcation between allegory and history ; if the
preface to St. Luke, so reasonable, methodic, and philosophic,
looks like the preface to a collection of myths ; finally, if the
Epistles of St. Paul do not bear such an imprint of reality that
their witness casts a strong light on the preceding epoch ; their
author being a man so like ourselves, pleading for the truth and
historic integrity of the very persons Strauss attacks.
With regard to the comparison between the Gospels and the
poems of popular origin, I accept it and say : Charlemagne has
been transfigured by the imaginations of the Middle Age ; but
under the fable was hidden history ; under the fiction of the
twelve paladins is the author of the Capitularies, the conqueror
of the Saxons, the legislator and warrior. How then can there
be but a shadow under the traditions of the apostles ?
III.
Those who go far into this examination must be struck with
the strange fact that Christianity is an effect without a cause.
How is it possible that this despoiled figure of the Christ, this
shadow of which no appreciable vestige remains, can have
dominated the world? I see the moral universe overturned,
but the moving power escapes me. If in the New Testament
there is no originating force, from whence comes this powerful
life? If the New Law is nothing but a reproduction of the
Old ; if the miracle of the renewal of the world has never been
accomplished, what do we here ; how is it we are not stdl
within the walls of the ancient city.
- The personal grandeur of Christ is better demonstrated by the
movement and spirit of the times which have succeeded him
than by the Gospels themselves. If I knew nothing of the
Scriptures, and had never heard the name of Jesus, I must
always have thought that some extraordinary impulsion took
place in the world about the time of the Caesars. Wlience
came this impulsion and its wonderful results ?
"When Strauss says that he regards the invention of the
compass and of steam-boats as of more importance than the
cure of a few poor sick folk in GalUee, he is evidently the dupe
of his own reasoning ; for he knows as well as I do that the
miracle of Christianity is not there, but rather in the great
marvel of Humanity, cured of the evil of slavery, of the leprosy
of caste, of the blindness of pagan sensuality, able to rise up and
carry its bed far away from the old world. He knows that the
238 EDGAR QUINBT.
■wonder of Christianity is not so mucli in water having been
changed into wine, as in a world changed by a single thought,
in the sudden transfiguration of the old law, in the casting off
the old man, in the empire of the Csesars struck with stupor, in
the conquest of the conquering barbarians, in giving birth to a
Eeformation that brought all its dogmas into discussion, to a
Philosophy that denied them, to a French Eevolution that
sought to kill it, while it only served to realise it more com-
pletely than ever. These are the miracles by which Christianity
appeals to us.
What ! this incomparable originality of Christ nothing but a
perpetual imitation of the past ; the most wonderfully new
character in all history a man perpetually occupied in forming
himself, or, as some later critics say, in posing after the figures
of the ancient prophets !
And supposing the evangelists do contradict each other, after
all it is only on accessory points ; they all agree in the character
of Jesus Christ himself. How absurd to suppose that this
harmonious character is the result of a confused mingling of
thoughts springing up from all kinds of races, creeds, and
institutions that this vague multitude should aU join in the
same ideal, and that ideal should be a character conspicuous for
its unity and its distinctness from the past.
So far were the common people of Palestine from any such
ideal, that they were constantly misunderstanding the simplest
words of Jesus. Even his own disciples failed to understand
the spiritual nature of his kingdom, though he sought to teach
it in every parable.
The continual miracle of the Gospel is the reign of a soul
which felt itself greater than the visible universe. This miracle
is no illusion, no allegory, but a great reality. As palpable
Nature, the Sea, the primitive Night, the shoreless Chaos have
in paganism served as a real foundation to the inventions of the
peoples, in the same manner the^ infinite Soul of the Christ has
served as the foundation upon which the whole Christian
theogony has been built ; for what is the Gospel if it is not the
revelation of an inner world !
And here I meet with an extraordinary mode of reasoning :
The first figure in a series, it is argued, cannot be greater than
the last ; it would be contrary to all development. From whence
it follows that Christ gave place to St. Paul, St. Paul to St.
Augustine, St. Augustine to Gregory VII., Gregory VII. to
Luther, and that finally, we, being at the extremity of the series,
must be the highest of all.
But since when has the inspiration of beauty, of justice, of
truth, progressed after an arithmetic or geometric fashion ? It
ON STRA USS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 239
is clear that the question is not simply of the personality of
Christ, but of the very principle of all personality. We are to
be driven to admit a Humanity in which there are peoples, but
no individuals, generations of ideas without forms, that die, and
are reborn to die again at the foot of the invisible cross, on
which remains for ever suspended the impersonal Christ of
pantheism.
Dr. Strauss expresses this conclusion clearly when he resumes
his doctrine in this sort of metaphysical litany. " The Christ,"
he says, " is not an individual but an idea, or rather a race, to
wit — Humanity. In the human race, behold the God made
man, behold the Child of the visible virgin and of the Invisible
Father, that is to say, matter and spirit ; behold the Saviour,
the Redeemer, the Impeccable ; behold him who dies, who rises
again, who ascends to heaven. In believing in this Christ, in
his death, in his resurrection, Man is justified before God."
To despoil the individual, to enrich the species, to diminish
man in order to aggrandise humanity, is the tendency of the
times. We place to the account of all what we dare not attri-
bute to ourselves. Self-love is at once humbled and deified.
There is a certain titanic grandeur in the idea that enchants us.
Is the grandeur real, or do we deceive ourselves ? — this is the
question.
If the Individual cannot be the just one, the holy one pre-
eminently ; if he is not a like spirit with God ; if he is incapable
of rising to the supreme ideal of virtue, of beauty, of liberty, of
love, how can these attributes become those of the species?
How many men go to make up Humanity ? Will two or three
go to make up this ideal, or if that wiU not do, will two or three
millions succeed any better ? It is a vain attempt if the human
person is only a nothing alienated from God ; the peoples also
are but collections of nothing, and in adding nation to nation,
empire to empire, we only give birth to nothing ; so that the more
we pretend to the infinite, the more we succeed in embracing in
Humanity a completer nothing, since it is composed of all the
nothings together.
If this is true, the result is that all life, all greatness, as well
as all misery, emanates from the Individual. The whole spirit
of Christianity tends to render the idea of the person absolutely
sacred. For if the life of the God-made man has a sense com-
prehensible for us, it is in showing us that within each con-
science dwells the Infinite as well as in the soul of the human
race, and that the mind of each man can spread and dilate until
it embraces and penetrates the whole moral universe.
Dr. Strauss concludes by declaring that, after all, his book in
no way violates the belief of the Christian Church ; that he is
240 EDGAR QUINET.
orthodox, though in an indirect way. For it is one of the
maxims of modem casuists that it is not necessary to know
if the Gospel rests on an historic basis. Philosophy declares
that if a doctrine is in itself reasonable, it is not necessary to
trouble one's self as to its origin in time.
Spinosa is the author of this remedy. "To open to you my
mind entirely," he says, "I will teU you that it is not at all
indispensable to believe in Christ according to the flesh, but
certainly in that Eternal Son of God, that is to say, in that
Eternal Wisdom which manifests itself in all things, principally
in the mind of man, but more than in all others, in Jesus Christ.
In these metaphysics is hidden the abyss into which German
theology withdraws every time it seeks to avoid its own con-
sequences."
From this mixture of metaphysics and theology a learned
language has been formed, which tends first to produce a double
doctrine, one for the clergy, the other for the people, and second,
to make it almost impossible for a man to know on what ground
he stands, whether he believes or doubts. Who has gained,
who has lost, by this hazardous game ? Is it philosophy or reli-
gion 1 It is time we clearly informed ourselves.
IV.
The relations of Religion and Philosophy since the Christian
era have been threefold. First, we have religion among the
fathers, dominating philosophy ; then among the scholastics,
religion and philosophy entering into alliance ; finally, philo-
sophy begins to turn against religion ; gradually the struggle
becomes desperate, until philosophy, triumphing, magnanimously
comprehends, admits, raises up, rehabilitates religion. Thus at
first religion transformed philosophy, now philosophy transforms
religion.
This explains how it is that the Germans, in the midst of all
their scepticism, maintain such a profound calmness. They do
not regard themselves as having given up either religion or
Christianity. The idea has been preserved by the sacrifice of
the letter. This thread, impalpable as it may be, keeps them
from feeling that they have quite lost their way. Even when
their criticism is more murderous than Voltaire, they cry out
with Polyeuctes, " I am a Christian."
The agreement of Science and Religion is the problem which
all the schools set themselves, but in arriving at the solution
the Christian Institution is passed through so many transforma-
tions that it often comes out at last a something for which no
language has a name. Philosophy no longer denies Christianity,
ON STRA USS'S LIFE OF JESUS. 241
it does worse; it protects it, seizing on each of its dogmas to
make out of them a theorem. If Christianity submits to be
treated as a piece of ductile clay, no doubt the alliance will
continue; philosophy has everything to gain by such a treaty
of peace.
The metaphysics of Hegel vaunt themselves as being in abso-
lute conformity with positive religion. To believe their profes-
sors, they are but the catechism transfigured, the identity of
science, and the evangelical religion, or rather, the Bible of the
absolute. But go to the bottom of this orthodoxy and what do
you find 1 A tradition without a gospel, a dogma without immor-
tality, a Christianity without Christ. Is this what awaits the
Church?
This question of the identity of science and belief can only
be solved by perpetual approximation. It is what the mathe-
maticians call an incommensurable, with this difference, that
here the least fraction neglected means a world. In reality,
neither religion nor philosophy can absorb each other. They
are reborn one of another without ever being able to convert
each other.
If man had only reason he would fall from negation to
negation into the last circle of nothingness. If he had only
faith he would be carried away without return, beyond all
reality, to the farthest limits of the infinite. The one force
counteracts the other, and of their opposition is born the regular
movement of Humanity. If this apparent war were to cease,
all order, as all movement, would be destroyed ; hence we con-
clude, that neither those who would bring everything to reason,
nor those who would bring everything to faith, possess the
truth.
Philosophy believes itself the inheritor of all that is per-
manent in Christianity, and yet at the same time it sets forth
ideas which contradict the very spirit of the Christian religion.
It attempts, in Germany, to substitute Pantheism for the spirit
of the Gospel. Is Christianity supple enough to bear this with-
out ending in a rupture with philosophy? Will the personal
God of the Cross be supplanted by the God-Substance without
the people perceiving the change, the steps being so gradual ?
The Christ on the Calvary of modern Theology endures
to-day a passion more cruel than that of Golgotha. Neither the
Pharisees nor the scribes of Jerusalem have presented him with
a more bitter drink than the doctors of our time have poured
out. To what transfiguration will he be submitted? Is the
God of Jacob and of St. Paid to be transformed into the God of
Parmenides, of Descartes, and of his disciple Spinosa ?
But those who wish to extirpate Christianity will not succeed.
242 EDGAR QUINET.
for it is founded upon the grandeur and independence of the
person. Those who would reject philosophy will be equally
bajHed, for it has revealed the laws necessary to the human
race. The individual and society, man and humanity, these
two powers are everywhere present in theology and philosophy
as in politics ; who will make them agree ?
If, among my readers, there are those who, in the religious
agitations of their time, see only an image of ruin, especially if
there are any to whom the preceding pages have caused one of
those sorrows which should he sacred for all, I will remind them
of that day when the disciples, having seen their Master descend
into the sepulchre, began to doubt and to despair of the future.
They did not know what to do but to weep in secret; that
which they had expected not having happened, they were
almost ready to give up believing anything more. They said
one to another, " He whom we have known was not the Son
of God, for he is dead on the cross." They said again, " "Who
wiU take away the stone from the sepulchre, for we have not
the strength to attempt it ? " But some among them, drawing
near to Calvary, have perceived their Master in all the glory of
heaven, and they rejoice with one accord unto the end of time.
So even to-day the entire world is a great sepulchre, in
which aU beliefs, all hopes, seem for ever buried ; the seal of
doubt has been placed on them by an invisible hand, and we,
seized with fear, asked each other. Who will raise the stone of
this tomb ? A great number among us weep in secret, having
no longer any confidence in that we once most loved. But this
stone which oppresses us all will in the end be broken, were it
a thousand times heavier than all the worlds together. From
the depth of the darkness the God eternally old, eternally new,
will be reborn, clothed in light more brilliant than that of Tabor.
This at least is the faith of him who writes these lines.
( 243 )
CHAPTEE VI.
PARIS, STRASBURG, LYONS. 1836-1839.
" Mostly men's many- featured faces wear
Looks of fixed gloom, or else of restless care."
—F. W. Faber.
The fund of vital energy that Edgar Quinet possessed
is shown by the varied lives he led, now studying for
months together in his secluded home at Heidelberg,
now for months in the full tide of Parisian society. The
winter was the time he generally chose for his visits to
Paris ; he was there in 1 8 3 7-3 8, from ISTovember until
March, but he was not always so long away from home.
He was an energetic worker. His plan was to take
up one thing at a time and give his whole mind to it.
That finished, he felt free, and enjoyed the change to an
entirely new subject. After the publication of " Napoleon "
he hesitated to throw himself into another long work
without the means of living. So in 1836 we find him
publishing quite a series of articles on various subjects.
In May " ISTotes on Italy " appeared, in October " The
Field of the Battle of Waterloo." But Germany still was
his theme, and in this month another series of papers was
published on German subjects : — " The Prejudices which
separate Germany from Erance ; " " Fall of Spiritualism ; "
" Modern Theology ; " " Eeligion of Matter ; " " Fatalism
and Indifference ; " " Illusions of Industry ; " and a poem
called " The Borders of the Ehine."
In these papers Quinet complained of the absurd notions
concerning the French entertained ia Germany. It was there
,244 EDGAR QUINET.
supposed that French, men were thin, grinning, made-up cox-
oomhs ; French women, dressed-up dolls, pampered and spoilt,
heartless, brainless, soulless, the centre of all kinds of disso-
luteness, an ahyss of frivolity. German criticism on French
authors he declared to be a regular system of depreciation : Molifere
was flat ; Bossuet, vulgar ; Montesquieu, declamatory ; Comeille,
tautological. The German journals he accused in the same
manner, of systematically throwing mud at everything French.
Quinet's remarks were received remarkably well ir
Germany; they were translated into the papers, and
made Mm friends rather than enemies.
In April 1 836 his "Modern Greece'' was translated into
Eussian and published at Moscow. During this year he
was engaged in writing a series of papers on " The Epic
Poets ; Latin and French." These papers, as well as most
of the smaller works, appeared in the " Eevue des Deux
Mondes." His French critics had thought him too Ger-
man in his manner, too apt to dwell in the clouds. He
aimed more and more at simplicity and clearness, and at
this time he is constantly receiving letters recognising
this change in his style.
In March 1837 De Lamennais asked him to co-
operate ia his journal " Le Monde." He also proposed
in connection with General Dembinski, a Polish patriot
for whom he had a great esteem, to write something on
Poland.
During the winter 1837-38, he became, as he usually
did when long separated from those he loved, much
depressed and inclined to see everything in the worst
light.
Immediately on his arrival in Paris he writes : —
'' Never have minds been more dejected or spiritless than
to-day. What an inert, sordid mass ! How are these people
ever to be reached 1 In the end, some souls yet alive in this
desert may perhaps listen to me, and I work for the future,
come what may ! I speak to the deaf and the blind ; but I
know it beforehand. Every one shuts himself up in his hole,
seeing no one, and cursing the human race. This is the state
in which I have found all my friends. Two men remain at
IN PARISIAN SOCIETY. 245
their post, and are true to themselves. M. de Lamennais, pen
in hand, and my poor General Demhinski, who writhes and
gnaws in idleness, like a lion in his cage. Fauriel is getting old
and chilled by the Institute. However, he is always ready to
ohlige me, if I ask him. Michelet satisfies me ; the rest seem
to me cruelly empty.
" I am determined not to allow myself to be chilled by age or
by this moribund society : I make my heart like iron, they shall
make no impression on me My dear Francis Corcelles,
whom I have found again, is very different. He is uprightness
itself. Magnin is in the Koyal Library. He is by nature a man
of heart and spirit ; but he, too, is terribly shrivelled up. I
should never stop if I were to go on talking of the decay ; it is
in the air one breathes, moral life is lost."
Our poet moves about a great deal in society. Here
is a programme for one week : —
" Tuesday, musical party, Madame Belgiojoso's ; "Wednesday,
Madame Heche's ; Thursday, Miss Clarke's ; Friday, Odilon
Barrot's ; Saturday, again to the salon of the Principessa, or
to that of M. Lamartine, where I seldom go, caring less than ever
for sentimental intrigue ; finally, Sunday, Madame E^camier's :
my most agreeable soiree. There all the Corcelles are to be seen,
the best and simplest people in the world."
Lamartine's salon comes in for another severe remark.
" Nothing," says Quinet, " could appear more stiff and
affected than this poetic and diplomatic salon." The
monotonous salons of Paris, with their dryness and gild-
ing, tire him. As we have somewhat the same testimony
from M. Guizot concerning the Parisian salons in the
early years of Louis Philippe's reign, it was not simply a
melancholy humour that led Quinet to take so austere a
view. The minister thought it owing to the growth of the
democratic spirit, while the poet, there is little doubt,
attributed this decay to the blighting influence of the
Orleans Government.
Quinet is always very sarcastic in his references to
the citizen king and to M. Guizot. Of the retirement
of the latter from office, in April 1836, he says : —
" Far from regretting M. Guizot, I am delighted at his retreat.
246 EDGAR QUINET.
I know too well his Gascon manner. Another will he straight-
forward, we shall at least know where we are, a thing impossible
with these tenebrous doctrinaires."
The king was evidently much ridiculed in the circles in
which Quinet moved ; and he answers for the truth of
the following story. The scene is a sitting of the
Council with reference to a Speech from the Throne in
1840 : —
" It was written by M. de Eemusat and read aloud by him.
The king laughed frequently, and ended by saying, ' Give me that
pretty little writing, I shall have many things to scratch out.'
Upon that, he goes out and returns with a speech written in his
great round hand, prepared by himself. He read it in his turn.
Eemusat and the rest say ' that its language was crawling
(ventre d, terre), incredibly base.' "With one voice they said it
could not be accepted. Fresh whinings from His Majesty, the
whole followed by the offer of resignation of the ministry."
One thing Guizot and Quinet agree in ; it is that
Madame E^camier's salon was by far the most charming
in Paris. Guizot's testimony is all the more disinterested,
since he and his friends were among the few distinguished
people not to be met there. Quinet, on the other hand,
was evidently a welcome visitor at the Abbaye au Bois.
An old conventual-looking building, with a court-yard
into which you enter through a narrow gate surmounted
with an iron cross, the Abbaye au Bois may still be seen
in the Eue de Sevres, apparently little altered since
Madame EScamier's time. Its religious air, combined
with the warm greys of its roof and turrets, give it a
kind, grandmotherly appearance, not at all suggestive
of the literary-aristocratic coterie : the poets, dukes,
statesmen, and philosophers, who once made it their
daily resort. Madame Edcamier was probably the most
perfect example of a leader of society the world has ever
seen. She had every gift for the position except wealth ;
but what, no doubt, made her friends so sincerely devoted
to her was her disinterestedness. She sought the enjoy-
ment of others more than her own. Men of all parties.
A READING AT THE ABB AYE AU BOIS. 247
flocked to her humble apartments : Legitimists, Bona-
partists, Eepuhlicans, and a few Orleanists. Madame
R^camier, however, had an idol to whom she required
all her guests to offer incense. Chateaubriand was quite
a new friend compared to some, but after he had appeared
on the scene everything was arranged so as to please
him.
When Quinet first made Chateaubriand's acquaintance
the latter lived in the suburbs of Paris, in a long building
one story high, somewhat after the form of a Normandy
farmhouse. The short stature of the poet rather took
Quinet by surprise ; but when he recovered himself he
was struck with Chateaubriand's fine head and amiable
air. Otherwise his appearance was most odd. He was
wrapped up in a greatcoat, and his head enveloped in a
silk handkerchief. His hair was white, his shoulders
high, his chest broad, the lower part of his body and his
legs prodigiously thin. From this little body a strong,
shrill voice proceeded. His whole appearance admirably
represented the decayed noblesse of France. Considering
the style of the man, there was a true harmony in
the title of Chateaubriand's autobiography, " M^moires
d'Outre-Tombe ; " and in his reading them in a fading
light, to a select audience, in that small drawing-room
of a retreat for decayed gentlewomen. Edgar Quinet
appears to have made part of that audience ; for in
1834 he wrote a paper describing a " Eeading at the
Abb'aye au Bois."
" These abbey walls," he says, " were exactly fitted to receive
this confession, thus made in advance. You were there in a
place which was neither the world nor a retreat. As it grew
dark, you would have said that the Corinne of Gerard's painting
had dropped her harp to listen to another song than her own.
The women hid their tears beneath their veils, the wind sighed
through the trees in the garden. At intervals, in the midst of
the tremulous emotion and surprise of the listeners, the grand
form of the poet stood out in the shade ; the clock of the
convent, as it sounded the rapid hour, seemed to say at each
stroke : ' It is for you, and not for him.' "
248 EDGAR QUINET-
In his " Essays on English Literature/' Chateaubriand
had quoted Quinet's " Napoleon." " There was a time," says
the author, " when such a citation would have made me
swoon with joy." And now when he could laugh at its
emptiness he had his own turn of social honour. Soon
after he arrived in Paris in 1837, he was asked to read
the third part of " Prometheus " at Madame E^camier's.
She was at that time occupying a house, lent her, in the
Hue d'Anjou, and was very iU from a nervous affection
that almost extinguished her voice.
" Only ahle to speak in a low whisper, but always beautiful
and carefully dressed, she reclined under a canopy. At the
corner of the mantelpiece, M. de Chateaubriand, another wreck,
not less magnificent ; a niece of Madame E^camier, and the two
intimates, Ballanche and Ampere, were there also. Of a society
thus nobly composed, I was prepared for compliments, which as
a matter of fact were not wanting. The only thing that really
pleased me, has been to learn that M. de Chateaubriand said in
my absence, that he thought ' Prometheus' the best of my works.
Madame E^oamier seemed properly edified, and the reader retired
quite satisfied with the amount of incense received."
Another house which pleased him was that of Madame
Hoche, widow of the republican General. Although she
had lost her husband nineteen years, she still lived for
his memory. The house was full of souvenirs. A bust
of the General stood in the centre of her drawing-room,
which was chiefly frequented by military men. It was
the only salon in which Quinet found a decided character ;
and it carried him back to 1796.
The most sumptuous of all his hosts was the Princess
Belgiojoso, an Italian, and an authoress. At her house
he sometimes dined, meeting Cousin, Mignet, Ballanche,
Pauriel, and other people of note. These meetings with
Cousin appear to have been anything but agreeable to
Quinet, as the philosopher always behaved as if they were
still the warmest friends.
" The comedian was there," writes Quinet to his mother ; " he
came to me and took me by the hand with an effusion of
inexhaustible tenderness. What a Tartufe ! "
A FAVOURITE WITH WOMEN OF DISTINCTION. 249
At the same table lie met Odilon Barrot, whose face
seemed to him sincere and honest, and as if he was an
original man.
On one occasion there was a grand soirfe at Madame
Belgiojoso's ; six hundred persons were present, a great
crowd, whose only amusement seemed to be to look at
each other. The Countess Guiccioli, the celebrated mis-
tress of Lord Byron, was there. Quinet describes her to his
mother as short and squat in figure, yet easy and supple
in her movements, with a statuesque head, fair com-
plexion, flowing ringlets, blue eyes, and large features.
Although so austere in his principles, there was some-
thing extremely wiuning in the appearance and manner
of Edgar Quinet, so that he always appears to have been
a favourite with the fair sex. In addition to Madame
E^camier, the Princess Belgiojoso, &c., we find him at
this time the welcome guest of Napoleon's adopted
daughter, the Princess Stephanie of Baden.'"' Thus at
Mannheim, in May 1836, he spent half a day with her,
and she was anxious that he and his wife should spend
the summer with her at Freiburg. He speaks of her as
a woman remarkable for her good sense and grace. The
author of " Ahasuerus " was also much honoured by the
Duchess of Orleans. An ardent friend was the original
but rather whimsical lady to whom frequent references
occur in the letters, — Miss Clarke, still a figure in
Parisian society as the venerable widow of M. Mohl,
the German savant. She seemed, he thought, like some
character from one of Hoffman's ^ fantastic tales.
In this spring of 1838, reference is made in one of
his letters to his going to hear Talleyrand lecture at the
Institute. The wily old statesman was then seventy-four
years of age, and within two or three months of his end.
^ Some interesting details of the early life of this lady are given in
Madame de K^musat's Memoirs, corroborating Quinet's estimate of her
character. 'Vol. ii. pp. 1 16-120, 377-381.
2 W. Hoffman, one of the most original of German story-tellers,
1776-1822.
250 EDGAR QUINET.
On another occasion Quinet is at the Chamber of
Deputies and hears Thiers speak, and comes to the con-
clusion that he is a personally ambitious man.
At certain weekly dinners Edgar Quinet met Monta-
lambert, De Tocqueville, De Cormenin, Sainte-Beuve,
Lacordaire, Magnin, Ampere, and Francis Corcelles.
Corcelles and Michelet were his most intimate friends.
He saw the latter nearly every day. Their oneness of
heart was so thorough, that after two and forty years
they would both say, " We are one and the same person."
This same winter he makes his first acquaintance with
Mickiewicz, the famous Polish poet. He is delighted
with him at once.
" No one," he says, " could have an air more gracious or more
wild. His moral elevation seems remarkable ; there is about him
a slight touch of mysticism, but a mysticism that is in harmony
with his fine and grand nature. He has an air both young and
natural, which at this time is not the rule. He is irritated
against France ; but at this moment what Pole would not be 1 "
Another acquaintance that he made at this time was
Heinrich Heine. He had thought that his caustic criti-
cism on his works had offended him ; he was therefore
not a little surprised at the appearance of the German
poet in his apartments one morning, wearing his sweetest
Judaic smile. " They say you are furious against me,"
said Quinet. " That is quite true," replied Heine,
laughing ; " but I come to beg you to do me a service."
The service consisted in reading over a translation of
one of his poems. " Mickiewicz and Heine," Quinet
exclaims, " certainly the two most antipodal of men,
one might call them the angel and the demon."
Heine criticised Quinet with equal freedom ; and a
few years later touched off his portrait for a German
newspaper in one of those humorous sketches which,
though bordering on caricature, enable us better than
anything else to realise how a great man appeared in
ordinary life to his contemporaries. Far from having in
A HUMOROUS SKETCH BY H. HEINE. 251
it the venom Quinet attributes to Heine's writings, it
reveals a warm and honest sympathy with its subject,
rendering it worth any amount of unappreciative praise.
Moreover, it probably gives us traits very characteristic
of Quinet, the Wanderer and the Poet/
" Michelet and Quinet are not only good comrades, faithful
brothers in arms, but minds of exactly the same cast, with the
same sympathies; the same antipathies. Only the soul of one
is softer, I should say more Indian ; while in the nature of the
other there is something harder, more Gothic. Michelet recalls
to me the large flowers and the powerful perfumes of the
gigantic poetry of the Mahabharata ; Quinet reminds one of the
Songs, not less stupendous, but more rugged and abrupt, of the
Scandinavian Edda. Quinet has a northern nature, he might
be a German ; for he has altogether the German character, in the
good as in the bad acceptation of the word ; the German air
breathes in all his writings. When I read ' Ahasuerus,' or any
of the other poetical works of Quinet, I feel exactly as if I were
at home. I fancy I can hear the nightingales of my own land ;
I smell the perfume of the Suabian violets ; sounds from the
garden, I know so well, murmur round my head ; moreover, I
hear the chime of the well-known bells : profondeur allemande,
douleur de penseur allemande, sensihilite allemande, bourdonne-
ment de hannetons allemands ; with at times just the least
touch of German wearisomeness. Yes, Edgar Quinet is ours ;
he is German, good German stuff, notwithstanding his late
assumption of the airs of one who threatens to eat us alive.
The rude and rather uncouth manner in which he has attacked
Germany in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' is anything but
Erench, but precisely like that downright iisticuff, that genuine
roughness, by which we recognise a fellow-countryman. Edgar
is entirely German, not only in mind but in body ; and whoever
meets him in the streets takes him for a certainty to be some
theologian from Halle, who, having broken down in his exami-
nations, has dragged his heavy steps to Erance, there to dissi-
pate his moody humour. A massive, austere form, carelessly
dressed. A large grey overcoat, that might have been stitched
by our tailor-author, Jung Stilling. Boots that have perhaps been
re-soled by the philosophic shoemaker, Jacob Bohme.
" Quinet for a long time has lived on the other side of the
Ehine, especially at Heidelberg, where he made certain studies,
and daily intoxicated himself in the lucubrations of ' Creuzer
k
' Heine only knew Quinet between 1836 and 1839. He has never seen him
since. This sketch can only be considered as applying to this time.
252 EDGAR QUINET.
on Symbols.' He wandered all over Germany on foot, visited
our Gothic ruins, and fraternised with, the most eminent spectres.
In the forest of Teutoherg, where Arminius, the prince of the
Cherusoi, heat Varus and his legions, Quinet ate Westphalian
ham with Pumpernickel^ Whether he also visited at Moeln
the tomb of Eulenspiegel, of grotesque and popular memory, I
am not in a position to say ; but what I do know positively is,
that there are not now three poets in the whole world who are
gifted with as much imagination, such wealth of ideas, and such
originality as Edgar Quinet." ^
Liszt, the celebrated pianist, was a devoted admirer of
tlie author of "Ahasuerus."
Among the other interesting persons with whom
Quinet was friendly, Armand Carrel must not be for-
gotten. In quitting Paris in 1836, Quinet passed his
last evening in company with him. His untimely end
he much regretted.^ He says : —
"Armand Carrel was a character, a very rare thing. The
republican party is buried with him ; but it wiU rise again, only
it needs time ! "
In 1836 Ary Scheffer made some designs in illustration
of " Ahasuerus ; " his pupil, the Princess Marie, daughter
of Louis Philippe, and the sciilptor of the Joan of Arc in
the Mus^e at Versailles, making bas-reliefs from two
of them — the angel Eachel at the birth of the Christ,
and the angel Eachel pitying Ahasuerus. The originals
have been presented by the widow of the poet to the
Museum at Bourg.
Two years later Quinet went to Ary Scheffer's studio
to look at his picture of " Faust seeing Margaret for the
first time." Scheffer declared that Quinet had just the
figure that he had wished to give his hero. Quinet felt this
no compliment, for he exclaims : " But then it would be
a Faust who would never cease to love his Margaret, and
who would never have quitted her for the witches' circle."
1 Pumpernickel, the brown rye-bread commonly eaten in Westphalia.
^ Lutfeoe, Letter Iviii., pp. 3S8-36O1 June i, 1843.
8 Armand Caixel was killed in a duel with Emile de Girardin, July 24,
1836.
PEREGRINATIONS ABOUT GERMANY. 253
In the same year the sculptor David made a bas-relief of
Quinet in bronze.
In the autumn of 1837 we find him at Stuttgart,
meeting at the house of G. Schwab, a Wurtemberg poet,
all the choice spirits of the country ; visiting the studio of
the sculptor Dannecker, who was so afflicted with forget-
fulness of names, that he could not remember that of
Napoleon. From Stuttgart, Quinet went to Tubingen,
where he passed an hour with Uhland. He describes
the German poet as having the air of a professor, while
over his grave and furrowed face a smile played which
recalled that of the excellent and fascinating Manzoni.
He asked Uhland how it was he wrote no more poetry ;
he simply replied that he no longer felt the inspiration,
and believed that it was useless to provoke it. At
Tubingen he must have had that interview with David
Friedrich Strauss, to which he alludes in his criticism of
his work. He found him a man who, under an appear-
ance of fatalism, was full of candour, sweetness, gentle-
ness, and modesty, a soul slightly mystical and a little
saddened by the noise that his work had caused.
From Tubingen he went on into the Black Forest,
proceeding on foot along the deep, winding vaUey of the
Morg. Heavy rains had just cleared up, so that the
stream pouring between the darkly- wooded slopes and
picturesque ch&lets was in its glory.
Quinet was accustomed from time to time to write
political letters for the " Eevue des Deux Mondes." In
1837 the condition of public opinion in England on the
Eastern Question seems to have attracted his attention.
Our country was suffering from a slight attack of Eusso-
phobia, consequent on the doings of Eussia in Circassia.
Quinet, who was heart and soul for the oppressed nation-
alities, urged the alliance of France and England against
Eussia. Incidentally he makes a long quotation from Mr.
Cobden's pamphlet, "Eussia, 1836." He did not know
the name of the author, as it was published anonymously.
254 EDGAR QUINET.
Among the singular personages that hover in the
background of the picturesque circle that surround Edgar
Quinet's infancy, was a tall man, with brUliant eyes and
ready smile, arrayed in solemn garb, and having a
mysterious history. One day the child heard him say:
" Others, Madame, have had their four-and-twenty hours
of fever; mine lasted ten years." When Edgar asked
what that meant, he was told in a hushed voice, "the
Terror." For a whole generation it would appear as if
this venerable member of the Mountain party in the
Convention of '93 had lived on quietly at CharoUes.
He had done great things for his country as a com-
missioner in the army of the Ehine and as the discoverer
of General Hoche. The Quinets highly respected him ;
and now when, in 1838, he came to die, the young poet
sat by the bedside of the old Conventionnel, and received
as a legacy his memoirs of the Revolution. Grasping
Quinet's arm, and gathering all his strength into one last
look, he said : " Believe me, the history of our times has
yet to be written. Saint-Just and I fired the batteries at
Wissembourg. People praised us, but we did not deserve
it, for we knew perfectly well that bullets could not touch
us." Then the dying man relapsed into sHence, and his
friend bade him farewell.
It was apparently at Charolles that Quinet wrote his
articles on "The Age of Louis XIV.," "Literary Cosmo-
politanism," and the " Unity of the Modern Spirit," now
included in his "Germany."
Its object was to contend against that view of the age of
Louis XIV. which represented it as one apart from all others,
having no connection with those that had preceded it, but as
being rather a reproduction in modem times of classic antiquity.
Quinet argues that it had no more connection with ancient
times than St. Peter's at Eome ; hut that the real sources
of its civilisation were the same as those of all the modern
peoples. Christianity alone, he contends, made it a totally
different thing from the ancient world : its classicality is only a
veneer, the spirit of its literature being exactly the same as that
which pervades all modern and Christian literature. It differs
UNITY OF THE MODERN SPIRIT. 255
from the Middle Age because it combined two worlds, that of
scholasticism and modern philosophy, — Thomas Aquinas and
Descartes.
Of the absurdly pedantic tradition which those who assume
to be authorities of this age would enforce, he says : " You might
as well expect to find the first flowers of spring in the drawers
of a herbalist, as to recognise the eternal works of the mind in
the system of rules and restrictions professedly derived from the
age of Louis XIV.
" If anything may be affirmed of the thoughts of this age, it
is that they are winged like those of Plato. At the breath of
the Cartesian philosophy they rise with an easy efi'ort. Not only
are Malebranche, Pascal, and the sad recluses of Port Eoyal
borne to these heights, but you meet people of the world there
also. Not only is there an evident superiority in the epoch
to the one that followed it ; but everything, or nearly every-
thing about it, seems affected by that sublime folly of idealism
which in our days is the great reproach levelled at certain foreign
schools."
Having thus shown that the apparent isolation of the age of
Louis XIV. has no reality, he proceeds to develop the principle
of the unity of modern civilisation, and to lay the foundation of
a European literature.
Kacine, Moliere, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Goethe, CorneiUe,
Calderon, he says, are brothers. Let us elevate our theories so
as to admit them all, since none of them will lower themselves
to meet our notions. The place of these men is the fireside not
of a people, but of humanity.
Eising above the rivalries, the enmities, the antipathies of
climates, times, places, let us aspire to the spirit universally one
which dwells in the inspired works of each people.
Just as a feeling of the order and harmony of Nature has
taken possession of Man since he recognised the existence of one
spirit present everywhere, in place of the innumerable genii he
once supposed to preside over each tree, river, or rock ; so from
the recognition of each immortal work of humanity we shall
rise, sooner or later, to the thought of one same inspiration, one
same life universally present and acting in that other universe
which is called Art ; and the same Providence, that is discovered
in the works of dead nature, will show itself in the works of
thought. Can God, who is present in the ant's nest, the honey-
comb, or the beaver's hut, be absent in the Iliad, Athalie, or
Paust 1 This is not perhaps according to the poetics of De la
Harpe or of Blair, but it is assuredly agreeable to that of
Aristotle, of Pascal, and of Fenelon.
If the times in which we live have any value, it certainly is
256 EDGAR QUINET.
because they will end by putting in full dayligbt this .unity of
the modern genius. There is not a single writer of our time
who has not, in his own way, contributed to this alliance.
Philosophic, religious, literary discussion is no longer, as m
the eighteenth century, confined to the drawing-rooms of Paris ;
the word flies from people to people ; each has a particular task,
of which the others are at once conscious. At one extremity the
Americans conquer physical nature ; at the other end of the
chain the East seeks itself as a lost world. And these two
extremes being thus separated, as youth and old age, and hence
incapable of understanding one another, are united together by
the medium of Europe, so that in this great body there is not a
fibre to-day that can be broken without all shuddering at the
same time.
The French Eevolution has made this unity manifest ; trade
has developed it, poetry consecrated it. Who can tell what
effects inventions, types yet unknown in history, this union of
all climates, this instantaneous exchange of forms and tradi-
tions, and this single soul, bestowed on the human race, is
capable of producing.
The only barrier which will, ere long, divide the peoples to
any extent, will be language. But if this barrier were effaced,
the diversity necessary to unity ia order to form an organisation
would disappear, and chaos would be imminent. So we ought
to recognise a truly social instinct in the efforts recently made
to keep each language to its indigenous genius and its own
peculiarities. The problem each people has to-day to resolve is,
how to express the universal thought without going beyond
itself.
How is it that such a new condition does not awaken vast
hopes ? How is it that we hear lamentations, see marks of
depression ? How is it we have these signs of old age in the
midst of new life ? There are many reasons, but the principal
causes are the decline of the self-love of the peoples, the division
of minds which results from revolutions, that singular foUy
which continually leads people to depreciate the age.
Some, on the other hand, are so infatuated with the advance
of knowledge, that they would have us believe that great poetry
or art is henceforth impossible. But ask them what sort of a
society they live in, what it will be to-morrow, what will become
of the simplest relations of life — the master and the workman,
the king and the subject, the father and the child, and they
wiU confess their absolute ignorance. Still more, if you inter-
rogate them on the kind of God they worship, on their soul
which converses with yours, on what they hope or fear beyond
death ; they recognise that in the truth their fathers held, that
THIS EARTH CANNOT SATISFY MAN. 257
there was on these matters a basis of ascertained knowledge
but for themselves they no longer know anything about them,
and they do not wish to know. Thus the unknown surrounds
us and oppresses us more than ever. "We need not fear it will
ever fail us. Our knowledge increases our ignorance ; and the
universe now is not less mysterious than in the days of Homer.
Who does not feel that the marvellous and the unknown are
not only in nature, but, above all, in ourselves? Because the
age has got rid of its ancient god, it imagines itself for ever
emancipated from the Infinite and its allurements. But to how
many idols has it not already bowed down ? Where has it
not already been led by its imagination? Napoleon, German
philosophy, revived Catholicism, Saint-Simonism, and the many
other sects, are ever returning proofs of the innumerable illu-
sions of glory and of hope. Since man has substituted himself
for God, he has become sad and troublesome to himself. In
truth, the government of the universe embarrasses him, and
makes him very anxious. This great parvenu would do weU to
abdicate the crown he has usurped, and return to his former
condition.
Instead of saying all is finished, let us rather say all is com-
mencing. It would seem as if matter, more intelligent than
spirit, is fermenting in order to produce a new world. The
situation has some resemblances to times such as those of the
invention of the printing-press, of the first use of cannon, and of
the mariner's compass. To-day, as then. Humanity plays with
terrible forces which it has just discovered ; it feels carried to
the unknown by powers which at present it neither measures,
regulates, nor understands. Oppressed by its own inventions,
it prostrates itself before them ; Pygmalion once more adores
the work of his own hands.
It is thought that idealistic philosophy must necessarily be
antagonistic to the extreme development of the industrial world.
No, the soul triumphs in what is regarded as its defeat. Far
from being disconcerted at the apparent victory, we see in it the
assured victory of the Spirit. The age may give itself up to
squaring timber, sawing stone, digging the soil ; these occupa-
tions can never wholly possess it. Whatever may happen, Man
here below will always resemble Eobinson Crusoe on his lonely
island ; all the labours of his hands will culminate in his hol-
lowing out a canoe, in order that he may escape from what he feels
to be his prison.
In the autumn of 1838, Edgar Quinet had an offer
from the University of Strasburg of a professorship.
K
258 EDGAR QUINET.
In 1839 he sustained two theses at Strasburg ; one on
" Art," and the other on the " Nature and Growth of the
most Ancient Indian Poetry." Finally, however, he was
nominated to the Faculty of Lyons by M. de Salvandy,
and he opened his first course of lectures there in April
1839. This nomination appears to have been made at
last in spite of the royal prejudice against Quiflet. " A
fine choice you have just made ! " said Louis Philippe to
the minister. " You have named a republican."
as it F*
THE TEACHER.
*' Life of the Divine Spirit through tbe history of the world, Annals of the Eternal
incarnated in time, who am I that I Bhould attempt this history ? I have often
thought that a man, before he dies, owes it to himself to cast a look hack on the
beliefs of his brethren who have preceded him ; however, if I sought only repose, I
would put off until my last hour an examination so perilous for the intellect ! But
what ! always adjourn that which is most important I only take pleasure in that
which is most ephemeral I Can we do it ? Who can promise me a single day ? No
one." — Gtide des Religions.
f/^Ai f!4^)ut^-^
Edgar Quinet (1830, at tin: a ideal. Here,
as it were, at the antipodes both of Nature and Tradition, it
fojind another heaven, another god ; for out of the last efforts
of philosophy to overthrow everything, came forth the revela-
tion of Buddha, a religion which counts to-day a number of
adherents greater than the united hosts of all who profess
Christianity and Islam ism.
Such exalted spiritualism, it is clear, could not submit to the
Vedas ; hence one would expect that it would have brought
on itself the combined hatred of the people and the Brahmins.
A doctrine, moreover, founded on the revelation of the Nothing
could scarcely escape the charge of Atheism. Nevertheless,
we find that not only vast empires like a part of China, Ceylon,
Java, Thibet, repose on these subtle metaphysics, but that
the story of the incarnation of this impersonal being, Buddha,
springs up even in the depths of the steppes of Mongolia.
BUDDHISM. 303
What have been the social consequences of the new dogma 1
Buddhism is in some respects the opposite to pantheism. In
the trinity of Brahminism the three persons form a kind of
polytheism, in that of Buddhism only the first person has
any value, so that virtually the unity of God is believed. The
consequence is at once visible in the unity of the human
race, the natural result of vehich is the abolition of castes.
This consequence has been in reality deduced by Buddhism
with an intrepidity of logic which seems only to belong to
the East. Christianity itself, in its purest charity, has not pro-
claimed more irrevocably the equality of all men. " The dis-
tinction of races," said one of these Asiatic abolitionists, " is
marked by organisation. Thus the foot of the elephant differs
from that of the horse, the foot of the tiger from that of the
bull; but I never heard that the foot of the Soudra differs
from that of the Brahmin. In like manner, the eagle, the
hawk, the turtle-dove, the paroquet, are each distinguished
by plumage, flight, colour, and beak ; but priests, warriors,
labourers, artisans, are the same in flesh, skin, blood, form,
and bones : all men being alike, without and within, are
assuredly but one caste."
Such is the theory. But what else can result from this
spiritualism born of doubt than a negative morality and a
society ever bent on its own dissolution ?
Since the dogma exacts the abolition of all private or collec-
tive personality, Buddhism left to itself tends to a rejection of
such ideas as the Nation, the State, the Government, the only true
society being the Monastery. The true beHever has no country
but the convent ; and as all that recalls individual right is con-
trary to the spirit of his religion, it follows that he can possess
nothing of his own. The Buddhist, from his very nature,
belongs to the mendicant orders. All alliance, except with the
invisible, being wrong, marriage is condemned ; but since iii this
exaggerated idealism each reform goes so far as to become im-
possible, polygamy is simply corrected by celibacy, property by
almsgiving. The rigorous consequence of Buddhist dogma
would result in the absolute extinction of humanity.
It is quite confounding to see how, notwithstanding all the
differences of place and time, the same spiritual type has pro-
duced in the Catholicism of the Middle Age and in the Buddhism
of Central Asia institutions, manners, singularities, so exactly
similar that the East and the West seem Hke plagiarisms one of
• another. The legends of the Buddhists of Ceylon, as those of
the monasteries of Citeaux or St. Gall, are full of the foundation
of convents of men and women, missions among foreign nations,
pilgrimages, benediction of relics, indulgences, preachings, oecu-
304 EDGAR QUINET.
menic councils to combat schism, extirpate heresy, and maintain
the faith.
The architectural monument peculiar to this religion is a
colossal reliquary, an impenetrable temple, covered by a piled-up
heap of rocks, preserving and hiding some strip of the dress or
of a ring made of the hair of the incarnate god, just as St. John
Latran shelters in Eome the remains of the cross of Calvary.
At the head of this monastic organisation is a true papacy, with
this great difference, however, that the chief of the hierarchy is
not the Vicar of God but God himself, always incarnate and
always present in the midst of his people.
If Indian society has lived, it is owing to the profound con-
sciousness it has had of the Being, even after it has passed
through scepticism. But this idea, great as it is, does not suffice
for Man. Individuality, morality, conscience, activity, liberty,
where shall we find them? Not in the Indian genius, since
Buddhism as well as Brahminism teaches that inaction, the
eternal slumber in the bosom of the Eternal Substance, is the
good, the way of salvation, the supreme virtue.
Sec. 7. — The Religions of China — Revelation by Writing.
The civilisation of the Brahmins is balanced in Asia by the
civilisation of the Mandarins. The one carries the Ideal to its
farthest limits, the other the Eeal. Suspended between these
two worlds. Upper Asia remains perfectly motionless.
Eevelation manifests itself in China in a manner so strange,
that it is clear from the first that the Chinese must live unallied
with the human race. While the prophets of the rest of Asia
watch the Dawn, Fo-hi, the Chinese revealer, born of a virgin,
who conceives him as she wanders alone on the track of the
divine footsteps, descends into the flat marshes on the banks of
the Yellow Eiver. There, fixed in the slime of chaos, he sees
an enormous tortoise, and in the mysterious lines imprinted on
its shell descrys the divine wisdom. That motionless tortoise
is the emblem of the coming empire, those hieroglyphs on its
back the table of the Chinese law. In these forms Fo-hi sees
all the lines of the Universe, the shapes of mountains, rivers,
seas, lakes, &c., and draws the inference that in these lines God
reveals himself to men. This gigantic conception of writing
becomes the basis of all divine science. As God is revealed to
India by light, to the Persians by light and speech, to the
Greeks by the lyre, he is revealed to China by the marvel of
writing. Elementarily these divine hieroglyphs reduce them-
selves to two lines, images of the two principles which compose
REVELATION BY WRITING. 305
the world : a continuous line, , heaven, light, affirmation, the
eternal, the infinite ; a broken line, , earth, darkness, contra-
diction, time, the finite. All other ideas are expressed by a mixture
of these two lines in some form or other. Instead of conceiving
of man as attempting from the very first to depict the immeasur-
able, the Chinese think of him as a little child trying to repre-
sent in writing the simplest objects around him. The divine
schoolmaster holds his hand, and guides his first attempts, placing
before him, as copies, the lines of the universe. Traced under
the eye of the master, these marvellous letters are the types of
an infinite number of relations aad truths, which meditation
may discover. Each line is a parable, which will manifest its
most profound sense to him who contemplates it with the most
concentration. All form together the representation of every fact
in the physical or spiritual order of things ; and are the sub-
stance of the first religious book, the " Y-King," the source of
all knowledge of things visible or invisible. Upon the plan of
this revealed geometry as interpreted by tradition, and completed
by the philosophy of Confucius, it has been the aim of the
Chinese legislator to construct civil order.
WhUe in its swaddling clothes this society must have grasped
the idea of unity in the universe, for the same signs are arche-
types in the world of nature and the world of mind ; thus, for
example, the sign which represents the harmony of land and
water is the sign which expresses the idea of any good policy
founded on the union of two empires. Thus, again, the sign of
fire in the highest point of the sky represents a law of nature,
and is the sign proposed for the imitation of the prince who
should fill the entire universe with the lustre of his virtues.
From which we see that conscience is recognised by the in-
stitution, but that it ought to be regulated on the imitation
of the revealed sign as among Christians, on the imitation of the
cross. This geometric revelation not only figures forth all
knowledge of the present, but, by following it out in all its
possible changes, the future cau also be discovered. The inven-
tion of writing Ijeing then a divine revelation, each sign, each
line, and every turn in each line, has an absolute authority ;
the whole of Chinese society, in its various rites and cere-
monies, in its chords and its conibinations, being only a trans-
lation, a living application of this revelation.
Since the primitive source of authority is hidden under the
curves of writing, it is clear that the divine election must fall
on those who best understand the mystery of these signs. Thus
a society has come into being of scribes, of literati, in which the
civil hierarchy is formed, by competitive examinations, leading
to a government founded on the knowledge of the letter of the
U
3o6 EDGAR QUI NET.
sacred book, rather than on theocracy, or nohility of races,
or the rights of property or wealth, or even the sovereigntyof
the multitude. Inequality of conditions is born only of in-
equality of acquired lights ; political power is measured on
science ; so that China presents an example of a whole people
who, from examination to examination, is distributed into
bachelors, licentiates, doctors, just as others are divided into
proletarians, plebeians, patricians. Every one writes, from the
good man who records at evening on his tablet the actions of the
day, to the monarch who writes prefaces to the principal works,
and who is attended by scribes recording day and night his
actions and his words. History, as another consequence of this
hierographic institution, is not the work of an individual, but
becomes a real source of national authority. In addition to all
this, Chinese philosophy displays remarkable originality in the
ingenious manner in which it has subordinated the freest move-
ments of the human conscience to the geometric formulas of
revelation.
Here, then, is a people so absorbed in its books, that it has
forgotten the heavens above its head and the rest of the human
race. For want of a tie with the infinite source of renewal, its
life is worn out as soon as it commences, so that China is at
once the oldest and youngest society in the world. Its dis-
tinctive trait is, that from its cradle it has represented rational-
ism in the East. Its god, without form or voice, is but the
supreme heavens ; the Void, but the void without either depth,
or love, or hatred. The people are one ; no castes, scarcely any
traces of slavery, and up to a certain point no polygamy ; but
their god is without life, without personality, without soul. In
the canonical books, amongst the words, warnings, councils of
kings and sages, God never speaks or appears. "Without pre-
ference, without inclination for any one, he is impartial as
death ; he has become in reality nothing but a political fiction
placed at the head of the Constitution. Would you measure
all that earth can do without heaven, life without immortality,
man without God, study China.
Nothing being involved in such a religion, it neither pro-
gresses nor declines. Governments change, nowhere more ;
twenty-two dynasties have successively disappeared; but at the
end of all these revolutions the primitive institutions of China
remain immutable. In like manner, the West will be eternally
condemned to turn Ixion-like on the revolutionary wheel, should
the religious principle become similarly attenuated in Europe.
Six hundred years before the Christian era, the Emperors
caused a collection of popular songs to be made. With the
exception of a few words addressed furtively to the spirit, patron
CHINESE POETRY. 307
of the family, of a cry in a moment of distress to the blue
heavens, quickly followed, by a sceptical reflection, or of a prayer
to the void, these songs surprised on the lips of soldiers,
labourers, and hirelings, discover no trace of a God who sees and
tries the hearts of men. Each suffers, complains alone ; without
those cries of distress which rise from every condition of society,
from the beggar to the emperor, finding any common centre.
They resemble, if such a thing were possible, the Hebrew Psalms
without Jehovah. They are the last efforts of Chinese poetry ;
wanting sacred wings, it fell to the ground as soon as it attempted
to fly. Man cries out, God holds his peace, and the silence is
eternal. 1
These songs of the crowd, commented on by Confucius, make
part of the liturgical books. The instinct of the artisan and
the reflection of the thinker agree to leave God as small a place
as possible in the ideas and business of mankind. The She-
King is the ritual of a strong-minded people. The religion of
reason provokes that of mysticism. Laou-tseu propagated on
the borders of the Yellow River the Ascetic theories of the
Ganges ; Buddhism, expelled by the Brahmins, found a refuge
in the indifference of China. But neither worship has given its
society the form peculiar to it ; when they appeared the state
was already modelled on the literary dogma. Rationalism is
the religion of China ; positive faith the only heresy ; the
strong-minded man the only pope.
^ How true this is may be seen by reference to Dr. James Legge's " She-
King, or the Book of Chinese Poetry." Dr. Legge, as all interested in the
translation of the Bible into Chinese are aware, has been the advocate of the
opinion that the Chinese had the idea of the true God, the One, Supreme
Being, in opposition to Dr. Boone, the American Missionary Bishop in China,
who denied that they had. Dr. Legge thinks that these poems abundantly
confirm his conclusion. But abundantly is too strong a "word. The few
references to a Supreme Buler are often under the vague title of Heaven ;
and if Shang-ti is sometimes credited with good dispositions towards men,
he is as often spoken of in terms of the utmost bitterness, as thus : —
*' Great Heaven, unjust, the land exhausts with aU these pains ;
Great Heaven, unkind, these woes upon it ceaseless rains.
O Great unpitying Heaven, our troubles have no close !
With every month they grow ; men's minds know no repose,
My heart with grief is drunk." . . . — P. 325, II. iv. vii.
Or again, —
" Eevere Heaven's changing moods with fear profound."
—P. 320, III. ii. i.
It is not surprising after this to learn that these odes do not speak of the
worship which was paid to God, unless it be incidentally.
3o8 EDGAR QUINET.
The Chinese have founded, their society outside God, and this
is why they hve outside the human race. "Wanting a positive
reHgion, they have heen without the link by which the peoples
are bound together. For all the different orders of civilisation
have penetrated each other, uniting together more closely by a
mutual interchange of beliefs ; and the more a society has been
full of God, the more it has been able to nourish other societies ;
whereas in those in which religion is reduced to a shadow, more
than a shadow of ' relationship with the universal family is
impossible. Thus we see Judsea and China equally isolated
from the rest of mankind, equally removed from the orbit of
the human race, yet how different their final influence on the
world ! Judaea draws aU the greatest nations into the Abra-
hamic covenant, while China is powerless to form a single
association. The reason is obvious : Shang-ti is a name without
influence, while Jehovah is^all in all to his people.
At the other end of the world a society is discovered whose
principles are : Equality of all its members ; intellect the sole
ground of pre-eminence ; personal merit the sole aristocracy.
Everything there is regulated by the laws of human nature, its
one great idol being good sense. But as soon as these marvels
have aroused the admiration of the West, comes the discovery
that this wonderful people neither moves, nor breathes, nor
lives, and that all this wisdom has only ended by creating an
automaton. Why is this 1 Because man is there deprived of an
ideal superior to himself. Hebrew society gravitates towards
Jehovah, Greek society towards Zeus, Christian society towards
Christ, and in this effort towards heaven is the whole secret of
social life. But in Chinese society, man having no object higher
than himself, finds that he ends where he began. ^ Stifled
within the narrow limits of humanity, this dwarf society has
in everything lost its crown. Morality wants heroism ; royalty,
the royal muse ; verse, poetry ; philosophy, metaphysics ; life,
immortality ; because above all God is wanting.
1 In the foregoing chapter it should be' observed that Quinet does not deny
that the Chinese have the idea of a Supreme Being. What he affirms is,
that they entirely ignore it, and practically are atheists. But he nowhere
says that they are so theoretically ; on the contrary, he speaks of deism being
as popular in China as pantheism in the rest of Asia, by which he probably
means that while admitting the existence of God, they do not believe in his
having any communion with men. "'
( 309 )
IV.
The Eeligions of Westeen Asia and op Egypt — The
Eevelation bt the "Word and by Organic Life.
Sec. I. — Tlie lieligion of the Persians.
Modern travel has discovered the marvellous ruins of Perse-
polis, with their cuneiform inscriptions. But what increases
the interest of these three thousand columns " that the genii
have raised in the desert," are the bas-reliefs sculptured in
the living rock, and from whence may be gathered not only the
religious ceremonies, but the civil and political institutions of the
Persians. A whole people appear defiling before their founder,
Djemschid; magi, labourers, archers, artisans, each with the
sign of his calling ; we see the car of the migrations, and the
little beU that still tinkles at the necks of the camels of Iran.
Instead of the motionless empires of Brahma and Buddha, here
is a society that has arisen, that has gone forth to meet its new
God.
These Zend peoples have been restless from their cradle. A
vague instinct impels them to conquer all around them, and to
impose their faith on the world. Descending from the heights
of the Bactrian, they precipitate themselves on the race of Shem,
on Babylon, Chaldea, and the Assyrian Empire, never resting
until they have subjugated all from the Indus to the Halys.
Egypt added to the Persian Empire, they will attack Europe.
What doctrines did they bring with them to Marathon, Salamis,
Platseas, and Mycale ? "What god led them 1
If, in addition to the monuments of Persepolis, we look at
the Zend-Avesta, we shall find at first sight the same doctrines
as those of the oldest Vedas. The Hindoos and the Persians
have been twins in the same cradle, the latter having remained
most faithful to the old tradition, neither transforming it by art
nor philosophy, but, on the contrary, eternising it in a language
which time has been unable to polish or corrupt. The Zend-
Avesta is nothing but the revelation of the patriarchs of Upper
Asia rendered into a liturgic system by the magi.
Djemsohid marching at the head of his people, uttering to
the mute world the sacred word, this is the first day's work of
the Zend peoples ; the second is the appearance of its prophet
Zoroaster. On the summits of the Bactrian, before descending
towards Persepolis, as the Hebrew people in the wilderness, it
receives its teaching. There by Ardouisour, the spring of
immortality, Zoroaster seeks divine instruction. No thunder
3IO EDGAR QUINET.
rolls as on Sinai, but a dialogue, unheard by any but the
gushing spring, takes place between the Creator and the
creature. This confidence shown to man by his Maker is one
of the first characteristics of the Persian revelation.
The second is the necessity of praise. Man, in his ardent
desire to celebrate the glory of creation, invokes every object in
nature to assist, especially the firstborn of things. Nature to
him is pure and holy, and he feels his own impurity in com-
"parison. Why does the water, the tree, the fire tremble at his
approach ?
What existed in the beginning? asks the prophet. "Light
and the uncreated Word," responds the voice from on high.
Thus, in this Genesis, Light existed before creation. With regard
to the power of speech — the Word, none have felt more deeply
or more exalted its marvel. The Word is the light of Humanity
as Light is the word of Nature. Can we be astonished that
these Zend peoples should have identified the two, and, seeing
the double miracle in themselves, should have made it the object
of worship? For this luminous Word must have seemed to
them not' only a wonder of the moral but also of the physical
world, since every living creature has its own language and its
own rhythm. If the whole universe was, in fact, a word, an
hosanna pronounced by the organ of things, must not this
power of speech, this Word, be itself the principle, the soul of
Creation ? Each thing had been called into being, the world
itself had arisen by the power of evocation. Pronounced by
the Most High, this word of life, which is at the same time
light, breaks forth, circulates through the infinite, from sphere
to sphere, from mouth to mouth, and is repeated by all the
archangels of heaven and of earth, until it reaches the lowest
level in the hierarchy of beings, and is whispered in undertones
by the spirits of the flowers, of the metallic ores, and the precious
stones. This Word sustains the world; were it interrupted
creation itself would fall to pieces. Therefore it is that the
Persian people, associating itself with all nature, expresses this
word in a liturgy by the mouth of the priest, calling upon all
beings like a sentinel in the night, awaking them again at early
dawn, and giving them in a manner the word for the day.
Thence it is that the Zend-Avesta is composed chiefly of forms
of evocation, and teaches not only that man should join his
voice to the acclamation of the worlds, but that he should feed
upon the sacred Word, making it his meat and his drink.
The reign of the Word and of uncreated Light has for its
lord him who fulfils the order of heaven, the master of all
wisdom, the artisan of all beauty, Ormuzd. But against him
struggles another god, the author of all evil, the lord of darkness,
RELIGION OF THE WORD AND UNCREATED LIGHT. 311
Ahriman, All creatures, all things follow one or the other, and
the universe is a perpetual struggle between their contending
forces. But the kingdom of light takes the initiative, and
its rays are ever besieging the kingdom of darkness. Tliis
passionate struggle is repeated in the heart of man, and it
extends far beyond the limits of this world ; for every object in
natare has its guardian angel, the least flower has a spirit which
wa'iches over it, even the dagger has one. All these spirits
are engaged in deadly struggle in heavenly regions, the earthly
figlit has its counterpart in the skies.
in this battle, what side shall man take 1 Clearly, that of
Light. Here then is the thought at the root of Persian History,
the basis of its law, its Constitution, the ground and impetus
of iuty. To struggle for the Light, to make it triumph, is the
eni of man's existence, and explains how Indian asceticism is
replaced by the spirit of conquest. This explains the deadly
anmosity of the Persians against the dark negro races of Egypt,
wlo appeared to them the wicked race of Ahriman ; this explains
thdr crusades against the West under Xerxes and others. The
frczen banks of the Danube, that cold sunless Thrace, must be
wiested from the hands of the king of darkness for the pure
ani glorious Ormuzd. Read Herodotus, and you cannot under-
stand the reason of their great invasion of Greece ; study their
reigious dogma, the whole history is tliere.
A still closer tie existed between dogma and the state. As
ttere were seven archangels round the King of light, there
were seven satraps round the monarch, seven castes in the nation,
stven walls around the holy city. Xenophon's " Cyropedia" is
wanting in this, that he does not see that the education of the
pince is regulated on the ideal of God. The least of his
Eibjects must, like himself, prepare his heart for the rising, for
ihe reign of Ormuzd. Every Persian soldier was to watch
fgainst the approach of his inner enemies, since his life must
^e pure as the flame ; his future, his hope being, to become Light.
What is " to live well " but to purify one's self ? And this prin-
siple of private morality extends to the administration of nature,
establishing obligations to things as to persons. Thus work
became the first of rites, and we see how on this foundation was
established that accord so much sought after in our days between
Eeligion and Industry.
Have these ideas had no permanent value? Nothing in
tradition has been more durable, is to-day more living. The
stammerings of Persia broke into full utterance in Christianity :
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God ; in Him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Was the struggle between Light and Darkness to last for
EDGAR QUINET.
312
ever ? ISTo, it only waited the advent of the mediator, Mithia,
the third person of the Persian Trinity. Invested with a douBe
nature, he comes to illuminate the god of darkness with Ms
inward splendour. He converts him to the light. Ahriman
purified, redeemed, is reconciled to Ormuzd, and unites wth
him to make an offering to the Eternal. Hell redeemed chaits
the Avesta. The resurrection of the dead and the regeneraton
of the universe close this great struggle. Guarded hy the saced
dog, the souls who have passed the bridge Tchinevad are clotl.ed
in gold. Thus evil is only a shadow which glides over he
surface of things, while that which is most original is that Sa an
himself is recovered from his fall, and the resurrection of matter
governs that of the Spirit. Mithra, this labourer of the DesJrt,
the son of the Word, closes the era of religious revolutionain
Persia. Latest born of all the gods of the East, he is nearsst
in conception to the Christian tradition. So near that he be.rs
the same names, has the same attributes as Jesus ; for a ti Qe
even it seemed a question whose worship should prevail. lut
as the Persian god paled in the East before the God of 1ie
Bible, Mithra paled in the West before the God of the Gospsl.
Nevertheless the conquered has left its traces everywhere in tie
triumphant religion, from the image of the tree of life in vie
garden of Eden, to the wise men from the East, with thir
offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
To deify the principle of combat might suffice for the conquet
of the world, but could not convert it. It needed in addition
the principle of unity. It is true that above this struggle w s
the Being, the indivisible, impassible, incommunicable Akeren;
but in' the ardour of the warfare he was forgotten. Anothir .
result of this religion of struggle was that the combatants wob '
themselves out, and now the cities which resounded with thj
sacred word are the abodes of beasts of prey. Chased frod
their own land, the followers of Zoroaster have carried theij
religion back to India, the land of their fathers, and they prei
sent in the East the same miracle as the Jews in the West. A^
either end of the world these two peoples — the masters and the
captives of Babylon, those who laughed and those who weptl
beneath its willows, magi and seers — exist, equally imperishable, 1
equally miserable, equally obstinate in their resistance, the one \
to Christ, the other to Mahomet ; and all the enmity of the world
cannot unite two causes so alike in form but differing in God.
How hard it is for a religion to disappear ! The immortal
part of empires, the soul of civilisations, it wiU survive in a
thought, or in a dogma, or perchance in a rite or an image which
it has added to the profession of faith of the human race.
\ \
REVELATION BY ORGANIC LIFE. 313
Sec. 2. — The Religion of Egypt — Revelation by Organic Life.
Some peoples appear to have liad no infancy ; the tiuth is,
that every society is of the age of its beliefs. From Asia pro-
ceed a line of gods, each one less artless, more contemplative,
wiser, sadder than its predecessor. They give to the states they
adopt their character, that is to say, their age. Born of the
dawn, they contract in the human spirit a taste for darkness,
until, coming at last to bury themselves in mystery, they enter
Egypt.
The thoughtful brow of its sphinx came from the East, its
powerful loins from the deserts of Libya. Abyssinia and Ethi-
opia supply the heart and force of Egypt ; from thence it inces-
santly renewed its life and drew its tropical rites. Its religion
awakes at the source of the Nile, a colony of Oriental priests
come to direct it, and from Meroe it follows the course of the
river until it arrives at Thebes, Memphis, and the Delta. A
temple marks each station, a city follows the temple. The sur-
rounding tribes — red,'black, white, copper-coloured, and tawny-
flock in ; each city forming an oasis in the desert, without reci-
procal ties. A pastoral people invade this divided Egypt, and in
the effort to expel them its mongrel population attains unity.
This unity is established on the one common tie, the god to
which they offer a common worship — the Nile. The soul of the
river henceforth takes possession of them. Its mode of life, its
destiny, is theirs. Once in the time of Sesostris they overflowed
the world ; then they retire into their bed, and eight centuries
before the Christian era the national life of Egypt is already
exhausted.
Egypt has not been unveiled to us, as India and Persia, by
sacred books. It would seem as if Africa could not rise to the
miracle of tradition by the word. Neither of the great empires
of Carthage or Egypt have left any monument of the spoken
word. Silence is the foundation of their religion. The Egyptian
Bible is made of stone ; its Old Testament is written on obelisks,
pyramids, temples in granite.
The genius of Egypt could not rise to Light and Speech ; the
divine appeared to it in the heart of the hawk or the lion.
Kneeling before the animal it sealed its own slavery, and as far
as in it lay made Africa the' nursing mother of servitude. Its
animal worship extended beyond mere images ; for in the temples
were kept living creatures, crocodiles adorned with earrings and
golden bracelets, lions covered with embroidered carpets, before
whom incense was burnt, serpents fed with milk, and howling
dogs. The African brought his gods from the desert, and the
314 EDGAR QUINET.
priesthood adopted them all; and though the worship, thus
formed gradually, rose with civilisation, it never denied its
popular origin, for of its highest type was born the sphinx.
Thus the carnal soul of Africa took possession of the civilisa-
tion of the Pharaohs, the ferment of the deserts rose in the
heart of the cities. To explain the principle of ,the Egyptian
rites we must picture to ourselves Organic life at the time in
which they commenced. How marvellous to man must that
life have been as it swarmed beneath his feet and buzzed around
him, appearing to spring without any parentage from the sacred
dust. In the solitary place he met a being more powerful,
wiser than himself, who reigned over the desert without a rival.
To add to the mystery he could not interrogate the animals, for
they were mute ; yet they evidently possessed a secret know-
ledge, by which they perceived the coming of the seasons and
the unknown paths of nature. The humble scarabaeus, in putting
on his golden suit, marked the approach of summer ; the ibis
walked with all the solemnity of a priest before the waters of
the Nile, as if to show them the way. Besides, had not the
animals reigned long before the coming of man ; was not the
lion king of the desert, the crocodile lord of the river, the
eagle master of the sky ? The poor slave must often have
envied the wing of the bird or the hoof of the wild horse ; as
he saw the hawk hover over the highest pyramid and seat itself
on its apex, he must have felt there was 'something divine in
one so masterful and free. Could we forget what we owe to
civilisation and to Christianity, we should quickly see how the
permanent wonder of living nature in the midst of dead nature
must have astonished the man alike naked in body and mind ;
how he must have been carried away at the sight of certain
animals, believed by him to be gods or kings over the others.
To have sought Revelation in organic life is the distinctive
feature of Egypt.
This liturgy of the desert did not suffice for the priesthood,
they crowned it by a system of dogma. The Egyptian Genesis,
so often compared to the Hebrew, differed especially froro. it in
this, that each day was an Incarnation, so that there are as
many divine dynasties as epochs. A trinity appears : first the
unrevealed Being, Jupiter Ammon, the ram of heavenly blue ;
then Athor, the mother, who holds on her knees and suckles
the infant god, incarnate, under the figure of the new-born
world. In every sanctuary is found, under divers names, this
eternal family : Ammon, Osiris, Knef, the father ; Mouth, Isis,
Neith, the wife, the nurse, the mother ; Orus, Khons, Malouli,
the sacred child. Around this monstrous family prowls Typhon,
the spirit of death, whose breath obscures the light and dries
MAN GROWS AS HIS GOD DECLINES. 315
■up the waters. Incarnation, the universal doctrine of the East,
appears in Egypt under the double figure of the Sun, and of the
Kiver in which it reflects itself. These two forces are, as it
were, the Egyptian Messiah ; their coming is looked for with
hope, their departure is regarded with dismay. If the American
Indian hears the voice of the Great Spirit in the cataract of
Niagara, should not the Egyptians hear it in that river which,
springing from unknown sources, was shaded by sacred obelisks,
pyramids, and temples, and brought fertility and joy at every
step in its course ? All their theology and poetry is born of the
waters of the Nile.
Only in countries where the sun appears in all its splendour
is it possible to realise the mysterious pang with which nature
seems smitten during the short winter. AH flies away or dies.
The sacred bird takes wing, the golden scarabeeus disappears.
No more murmurs, no more swarming, no more buzzing of living
things ; the universal languor that appears on the face of the
world looks like the dying palor of a god fading away under
the breath of the evil one. Seen by a people whose faith rested
on the wonder of organic life, this sight evoked a passionate
lamentation, sorrowful pilgrimages went from city to city, the
priests striking their breasts, while the cry arose, " The god is
dead." Man having taken to adoring nature, is alarmed at its
decay. He can do nothing but celebrate the passion of his
fainting god, of which the whole universe becomes the Golgotha.
Egypt celebrated with the rest of the world the birthday of
creation, but none beheld in so striking a manner as she did the
picture of its death ; thus the monuments which represent her
the best are sepulchral. Like the desert, bare, empty, without
entrance or exit, without sculptures, inscriptions, or any living
images, what can have been the origin of the pyramids if they
were not tombs for the gods ? .
Erom the very instability of its god, Egypt drew a part of its
greatness and originality. In the moments of the divine weak-
ness, man learnt to regard himself as something. The peculiar
power of Egypt is shown in fitting this new-born sense of
personality to the pantheism of the East. The Pharaohs place
their own colossal statues in front of the temples, seat themselves
amongst the gods, write their names on the sacred tree, and
picturing the records of their reigns over the house of their
gods, evidently make their own apotheosis. In further con-
firmation of this idea, comes the ritual for the dead. The
Pharaohs spend their lives in making their tombs, and the
poorest workman follows their example. Other peoples burn
or offer their remains to beasts of prey, the Egyptian makes
every effort to preserve his body as a pledge of his personality
3i6 EDGAR QUINET.
in the kingdom of the dead. Not only does he believe in
resurrection, but in judgment. Every soul is weighed against
a feather by the god Atmou, and if found too light, sinks into
the infernal regions ; but if of good weight, it goes to bathe in
the heavenly river, and to taste of the tree of life ; and then
passing, under the conduct of Hermes, through the labyrinth of
forms, it rises again with the Eternal Sun in the pure dawn of
Ammon.
This precocious instinct of individuality is the one point in
which Egypt bears the palm over India and Persia. By this
faith ' in the human personality, it has always remained the
equal or the mistress of those who have conquered it, and not
one of its conquerors have been able to make it alter its wor-
ship ; on the contrary, it has imposed its dogmas upon them.
Christianity alone has been able to dissolve this civilisation of
granite. i''ox its profound feeling of the instability of visible
things, its worship of death, its passion of Osiris on the African
Calvary, its legends written by Hermes on the tree of life, have
all prepared it, more than any other part of the world, to receive
the news of spiritual life and Christian immortality. So many
of its great thoughts had been prophecies of the coming faith
that nowhere was the change more rapid. The priests, who had
stood out against all other religions, yield so easily that they
disappear without leaving any trace of their last moments. In
their place are suddenly seen the monks of the Thebaid. Who
can be astonished if in the midst of so many relics of the
religion of organic nature, when their eyes met everywhere gods
with faces of lions or of wolves, these followers of St. Antony
were assailed by frightful visions, or that they thought that
they held converse with centaurs ? In their inward struggles
the Egyptian religion came to its end ; in treading under foot
the emblems of subjugated matter these holy men conquered a
crown for the spirit. They are accused of giving the signal for
social dissolution by cutting themselves off from the world ; on
the contrary, the thought that drove them into the desert was
the very opposite to that of destruction ; in place of a dead
society they sought the type of every living one, of every living
alliance, by a renewed communion with God. They entered
again with Him into the social contract that had been broken.
"Whilst the human city was crumbling into dust, they imbibed
in the contemplation of the Eternal City the spirit of the laws
which could raise up ruined walls. The beginning of every
society is marked by a similar concentration on the part of those
who go to seek the new law in the desert. Moses on Sinai,
Zoroaster on the Bordj, Manou on the Ganges, Orpheus in
Thrace, what were they, if not the anchorites of the • new-born
THE RELIGIONS OF BABYLON AND PHENICIA. 317
■world, as Antonj^, Paul, Athanasius, were the anchorites of a
world torn again ?
Sec. 3. — The Principle of the Religions of Babylon andPhenicia
— The Sentiment of the Infinite in Pagan Love.
Babylon inherits the religion of the shepherds of Upper
Asia, hut that which amongst them was inspiration has here
become science, observation, calculation. The heavens are
reduced to a system, a radiant society, which has its hierarchy,
its satraps, its despot. The stars are formed into constellations
which pour out good and evil on the world ; interpreters of the
invisible light, the planets discover the future ; over the whole
celestial universe is the God of Light, who here appears under
the name of Bel. It is evident that this religion is an indi-
vidual rite of the primitive worship of Light, but in regarding
Light under the form of stars it sanctions the worship of images
in the temples ; a characteristic which divides it sharply from
the wholly spiritual worship of the Zend-Avesta, the true
Protestantism of the East ; and is the cause of the religious
wars between Persia and Assyria. Besides this, the gods have
passed from infancy to youth. Desire has been born, the
earth has lost its primitive innocence. The universe, which
in the early Vedas has, so to speak, no distinct expression, is
full of ardent thoughts. The ancient night, sleeping under the
cold gleams of the Asvenau, has become amorous of the
caresses of the day. The Dawn of the Eig-Veda has become
a nubile virgin seeking her eternal lover. This ardour of a
youthful world manifests itself in the voluptuous cry which
rises from Babylon, where the espousals of Nature with the
Sun are celebrated in rites unveiling the mysteries of child-
birth and maternity. Seated on a shaggy lion, wearing a
diadem of towers on her head, and a necklace of precious stones
shining with the light of the stars, the courtisan of the
universe dashes here and there, sowing everywhere in the
season of life that cruel voluptuousness which devours it.
Commerce opens up her way ; at the end of each of its great
roads a temple is dedicated to her worship — Mylitta and
Thammuz at Babylon, Astarte and Adonis in Phenicia, Cybele
and Attis in Phrygia — always the same couple, the marriage of
heaven and earth. The feast of the conception of the mother
of all things at the approach of summer, the grief for the sun
lost in winter, refound in spring, buried and risen again, are
celebrated by rites frightful or polluting. The Babylonian
commerce in articles of luxury was itself a sort of religious rite
by which the bosom of the earth was adorned. The Phe-
3i8 EDGAR QUINBT.
nicians, in carrying the Tyrian purple from store to shore,
beautified the robe of the great mother of the mountains ; and
those maritime cities, Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Smyrna, were as
so many officiating priests continually employed in adorning,
repairing, embroidering the hem of her garments ; so that, in
many respects, the industrial arts were only a consequence of
this worship. Babylon was the insatiable heart of this worship ;
from thence it enclosed all the societies of Western Asia,
Phenicia, Phrygia, Lydia, Canaan, consuming them in its
embraces until it left them nothing but names.
Divinity thus represented gave to woman a certain emanci-
pation. Instead of being shut up in her apartments, she
enjoyed a horrible liberty. Semiramis, Dido, Stratonice, Atha-
lia, Artemisia, Cleopatra, appear on their thrones, representa-
tives of the Eternal Astarte.
It is this which made the path to idolatry so slippery in
Judaea. Solomon and the kings of Israel, in wishing to unite
the worship of Jehovah and Astarte, had no intention to deny
the worsliip of the former ; they thought to complete it. But
the God of Joseph persistently refused such corruption. He
would have no other bride than the mystic church.
Terror, respect, delight, every childlike sentiment worn out,
man is smitten with a delirious love of the infinite. He cannot
resist it. Desire for the foolish Virgin, who lives and breathes
in all things, has broken loose. Tired ere long of her cold
form in the temples, it would possess her living and palpitating.
With haggard eyes it rushes forth seized with madness, and in
wild spots forms choirs of Corybantes, Curetes, Dactyles, who,
from retreat to retreat, seek the great ancestor of the hiUs, ever
mother, ever virgin. To the sound of sackbut and Phrygian
flute, it explores with flaming torches the depths of the caverns
to see if she sleeps there. Her perfumes rise from the sacred
woods, it feels her moving among the flowers. It ascends the
highest peaks, it descends the lowest valleys. Evoe ! evoe !
and then, when the sigh of the ocean is its only answer, it
mingles despair with its voluptuousness at not being able to
overtake its infinite deceiver. It exhausts this cup of its orgies,
its thirst increases, it cuts its body with frightful scars, ever
following the great amorous Madonna, who is ever disrobing
herself at the extremity of the horizon, as she rushes along in
her car drawn by roaring lions. Never does it cease until the
day beholds her arise under the purified heavens of Syria as the
immaculate Virgin of Christendom.
( 319 )
V.
The Hebrew Eeligion.
Sec. I. — Jeliovali — Revelation through the Desert.
We now open tlie book that contains whatever is vital in
every other hook in Asia ; the hook that, recalling them all, is
opposed to them all ; doing away with them at the same time
that it consecrates them. Eegarded solely from a human point
of view, this is the miracle most visibly written upon every page
of the Bible.
For half a century the text of the Old Testament has been
examined more closely than ever. Germany has undertaken
this task. The spirit of man wishes at last to see clearly into
the book of God. Taking it up again and again, he weighs
every syllable ; never has so rude an assault been made on the
letter. If we were to consult appearances, all is irrevocably
changed by the discoveries of criticism. But if, after our first
surprise, we examine the results, we find them so mixed with
hypothesis and conjecture that we despair of founding anything
yet on such a basis.
In substituting everywhere, for instance, the vague action of
time for personal influence, has it been sufficiently considered
that such a system, which is applicable to peoples in which the
man disappears in the caste, is in nearly continual contradiction
to the genius of all others 1 Their past is not formed by here-
ditary dynasties, but by individuals. "We might as well cut the
Hebrew people out of history as try to get rid of the personality
of Moses. Of what consequence is it to prove Moses not to be
the author of certain laws and narratives, if he is left in full
possession of the idea of Jehovah, in which after all consists
the miracle of his life 1 What is gained by making the theo-
cracy commence after the destruction of Jerusalem, if its
doctrines are not disputed ? Let them date from Egypt or
Babylon, are they any the less extraordinary on that account ?
Regulate, change at your wiU the chronology of the Hebrews, it
is impossible to deny that one and the same genius reigns
through all the books, and that it is this genius alone which
makes all the difficulty.
Admitting that the religions of Asia have drawn their light
from the same source ; admitting that the same fundamental
dogma, that of the Trinity, appears in each of the religions of
the East, the difficulty is to find the tie that unites that of
Judasa with the rest. Eaise the gods of Phenicia or of Egypt
as much as you like, you can never make them attain to the
320 EDGAR QUINET.
idea of Jeliovali. Why is this? Because incarnate in the
universe they are one with it, because the earth forms their
feet, the sky their head, the stars their glance ; while nature is
not even a rohe for Jehovah ; he can remake it or destroy it, just
as it pleases him. The winds are not his breath, they are his
messengers. The stars are not his eyes, they are his servants.
The world is not his image ; it is not his echo ; it is not his
dress ; it is not his light ; it is not his word. What is it then 1
It is nothing before him.
To find a solid alliance with Jehovah we must go back to the
origin of the religions of Asia, to the first divinity, mysterious,
impenetrable, the source of all others, the Brahma of the
Hindoos, the Zervan-Akerene of the Persians, the ancient of
days, without wife, without son, without family. But in the
other religions this great Solitary is scarcely seen ; quickly
incarnating himself, he sinks and disappears under the form
of the world, exhausting his divinity in imparting it to all.
Jehovah, on the contrary, so accumulates all his divinity into
himself, that that Trinity, which is at the bottom of all other
religions, is veiled and, as it were, buried in his.
It is in the splendour of the first dawn of the religion of un-
created Light, with gods who, like Indra and Ormuzd, rise above
creation and look down upon it, that his alliance shines forth.
By light Jehovah reveals himself to Abraham, to Moses, to the
people, to Solomon, to Elijah ; so from age to age with increas-
ing glory he shines, until he is seen by Isaiah, Ezekiel, seated
on his flaming throne. It was because Baal and Astarte were
the incarnations of matmal light that their rivalry was so
dangerous. And this danger was increased by the fact that
some of the ornaments of Solomon's temple were borrowed from
that of the Sun. For every sacred thing in the East, as it comes
in contact with Jehovah, is assimilated and purified at his shrine.
Converting all that he touches, his originality and his personality
are never more strikingly seen than in these divine reavings.
And yet, in reality, what an insuperable barrier he extends
around himself ; how he separates himself from all, at the very
time that he is connecting himself with all ! Instead of reveal-
ing himself in the midst of tropical nature, where all provokes
to idolatry, he chooses the desert. Nature had been adored so
long that it was necessary that a people should be led where
nature was not, if they were to learn to worship a God who was
above nature. In the desert the universe has disappeared ; no
river nor spring to adore, no wood nor metal to make an image ;
not even a voice save that of thunder ; but everywhere the face
of Jehovah shining alone in the void of immensity, the Spirit
standing alone in the midst of His invisible temple. This is the
REVELATION THROUGH THE DESERT. 321
reason of the withdrawal of the Hebrew people into the wilder-
ness of the Wandering. There Humanity gathers itself up ; in
the midst of the silence of the universe the miracle of the God-
Spirit consummates itself in its heart. In vain criticism lays
hold of numerous contradictions to affirm that the migration
from Egypt is nothing but an allegory without any real founda-
tion. The desert is imprinted in ineffaceable characters in every
institution ; and its majesty, nakedness, and immensity is even to
be seen in the temperament of the God of the Hebrews. The
rough tracks of these valleys of hyssop, the slag of these dread-
ful rooks, the menaces of this land of anger, all reflect them-
selves in his face. Terror is his law, to behold him is to die ;
all other gods have temples, he alone is wandering, without
dwelling-place. He is not willing _to stop anywhere, or to take
the form of any place ; he is not the god of the mountain nor the
valley, he is nomadic as the Spirit who dwells everywhere at the
same moment. It is only when his image is completed in the
understandings of men, and can no more be veiled by the image
of the world, that he consents to enter a temple. The seed of
life roots itself, and the kingdom of Judah begins to germinate.
And when that kingdom finally disappears, in order that the
world may be constrained to take its place and follow Jehovah,
he enters again into the same solitudes. The Christ before
revealing hiraself, for forty days followed the traces of his Father
in the desert.
In the world are two visible figures of Eternity, the Ocean
and the Desert. Each has left its imprint on the genius of the
Religions. The changing gods of India have arisen from the
capricious and tumultuous Ocean ; the Desert, without voice,
without succession, without apparent form, can never reveal any
other than the God-Spirit, immutable, inexorable, incorruptible
as itself.
Seo. 2. — The Prophets.
Since it had been by the mixture of races that those religious
confusions had taken place out of which had grown the divi-
sions of polytheism, it was necessary in order to preserve the
pure gold of tradition : the doctrine of the Unity of God, that
there should be one people who dwell unallied with the human
race. Convinced that no union was possible between their reli-
gion and the rest of the East, the Hebrew leaders never sought
to convert. Wherever they came they made a desert around
them; it was their calling to live alone on the earth and in
time, as their God lived alone in heaven and in eternity.
In this solitude the Hebrew people was always burdened by
X
322 EDGAR QUINET.
the great secret tliat it alone in the universe possessed ; it knew
itself to be the confidant of the Eternal, it listened to his in-
visible messages ; it underwent all the magic and witchery of
solitude ; a voice declared that it carried the future in its bosom,
that its highest worth lay in its destiny. Tormented uncon-
sciously by this work of the future, it was at once proud and
dejected; prophecy being ever the dominant tone of its poetry
and of its worship.
In the pantheistic religions there are no prophets. All gene-
rations confuse with rather than succeed each other. Even in
Persia and Egypt oracles and soothsayers do little better than
mutter. It is only among the Hebrews that the genius of the
future discovers itself, for their God is free : he wills, he changes,
he destroys, he is angry, he js appeased. That which has been,
ceases to be the invariable rule of that which will be. With
the divine personality the miracle of liberty is discovered in the
world, old institutions give way, the future as a closed book is
opened, man seizes on it, and eagerly peruses it.
Hence the image of a people who, rejecting an odious pre-
sent, live always outside of it in an effort after the impossible.
Its constitution rests on a double priesthood : that of the tribe
of Levi, possessing many traits in common with the priesthood
of the rest of the East ; and that of the seers, personal, spon-
taneous, drawing their authority from within themselves.
Tribunes of the people of God, it is their mission to arouse the
hereditary priesthood always ready to go to sleep on the forms
of the past ; they keep the idea of Jehovah incorrupt, they
purify and spiritualise His worship from generation to genera-
tion, diffusing incessantly a new soul into the ancient rites.
Always possessing a profound understanding of the times in
which they lived, they were the first in antiquity to perceive
that the old East was dead. From the height of the idea of
Divine Unity, as from some lofty watch-tower, they overlook
the whole horizon of antiquity ; they see the old religious sys-
tems which surround them falling to ruin, and with them the
societies, the empires, the states they ar6 sustaining. In reli-
gious history, they read civil and political history ; the death of
the gods taught them in advance the death of the peoples.
When no temple had as yet tottered, when the priesthoods were
still enjoying peace, strange voices interrupt the silence ! Pro-
phesy against Babylon I Ere long the empire of the Medes comes
out of its obscurity, comes at the time named to subjugate
Babylon. Prophesy against Egypt I Cambyses is in his cradle ;
he becomes king, he invades Egypt, and causes the bones of the
Pharaohs to be beaten with rods. Prophesy against Damascus,
against Uphraim / As a matter of fact, these kingdoms are
THE HEBREW PROPHETS. 323
carried away like birds'-nests by the Chaldean fowler. Each
word seems to be a. judgment of God, so quick is its execution.
But the prophets mainly occupy themselves with their own
people. They appear just when its independence is most in
peril, each having an individuality of his own and bearing a
particular message, but all agreeing in the same thought, the
same politics, the same fear. In face of the East united against
Israel, they invoke in heaven the unity of God, on earth the
unity of the people, the fraternity of Ephraim and Judah, the
unity of the government by the alliance of the priesthood, and
the monarchy in the bosom of the theocracy. They are dis-
tracted between two thoughts : if they look at their scattered
tribes at the feet of the colossi of Assyria or Persia, nothing
appears but distress, signs of ruin, tears, cries, despair, and grief
unexampled ; for they foresee the dispersion and the inevitable
ruin of Judaea, the sanctuary of the future. When, however,
they consider what idea the Hebrew people represent, they
feel, in looking up to Jehovah, that on their side is invincible
force, so that in their extremest distress they never suppose it
possible that the people who have been made the living temple
of God can perish ; to do so would be to admit the defeat of the
Eternal. Thus every time they rose to this idea despair ceased ;
far from fearing, they menaced their enemies, and lifting their
nation from the dust, they sang its ultimate triumph. This
mixture of sorrow and of joy, of all that is most feeble — Judtea,
with all that is most powerful — Jehovah ; this dialogue of the
infinitely little and the infinitely great, is quite peculiar to the
Hebrew genius.
And these ideas belong not only to the seers ; they are those
of the entire people, who may be considered in the course of its
life as a single prophet living from the times of Moses to those
of the Maccabees. Even in exile, under the lash of Chaldean
archers, when Israel is dragged away, his hands tied behind
him, he goes, led by a sacred dream ; in vain he tramps bare-
footed over the sands of the desert, nothing can awake him out
of it. All the while he is descending the bitter steps of slavery,
he believes he is mounting the throne of the world ; for the
possession of such an idea as Jehovah is alone sufficient to
invest him with a royalty which, nothing can abolish.
Ear from being mere Hebrew tribunes, or men whose thoughts
are confined to a city or to a race, the Hebrew prophets are,
as tradition has called them, God's spokesmen, who read the
future where it forms itself, in God Himself. From their point
of view every horizon of history is to be seen ; they do not
merely prophesy a series of accidents and events, as the Greek
oracles, but announce a social change, a new humanity. The
324 EDGAR QUINET.
reign of David is for them the golden age, which they extend
through the whole future. With the restoration of this ideal
reign they see the unity of God taking possession of the earth,
and this idea repairing the old world. It is in this sense that
it has been rightly said that there is more than one republic of
Plato in a single chapter of Isaiah.
As a matter of fact, are not the prophecies accomplished?
Has not the unity of the Elohim triumphed t Has not Jehovah,
enslaved in Babylon, conquered the god of Babylon ? Has not
the fraternity of the peoples succeeded to their enmity 1 Did
not the Old Testament implicitly contain the New, as the bud
the flower 1 And if these things are yet incomplete, does not
each man unconsciously work for the re-establishment of the
kingdom of David according to the divine plan perceived in the
beginning by these divine men ? , For all the thoughts of God
as well as his works are enveloped in one supreme thought; and
the men who have been the first to possess this idea, have
really possessed the science of all times and of all forms to
come. After, the return from captivity the power of prophecy
vanishes. It 'reaches its greatest height during the time of
slavery ; it passes away when the Jews consent to exist under
protection. Henceforth its teachers drop into the didactic tone.
Instead of the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel come the pro-
verbs of the Preacher.
Sec. 3. — Tlie Principle of Hebrew Poetry — The Psalms.
In the sacred books of the East creation continues indefinitely.
In the Old Testament, Elohim creates the universe by a flash of
his will ; he places it far from himself, he sits down beyond it
in the skies. Hence a totally different poetry from the Indian
epics ; a poetry rapid, instantaneous, like the God it celebrates.
"Where the Creator is distinct from his work, every change
gives the impression of an extraordinary intervention of his
will ; whence the idea of prodigy. Born at the same time as
that of divine liberty, it arouses enthusiasm, transport, thanks-
giving ; and the psalm, which is the epitome of all these sen-
timents, is the true poetry of miracle. The language of the
Psalms has the peculiar character, the very accent, of Jehovah ;
all is movement, life, personality; attributes become beings, be-
ings actions, differences of time are scarcely marked, the pre-
sent being almost entirely wanting in the verbs, appearing as an
indiscernable point between the past and the future. Echo
of generations, these sacred songs belong to nearly every epoch
of Hebrew history from Moses to the Maccabees. Most nume-
rous under David, the psalms of that period gave the tone to
THE PSALMS. 325
all the rest : at first, during tlie unity of the monarchy and the
priesthood, full of the confidence of the Lord's anointed, they
are calm and majestic ; during the Captivity they have a heart-
rending accent ; then enthusiasm hursts forth afresh with the
Return into a style more liturgic than under the first temple.
As this poetry grows with him, the image of the Euler of Israel
sitting down on the holy hill by the side of his God is more
and more idealised, until it becomes the image of every hope
and the permanent emblem of the future. Thus this grand
triumphant choir goes on alike in peace or war, increasing,
resounding as long as the Hebrew people endure, and only
finishing with them ; marking by its rhythm the pulsation of
life through the whole course of generations. Sometimes the
accord of the voices breaks and seems lost in the sands ; then
the echo is heard beneath the willows of the Captivity ; some-
times but a single voice moans in the night — a newly-anointed
king, a prophet, a shepherd, a Levite forgotten among the ruins ;
the rest of Judah seems lost, the concert finished. But the
song of triumph never fails to recur, the liturgic choir bursts
out afresh ; the mute people come out of the dust, the image of
the ideal king appears resplendent, the gate of the City of God
reopens, and one hardly knows whether one is beholding the
triumph of the past or of the future.
In the midst of these exalted sentiments are others which
find expression nowhere else in the world, — the secret hopes,
the painful thoughts, the miseries which are at the depths of
the inner life, all hidden beneath the majesty of a king of
Judah ; for the personality of man shines forth with that of
God. Elsewhere the divinities do not trouble themselves with
the private thoughts which wander in the darkness of men's
spirits. It was not permissible to invoke the Immortals. Here,
on the contrary, is a God who dwells beyond all worlds, yet
hears the muttered complaints at the bottom of men's hearts.
He traverses immensity, he comes to lend an ear, to make his
creature enter into intimacy with the Infinite. He is the
Father, Israel the Son ; terrible paternity, it is true, without the
Virgin and the mother ; chastisement does not spare the child.
At intervals the psalms seem to recall reminiscences of the
Eig-Veda, but the Hebrew poetry is very far from the early
rudeness of these Indian hymns ; if it belongs to comparatively
modern society, it has many traits of tribal infancy; it has
found, for instance, no poetic artifice beyond repeating the
same idea twice. But if its clothing is rustic, its heart and
soul are loyal ; and tradition has done well in crowning the name
of David with this poetry, which displays at once all the
characteristics of the shepherd and the king.
326 EDGAR QUINET.
Sec. 4. — Hebrew PMlosophy — Job.
Directly the unity of God was proclaimed, the question at
once arose : If He is alone, whence comes evil 1 If He is master,
why do the good suifer ? If all hearts are in His hands, why do
the evil triumph 1 The Hebrew people were bound to seek its
solution. The book of Job is an attempt to do so. It belongs
to the system of the Bible as reply to query ; blasphemy is here
the demonstration of the faith.
Founded on an ancient tradition, though not an historic
work, this book of Job, the most poetic of all the books in the
Bible, opens in heaven. Satan, still permitted to come into the
presence of God, appears among his familiar angels, and pro-
poses the temptation of the most just man on earth. Job is
suddenly struck. A powerful prince, he is laid low in the dust.
He has never done aught but good, and yet he suffers, — suffers
bitterly. Why is this ? Thus he arraigns God. One step
more and doubt comes, but it is doubt mixed with hymn, with
adoration. Some have found in these contradictions proof that
the book was written at different epochs ; no, it is the heart of.
Job that is divided, not the poem. He is terrified at his own
thoughts ; before entering farther into the way of scepticism, he
would return, but he cannot ; he has set out in a way from
which there is no issue. Under the goad of despair, under the
sting of injustice, he plunges sometimes into faith, sometimes
into doubt. He prays and adores at the same time that he
denies and blasphemes. In these violent struggles his soul
breaks far away from the old Mosaic law ; its inward storms
impel it at times to pass right through Christianity itself. In
no other work bearing the character of a sacred oracle has moral
torture been thus strikingly depicted. That which renders it
more touching is that Job's friends, shut up in the spirit of the
old law, do not understand the quite divine furies of a soul that
despair has rendered prophetic. These pharisees in the presence
of the Christ of the Old Testament can only comprehend the
past. As the whole question turns on the existence of evil,
they begin by denying the fact altogether. When Job displays
his wounds they prove that they are just, he is guilty of a
hidden crime. With the sentiment of his integrity, Job loses
faith in himself, in the world, in God ; but in this moral agony,
when he is on the point of falling into the profoundest depths
of the abyss, suddenly, as by some inward miracle, he catches
sight of the hope of immortality. Eternal life, resurrection ;
these words, which had never been pronounced before, shine out
in this moral tempest as a flash of light through the darkest
THE BOOK OF JOB. 327
night. The light vanishes,' only to make night and the ahyss
more profound ; for the friends entrench themselves in sublime
commonplace, eulogising the order of the universe and its im-
mutable laws. ' What does it matter that the heavens are well
ordered if confusion reigns in the heart ? Tired of arguing with
men whose reason seems to totter and to fly before the truth,
Job would enter into the lists with God himself, triumphing
bitterly as, with the logic of despair, his words sum up all the
difficulty in the question : Why then do the wicked live 1 why
are they advanced and strengthened with riches ?
The friends are reduced to silence, the clouds open; the
Eternal himself descends to' plead his cause against Job. He
win have nothing to do with the friends, he rejects their
superannuated wisdom ; he prefers the delirious impiety of Job
because it is full of the God of the future, and comes from a
heart torn by a superabundance of life. But he does not really
argue with Job ; the sufferer is conquered, but not by persua-
sion ; = he holds his peace, dazzled by the torrent of Eternal
splendour. Had he been able to stand up, he might have
replied by innumerable questions, all insoluble under the old
law. Christian immortality alone could give any satisfactory
answer. How could the acquisition of new flocks, the birth of
new children, balance the loss of the others ? Job must possess
the heaven of the Gospel, he must see his sons before him in the
kingdom where there are no more contradictions, no more evil
men, no more ruins ; a few years of earthly happiness could not
cure his wounds, for they were infinite. Only when the evil is
entirely repaired, the injustice fully corrected, could Job be satis-
fied. As the drama of " Prometheus " has no possible denouement
except in Christianity, so it is with the book of Job. What
makes this poem so grand is, that it goes beyond the Old Testa-
ment, it necessitates a new heaven. It is this, too, which makes
it so pathetic, for these despairing cries will find no answer
except in another society. Christianity lies at the bottom of
the blasphemy, it dawns in the deep night of pharisaism. The
poet is straitened in sacred antiquity, he stretches out his hands
to the future, he embraces only despair. Moses puts the ques-
tion, Job discusses it, Christ alone resolves it.
The other religions of the East are each a definite system
complete in themselves ; Mosaism is only the first period of a
religion which expects to be consummated by a new law. The
Old Testament is full of difficult questions which the New alone
answers. In the one we seem wandering in the desert, always
sublime, but of which we cannot see the issue; all is grand,
frightfully grand ; thought rises, wavers, darts forward as if it
would seize the future : in the other all is calm, all is conse-
328 EDGAR QUINET.
cutive; man has found -wheil he sought, the disquiet of the
spirit has disappeared, the system is finished ; peace, companion
of order, breathes in everything.
To suppose that Moses wrote this poem would be to suppose
that scepticism broke out at the same time as revelation, and
such a scepticism as Job's, which presupposes disastrous ex-
periences. No, this philosophy belongs to a ripe age in the
history of the Hebrew people, if not to its decline. It is true
that it is not the last word of scepticism. If it took several
centuries to fall from Moses to Job, perhaps it took as many to
fall from Job to Ecclesiastes. Here revolt has ceased, impreca-
tion is extinct, there is every mark of the irreparable doubt of
a worn-out old age. Where is the prophetic spirit? Not a
spark lives under the livid cinder ; life and hope are dried up.
So many ardent wishes have been deceived, so many attempts
frustrated, that desire has failed, nothing remains but disgust
with heaven and earth. When after all this marvellous history,
this way of miracle, this search after the promised land, after
so much enthusiasm, after sorrows, triumphs, exiles so heroically
borne in the thought of the future kingdom, the outcome of all
is : Vanity of vanity, all is vanity ; there is nothing new under
the sun ; it would seem that the Consummatum est of the Old
Testament is reached ; that Jehovah himself must have his
cross, and disappear buried in this death of thought. The East
is sinking, falling in upon itself. The Old Law is passing
away, when will the New come ?
Sec. 5. — Continuation — Comparison of Oriental with General
Scepticism.
The thoughts unchained by Job sleep no more. Scarcely
closed, the abyss reopens, the discussion begins again. The
issue is delayed; about to appear, it is adjourned to eternity.
The Greek genius is the first to take up the question debated
by the Hebrew. The Prometheus of ^Eschylus has some points
of resemblance to Job. As the patriarch of IJz, Prometheus has
done well : he has given men speech ; justice, the celestial arts :
for this he is persecuted by Jupiter, and chained to a rock.
Who is this Titan that he shiould struggle with the wisdom of
the Olympian gods ? He must submit ; on that condition alone
the torture will cease. So far the resemblance, but here the two
dramas separate. In the utmost madness of grief Job is always
subdued by the thought of Jehovah; he never ceases to humiliate
himself before his supreme majesty. In Greece human pride
goes a step farther. Prometheus may be delivered if he will
PROMETHEUS— HAMLET. 329
only show a sign of regret ; Hermes comes himself to beseech
him to give up his resistance. But he will not ; Prometheus
braves the whole host of Olympus, and prophesies their fall.
Even when they pour their united thunder on the head of the
Titan, he pursues them with his execrations. This implacable
revolt of Athenian poetry shows what a step man had made in the
religious revolution. What in reality is this figure of Prometheus
if not the image of the Hellenic spirit repelling for ever the
dynasties of the Oriental gods? The religions of nature are
about to fall under the blasphemy of philosophy. Nothing can
ever make the Greek genius, that true Titan, enter again under
the ancient yoke.
In the Hamlet of Shakespeare the enigma is the same as it
is in Job and Prometheus, while all the circumstances are
different. Among feudal castles, in a Catholic graveyard, under
Northern skies, side by side with a powerful religion, is a man
who doubts, denies, suffers. The bad are triumphant, iniquity
is crowned on the throne of Denmark, and the abyss opening,
he asks the old question : " Why then do the wicked live 1 "
The answer now is a cold sarcasm, a thousand times worse than
the imprecations of Job and Prometheus. Scepticism of the
heart has given birth in Hamlet to scepticism of the spirit ; it
is this which renders it irremediable ; and I know nothing more
profound than to have made absolute doubt depend on the
necessity of doubting one's mother. After the secret revealed
in the graveyard, all belief perishes in the young prince. If his
mother is a poisoner, in what man, woman, or sentiment can he
trust ? He disbelieves the sight of his own eyes. A phantom
wandering among the ruins of the human intelligence is all
that remains of Hamlet. He passes through the same tortures
as Job and Prometheus, but he has none of their antique
violence ; he feels the serpent in his heart, and it is cold. He
does not cover his despair with the magnificent symbols of the
East, nor the correct figures of Greece ; his evil is too profound ;
he jests about it. Instead of struggling with sovereign justice,
he counterfeits madness ; and he succeeds so well because, in
reality, his reason is half gone. It loses itself, seeks itself, finds
itself again, only to lose itself anew ; you see a great soul divided
between reason and incipient madness, without knowing which
will in the end prevail. Hamlet has looked down into the abyss
unknown to the ancients, he has had a glimpse of the kingdom
of the dead ; it has made his intellect reel, and if his life is not
cut short by some mischance, there can be no end for him but
intellectual death. This makes the drama incomparably more
hopeless than either Job or Prometheus. What makes Hamlet's
fall so frightful is that his point of departure is from the beliefs
330 EDGAR QUINET.
most commonly held among Christians in his day. He repre-
sents at the opening of the modern world the society of the
Middle Age, still young in appearance but already old in heart.
Can man go farther in sceptical poetry? In the midst of
Catholic skies, Satan proposes to God to tempt the man who
by his intelligence is nearest the supreme truth. Thus the
preamble of Faust resembles that of Job. He is not, however,
like the patriarch, one who draws his strength from his virtue.
He is great by intelligence, a learned doctor, wise as modern
society. He has studied every science; still he is confronted
with the same fatal questions that Job met in the desert, under
the hght of the stars of Asia. It is not only the thirst for
knowledge which devours Faust ; he wishes in his pride to
possess the secret of things, in order that he may become God
himself. His books are mute, science has deceived him; he
will reject science, he will trust to means disavowed by reason,
to feverish imaginations ; he will abandon himself to magic. In
the solitude of the night he evokes the spirit of the worlds.
Constrained to bow his head before the splendour of spirit, he
determines to free himself from the bonds of material existence;
his suicidal purpose is arrested by the sound of the Easter bells.
Their melody falls like dew on his sepulchral soul. He renounces
the poison, but the holy impression does not last. A belief in
hell is the only tie between Faust and religion. What are all
the blasphemies of the past compared with this last cry 1 Cursed
be belief ! cursed be hope ! cursed be patience ! Science,
nature, religion, even the taste of death, have all been expe-
rienced. Nothing remains but to traverse the regions of death
itself by the suicide of the soul and the conscience. Faust
makes a compact beyond the tomb with Satan himself. Finally
he alienates his reason and his will ; and the infernal spirits
celebrate this last act of the tragedy, Faust drinking the hell-
draught to its last drop.
The human race is to-day a great teacher, admiring itself in
its books, adoring itself in its works, and trusting only in itself.
At times, however, this pretended divinity is troubled, meeting
with voids it cannot fill. FuU of feverish life, it puts to its lips
in place of the poison phial that scepticism which it can neither
reject nor accept ; and cries of disordered grief escape the bosom
of the new god at the very moment that it is crowning itself
with its own hands.
The life of the human race in its moments of trial can be
summed up in these principal figures : Job, Prometheus, Hamlet,
Faust. We have in them the whole history of the heart of man
fighting with religion. It is easy to see that in each book scepti-
cism becomes harder and harder, and that each presents an
SLAVERY AND POLYTHEISM. 331
alternative in the struggle between the -wisdom of man and the
wisdom of God. , But whatever may be the sadness or even the
disorder of these poems, we all take the deepest interest in them.
We love to follow these proud intelligences into the abysses into
which they have fallen ; we would call to them, and would ask
them what they have found, or heard, or perceived in those
unfathomable regions. But our voices only repeat themselves ;
and the echoes of the great minds of the Hebrew prophets, of
.i35sohylus, of Shakespeare, as they return one upon the other,
enable us to form some idea of the profundity of the problems
in which they have been engulphed. And yet all scepticism
is not sterile. There is a fruitful doubt, as there is a fruitful
grief ; for doubt is an instrument of the truth, and this is the
reason why it is indestructible.
Seo. 6. — Slavery in its Relations with the Eastern Religions.
To grasp the ultimate consequences of Oriental dogma we
must descend to the lowest level of life in the East, and there in
every city we shall find a man who, like the stone colossus that
supports the frieze of a temple, bears on his shoulders the whole
burden of society. Excluded from the principal rites of religion,
outside God and humanity — empires, institutions change ; his
condition alone remains unalterable. The slave can neither live
nor die.
To Montaigne, who assigns Tyranny and Climate as the prime
causes of Slavery, it is easy to reply that the republics of Greece
were founded on it, and that it existed in the North as well as
the South. Eousseau, following Hobbes and the ancient legists,
ascribes it to war. But here again we remark that, led by a false
etymology, the holders of this opinion stop at a fact which was
often its immediate cause, without going back to the principle
which would explain its general sanction and the cause of its
universal distribution.
As there is no polytheism without slavery, there must be a
certain relation between them. The more attentively paganism is
examined the more sure it becomes that slavery was a component
part of it. After admitting the existence of slave gods, it is not
astonishing that the Oriental and Greek peoples should regard
the natural inequalities of men as making one man by divine
right the slave of the other.
How could they escape slavery when it was consecrated by
dogma ? At the highest point in the polytheistic heavens sat
Osiris or Jupiter like a Pharaoh or Agamemnon; below this
master an oligarchy of great idle gods, immortal satraps or
332 EDGAR QUINET.
patricians, who thouglit their tasks accomplished when they
breathed the incense or drank the ambrosial cup ; at their feet
a people of inferior demons, who consumed themselves in sterile
works far from the light of day. Titans bound in fetters and
shut up in darkness; heavenly galley-slaves, who tug the planets
in their cars ; Cyclops, who forge day and night the burning
arrows of the Sun ; Telohines, who polished the metals and
repaired the worn-out earth. In all these indefatigable workers,
hidden in the interior of the earth, in the folds of the clouds,
in the grottoes of the seas, always bowed down at their work,
without joy or repose, have we not the divine plebeian, who
has no other right but sorrow without remedy, labour without
pay, and with no hope of emancipation 1
One of the worst features of primitive slavery is that the
slave does not himself complain or think his fate unjust. Why
should he expect an enfranchisement refused to immortals ? The
workman could not be less resigned than the Cyclops, the boat-
man of the Nile than the pilot of the bark of Osiris, the shepherd
than the wandering faun. Moreover, what could the philosopher
say against an institution which could not cease or be modified
without everything else falhng with it ? Polytheism, slavery,
the one engendered the other ; the society which accepted the
fiirst was condemned to maintain the second.
To abolish slavery, then, it was necessary to begin by abolish-
ing the old heavens. Only when God was restored to his full
independence, to his full liberty in the recognition of his
indivisibility and unity, could man attain his freedom and
unity. Then not only the principle of castes disappears, but
servitude loses its sanction. It may continue to exist under
disguised forms, but its foundation is ruined.
Thus it is that in the degree any Eastern nation escapes from
polytheism, in that degree they get rid of slavery. By the law
of Moses no Hebrew could lose his liberty for more than six
years, a regulation which rendered it impossible to enslave the
people. If this commandment, which goes back to Exodus, and
recurs in Deuteronomy and in the Prophets, was not always
obeyett to the letter, it was nevertheless the ideal which
dominated the whole Hebrew legislation. The spirit of equality
was rooted in the Law ; where can you find a more striking
contradiction to the spirit of antiquity than when the legislator
says : " Eemember that thou wast a bondman in the land of
Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee " ? From the hour
that the Hebrew people considered itself the property of Jehovah
it could not sell itself into the hands of any other master.
If for a moment we compare the modern with the old East,
we see in place of the Hebrew God an abstract God, free from
DIVINE UNITY AND HUMAN EQUALITY. 333
any national tie ; his people one by belief rather than by origin.
His ■wrath gathering slowly for ages, is at last poured out not
only on the land of Canaan, but far over the East ; the sword is
his instrument. Who would not imagine that out of this sacred
war would come monstrous inequality ; at least a system of
castes worse than that of antiquity 1 On the contrary, it only
serves to abolish the principle of slavery wherever it comes.
The rapidity of the Mohammedan conquests is explained by the
civil equality promised to the converted. Never had reUgious
unity been more absolute, never had there existed a civil order
with fewer civil privileges of race or birth : even that remnant
of caste which Moses maintained in the tribe of Levi, disap-
peared beneath the level of Mahomet. Nor was this all;
Islamism ended in a society which felt so little contempt
for slaves that, not content with regenerating itself by them, it
resigned into their hands authority and government. And thus
over the land most accustomed to castes, for a space of five
hundred years slave dynasties reigned by right divine.
VI.
The Gbeek Ebligions.
Sec. j.~r-The Aspect of Nature in Greece — Its Ruins.
Judging from one's own impressions, the Greek writers have
depicted their country from the horizon of Athens. Plato in
his "Phaedrus" has reproduced the radiant serenity which all
things breathe there ; Sophocles in his chorus of CEdipus has
celebrated the nightingales of Colonus, and the shade of its
olive woods ; and still each word of that hymn applies to
the same place. But while in certain places Nature continues
to murmur the echo of the strophes of the poet, this is not the
character of all Greece. The Greeks chose, from the landscape
around them, the traits which best accorded with their genius ;
all that remained outside a certain ideal type, and would not
smile with an Olympian smile, they forgot as matter which
would not lend itself to the conditions of human art.
If the poets have exaggerated the rivers of Greece out of all
proportion with the reality, we must remember that each of
them has been the centre of a sovereign society, and could be
aggrandised by poetry without belying the nature of things.
But the true river of Greece is the Sea, which, circulating from
bay to bay, from gulf to gulf, awakes everywhere, by the sight
of the Infinite enclosed between two ridges of marble, the senti-
334 EDGAR QUINET.
luent of Order in grandeur ; and tlius Greece among all countries
of the world still remains the image of supreme beauty.
Infinity thus limited, man no longer felt oppressed by the
immensity of Creation, but began to judge it. Ho could take in
■with a glance and master it ; he would be its rival, work on
the same plan, and even correct it. Thus he turns the parallel
beds of its calcareous rocks into the first course of the Cyclopean
walls on whose heights the gods hold their councils ; he rounds
the curbs of the valleys into the scats of amphitheatres ; and
plants on every summit a temple. These monuments of art,
Ijuilt entirely on the plan of the country, give nature the appear-
ance of having been completed and crowned by the hand of
man. Everything in the landscape is in harmony with them :
the azure of the skies, of the gulfs, of the distant summits,
accord with the azure of their friezes and their painted cornices ;
the horizontal lines of their architecture prolong themselves in
tlie mountains, tlie promontorie.s, the seas, into the infinite.
When they arc erected in the cities, they show in all its
nudity the donocratic spirit of the Greek religions. In place
of the halls, the courts, the pylones which protect the mysteries
on the banks of Nile, three stops alone separate them in Greece
from the crowd. Dogma is henceforth in full daylight. The
Greek Temple belongs to a people who display their gods in
the market-place, that they may constantly examine them, inter-
rogate them, judge and destroy them.
Each part of Greece has preserved its own character in its
ruins. Athens remains radiant in her misery ; but nothing can
equal the nakedness of Sparta. The prophecy of Thucydides
is fulfilled. This silent people has died without display. Its
monument was the City, the Law, the Country. She has left
the vanity of ruins to her rival, Messina, the city of slaves.
In Italy the ruins of polytheism have nearly always become
Christian monuments ; in Greece they have lemained pagan.
Under their shadow little churches shelter themselves, but they
are already dilapidated, while the heathen columns seem clad
in eternal youth ; as if on this gay earth no other religion could
root itself but that of visible beauty. The rising sun still gilds
the Capitols of Ncmea ; the thir.sty chorus of the grasshoppers
under the porch of the Cella, yet invoke Jupiter I'luvius; the
h)'mn of the subterranean gods rises once again from the vaults
of byzautine chapels, which, formed of broken pieces of pagan
sculptures, seem themselves only half converted to the Christian
idea.
THE DIVINE IN HUMANITY. 335
Sec. 2. — The Divine in Humanity — The Greek Religions in
their relation to Poetry and Art.
The god of Paganism had as yet manifested himself only in
Nature ; the day came when man began to think of looking for
him within himself. That infinite which he had seen in the
face of the desert, he discovered in his own countenance ; he
recognised in the proportions of his own hody the type of beauty
spread out in the rest of things. In place of effacing himself
before the majesty of the universe, he exclaimed with the
pythoness, as he felt his heart beat : Here, here is the god. He
becomes himself the measure, the rule, the term of all things ;
thus Paganism makes its first step towards the revelation of
God made man.
Before Homer, the Greek genius seems hardly to exist ; after
Alexander, it has ceased to be : outside these limits it depends
on Asia ; but during that interval, adopting all to change all,
it combats, ruins the East by thought quite as much as by the
sword.
Where are the vestiges of those revolutions by which the
Oriental beliefs passed away before taking the Olympian forms ?
Since every monument of them has so soon disappeared, we
must conclude that they were in contradiction to the nature of
its genius. At our first sight of that genius, it is already quite
independent. The originality of Greece consists in having thus
broken all its rough models ; from the abyss of the past this
daughter of song arises in full beauty ; as Aphrodite, she comes
forth a nubile virgin from beneath the waves. Whatever
opinion may be held concerning the relations of Greece with
the East, between the Rig- Veda and the Iliad, there is an
interval of several civilisations ; all the difi'erence, in fact,
between infancy and youth.
Homer represents the first great change in the world by
means of poetry. He cast the old divinities into the mould of
humanity, and they came forth an Areopagus of social gods,
civilised, eloquent, discussing in the clouds celestial politics.
He was all the less scrupulous about altering the ancient dogmas
because he did not care to comprehend them. Belief become
art ; the antique religion was lost, but for a moment the earth
felt relieved from a great burden. At no time has man lived
so perfectly satisfied with his lot on earth as during the reign of
this religion of poets. For a time he gave up searching into
the old questions ; wherever he found an abyss, he covered it
with a divinity, who hid its depths under- his purple. These
indulgent gods always near him, young, as little given to fore-
336 EDGAR QUINET.
sight as lie was, constantly reassured Mm of his own destiny.
Provided that the earth smiled at sunrise, what more could
he ask ? This was the limit of his soul and of his desires.
Nourished on nectar, his serenity was so complete that he was
hardly troubled even at the fall of Greek society. The cities
fell into ruins, still he refused to he anxious. To awake him
from this bed of roses, it was needful that Christianity should
come to unchain within him an ambition without limits. From
that hour he began to look on the earth with disdain. The
very pleasures of the sovereigns of Olympus seemed beneath
him. Those prodigious contradietio7is of which Pascal speaks
took possession of his heart. What are nectar and ambrosia to
the man who thirsts for the life of the spirit ? The valley of
Temp6 has become a vale of tears. Man has conquered the
infinite at the price of infinite grief.
In bringing back the beliefs of the East to the conditions of
beauty alone. Homer marked beforehand the character and
destiny of Greece ; and thus it was that his poems became the
Book of the Law for the Hellenic peoples, so that he became
for them what Moses was to the Hebrews. Never again shall
we see a society regulated on the plan of an epic. The efforts
of Lycurgus, Solon, Pisistratus, are attempts, one after the other,
to compel the city to return to this harmonious plan. Before
realising itself in Athens the democratic spirit had burst out in
the discussions on Olympus. Alexander modelled himself on
Achilles, Agesilaus' on Agamemnon. Greek society, in fact,
tended by a constant approximation to form itself on the ideal
of the Hiad and the Odyssey. When at last it thought it had
realised its poem, it awoke under the law of the Gospel.
To find that the noblest thoughts of the peoples belong to
their first years might astonish us if we did not see that it was
so also with each individual life. For it is in the morning of
existence, before the corrupting necessities have been felt, that
the pure revelation beams forth. Then an ideal of poetry,
of truth, an Iliad, an interior Odyssey bursts out in the
mind of every man who comes into the world ; glorious wOl he
become if he follows it, pusillanimous and only fit for mediocrity
if he denies it. Greece was not untrue to the image that had
thus been revealed to her ; on the contrary, she has made of the
poem a truth, of fiction a reality, of presentiment a history.
After the epic, nothing so influenced this religious revolution
as sculpture. The first great step was made when the human
head was substituted for that of an animal in the statues of the
gods. There was a period in Pagan art corresponding to the
Middle Age in Christian, with one striking difference. The first
perfected the body when it could only give a radiant imbecility
SCULPTURE AND RELIGION. 337
to the head ; the last thre\V holiness into every line of its faces,
when its forms were rude and its anatomy barbarous. Greek art
commences by the imitation of nature, Christian by the ideal.
The one works from without to within, the other from within to
without. Does not this difference alone mark the whole interval
between Paganism and Christianity ?
Phidias did by sculpture what Homer did by poetry. He
gave his countrymen a new idea of their gods. The genius that
the Greeks had drawn from the contemplation of their beautiful
land he threw into the statues of the gods. In them Phidias
carried physical beauty to such an elevation that it ceases to be
sensual ; sublimity appears not only in the faces, but in the least
detail of the bodies. Their forms discover absolute harmony of
matter and spirit, perfect beauty expressed with mathematical
truth. We do not ask if such art is Pagan or Christian ; it is
perfectly true, perfectly beautiful ; it belongs to the Eternal.
In the gods of Phidias the unalterable face of Nature appears
under a human form ; serene as the azure sky as yet untroubled
by tempests, calm as the ocean on the first day of the world,
one would say that the soul of the universe rayed forth from
their impassible brows. And yet from this epoch of art they
are brought more and more under the yoke of the passions, of
social ideas, until at last the human alone remains, the god has
quite departed. Scopas and Praxiteles succeed Phidias ; this
change is marked by the group of Niobe ; the antique calm of
the Olympians gives place to incurable grief. Praxiteles is
followed by Lysippus and the Khodian school ; the Kiobe by
the Hercules Farnese and the Laocoon. How far is this beauty,
a little theatrical in its magnificence, from that sovereign art
which only expressed eternal thoughts ! It is the difference of
Euripides from Sophocles. By degrees the austere Venus of
early days gives place to the Venus di Medici, the breath of
divine things is felt no longer. The pious Greece of Miltiades
has vanished, and a corrupt Greece takes its place. And now
Alexander in making himself God, the Jupiter Tonans of the
sculptors, impresses Greek art with its final character. Taking
literally the doctrine of Euhemerus, Greece becomes the courtier of
political divinities ; she who commenced in heaven with Phidias,
ends by the apotheosis of the favourite of Hadrian.
338 EDGAR QUINET.
Sec. 3. — Continuation — Of the Drama in its relations with the
Greek Religions.
As Homer changed the gods of the East, the poets change the
gods of Homer. The most apparently Pagan of all is Pindar.
He loves the lyre, and it is this which explains his popularity
among a people who count their years by their games. These
games are the uniting links of Greece ; he who celebrates them
is the priest of the alliance. Expect not from him the naked
and rapid simplicity of antiquity; imagine rather Greece clothed
in the purple of Tyre. As to his faith, this Hellenic David
announces a master more powerful than Jupiter ; he peoples
Olympus with moral truths, sentiments, ideas which he personi-
fies by the same title as the ancient powers of Nature. Enthu-
siam. Wisdom, Law, are the new divinities consecrated by the
poet.
This Eevolution is continued by the Drama. In (Edipus,
the hero, wiser than the priest, resolves the enigma by reason
alone. More and more the personal god of Homer melts into
metaphysical attributes. The Jupiter of 4Sschylus is etherial
space ; the earth, the heaven, and something more superior to
them all. As the attributes become less and less distinct^ it
often happens that they are taken one for the other ; and this
very confusion is a step towards future unity. Not only do the
tragic poets decompose the beliefs of Antiquity, but they have
presentiments so entirely divine, that they may be called the
pagan prophets of Christianity. Thus, in the drama of the
" Suppliants " the women repel the yoke of Oriental marriage,
their condition has risen by the almost evangelic sentiment of
their personal dignity. In Sophocles the growing spirituality
of poetry is fully seen. Like an antique vase of purest design,
it could not be different without ceasing to be beautiful ; and in
this incorruptible purity of art you would have a foretaste of
Christianity even if the soul of Antigone were not mixed with
it. What will it be, then, when Athenian thought meets the
poetry of the Psalms and the Word of St. John ?
It is an exaggeration to affirm that the Greeks blindly sub-
mitted to the yoke of fatality. In the tragedies the chorus
nearly always protest against force, and that which we call to-day
the religion of success. Whilst the events are passing under its
eyes, it represents the living conscience of the human race ; it
announces a second issue better than the one at which it really
assists ; it keeps in reserve the last arrows of eternal justice.
Hence we see that the power of the Greek drama lies precisely
in that which is most misunderstood — the nascent struggle
THE GREEK DRAMA. 339
between fatality and providence. The chorus had also another
function, that of calming the mind when the impression became
too poignant. In conformity with their happy creed, the
Greeks did not like grief to be prolonged unless it appeared
crowned with hope. So in the midst of the tears to which this
people of poets were so easily moved, the chorus came in to
refresh and console them with its hymns. Thus reposing at
times, but ever rising, the antique drama reached its denouement
the agony intensified by its very moderation.
When I think of Greek comedy I could imagine that I see
on the pediment of a great temple the ivy-crowned mask of a
colossal satyr rallying the whole creation.' What lends a fuller
meaning'to such a figure is, that up to this time we cannot find
throughout all Oriental society a single monument of comic art.
All has been hitherto taken seriously — men, things, beliefs.
Mockery supposes inward experiences ; and a man must have
been many times deceived before he will consent to laugh at
everything. In Greece, at least. Mankind looked back, and
seeing so many phantoms vanished, so many illusions ruined,
bursts out into one of those interminable roars of laughter such
as Homer attributes to the Olympians. This hilarity mingled
with nectar represents the poetry of Aristophanes.
There is in reality so much humour in the Greek nature, that
even when bowing down before its gods it cannot help feeling
their absurdities. So Aristophanes, a believer so inflexible that
he assisted to bring about the death of Socrates, permits himself
the utmost license with the gods. There is nothing great, sacred,
or solemn at which Aristophanes does not mook. Faith thus
allied with sarcasm is one of the most striking originalities of
the Greek temper. But all this mockery was corrected in the
choruses by the most exalted, heroic, and religious poetry, so
that the soul was relieved as soon as it was struck. The comic
and the sublime, the demon and the angel, what other poet has
thus united these contradictions in one art, so that it seems that
of nature itself ?
Thus Greek Paganism is mobile and changing as Greece her-
self. Epic poetry, sculpture, lyric poetry, the drama, all meta-
morphose one after the other the ancient worship of nature,
which, deprived of the authority of its priesthood, is given up
to all the fancies of art. Yet, in the midst of these continual
variations, the history of Greece is that of a people who, hunger-
ing after infinite beauty, seek it in all things, never giving up
the pursuit from age to age. Greece arrives at the good by the
beautiful. It commences by making itself gods who please by
their looks ; it makes them perfect without, it enriches them
with its own thoughts; then it destroys them by scepticism,
34^ EDGAR QUINET.
■wishful to look more closely at the splendour with which it has
clothed them ; its eyes fixed on the ideal, it advances without
being tired or disconcerted across the ruins of positive religion.
Then when at last St. Paul appears in the Areopagus to announce,
not the fragile beauty of the art world, but the ever-living and
eternal beauty, all eyes turn to him. The education of Greece
was finished, it comprehended this language ; and as Egypt was
converted to the God scourged and suffering, Greece gave her-
self to the shining God of Mount Tabor.
Sec, 4. — Of Greek History.
While the drama develops in times of repose, history develops
most in times of revolution. As the stirring events of the Crusades
first aroused among Christian peoples an interest in the real as
opposed to the legendary, so the Median wars awoke among the
Greeks the muse of history. Till then truth and fiction had
had the common language of verse ; but when two millions of
men suddenly poured down upon Greece, the tremendous reality
of the fact gave birth to prose, Herodotus and Thucydides
succeed Homer and Hesiod.
"We moderns imagine that we have invented the philosophy
of history. The work of Herodotus, apparently without order,
hides a unity in events all the more profound because it was
partly hidden from the writer himself. At first he is only a
simple traveller wandering from temple to temple. He is pious,
but this does not prevent him from weighing all that is told
him, and judging it. Long time he wanders in Persia and in
Babylon describing their fabulous splendour. He makes us
mount their vast walls,- he takes us to the summit of the tower
of Bel. Then he leads us into Egypt. We enter the labyrinth,
we touch the pyramids, we measure this civilisation already in
its decline. So far we appear to have followed a capricious
traveller. But now the historian reveals himself. After having
enabled us to estimate, in some degree, the enormous weight of
these empires ; after having overwhelmed our imagination with
their power, so that we have counted up their riches, their pro-
vinces, their cities, we are brought by degrees to see all these pro-
vinces, states, kingdoms, united under the power of Xerxes, who
suddenly unchains them upon the cradle of Greek society. The
longer we have been kept wandering among these immense states,
hearing only now and then a feeble echo of Greece, the more
the conclusion to which we have been brought takes us by
surprise. And as we realise the Homeric host about to preci-
pitate itself on these little states, our one thought is, how will
Greece ever resist such a shock ? Gradually narrowing his
THE ART OF HERODOTUS. 341
horizon, Herodotus brings us to the defile of Thermopylse. That
passed, and the mighty host, which seems to dry up the rivers
as it marches, brought through, he leads us to Salamis. All now
seems lost. On the evening of the battle the generals are ready
to disperse before the terrible Asiatic apparition which takes pos-
session even of our minds, for by this long detour we have been
made to feel that the struggle involves more than the fate of an
empire, that humanity itself is the stake. At last when the
battle is gained, when this immense peril so slowly accumulated
by the historian is for ever dissipated, then it is that we feel
how great a miracle has been accomplished by human heroism :
the weak has overborne the strong ; right has triumphed over
violence ; art has surpassed numbers ; thought has conquered
brute matter. Herodotus has aggrandised and interpreted these
events by legends of the Trojan war, the figures of the Homeric
heroes appearing amongst the Greeks as propitious genii. Could
the wisest reflections have more accorded with the plan, the art
of Providence ? For Herodotus has composed his work as the
hidden divinity composes history. "Without showing his object,
without proclaiming it beforehand, he attains it ; the denouement
explains what was obscure at the beginning. Without doubt
he does not, as Bossuet, see Providence distinctly in history.
But in the end he has done so without being aware of it ; and it
is this instinct of a general ordination, joined to the simplicity,
not only of the diction but of the thought, that gives his work
so much grandeur and originality.
Among the historians, even more than among the dramatic
poets, the spirit of Paganism is transformed ; the enthusiasm of
combat impinges on the idea of fate. "With heroic subtlety it
forces the Delphic oracle, so that when it conquers, its garlands,
its pseans, and its dances seem only to celebrate the triumph of
the human will. The historians leave the issue uncertain to the
last, knowing well that a thought may turn the balance. In
the harangues which they introduce they give expression to that
liberty of great souls which, rising above fate, commands great
events. In the midst of the tumults of the world they proclaim
the independence of thought ; they maintain, they reassert the
rights of justice, reason, and conscience ; they follow the very
nature of "things, since every history is in itself a tragedy in
which liberty and destiny struggle together. "When souls are
strong, as among the Greeks, necessity yields ; in our day, souls
being mute, fate carries the day. In the eyes of historians,
statesmen, and philosophers, there is nothing so eloquent as the
force of facts. Things speak, man is silent, resignation becomes
inertia, we are in danger of ending in a Christian fatalism as
the ancients did ia a pagan one.
342 EDGAR QUINET.
As the history of Herodotus is of the nature of the epic, so
that of Thucydides resembles the drama ; the one relating how
the unity of Greek society was formed at Salamis, the other
how that unity was broken by the Peloponnesian War. In the
midst of the various chances of the struggle, what always appears
in the mind of the historian is the idea of two races at war, the
struggle of two religious and political systems, aristocracy and
democracy, tradition and innovation. These systems are per-
sonified in the most striking manner in Sparta and Athens, so
that the subject has at the same time universal interest and a
precise form. On the side of the Dorians, religious tradition,
rigid worship, the old royalty of the heroic times, often the cold
cruelty of the reason of state ; on that .of the lonians, philo-
sophic scepticism, profanation of temples, bloody caprices, and
sublime contradictions. What can be finer than that day
when, after having condemned the traitorous people of Mitylene
to extermination, Athens, having passed a sleepless night, re-
vokes her decree, and despatches in hot haste another bark to
overtake that which had gone forth with the decree of death.
Sometimes this struggle of beliefs, races, customs, is set forth
in a still more energetic manner by a dialogue between the two
cities. In Thucydides even more than in Herodotus Oriental
Fate is for ever conquered, since that which above all things
fixes itself on the mind are those noble discourses, those grand
words that always govern the storm. Each one becomes his
own providence, the tribune replacing the tripod ; this is the
keynote of the history. Outwardly all the great political
characters in Thucydides have the same character of repose,
moderation, impassible coolness : so utterly different to the
passion distinctive of the epoch of Demosthenes. On the
morrow of the Median wars, the Greek orators, feeling the
responsibility of their temporary royalty, considered it necessary
to moderate the impatience of the people, filled with pride at
their success. The great effort of these Greeks was to possess
themselves. But later on, when the forces of Sparta and
Athens had destroyed each other, the people were worn out,
and above all things wished for rest. Then it was necessary
for Demosthenes to excite, to spur on the breathless people.
Thus his orations were stinging, scourging, burning in their
passion and menace.
Modern orators seem to have renounced this struggle of the
soul with events and with society. They would be the expres-
sion of their time, rather than dominate it ; they fear to be
alone, the royalty of speech ought, it would seem, to exist no
more for any one. If opinion ferments, the orator is violent ;
if the people yields, the orator bends his knee. With the
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 343
Greeks the word of the Jupiter of Athens descended into the
tribune as pure reason descends into the clouds of intelligence.
They recognised this solitary eloquence as a heritage of the
heroic royalty of primitive times, and gave the grand spectacle
of a people ever discontented, but always kept in check by the
tyranny of reason.
Although Thucydides wrote his history in exile, he does not
in all his eight books utter one word of complaint or apology.
Yet exile is to be seen in every line, and the necessity he was
Tinder of restraining himself adds a natural austerity to his
genius. The more such souls inwardly repress themselves the
more they rule ; thought irritated by wounds, leaves in each
word the trace of an entire life.
Democracy and aristocracy having destroyed each other, Alex-
ander finished the victory of the West over the East. The
Greek spirit triumphed ; but Greece was no more. Henceforth
solitary great men appear in place of peoples. Thebes is summed
up in Epaminondas. To meet this new revolution, history takes
the form of biography. In Plutarch we have a series of isolated
figures, with so little relation one to the other, that it would
seem as if the religious foundation which once united them had
vanished. They appear as a series of noble statues whose
common pedestal is the tomb of Greece.
Sec. 5. — Philosophy in its relations with Religion — Fall of
Polytheism.
In searching out the causes of civil and political revolutions,
the Greek philosophers have forgotten nothing but religion.
The result is that they have substituted for the general principle
as many secondary motives as there are cities in the state and
states in Greece. Properly speaking, there is only one revolution
in antiquity, that which nearly everywhere and at the same
time caused royalty to give place to the republic, hereditary
succession to election. The historians scarcely give any expla-
nation of this change, at once so striking and unanimous.
As long as worship consisted in the adoration of primitive
nature, the foundation of authority remained enveloped in
darkness ; — this is the epoch of divine right ; rulers draw their
legitimacy from the night of chaos. When, however, humanity '
makes its own apotheosis under the form of the Olympians, it is
impossible that it should any longer submit to a power which
does not also spring from itself. To deify the general reason
was to consecrate the sovereignty of all; in other words, to
found a republican government in place of constitutions like
those of the Oriental monarchies. It is the philosopher rather
344 EDGAR QUINBT.
than the priest who henceforth becomes the legislator. The
Areopagus succeeded to the dynasty of Theseus. The third
revolution takes place ; the degenerate gods represent only
ancient kings immortalised hy the peoples ; and this last doctrine,
springing up under Alexander, becomes the sanction of the
Macedonian despotism.
As a result of the perpetual mobility of dogma, the Greek
philosophers knew nothing of those violent struggles that divide
science and religion. The earliest among them seem to enclose,
each in his particular system, the soul of one of the extinqt
religions. Thus that of Egypt seems to live again in Thale^,
Persia in Heraclitus, the East in Pythagorus.
Besides, as soon as philosophy finds itself embarrassed by
Eeligion, it confounds it with Art, since it can thus condemn
with impunity what it must respect in the priest. Hopeless,
very soon, of bringing the national beliefs to the conditions 'of
truth, it grants them nothing, ignoring them, or using thfem
only as an ornament. Crowned but yesterday, its vices are those
of the parvenu. It abandons itself to tyrannical fancies, per-
suaded that since it is mistress it can do all things — build or
destroy, affirm or deny, create and abolish the nature of things
by the sole authority of reasoning.
Socrates, who brought back order into this chaos, is in philo-
sophy that which Phidias is in statuary. Each of his disciples
was in his hands as a rude block in the hands of the sculptor,
which he went on correcting until upon the common humanity
he brought out in relief the inner divinity. On the one hand,
he carried the serenity of Homer into the abysses of the Spirit,
moving playfully amongst the most terrific problems ; on the
other, leading all back to man ; judging all by that standard,
he reduced to system the leading characteristics of the Greek
beliefs, and under these two aspects summed up the spirit of
the religions they accused him of wishing to destroy.
Modern historians have misconceived the original grandeur of
Greek scepticism. Far from being troubled at his doubt, the
Greek retired into it as into his natural dwelling-place. He
sought it in every way, only impatient that he could not get
rid of the little faith which remained to him. His belief never
having been immutable, he felt no fear in passing from faith to
doubt. Like .tineas with the golden branch in the midst of the
darkness of the Styx, he braved the phantoms and dispersed
them. With every hope he trod under foot he thought he had
broken the enchantment of a sophism, only breathing freely
when he had quite despoiled himself of every belief. Arrived
at this utter nakedness he rejoiced, crying that now he tasted
the pleasures of God. Nor was this the bitter laugh of a spirit
GREEK SCEPTICISM. 345
undeceived, but rather an heroic scepticism, which, feeling that
the ■world reposed on an illusion, refused to acquiesce in it,
preserving its equilibrium on the ruins of all -certitude ; it vfas
a prophetic, enthusiastic doubt, ■which, exorcising the vain
spectres of intelligence, passed the bounds of the pagan -world,
and prepared ■without impatience the bounds of the future
order. The pagan sceptic denied nothing, affirmed nothing ;
he did better, he -waited.
The ground of the Greek philosophy as of its religion being
the. identity of the human reason ■with the divine, it foUo'ws that
all its schools have one common end, the calm, imperturbable
repose of the Olympians. All form their sage on the model of
impassible marbles of Phidias. This is -why the sublime in
antique morality has in it something theatrical, man is always
trying to ^play the god. He does his best to simulate the
supreme felicity ; he disguises his misery under apathy ; he poses
as a Hercules. This spiritual Hercules ■who, by his labours, makes
himself divine, is the patron, the model of the great schools of the
"West. They fashion themselves on him as on the imitation of a
pagan Christ.
The glory of Stoicism is to have been the first to recognise
one God under the different masks of polytheism. Ho-w this
idea penetrated by degrees into religion may be seen in the
hymns attributed to Orpheus. Eemade from age to age, those
■which remain ■were composed in the last hours of paganism.
These hymns are addressed individually to each of the gods of
polytheism ; but the persons who formerly were so easily dis-
tinguished are here confounded into one vague divinity, we can
scarcely distinguish one from the other, masculine or feminine ;
great or little, all these powers receive the same invocations,
the same prayers, the same names. In the bosom of each we
discover the infinite, which stretches itself so as to envelop and
absorb all the rest.
The East had developed the dogma of Incarnation in the
Divine Trinity ; Judsea led this Trinity back again to Unity ;
Greece joined to it the idea of God in man. Thus the Old
Testament of the sacred and profane was completed.
346 EDGAR QUINET.
VII.
The Eoman Eeligions.
Sec. I. — Religion and Policy.
A new age commences, of wMcli tlie term is already predicted
by the sybils. Eome is founded ; and for the first time a new
society comes into existence without a religious principle peculiar
to itself. It lives on the common fund of former worships,
doing nothing more than borrowing and concentrating the uni-
versal tradition of paganism. Its own rude beliefs are effaced
at the first breath of the more brilliant beliefs of the rest
of mankind. Politically the mistress of other nations, Eome
serves them religiously. No memory of the new-born world,
no impression of the beginning of things, no familiarity with
the heavenly powers, nothing but Eeasons of State, above all
Pear. Everything indicates that the Eeligions of Nature are
worn out and about to perish ; and it follows, therefore, that the
Eoman City, which lives by feeding on their remains, will be
the last society and the final revolution of the pagan world.
The originality of the Eomans consists in the relations that
they establish between the Eeligions and the political State.
They found their own gods so inferior to those of Italy, Greece,
and Asia, that they never entertain the idea of imposing their
worship on the world ; on the contrary, they bow before the
gods of the people they conquer. Afraid of every god they
hear of, they determine from the very first to compromise them-
selves with none, but to place them all, without discussion, in
the Capitol ; meanwhile doing their best to embroil these same
deities with the societies which adore them. In this manner
they change the whole Eight Divine of antiquity ; and if we
watch, we shall see that the whole course of their history has
resulted from the revolution they thus produce in Oriental and
Greek paganism.
"When the Eomans besieged Veil, they approached the national
goddess of the Veians and said to her, " Do you wish to go to
Eome, Juno 1 " The foreign goddess assenting, was carried into
the walls of Eome, her people following her, and receiving the
right of citizenship. This history repeated a hundred times, is
that of each of the Eoman conquests. Before crossing the
enemy's territory, a herald with veiled face, or a consul, repeated
the sacred formula : —
" If there is here a god or goddess that has under his or her
ROMAN POLICY IN RELATION TO RELIGION. 347
protection this city, we supplicate and adjure them to quit
and abandon these temples, and to 'go out of these walls, to
inspire in them terror and oblivion and to come to Rome, to
me and to mine ; in order that our altars and sanctuaries, being
more agreeable and precious to them, they may charge them-
selves with the care of the Roman people and of my soldiers,
it being agreed and understood that we vow to them temples
and games."
With this formula the earth has been conquered. The
Roman gods, like birds of prey, are enticed to Rome by bait ;
the Romans dared not take them captive, so they gained them
first, the better to gain their people. For the people who were
thus deserted of their gods could find no other way of recover-
ing their sacred things than by following them. Hence the
desire which awoke among them to form part of the victorious
city where their religion had its focus.
But even if permitted to do so, they entered as a people
rejected by their gods. Struck by a sort of interdict they
became plebeians. And since they could not reconcile them-
selves with their own deities except through the mediation of
the Roman people, they fell into the position of clients to those
who were thus able to become their guardians and patrons.
Their utter powerlessness in matters of religion was .expressed
by this sacramental phrase : " The plebeians have lost the right
of the auspices."
This is the foundation of the Roman aristocracy ; it rests on
the principle of the inequality of classes before the gods. The
principle of Oriental caste reappears on the banks of the Tiber,
and continues just as long as the people believe that the
patricians alone have hands clean enough to touch sacred things.
For it is evident that no law, no change, no revolution can
give these men an equality which they themselves regard as
sacrilege.
Where the immortals refuse to speak to the plebeian, all is
closed to him as by an invisible hand. After having lost his
altars he wanders, legally blind. Unhappy the man who dares
lift the veil that surrounds the plebeian. The decemvir Tullus
is sewn up in a sack and thrown into the Tiber for having
divulged the formulas of the civil rites. This interdict ' is
maintained by the systematic worship of Fear, which was
everywhere at the heart of the Roman genius.
How did these colleges of priests of Paleness and Fear
originate? What have been the rites by which they have
filled the people with a spiritual terror 1 Look at the most
ancient bas-reliefs of their truly national god Terror. With
mouth half opened, hair dishevelled, she it is that has com-
348 EDGAR QUINET.
municated that slmddering which the Eomans appear always to
experience at the slightest -presage, or before the least important
of the pagan gods. In that haggard livid face we see the
stupor which froze the soul of the plebeian in a city where all
for him was mystery, danger, malediction. The reign of the
gods of Paleness and Fsar was the golden age for the Eoman
aristocracy. In comparison with this bond of terror, what was
the chain of the debtor in the prison-house of the creditor 1
When at last the idea of the equality of all men returned to
the heart of the plebeian, many scruples arise before he dares
to vindicate it ; whence the entirely new character of the demo-
cratic struggles in Rome. The proletarians do not revolt against
the authority of the nobility. The utmost they do is to retire
on the Aventinus or the Janiculus. Their insurrection is a
flight ; they feel that in the city, where the immortals refuse
them everything, the ground would open under their feet.
Historians only see in these plebeian secessions moderation of
spirit ; they are really the effect of interdict and religious
terrorism. ^
It is important to note with what prodigious subtlety the
Aristocracy defends, as a stronghold, its privilege in holy things.
When it is menaced it grants the common people everything
except religious reform. That one point shelved, it willingly
cedes all, because it knows very well it can resume all ; for
nothing so far is given except by its good right and pleasure.
The people therefore only conquer the word, while the aristo-
cracy keep the thing.
In a state where existence was aflfected by religion at
every turn, he who had the religious right was master of
all ; and, on the other hand, he who had it not was in vain
possessed of others. Of what use was it to be able to elect
consuls, if the augur could always annul the election by his
veto 1 How was it possible to make a supreme magistrate of a
man to whom the gods refused to speak f In a country where
nothing could be done without the intervention of the augural
right, not a house built nor a wall or an oven raised, not a door
put on its hinges nor a boundary stone fixed, it is clear as day
that he who kept the religious monopoly must remain master of
all. That the Roman plebeians should have remained blind
for three centuries to so simple a fact, would be incomprehen-
sible if we did not see the same state of things at the present
day in the greater part of Europe.
The democratic revolution which gave' power to the depem-
virs, proved on this very account an illusion. The twelve
tables, in maintaining the sacred privilege, made no real change
either in the condition of the person or of property. The people
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN ROME. 349
were deceived, they knew not why. Tliis is the real foundation
of the stoiy of Virginia.
The people struggled blindly, they gnawed the bit ; but they
could not find out what it was restrained them. "Without stir-
riug, the nobility held the bridle by the clause which it left
standing in every change of the constitution : " Let the auspices
be incommunicable to the people." The blind despair of the
first, the tranquil majesty of the others, such is the temperament
of Rome as long as this imperial secret continues.
As long as a people does not carry the democratic spirit into
the constitution of its religion, it attempts in vain to emancipate
itself from the tutelage of the aristocracy ; and no history puts
this truth in broader daylight than the Eoman. Its boldest
revolutions are mere lures, its most humane laws a dead letter.
Before they carried revolution into religion the plebeians had
conquered all kinds of rights ; the tribunate, the consulship,
accession to nearly every magisterial office, reform of debts,
chastity in the family with the solemn marriage with patricians :
all these things were written in the laws, yet remained imprac-
ticable. When the plebeians had the right they dared not
exercise it ; when they dared, a patrician was always found
ready, at a given point, to declare that he had heard the thunder
roll; the divinities of Palor and Fright were exhibited, and
the plebs fell back in dismay.
The true day of emancipation was that upon which Publius
Decius openly claimed equality of religious rights : if the
plebeians could have mural crowns, and sit in curule chairs, why
should they be everlastingly incapable of holding the augur's
wand? That day as terrible a light shone in antiquity as when
Luther burned the papal bull; the principle of the ancient
authority was overturned.
This revolution changed all in Rome. Before it occurred
every effort of the democracy was illusory, they could not get
hold of the future ; afterwards all the efibrts of the aristocracy
were vain, they could never again get possession of the past.
Before the change the democracy dared not exact it ; after it
was accomplished the nobility dared not abolish it. Yet there
was one more chance. When the plebeian magistrates met with
some reverses, the patricians immediately declared that it was
plain that a promiscuous priesthood was odious to the gods.
However, notwithstanding the temptation, the people remained
true to themselves, and all was consummated.
It was a revolution analogous to that which in modern
Europe, by establishing liberty of worship, destroyed the prin-
ciple of divine right. The privilege of the auspices once
attacked, nothing could save it; and once abolished it could by
350 EDGAR QUINET.
no means be restored. The democracy entered by this breach,
and it now became impossible to prevent the transformation of
the family, of property, of citizenship, and of all the social rela-
tions. After religious equality came civil equality, by the
publicity of the laws, by the extension of the right of citizen-
ship, by the application of the agrarian laws. Nothing could
any longer stop the torrent.
From that day there were two men who never died, and who
never ceased to shake the old society : the tribune in political
law ; the prsetor in civil law.
Thus it is that Revolutions which change the religious order
are the only ones upon which you can certainly count. For just
as it seems at first impossible that such conquests should be
made, it seems afterwards impossible to lose them ; those who
once thought they never could have been wrested from them
quickly sinking into such a state of depression as to be unable
to do anything to recover the position.
Directly the Roman aristocracy felt itself attacked mortally,
it became demoralised, whereas the plebeians from the time of
the reform of the religious constitution gave up all thought of
quitting Rome. With the mysteries of religion they possessed
the mysteries of the laws ; with the laws the means of profiting
from their victory ; they knew the sacred' formulas by which
each revolution in the division of the public lands could be
rooted. Why quit the city 1 the gods were with them as much
as with the patricians.
Sec. 2. — Borne and the World.
So superstitiously jealous was the policy of Rome, that it was
a crime to mention the name of the national deity ; the greater
part of the people lived and died without ever knowing it.
Even such men as Cicero and Virgil were not in the secrets of
the priests.
This jealous secrecy about their own gods and selfish covet-
ousness to possess the gods of other nations brought its own
punishment. Wbile Greece, who freely lent her gods to the
world, founded permanent centres of civilisation everywhere,
Rome could do little more than establish camps.
This ambition for conquests purely material, without any
desire for moral dominion, was an entirely new thing in the
world, and in the end brought about most unexpected results.
As there were neither conquerors nor conquered among the
gods, there came a time when there were neither conquerors
nor conquered among the peoples. Fancying that they only used
the religions as instruments of conquest, the Romans did not
RELIGIOUS POLICY: ITS END. 351
see that they were themselves being gradually dominated by the
spirit of the religions with which they played. Dupes of their
own sacred diplomacy, these proud patricians did not see that
the levelling of the privileged gods drew after it the levelling
of civil privileges. It seemed a clever thing to make the very
religions of their enemies assist in their subjugation. But it
led to the indigenous gods in the Capitol having to retire more
and more to make way for the foreign gods, so that in the end
the foreign religions became stronger than the ancient constitu-
tion, and ruined it. Because the Eomans did not found their
conquests on religious sovereignty, and their city on a national
worship, they engulphed immense empires without ever being
able to fill up the inward emptiness of their city. The more
peoples they conquered, the more they became themselves
dependent on the worships, the religions, and the spirit of
the foreigner. In their conquest of the world, each victory
diminished the Koman spirit and brought a hostile soul into
Eome.
For these foreign religions were indeed the very soul, the
thought, the national genius, the eternal hope of the strangers ;
where was their god, there was their right. And how could
they renounce social life or believe it irrevocably lost, when
they saw the principle of hope and of life crowned in the Pan-
theon ? No case is more striking than that of the Samnites ; the
massacre of a whole people does not prevent Samnium conquer-
ing the right of citizenship. "What is the meaning of this
history, in which the conquered always triumph over the
conquerors ?
The truth is that the Eomans were ignorant of the art of
moral extermination, the only one that can really kill. Their
materialism or their indifference deceived them. They had no
idea how to strike that mortal blow which kills a moral being
like a people, and so secure themselves against reprisals. Car-
thage excepted, whose moral yoke they rejected in refusing her
unsocial rites, they scarcely ever really got rid of an enemy.
But everywhere else in their conquests there are constantly
revolts, risings, and after each new victory new exactions_ by
the conquered. Eeturning from one of his victories, Scipio
met in the Forum the peoples whom he thought he had exter-
minated. We know his answer to his interrupters — "I have no
fear of the men that I brought here in chains, since I see them
to-day as sovereigns."
They could not even reign in peace over the slave, not having
annulled him morally. Possessing his altars, his servile gods,
his Manes, his day of Saturnalia, the slave everywhere else so
complacent and so mute could not forget he was a man; and
352 EDGAR QUINET.
under the shelter of the goddess of Syria he gave his masters
almost as much anxiety as the world of freedmen.
After the social war, that is, after centuries of carnage, the
historians, not heing able to understand how the conscience of
social life survived so many murders, begin to deny the facts,
failing to recognise that the soul of each subjugated nation was
preserved and perpetuated with the national god. Again, the
promptitude with which so many peoples seek to confound
themselves in one, this intimate alliance of men of such different
races, would be incredible if we did not remember their familiar
union in the Roman Pantheon. For this unity of religion once
recognised, what was there extraordinary in the social unity of
the populations ?
The failure of a man like Hannibal to attract to his cause one
of the Italian peoples, would seem due to the unsocial worship
of Carthage. The anthropophagous religion of Baal was what,
without doubt, he bitterly called " the fortune of Carthage."
The Roman aristocracy attempted two contradictory things ;
on the one hand, they wished to impose an Oriental immobility
on Roman society, while on the other, in order to aggrandise the
state by conquests, they consecrated the principle of change in
religion.
During the civil wars the force of passion seems for a moment
to have enlightened every party ; there was not then a political
revolution which did not support itself on a religious revolution.
In order to establish Democracy, the party of Marius introduced
it into religion, in giving the people the right to elect the
priests. Sylla, on the contrary, abolished this new law, and
restored the right of election to the sacred college. Although ,
the base of the whole system of Sylla, it was only a half-measure,
since it did not go far enough to stifle the plebeian right. So
it was effaced at the first breath, and popular election re-estab-
lished it as soon as Democracy reappeared with Caesar.
It was in vain for Sylla to slaughter the Athenians as long
as he failed to conquer the spirit of Greek novelty. And this
he was so far from doing that, when he pillaged the temple of
Delphi, and carried away the image of the god of the Greeks,
he himself fell down and,adored it directly he found himself in
peril The restorer of the old Roman genius forgot nothing but
the Roman gods. The only means by which Sylla could have
re-established the old aristocratic constitution he did not take.
With his twenty-four axes no one would have dared to resist
him had he refused the people their altars and taken from
them the right of the auspices. But the man who recoiled
before no murder trembled in the presence of the plebeian
divinities. So his work never stood. It is a rare thing, indeed,
THE ROMAN SPIRITUALLY TIMID. 353
to find boldness of mind joined to boldness of cbaracter. Few
men have tlie courage to do what is necessary to surmount a
mortal peril. To arm the slaves was the only thing that could
have saved Catilina; but it was just the one thing he dared
not do.
However, the patricians had occasional glimpses of the neces-
sity of getting rid of the new worships if the ancient society was
to be maintained, but after a momentary effort they fell into
the old indifference. The fact was, they cared so little for their
own religion that they did not realise the danger of being
invaded by the religions of the rest of the world. It was only
when they had quite ceased to believe in religion at all that
they began to repress such worships as they believed dangerous
to the state ; so that amongst the Eomans we may say faith
was tolerant, incredulity exclusive.
Thus these people, so intrepid in bloodshed, were more timid
than any in the world of spirits. From Virgil to Statins there
is but one voice on this subject. The cry of Lucretius pierces
the temples as of a soul long stifled by terror in a conventional
world that has suddenly found its liberty in the Infinite. The
more the witnesses of antiquity are examined, the more does it
appear certain that the basis of the religion of a Eoman was
fear of the intelligible universe. He seems to exist in a sort of
spiritual panic which distinguishes nothing, measures nothing ;
adoring without choice every power of which he hears, the'
wicked as much as the good : bad Fortune ; the goddess Febris — ■
fever ; the goddess Cloacina, who presided over the sewers ; and
the god Terror himself. A clap of thunder, a flash of lightning,
the fall of a grasshopper, is enough to make these masters of the
world turn pale. "When faith has disappeared, there still remains
in them a depth of stupor which discovers itself in every matter
in which religion is concerned. Decorum, Custom, become for
them so many gods-termini which they dare not displace. Bold-
ness of character, timidity in thought, — this is still the tempera-
ment of the modern nations of the Latin race.
Finally, these foreign religions, which even Marius and Sylla
had spared, conquered the conquerors. For from the peoples or
cities they represented arose not complaint but commands ; in
the end the vanquished themselves chose the Caesars, and forced
them on Eome. It was Merciiry Teutates who opened to the
Germans the gate on the Flaminian way. Then it was seen that
Eome had only conquered for her enemies. Directlythe Eeli-
gions ceased to be used as a political weapon they rapidly wore
out. First went the indigenous gods, next the Greek, then the
Egyptian, the Syrian, and finally the Oriental. The supremacy
of° each marks a phase in the history of Eome — the kings, the
z
354 EDGAR QUINET.
republic, the empire, from its rise to its fall. "When the old
mythology was quite ruined, the Eoman world cracked to its
very foundation, the earth gave way because the heavens fell.
Sec. 3. — The Caesars — The Religion of the Law — End
of the Ancient City.
The result of inventing auspices to suit policy, was to destroy
all religious faith in the people ; and as with them Religion was
the same thing as Eear, they were set free from the double curb
at one and the same time. Henceforth they believed in nothing
but force ; a condition that necessarily brought about the
Empire. Valerius Maximus astonished no one when, in the
preface to his book, he said to Tiberius : " Other divinities are
only in opinion, thy Divinity we see and touch in thee."
From the times of Ennius the patricians had entertained the
idea that the gods were only great men deified. This doctrine
admitted, there was no Csesar who did not feel himself equal to
Saturn or Hercules. If Jupiter was only a little king of Crete,
why should not the master of the Eoman world be the divinity
of his time ? This imitation of the Olympians explains the
monstrous condition in which the greater part of the emperors
lived. Ceesar's good sense resisted it ; the delirium commenced
with Antoninus, who called himself Father Bacchus ; Caligula
said to Jupiter, "Kill me, or I will kill thee." Domitian signs
his decrees, "Your Lord and your God." But the most insen-
sate of all these illuminati of Euhemerism was Heliogabalus,
who wished to be called " the Lord Sun."
The very thing that seemed to render this folly universal was
the very thing which saved it. This confusion of gods in the
Eoman system forced home the conviction that, under many
names, there could only be One. As soon as Paganism had
grasped the idea of unity, it is astonishing how quickly it im-
presses itself on its institutions. The frenzy of the emperors
does not prevent it ; on the contrary, they appear to work for
it. Thoir own actions may be infamous, but by their side there
is a man who represents Eeason, so that their constitutions are
nearly always liberal and humane. jThus, by hands stained
with blood, the freedman, the woman, the minor, the slave
are lifted up. Octavius assures both the liberty and the dignity
of woman. Tiberius establishes a fund for lending money on
land without interest. Nero renders justice free ; defends the
poor and the freedman, that is to say, nearly everybody. Domi-
tian assures them equality with the knights. Claudius renders
the life of the slave as inviolable as that of the freedman.
THE SPIRIT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 355
Hadrian, Commodus, and Alexander protect the slave against
prostitution. Caraoalla is the author of this magnanimous
rescript : " If thou hast given liberty to any one in error,
understand that thou canst not recall it." Later on he is indig-
nant at the idea of perpetual fetters in a society of freemen ;
he concludes by giving social liberty to all vfho are in the
Roman World ; that is, to nearly all the earth ; so great is the
power of a new dogma as soon as it penetrates social institu-
tions, that even the monsters obey it.
The principle of social equality under its pagan form of
Stoicism organises itself into law. The human conscience
seems to go for nothing in this work. Justice comes down into
civil institutions like a sacred geometry. This indomitable force
which breaks out, so to speak, of itself, and to which the emperors
bow like slaves, is the last miracle of antiquity. They are all
equally subject to a kind .of legal mathematics, which is con-
tinued passively from reign to reign, and fastens them all
equally down to the same level. It would seem as if the
doctrine of the Stoics, the Soul of the World, had penetrated
the social body and developed itself through humanity inde-
pendently of individuals. A 'series of bloodthirsty men become
the passive instruments of natural equity, conscience manifests
itself by those who have lost all conscience, and the most
insane co-operate in the work of the highest reason. Roman
law and Christianity worked to a common end — the equality of
the human race. Thus it was that after the fall of paganism
Roman law continued the law of Christian peoples, and that this
monstrous epoch of the empire appeared to the Italians an age
of felicity.
If we study the edicts of the worst emperors, we shall be
struck by the introduction of a crowd of new words into the
Latin language, which become necessary to express the entirely
new solicitude felt for the weak, the mean, the miserable, the
nameless classes of which the law of the twelve tables knew
nothing. The interest of the new law is for the poor as against
the rich, for the misery of the debtor as against the voracity of
the creditor.
Between the edict of Diocletian in favour of the poor, and
that of Constantino on behalf of widows and orphans, there is
an intimate relationship. They lead one to the other. It is
difficult to distinguish the different shades in the edicts of the
Pagan and Christian emperors. In the end they all mingle to-
gether in the revolution of Justinian; Stoicism and Christianity,
Diocletian and Constantine, Ulpian and St. Paul, persecutor
and persecuted, all end by being confounded and lost in the
ocean of Roman Law.
356 EDGAR QUINBT.
How was it with such fine laws that life ended by heing
intolerable? When a struggle is too prolonged, it comes to
pass that everything a man is obliged to do in order to succeed
depraves him ; so that when at last he conquers, he is often no
longer worthy of the victory. Thus it was with the Eoman
democracy. Every condition of society, one after the other,
had served towards the establishment of equality, of social
unity, so that in the end these great principles burst out with
invincible power. But when the great conflict is over and the
triumph secure, there is no one in the empire to profit from the
new laws. A new world is coming to inherit them.
In the hymns that Velleius Paterculus addresses to Tiberius
we see plainly what were the illusions of the higher classes.
They ran to meet the servitude of the empire because they ex-
pected that it would restore the privileges of the nobility and
the senate and all the old order of things ; on the contrary, the
aristocratic families were exterminated by the Imperial system.
Of all the projects attributed to Catiline — burning of Eome,
proscription of the rich, murder of the nobUity, annihilation of
all social superiority — there is not one which has not been taken
up by one or other of the emperors. The conspiracy against
the old order of things hidden under the eagles of Marius, was
consummated by the Caesars ; the old society perished by the
hands called to save it.
Unity of gods accomplished by Stoicism ; unity of the social
world by the Emperors : the pagan city could go no further.
The greatest trial for a society is to pass from one religion to
another ; antique society disappeared in the effort. As soon as
Arcadius and Honorius ordered the destruction of the pagan
monuments, the spirits of paganism fled away, and the Koman
Empire was engulphed with the foundations of the last temple.
The multitude of nationalities, hostile one to the other, of
which the ancient city was formed, had their bond in the alliance
of their gods; that broken, the bundle went to pieces. Paganism
disappeared, leaving an immense void; the Barbarians had nothing
to do but to enter. Their conversion to Christianity added
much to their force ; the new religion for a long time seemed
the condemnation of the old, so that they felt in entering into
the Eoman lands that they were in a world which belonged to
them ; they considered themselves, moreover, the executors of
a mission of vengeance against the old religion ; and in this idea
they were supported by the Christian churches. This was in
itself an incomparable moral force, giving to their last irruptions
all the energy of a revolution of nature.
As each portion of the ancient world has brought some
peculiar idea into Christianity — the East, the worship of Incar-
PAPAL ROME CONTINUATOR OF PAGAN ROME.^3S7
nation ; Greece, Platonism — Eome has brought into its walls
the spirit of Unity and the religion of Fear. From the earliest
days of the Empire, the Senate sitting in conclave decided on
religious questions between the priesthoods of paganism. The
pontiff of Jupiter Capitolinus was high priest of the universe ;
it was not a great step to the principle of Eoman Catholicism.
It is a strikiug fact that it is the Christian emperors who re-
introduce inequality before the law. Already the Gospel gives
place to Catholicism, Antiquity to the Middle Age. The form
of the new society exists in principle in the hierarchy, and the
feudal inequalities of the new priesthood ; the barbaric peoples
have only to flow over and fill the new social mould.
In the sepulchral bas-reliefs a mournful Genius may be seen
who with one hand extinguishes his torch, while with the other
he conducts a horseman, dead and veiled, to the Hells. It is
the Genius of the dead religions : he leads into the abyss the
Eoman people veiled in darkness and slavery.
THE END.
INDEX.
Aeeatb au Bois, 246, 247
Abolitionist, Asiatic, 303
Abraham, 320
Achilles, 336
Adonis, 317
^,'ina. Island of, 112, 113
^^chylns, 328 •
Agamemnon, 301'
Agesilaus, 336
Ahasuerus, 121, 152; a mystery play,
164; its meaning, 161-163, 177,
178; criticism on, 163, 164; Pro-
logue, 164; first day — the Creation,
164-166 ; second day — the Passion,
166, 167 ; third day — Death, 167-
172; fourth day — Last Judgment,
172-175; Epilogue, 175
Ahriman, 311, 312
Alexander the Great, 335-337, 344
Alexander Severus, 355
Algebra, 44
Alps in Winter, 143
Alsace and Lorraine, 130
Ampere, M., 248, 250
Anquetil-Dup^rron, 273
Antigone, 338
Antoninus, 354
Antony, St., 317
Apennines, the, 148
Apollo, the Temple of, 108
Apostles, the, 234
Apotheosis of woman, 227
Arcadia, 106
Arcadian hovel, Night in, 107
Arcadius and Honoring, 356
Architecture, 281
Aroole, Bridge of, 144
Argolis, IIO-II2
Aristotle, 225
Ariosto, 44, 146, 147
Aristophanes, 339
Army of the Rhine, 6
Art, Florentine, 147
Art, its aim, 279, 280 ; its immuta-
bility, 280 ; of depreciating historic
individualities, 233 ; of moral ex-
termination, 351 ; and religion,
147, 279, 281 ; a Thesis, 258 ;
Venetian, 145 ; why Christians
admire pagan art, 280
Artemisia, 318
Arthurian cycle of poems, 227
Artistic in torture, 145
Ary Scheffer, 252
Asceticism, Indian, 290
Asia, its influence in the present day
on Europe, 274
Astarte, 317, 3 '8, 320
Athalia, 318
Athanasius, 317
Athens, 113, 333, 334, 342
Attis, 317
Auspices, the right of, 347, 349
Austrians in Bourg, I7;ia Italy, 147
Authenticity of the Gospels, 22S
Azura, adventure in grotto of, 155
B
Baal, 320, 352
Babel, symbolic meaning of Tower
of, 270
Babylon and Persia, religious anta-
gonism, 317
Babylon and Phenicia, principle of
their religions, 317; corruption of
primitive religion of Light, 317;
their cruel voluptuousness, 317
how they promoted the industria
arts, 318; effect on condition of
woman, 318 ^
Bacon, 299
Baden, 183
Ballanche, 248
36o INDEX.
Baudot, old Conventiimnel, 254
Bauer, 231
Beethoven, 382
Beginnings of human things, 86
Belgian Government and Quiuet, 121
Belgiojoso, salon of Princess, 245, 248,
249
B^ranger, 222
Bernardin de St. Pierre, 274, 275
Bible, the chief miracle of, 319
Biblical criticism, its severity, 319
Bismarck, remarkable prophecy about,
128
Blanc, Louis, 118, 125
Bologna, 147
Borders of the Rhine : a poem, 243
Bossuet, 73, 341
Bourbons, return of, 19, 27
Bourg, 3, 10, 27, 30
Brahma, 286, 288, 294 ; harmonies
with the ocean, 286
British inhumanity, 114
Brotherhood, the Greek political,
297
Brou, Church of, 182
Bruys, the, family, 25
Buddhism, its origin, 302 ; its num-
bers, 302 ; contrasted with Brah-
minism, 303 ; its theory of equality,
303 ; its doctrine, 303 ; likeness to
Catholicism, 304
Burning Bush, universality of the
miracle of the, 285
Byi'on, Lord, 275; his memories, 121
Byron quoted, 48, 49
Calais, 71
Csesars, the, 354
Calderon, 299
Camoens, 274
Campagna, the Roman, 148, 150
Cape of Good Hope, effect of its dis-
covery, 274
Caracalla, 355 ; baths of, 148
Carlovingian cycle of Epics, 227
Carrel, Armand, 252
Cartesian Philosophy, 255
Carthasje, 318, 352
Casaubon, 42
Caste, 293-298
Catholicism and Buddhism, a parallel,
303-304
Catholic fetes in Rome, 151
Catiline, 353, 356
Cato's Origines, 224
Celts, why unsuccessful, 272
Central stock of Humanity, necessity
of a, 268
Certines, 8, 13, 47, 136, 183
CharoUes, 20, 60, 1 14, 254
Chartreuse, la Grande, 66
Chateaubriand, 12, 114, I15, 247,248
Chenavard and Gleyre, 148
China, its religions, 304-308 ; how
God was revealed to, 304; the
foundation of its civil order, 306 ;
a society of literati, 305 ; its philo-
sophy, 306 ; why its institutions
are so immutable, 306 ; its poetry,
307; China represents rationalism,
307; ignores God, 306, 307 ; is out-
side the human race, 308
Chorus, the Greek, its function, 338,
339
Christ, the, of the Middle Age, 1 78 ;
of the fresco of S, Paoli, 150 ;
the real Christ, his originality,
238 ; his character, 238 ; his
grandeur, 237 ; the reign of his
soul the real miracle of the Gospel,
238 ; on the modern Calvary, 229,
241 ; a new resurrection, 176, 242
Christian Art, its birth, 227
Christian and Indian priesthoods
compared, 298
Christianity, an effect without a cause,
237 ; and Feudalism, 279 ; the
miracles to which it can appeal,
238 ; will not be extirpated, 241 ;
its future, 242 ; and the French
Revolution, 263 ; and poems of
popular origin, 237 ; and painting,
281 ; and music, 282.
Cholera in Paris, 143
Church property, its effect on Euro-
pean society, 279, 357
Cicero, 164, 350
Civilisation, a religious dogma the
parent of every, 265
Clarke, Miss, 245, 249
Claudius, 354
Cloacina, a goddess, 353
Cobden quoted, 253
College of France, 263 •
Colmar, 85
Columbus, the new ideal world of, 181
Comedy, Greek, 339
Commerce, effect of its rise in
Christendom, 273
Commodus, 355
Confucius, 305, 307
Constant, Benjamin, 59, 114
Constantine, 355
INDEX.
361
Coroelles, Francis, n6, 121, 245, 250
Corinth, 110-112
Cormenin, De, 122, 250
Corneille, 12, 299
Cornelius, the painter, 140
Cory ban tes, 318
Cousin, Victor, 82, 83, 114, 115, 117,
120, 248
Creuzer, 90, 93, 99
Crucifixion, the, a parallel in our
days, 241
Cuvier, Strasburg pastor, 89
Cyolades, the, 113
Danneokbe, the sculptor, 253
Dante, 44
Dante and Florence, 147
David, King, 324, 325
David, sculptor, his bas-relief of
Quinet, 253
Daybreak, described in the Vedas, 283
Decemvir, the, TuUus, 347
Declaration of Rights of tJie Being,
2S8
Denabinski, General, 244
Democracy, war between it and Mon-
archy, 131 ; its end, 131 ; Roman,
when triumphant found unworthy,
356
Demosthenes, 342
Dervouny, 107
Desaix, General, 99
Descartes, 241, 299
Desert, revelation through the, 320
Despair, the literature of, 276
Destaillades, Madame, 5
De Wette, 231
Diana and Endymion, valley of, 107
Dido, 318
Dinners of Parisian men of genius,
250
Diocletian, 355
Djemschid, 309
Doge, palace olE, 145
Dombes, the desert of the, 48
Domitian, 354
Dorians, the, 342
Dover, JI
Dowden, Dr. E., 265
Drama, its connection with philo-
sophy, 299 ; Greek, in its relation
to religion, 338-340 ; Indian, in
its relation to religion, 299-301 ;
Indian and Greek compared, 299
Dupin, M., 126
Dupont de I'Eure, 125
E
Eault Life, the, of nations and of
men, 336
Earth, the, considered as the first
temple, 267
East, the, its common dogma, 278
East and West, what re-established
their relations, 273
Easter-day in Rome, 151
Eastern Question, 253
Ecclesiastes, the book of, 328
Eclectic philosophy in France, 119
ficole de Droit, 45, 58 ; Normale,
116; Polytechnique, 46, 53
Education and Migration, 268
Egypt, the religions of, 313 ; the tie
that bound its first populations,
313; distinctive feature of, 314;
how its religion was formed, 314;
the Sun and the River in, 315 ; in
what it bears the palm over India
and Persia, 316 ; what alone was
able to dissolve its granite civilisa-
tion, 316
Egyptian, the, Bible, 313 ; Trinity,
314 ; Messiah, 315 ; Religion, 313 -
316
Egyptians, the, in Argolide, 271
Eichorn, 231
Elijah, 320
Blohim, the, 324
England, 71, 253; its influence in
orientalising Europe, 275
English poets, their pathos, 276 .
Epaminondas, 343
Epic, a French, 186
Epic Poets, 220
Epics, Unpublished French, 122
Epidaurus, 112
Epopees of the Middle Ages, 227
Equality among tlie Hebrews, 296 ;
civil o,nly made real by religious
equality, 349
Erasmus, 42
Etruscans, the, 272
Euhemerus, his doctrine, 279, 354
Eusebius, 73
Evil, shadow of future, 163
Examination of Strauss's Life of Jesus,
229-242, 263
Ezekiel, 320
F
Fall of Spiritualism, 243
Family, the, what it owes to the In-
carnation, 294
362
INDEX.
Fatalism and Indifference, 243
Fauriel, M., 183, 248
Faust, 330
Fear and Terror, Roman worship of,
347
F^n^lon, 230, 255
Ferney, 66
Ferrara, 146, 147
Feudal life and poetry, 228
Field, the, of the Battle of Waterloo,
186, 243
Filiation of the Human Race, 267
Fireflies, Italian, 144
Florence, 147
Fo-hi, the Chinese Revealer, 304
Fra Angelico, 151
France, 51, 57, 125, 127, 130, 131, 201
Francis, St., 227
Franco-Gei-man War foreshadowed,
127, 128, 130
French Epics of the 12th century,
123; ignorance of Germany, 127;
literature depreciated in Germany,
244 ; men and women, German idea
of, 244 ; women, Quinet on, 91
Future of Religion, 121
G
Ganges, 290, 291
Genesis, Egyptian, 314; Indian, 285-
288 ; the spiritual, 266
Geneva, Lake of, 65
Genius of the ancient religions, 263 ;
its main idea, 264 ; unity of mo-
dern, 254 ; God in the works of,
255
G&ando, Baron de, 82
German Art and Literature, 1 38-142 ;
Diet, 129; ladies, 90, 91
Germany and the Revolution, 126-
130, 136 ; awakening of, 127 ;
centre of a coming struggle, 142 ;
course of its philosophy (1775-
1835), 229-232 ; influence of the
Bible on its language, 275 j its
bitterness against France, 127 ; its
liberty deferred to its unity, 129 ;
its metaphysics and those of India,
276 ; its orientalism, 275, 276 ;
period of enchantment and mysti-
cism, 139, 179 ; progress of its
scepticism, 1 79-181 ; prophecies
about, 127-129; what it owes to
Luther, 129; what preserves it
from atheiwm, 276
Goerres, 141
Goethe, commendation of Quinet,
138; criticisms on, 138-140, 179,
l8r, 230, 275 ; his death, 138 ; his
unpopularity, 140
Gospel, the, its continual miracle,
238 ; prophesied by the Old Testa-
ment of the entire human race,
287 ; of St. John, 232
Greece, Ancient, arrives at the good
by the beautiful, 339 ; aspect of
nature in, 333, 334 ; discovers the '
divine in humanity, 335; its one
revolution, 343 ; its rivers, 333 ;
its ruins, 334; sentiments the sea
■ awakened in, 334
Greece, Modern, 105-114 ; atrocities
in Athens, 113 ; desire for instruc-
tion, 112; depopulation, ill; gloom
of its women, ill; mutual schools,
112; rivers, 108; struggle for in-
dependence, 105
Greek Art, 337 ; authors, their hori-
™r>, 333 ; comedy, 339 ; chorus,
338 ; drama, 338 ; efi'ort to correct
nature, 334 ; genius, 335 ; games,
338 ; heroism, 341 ; humour, 339 ;
orators, 342 ; philosophy, 343-345 ;
poetry, 335, 338 ; political family,
297 ; religions, 333-345 ; rhapso-
dists, 222; scepticism, 344; so-
ciety, its ideal, 336 ; temple, 334
Greeks, power of reason over the,
343
Greenwich Hospital, 71
Gregory of Tours, 42
Guiccioli, Countess, 122, 249
Guizot, F., 114, n6 ; at home, 117 ; .
on a republican form of govern-
ment, 118; his bitter words, 120;
on Prussia, 128 ; on Parisian salons,
245 ; Quinet on, 246
Gustin, a peasant boy, 9
H
HADRrAN, 355
Hadyn, 140
Ham, qualities of race of, 270
Hamann, J. G., 69
Hamlet, 301, 329, 330
Handel's Samson, 99
Hannibal, 352
Harrow — Byron's tomb, 71
Hebrew genius, its characteristic, 323 ;
people, their spirit never broken by
conquest, 290 ; philosophy, 326-
328 ; poetry, 324, 325 ; prophets,
321-324; religion, 319-333; scep-
ticism, 326-328
INDEX.
363
Hebrews and Hellenes, their migra-
tions contemporaneous, 271
Hebrew society, on what founded,
271
Hegel, 179, 230, 282
Heidelberg, 85, go, 99 ; University
of, 90
Heine, Heinrieh, 180, 250; character
sketch of Quinet and Miohelet,
251
Heliogabalua, 354
Helvetius, 77
Heraclitus, 344
Herder, his early history, 69 ; his
works, yo ; philosophy of the
History of Humanity, 67, 68 ;
Primitive archives of the Human
Race, 86 ; the Genius of Hebrew
poetry, 69; his serenity, 139
Herodotus, 311 ; his unconscious art,
340-342
Himalayas, sunrise in, 283
Historic method, the true, 43
Histories worthless that neglect reli-
gious belief, 277
History — the drama of liberty, 76 ;
how to understand it, 78
Hobbes, 331
Hoche, Genera], 254 ; Madame, her
salon, 245, 248
Homer, has he ever lived ? 221-223 J
his influence in altering the old
belief, 335
Hugo, Victor, 120, 122
Human conscience and moral person-
ality, history of, 59
Human race, the filiation of, 267
Humanity, how we ought to regard
it, ,80 ; its title to be the new Christ
examined, 239 ; necessity of a cen-
tral stock, 268
Hungarians, talking Latin with, 18
Hyde Park in 1825, 71
Ieolatet, why so easy in Judsea,
318
Iliad, the, and Odyssey, 336 ; close a
forgotten antiquity, 223 ; not by
several authors, 221-223
Ilion, the, of the troubadours, 228
Illusions of Industry, 243
Imitation of Jesus Christ, 43, 58
Imitation the rule of Latin poetry,
226
Improvisatore at Naples, 222
India, why it has no history, 293 ;
why it has always been subjugated,
293; its industrial classes necessarily
sinners, 296 ; only way to reform
social inequalities in India, 296
Indian drama in its relation to reli-
gion, 298 ; Pantheism explains its
character, 299, 300 ; compared
with the European, 299 ; its
characteristic, 299 ; epics, their
form, 288 ; their author, 288 ; how
published, 289 ; the society they
reveal, 290 ; their characteristics,
290; their style, 293 ; heroes re-
semble those of the Round Table,
291 ; society, its constitution, 293 ;
apparent gentleness of its law, 294 ;
caste, its ground and sanction,
295 ; rhapsodists resemblance to
minstrels of Middle Age, 289 ; love,
292, 299 ; patriarchs, their life and
religion, 283, 293 ; philosophy,
301 ; scepticism, 302 ; society, what
has preserved it, 304
Individual, the, 239
Indra, 283, 320
Industrial arts of Phenicia fostered
by its religion, 318
Infinite, the, revealed by the Ocean,
285, 286
Innocent III., 227
Intrepidity of Eastern logic, 303
Introduction to Herder's Philosophy
of the History of Humanity, 73-81
Invasions of France, 17, 23
Invasion of the Barbarians, one rea-
son of its success, 356
Isaiah, 320, 324
Islamism and Slavery, 333
Italian Lakes, 143 ; Gothic, 144
Italy, notes on, travels in, 143-157
Jehovah, 308, 318-324
Jesus Christ, reality of his existence
and character, 228
Jesus, Life of, by Dr. Strauss, 228
Job, the book of, what it means, 326 ;
incomplete without Christianity,
327 ; period when written, 328 ;
compared with Prometheus, Ham-
let, and Fanst, 329
Jones, Sir WiUiam, 273
Judaea and China compared, 308
Jules Janin, 45, 114, 121
July, the Revolution of, 115
Jura, visit to the, 65
Justinian, the code of, 355
364
INDEX.
K
Kant, 77, 229, 230, 299
Koerner, 140
L
Laoonia, 108, no
Laoordaire, 250
Lafitte, 125
Lamartine, 114; his salon, 245
Lameunais, 123, 244, 245
Language, benefit of its diversity, 256
Lares aud Penates, the, 297
Lascaris, 273
Latin poetry, 226
Latournelle, Adrien de, 55
Law, representations of the idea of,
164 ; Roman, 354, 355
Legge, Dr., 307
Leipsio, Battle of, 17, 51
Lessing's Education of the Human
Eace, 77
Libation, oiJering and sacrifice, first
cause of, 284
Liberty of Worship, 349
Life, the true individual, 79
Light, revelation by, 283
Liszt, 252
Literary Cosmopolitanism, 254
London, 69, 70
Louis XIV., age of, 254
Louis SVIIL, 19
Louis Philippe, 126, 245, 258
Lucretius, 77
Luslad, the, 274
Luther, 129, 181
Lycseus, a thunderstorm in the, lo5
Lycurgus, 336
Lyons, 37, 258
Lyric poetry, 282
Lysippus and the Khodian school, 337
M
Macerations of Hindoo priests, 292
Madeleine, la bonne, 6
Magnin, M. , 245, 250 ; on Ahasue-
rus, 163, 164
Maha-bharata, the, 288
Malta, 113
Manu, 316
Manzoni, 253
Mariolatry aud Romance poetry, 227
Marius, 352, 353
Marseillaise, the, 12
Marvellous, the, no proof of the un-
historio, 234, 235
Mary of Orleans, Princess, 252
Massillon's Sermons, 58
Mathematics, poetry of, 44
Mazzini, 262
Medici, chapel of the, 147
Megalopolis, 106
Merlin VEnchantewr, 71, 961 98, 1 00
Mercury Teutates, 353
Michael Angelo, 151
Michelet, Jules, Qainet's first intro-
duction to, 83 ; early history of
Jules Michelet, 84; friendship
with Edgar Quinet, 84, 114, 116,
245. 250
Mickiewicz, 250
Mignet, 248
Migration in relation to religion, 269-
273
Milan Cathedral, 143
Miltiades, 337
Minstrels of the Middle Age and
Indian rhapsodists, 289
Miracle, the last of antiquity, 355
Mistrain Greece, no
Mithra, 312
Modern Greece, 114, 244
Modon, 106
Mohamet, 333
Mohl, Madame, 249
Monarchy and Democracy in France,
131
Monarchy of July, warning to, 130
Montaigne, 331
Montalembert, 250
Mor^, Herr, 99, 100
More, Sir Thomas, 75
Morea, commission to the, 105
' ' Morning Chronicle " and the Bour-
bons, 67
Mosaic of Christ, its apocalyptic char-
acter, 150
Moscow, the burning of, 17, 51
Moses, 231, 316, 320, 323-324
Mozart, 139, 282.
Music in its relation to religion, 282
Mylitta, 317
N
Nantda, 65
Naples, 1 54 ; exhibition of skulls at,
156
Napoleon I., 15, 20, 23, 26, 31, 32,
187, 275
Napoleon, a national epic, l8j, t88-
201 ; the Cradle,i88 ; Madame Leti-
tia, 188 ; the Bohemian, 188 ; the
Adieu, 188 ; the Star, 189 ; the Re-
public, 1 89 ; the Song of tlie Bridge
of Arcole, 189 ; the Song of the
Dead, 189 ; Venice, 189 ; the Mes-
sage, 189; the Answer, 190; the
INDEX.
365
Pyramids, 190 ; the Dream of the
Pacha, 190; the Song of the Camel-
driver, 190 ; the Imaum, 190 ; the
Lament, 190 ; the Desert, 190 ; the
First Consul, 191 ; Saint Bernard,
191 ; Te Deum, 191 ; the Corona-
tion, 191; the Bivouac, 192; Auster-
litz, 192; theDayafter, 192; Monte-
bello, 193 ; the Letter, 193 ; the
Sisters, 193 ; Vertigo, 193; the Ana-
thema, 194 ; the Fgte, 194 ; Sara-
gossa, 194 ; Moscow, 195 ; the Bere-
sina, 196 ; the Traveller, 196 ; the
King of Rome, 196 ; Leipsic, 196 ;
Poniatowski, 196 ; Champ- Aubert,
196 ; the Goad, 197 ; Fontaine-
hleau, 197 ; the Invasion, 197 ;
Elba, 197 ; Waterloo : the Shep-
herds, 197-198 ; the Storm, igg ;
the Trumpets, 199; the Cavalry,
200 ; Prayer, 200 ; St. Helena, 200 ;
Longwood, 200; the Tomb, 200;
the Widows, 200 ; the Column, 200
Nation, what originates a, 269
National ballads, 223
National life, how it commences, 269
Nature, a source of inspiration, 269 ;
its theology, 284
Nature and the Human Mind, their
correspondence, 264
Navarino, 106
Neander, 232
Neckar, valley of, 99
Necker, M., 43
New Testament of India, 302
Nero, 354
Ney, Mar^chale, 54
Niebelungenlied, the, 223
Niebuhr, 91, 127, 223, 231 ; his
theories on the early treaty of
Rome refuted, 223-226
Night at sea in Greece, 1 13
Night in the Tavgetus, 108-110
Nile, the, 313, 314, 315
Notes on Italy, 243
Novalis, 140
Object of the spirit of the ancient
religions, 263-265
Ocean, Revelation by the, 286
Octavius, 354
Odenwald, the, 91
Odilon Barrot, 122, 245 , 24
Odin and Jupiter, 273
Old Faith, the, and the New, 229
Old Testament, 319
Orators, modern, 342
Organic life, Revelation by, 314
Oriental marriage, its religious prin-
ciple, 294; idea of the family, 294
Origen, 230
Origin of society, 268 ; of the gods,
93. 94
Orleans, the Duke, 125 ; monarchy,
its mistake, 130; its fall fore-
shadowed, 131
Ormuzd, 320; and Ahriman, their
struggle, 311
Orpheus, 316 ; hymns attributed to,
^345
Ovid, 42
P
Paganism, modern attempt to reha-
bilitate it, 277; its last effort, 279
Pagan love, the sentiment of the
Infinite in, 317, 318
Painting in relation to religion, 281
Panhelleni, columns of, 1 12
Pantheism and the family, 293, 294 ;
its tyranny, 296
Paradise Lost, 292
Parceval, epic of the eleventh cen-
tury, 123
Paris, 53, 54, 55, H4, 115
Parisian Duessa, a, 60; society, 244,
250
Parsees, modern, compared with the
Jews, 312
Parthenon, the, 113
Pascal, 230, 336
Paul, St., 241, 355
Paul and Virginia, 274
Peloponnesus, 106
Peloponnesian war, 342
Pentateuch, the, 231
Perier, Casimir, 143
Persecution and unbelief, 353
Persepolis, the bas-reliefs of, 309
Persia, why it invaded Greece, 31 1;
its hatred to the Negro explained,
3'."
Persian religion, 307; revelation, 310;
its noble character, 311 ; its glori-
ous hopes, 312; and Christianity,
312; its want, 312; liturgy of crea-
tion, 310; law of life, 311
Petrarch, 44
Peveril of the Peak, 58
Phenician worship, 317, 318
Phidias, 337, 344, 345
Philosophy in its relation to political
history, 119; in its relation to
religion, 241
Pichon, Father, 14
INDEX.
Pilgrim of faith and the pilgrim of
doubt, i6i, 162
Pindar, 338
Piraeus, 1 13
Pisistratus, 336
Plato, 77, 333
Plutarch's Lives, 343
Poetry in relation to religion, 282
Poetry rose again with the Christ, 227
Policy in religion, how it destroyed
popular faith and in what it ended,
3.5,'
Political and civil society and religion,
263
Polytheism and the Tower of Babel,
269, 270
Pompeii, Street of Tombs, 156
Poniatovvski, death of, 17
Popular poetry, result of leisure and
liberty, 226
Power of speech, 310
Praxiteles, 337
Prejudices which separate Germany
from France, 243
Prsetor, the, 350
Prometheus of ^schylus, 328, 329,
331
Prometheus, an epic poem, 202;
Quinet's profession of faith, 203 ;
the myth, 203 ; its meaning, 204 ;
incomplete without Christianity,
205, 206; its action, 207. I. Pro-
metheus inventor of fire, 207 j and
makes men, 207 ; and steals fire,
208 ; converses with Hesione, 208 ;
Cyclopes discover the theft, 209.
II. Prometheus euchained, 209 ;
dragged to Caucasus, 209 ; victory
through suffering, 210; Ocean coun-
sels him to submit, 210 ; Hesione's
prayer, 211 ; the sybil's request,
211; silent when questioned by a
god, 212 ; the gods precipitate
themselves on him, 212 ; he falls a
prey to doubt, 212 ; his prayer,
213. III. Prometheus delivered,
213. I. Archangels descend from
heaven, 213 ; the deliverance, 215 ;
prayer of suppliant gods, 216 ; their
final cry, 217; the ascent to heaven,
217 ; choir of seraphim, 218
Prophecies that have been accom-
plished, 322
Prophecy, its decline, 322, 324
Prophets, the Hebrew, 321-324
Prussia, 124 ; her despotic character,
128; waiting for the man, 128;
dictatorship over Germany fore-
shadowed, 129, 130
Psalms, the, their language, 324 ;
character, 325 ; originality of the
character of Jehovah as there dis-
played, 324
Psariotes, the, III
Publius Decius, the Bomau Martin
Luther, 349
Pulcheria, 32, 33, 40
Pytha^orus, 344
Q
QniNET, Edgar, birth, 3 ; parents,
3-5 ; infancy, 7 ; rural education,
9, 10; first teachers, II, 12'; his
mother's influence, 13 ; je suis
damn(5, 1 3 ; the typhoid fever, 1 3 ;
the military fever, 15 ; hears of
the burning of Moscow, 17 ; the
Austrians in Bourg, 18 ; interpre-
ter to the Hungarians, 18 ; his boy
life, 19 ; the return from Elba,
20, 21 ; the deserter's ghost, 22 ;
Waterloo, and the second invasion,
23 ; the musical Croat, 24 ; passion
for the violin, 25 ; the fashion to
be stupid, 26 ; portrait when a boy,
26 ; hiatus in the illumination, 27 ;
sent to college, 27 ; Mademoiselle
Genevier, 29 ; first communion, 30 ;
a revelation of the Eternal, 31 ;
faith in Napoleon's conversion, 32 ;
Pulcheria, 33 ; attempts suicide,
33 ; deliverance, 34 ; at college at
Lyons, 37 ; the barring out, 38 ;
personal appearance, 39 ; idolises
his mother, 40 ; den on the Rhone,
41 ; first burst of intellectual life,
42 ; Bible readings at mass, 43 ;
how he read the Italian poets, 44 j
the poetry of mathematics, 44 ;
algebra, 44 ; his fellow-students,
45 ; refuses to go to the polytechnic
school, 46 ; becomes a bank clerk,
47; influence of Certines, 47; feels
his vocation, 51 ; resigns his situa-
tion, 53 ; left to shift for himself,
54 ; privations, 54 ; purity of life,
55 ; rescues a prodigal, 55, 56 ;
Tablettes du Juif Errant, 57 >
student-at-law, 57 ; New Year's
prayers, 58 ; history of the Human
Conscience and Moral Personality,
59 ; a strange trial, 60, 61 ; visit
to the Jura and Lake of Geneva,
65 ; pilgrimage of filial piety, 66 ;
INDEX.
367
struggle with hie father, 66 ; Mr.
Smith, 67 ; Herder's Philosophy of
the History of Humaufty, 67; trans-
lates this work and writes an Intro-
duction, 67-70 ; trip to England,
71 ; Victor Cousin and his friend-
ship, 82, 83 ; meets Jules Miohelet,
83, 84 ; goes to Heidelberg, 85 ;
E^say on the Works of Herder, 85;
separates himself frona Herder, 88 ;
doubt and depression, 89; Creuzer,
go; society at Heidelberg, 91; his
love of horses, 9I; trip into the
Odenwald, gi; visits Niebuhr, gi;
and A. Schlegel, 91; the Rhine,
91; talk with Tieck, 92; studies
German philosophy and literature,
92 ; Origin of the Gods, 93-gS ;
Minna Mor^, gg ; an idyllic life,
96-101 ; struggle with his mother,
lOI ; romantic episode, 103 ; his
portrait as a young man, I04 ;
goes to the Morea, 105 ; adven-
tures in Greece, 106-I12; visits
Athens, 113; almost wrecked, 114;
return to France, 1 14; Revolution
of 1830, 115; flies to Paris, 115;
reception by Guizot, 117; philo-
sophy in relation to political his-
tory, 1 19; not a courtier, 120; the
future of religion, 121 ; helps to
found Revue des Deux Mondes, I22j
his discovery in the Bibliothfeque
Royale, 122; his report on unpub-
lished epics of the twelfth century,
123; writes for the " National," 126;
Germany and the Revolution, 127;
warning to the monarchy of July,
130 ; political prophecies, 129-134;
winter at Certines, 136; death of
his father, 136; German art and
literature, 139; goes to Italy, 143;
Venice, 144-146; Ferrara, 146, 147;
Florence, 147, 148 ; Rome, 148-
152; religious temptation, 151,
152; writing Ahasuerus, 152;
Southern Italy, 152-156 ; ascent
of Vesuvius by night, 153; adven-
ture in the Grotto Azura, 155,
156; Pompeii, 156; dream at Pces-
tum, 157; progress of scepticism
in Germany, 179-181; marriage,
182; Epithalamium, 182; residence
at Baden, 183; writing Napoleon,
183; writing Prometheus, 202; the
epic poets, 220; examination of
Strauss's "Life of Jesus," 228;
Quinet's own faith, 242 ; Heidel-
berg and Paris, 243 ; mode of
working, 243 ; unhappy in Parisian
life, 244; Mimoires d'outre Tombe,
247; reading Prometheus at Mdme.
R^camier's, 248 ; at Paris and at
Baden, 243-253 ; sketch by Heine,
251 ; Ary Scheffer's bas-reliefs
from Ahasuerus, 252; David's por-
trait of Quinet, 253 ; Quinet visits
Stuttgart, 253 ; Tiibingen, 253 ;
Uhland, 253 ; Strauss, 253 ; the
Black Forest, 253 ; his political
letters in Revue des Deux Mondes,
253 ; literary executor to Baudot,
254; Age of Louis XIV., 255;
literary cosmopolitanism, 255 ;
Unity of Modern Genius, 255;
nominated to a professorship at
Lyons, 258 ; Unity of the Jlodern
Peoples, 262 ; removed to the Col-
lege of France, 263 ; the Genius
of the Ancient Religions, 263
Quinet family, 3
Quinet, Jerome, I, 3, 6, 17, 23, 27, 46,
47. S3, 54, S5> 56, 57, 58, 6°, 66,
121; his character, 4, 136, 137; his
calculations on the variations of the
magnetic needle, 137 ; his death,
136
Quinet's grandfather and grand-
mother, 3, 4, 13
Quinet-Rozat, Madame, ancestry, 4 ;
early home, 16 ; religion, 4 ; per-
sonal appearance, 5, 3g ; cliaracter,
5, 6; marriage, 5 ; notions of educa-
tion, g- 13; literary idols, 12; read-
ings with her son, 16, 24; piety,
13; sympathy with the oppressed,
16; dislike of Napoleon, 15; patri-
otism, 18 ; latitudinarianism, 13 ;
influence over her son, 30, 34, 40 ;
his letters to her, II, 28, 38, 40,
47, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 66, 83,
8g, loi, 103, 115, 116, 121, 145,
152 ; false ideas, 61 ; opposition
to her son's marriage, loi ; is recon-
ciled, 184
Quinet-More, Madame, g6-l02, 120,
121 ; her appearance, gg ; charac-
ter, 100, 182, 184 ; family, 99 ;
marriage, 182
Quixote, Don, and Sancho Panza,
299
R
Races, tradition of three, 270
Racine, 12, 255
368
INDEX.
Raffaelle, ijo
Rama, 291, 292
Earaayana, the, 288
R^camier, Madame, 244, 246-248
Religion and Industry, 311 ; and
Roman policy, 346-354 ; and Ro-
man revolutions, 349, 350, 353; and
the character and institutions of a
country, 261-265; "^ success, 338 ;
and philosophy, 240, 241 ; the
inspiration of A.rt, 279-281 ; the
substance of Humanity, 261
Religions of antiquity misunder-
stood, 277
Religious reform, the demand for,
262
Religious revolutions in their relation
to Art, 297 ; social revolutions,
278 ; revolution of the age, 207
Rdmusat, M. de, 246 ; Madame de,
188, 192.
Revelation, 84,264, 267,283; of the
Infinite, 288
Republican clubs in Paris, 126
Republicans of 1830, 124, 125
Revolution of 1848 foreshadowed,
131; of July 1830, 115; the
French, 130, 256
Revue des Deux Mondes, 122, 244,
253
Rhenish provinces, 130
Rhine, the, 91
Rhone, a den on the, 41 ; disappear-
ance of, 65
Richter, Jean Paul, 139
Rig-Veda, and the Psalms, 325
Ritual, the, of a, strong-minded
people, ^07
Rome, ancient, and the world, 350 ;
becomes focus of every religion,
347 ; how it conquered the world,
347 ; founded on no religious dog-
ma, 346 ; its contribution to reli-
gion, 357 ; its corruption, 154; its
early history, 223-226 ; its early
poetry, 226 ; its genius, 225 ; its
law, 279, 355 ; its so-called lays,
224; its religious avarice, 351 ; its
superstition, 350 ; its timidity in
spiritual things, 353 ; of the Middle
Age, 149 ; of the Renaissance, 150 ;
Modern, its Campagna, 148; Easter
Sunday in, 151 ; picturesque char-
acter of its fetes, 151 ; slculls on
Porta Angelica, 148 ; storm in, 149
Roman aristocracy, 347-354 ; impe-
rialism, 354; religions, 346; religion
of Fear, 347, 349, 353 ; plebeian
and his lares and penates, 247 ; ple-
beian and the right of auspices,
347-349
Romantic incident, 103
Round Table, Knights of, and the
Indian heroes, 291
Rousseau, 12, 66, 268, 277, 331
Rousseau, the Abb^, 37, 41, 42
Rozat, M., 4
Ruckert, 276
Russell, Lord William, 76
Russian translation of Modem Greece,
224
S
Sabine, Sir Edward, 137
Sacerdotalism, Christian and Indian,
298
St. Augustine, 73 '< ^^^ confessions,
43
St. John, Gospel of, 232
St. Lorenzo, Florence, 147
St. Paul, 241
St. Paul's, London, 71
St. Paul outside the walls, Rome,
149
St. Peter's, Rome, 150
St. Mark's, Venice, 144
Sainte-Beuve, 114, 187, 188, 250
Sakoontal^, 300
Salvandy, M. de, 258
Scaliger, 42
Scepticism, in East and West, 328-
331 ; Greek, 344 ; of Job, 328; of
Prometheus, 329 ; of Faust, 330 ;
not always sterile, 331
Science, a, of wills, 76
Science Nouvelle, of Vico, 74
Science of Religion, 262
Scipio ^miliauus, 351
Scopas, 337.
Schelling, 92, 179, :8o, 230, 277
Schiller, 139, 299
Schlegel, A., 91 ; the , 139, 179
Schleiermacher, 231
Schopenhauer, 229
Schwab, G., 253
Scott, Sir Walter, 58
Scribe flayed alive, 113
Scriptures, the, their influence on
Germany, 275
Seillon, Forest of, 50
Semiramis, 318
Shadow of death, 89
Shakespeare, 12, 92, 299, 329
She-King, book of Chinese poetry,
307
INDEX.
369
Shelley, 275
Sicyon, no
Siva, 287
Slave gods, the, 351
Slave, the, in Rome, 351 ; rules in
the East at last, 333
Slavery in its relation to religion,
331-333; not a Hebrew institution,
332
Smith, Sir Peter, 67
Society, its religious institution, 268
Socrates, 299, 339
Solon, 336
Solomon, 31S, 320
Sophocles, 299, 333, 33S
Soul of the World, 355
Southampton, night coach to, 71, 72;
water, romantic incident, 72
Spanish War, incident of, 16
Sparta, no, 342
Spinosa, 230, 231, 240
Spirit, the creative, 266
Spohr, 140
Statins, 253
Stael, Madame de, 12, 51, 66
Stein, 127
Stephanie of Baden, Princess, 249
Stoicism, 345
Strasburg, 69, 70, 85, 89 ; university
of, 257
Stratonice, 318
Strauss's " Life of Jesus,'' 229 ; great
effect, 229 ; proposed suppression,
232 ; its theory, 233 ; its method,
233 ; a system conceived in advance,
233; its book knowledge, 234 ; its
want of understanding of common
life, 234 ; its analysis of the Temp-
tation, 235, 236 ; other questions,
236, 237 ; positive difficulties, 237,
238 ; its conclusions, 239, 240
Strauss, Dr., Quinet's visit to, 253
Students, the Paris, 57
Stuttgart, visit to, 253
Sulpieius Severus, 73
Sunrise from Vesuvius, 154
Superstition of Greek sailors, 1 14
SyUa, 352, 353
.Tacitus, 42, 91
Talleyrand, lecture by, 249
Talma, 57
Tasso, 44, 146
Taygetus, adventures in the, 118,
120
Temple, the earth the first, 267
Terror, the Red, 254 ; the White, 26
Thebaid, monks of, 292, 316
Thiers, M., 124, 250
Thucydides, 342
Tiberius, 354, 356
Tieck, 92, 139, 179
Titian, 145
Titurel, 227
Thammuz, 317
Tradition, the Oriental, lost and
recovered, 273-276
Tower of London, 71
Tocqueville, M. de, 250
Tracy, M. de, 121
Tribune, the, and the Praetor, 350
Trinity, doctrine of, and true idea of
the family, 294
Tristan and Tseult, 292
Tiibingen, visit to, 253
D
XThland, 140, 253
Ulpian, 355
Umbria, 148
Unity, the divine, 296 ; unity nf
civilisation, 256 ; of modern genius,
254 ; of the modern peoples, 262 ;
rehgious, produces social unity, 352
Unrecognised genius, 137
Valerius Maximus, 354
Valmiki, 288
Vedas, the, 282-284
Velleius Pateroulus, 356
Venice, 144-146
Venetian architecture, 144 ; art, 145,
146
Verona, 144
Veronese, Paul, 145
Veuillot, Louis, 118
Vico, 73, 85
Vicenza, 144
Virgil, 353
Virginia, 349
Vivian, 98
Voices of the past, 43
Voltaire, 12, 77, 229, 277
Wandering Jew, note-book of the,
56, 57
Waterloo, Field of, 243 ; legend of,
22, 23, 51
Weber, 140
Wesel, 7
Westphalia, treaty of, 130
2 A
37°
INDEX.
Wieland, 1 39
Winckelmann^ 140
Wolf, 221, 222, 231
Woman in the 19th century, 177
Word, the, 310
Wordsworth quoted, 264
Xenophon's Cyropedia, 311
Xerxes, 311, 340
Youth of a people, period, its noblest
thought, 336
Zend-Avesta, the, 309, 317
Zend peoples, 309
Zervan-Akerene, 320
Zoroaster, 78, 309, 316
Price One Shilling and Sixpence,
THE EELIGIOUS EEVOLUTION OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTUEY,
FROM THE FRENCH OF
EDGAR QUINET,
FoEMiNG AN Explanation and a Defence of the Peinciple of the
Policy of the Tkench Govbbnment with Rbfebence to the
Roman Church in Feanoe. With a Preface et the Author of
" Edgar Quinet, his Early Life and Writings."
" This work . . . certainly shows the importance of many French diffi-
culties which Englishmen are apt to undervalue through their habit of look-
ing at foreign questions in an insular light. ... It is improbable that
Quinet's views will be accepted by the present generation ; but the trans-
lator believes that time will bring them to maturity, and gives some
striking facts respecting the growing tendency of the French towards a
Protestant form of religion. The book is well worth reading." — Bristol
Mercniry.
" It is full of interest and information for those who do not altogether
agree with the opinions of the author." — Sunday Times.
" The object of the work is to lay the whole case of the Republic in its
relations with the Roman Catholic Church before the calm judgment of
English Liberals, who are not satisfied with the policy of intolerance or
persecution carried out against the religious orders. It is undoubtedly a
very able production." — Belfast Northern Whig.
"... It says much for the keen intuition of M. Quinet that he foresaw
so well what was coming, and foretold it." . . . — Aierdeen Journal.
" Any of our readers who wish to understand the genius, or see the hand
that just now is leading the French people, cannot do better than possess
this little book." — Christian Life.
( 2 )
" Those who look upon the French Government as having been unduly
harsh and intolerant in their treatment of the Jesuits (as we ourselves
think it was) should read this little book, in which are to be found the
views of a philosopher whose doctrine was not to destroy religion, though
he was all for rooting out religious despotism." — St. James's Gazette.
" This translation at the present moment comes most opportunely. . .
Though we cannot agree with many of Quinet's conclusions, yet his book is
fuU of pregnant suggestions which we might do well to study with a view
to matters even nearer home than French politics." — Aberdeen Daily Free
Press.
" The book is worthy of careful study." — Greenock Herald.
" A more opportune hour than the present could scarcely have been chosen
for the introduction, through an excellent translation of this eloquent pro-
test by the author of the Ginie des Religions against that foe to liberty —
the Catholic Church." — Jevnsh World.
" The translator's preface is a very important and elucidatory prefix to
these suggestive, eloquent, and practical lessons from the past, inciting to
intelligent and effective action in the present."— CAmiiam.
" Those who are familiar with M. Quinet's character and genius will need
no assurance that his argument is of striking force and full of a wistful ten-
derness. To have a man like Quinet for an antagonist is fatal to almost
any system." — Cambridge Semem.
" Quinet is never mentioned in this country vnthout an expression of re-
gret that he and his philosophy are so little known among us, and a perusal
of this little book will increase the very general feeling that his writings
ought to be more studied We may bear testimony to the clearness
and strength with which the position of the Continental Liberals is de-
fended by the author, to the vigour of the translation, and to the excellence
of the printing of this little work which comes from the Chiswick Press." —
Liverpool Daily Post.
" Edgar Quinet was in all senses one of the most remarkable men of the
age, though, owing to our proverbial insularity, he was little known in Eng-
land. He was a man of deep religious feeling ; a poet, a philosopher, an
extraordinary linguist, and the determined opponent of the Roman Church
in France." — Liverpool Weekly Albion.
" Quinet believed that a religious revolution in France is essential for the
preservation of the benefits arising from the political revolution. He called
upon all to leave the Church of Rome, and not to allow it to employ the
forms of liberty for the destruction of liberty. This testimony against
spiritual tyranny is a word in season for us." — EvangeUcaZ Magazine.
LONDON : TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.