BOUCTHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE tSIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE ]89I Cornell University Library PQ 306.T95 Some modern FfS",?,l?,,,yi',rii^SSS 3 1924 027 235 468 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027235468 Some Modern French Writers A STUDY IN BERGSONISM By G. TURQUET-MILNES Author of "The Inpxuejtce of Batoeiaike," "Some Modern Belgian Weiteks," etc. NEW YORK EGBERT M. McBEIDE <&• COMPANY 1921 Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS PAGE Preface i The Tkend op French Contemporary Thought . 1 Henri Bergson 51 Maurice Barres 79 Paul Bourget 107 Anatole France 131 Paul Claudel 155 Jules Bomains 186 Jean MorIas 195 Charles PfGur 212 Bmile Clermont 242 Bibliography 261 Index 297 PEEFACE THOSE critics who study the destiny of philo- sophical ideas for the ironical pleasure of seeing them work in exactly the opposite direction from tiiat which their founders intended have not failed to remark that the two great move- ments of French thought since the 16th century — Calvinism and Cartesianism — developed states of mind utterly different from those Calvin and Des- cartes wished to create. Descartes would have been horrified to hear himself called the father of the French Revolution, and Calvin equally so at being called one of the founders of free thought. It would seem, then, that in addition to the impetus given by a powerful writer, there is another and more powerful movement to which the first must conform, if it is to succeed. The fact is, that when we cut up society into slices, two important groups are soon discovered — the political and the literary, and the former always ends by absorbing the latter, except in the very rare case of a genius who is both legislative and poetical : Mahomet, for example. The social aspirations of a people always manage to get themselves adopted in the end, and that for obvious reasons. Vox popvXi, Vox Dei. The only doctrines which have a chance of sur- viving are those which in the course of time blend not only with the tendencies oif the moment, but with the general spirit of a nation, nay, of mankind. A study of history shows us humanity's progress ii PREFACE as one long, long journey towards an increasingly complete, ever-higher freedom. In truth no speo- tacle is better calcfulated to rejoice the heart of the idealist, since humanity, in spite of stumbles and backslidings, succeeds little by little in freeing itself from its material and materialistic fetters, and in ushering in a reign of more justice, more happiness, more liberty. In France, just before the outbreak of the war, we were looking on at a philosophic and literary movement which, in the width of responsive undu- lations it has produced in the world at large, may well be compared with the movement determined by Descartes. Greatly as we may esteem certain modern philosophers, it is no insult to them to say that it is M. Bergson who has the widest world- reputation. Japan studies him with the same ardor as Sweden or America. Every year sees the roll of his disciples swelling in England. Attention to him and to his famous doctrine of la realite qm s.e fait becomes more and more pronounced all over the world. "What fate does the future hold in store for himt Only our grandchildren can answer that question. Still, it is permissible to foretell the future, or even, in the pragmatist's way, to make it. If we questioned Bergson himself on this point, he would tell us that his doctrine, like every product of the human brain, is a progressive thing, by no means perfect nor complete nor absolute. I am only a man ; therefore you must not ask me for more than I can give. I have merely tried to get into close touch with that nature which always eludes us. For the riches of nature are inexhaustible — things do not begin, nor do they end, nor are they as we see them, nor as we should wish them to be. PREFACE iii We are placed in front of an admirable and beneficent fluid in which anything may happen, especially the unexpected; and philosophical sys- tems can never be more than the mind's points of view, more or less correct, but really incomplete, in comparison with Reality, the Reality which we shall know some day. So that it would be a great mistake to ask of science the divine light to guide us through the reefs and shoals of existence, for the very good reason that life is not made for our in- tellect, but "our intellect for life. Nature, too, is ever present to teach us modesty and patience. But it will take us a long time to correct ourselves of this habit of constructing and deducing ad infinitum — if we ever do. And we should therefore not be astonished to find that many have sought a supreme rule in Bergsonian philosophy, and that they have seen in Bergson first and foremost a director of consciences and even a new prophet. And yet, up to the present, M. Bergson 's works are not con- cerned with ethical questions. It may even be said that the religious idea appears only late in Berg- sonian philosophy. To tell the truth, after the publication of his first book, Essai sv/r les donnees immediates de la Conscience (1887), philosophers also had wondered what consequences were to be deduced from a doctrine which aimed at destroying all meta- physical constructions, and at being guided only by experience. It is enough to remem- ber an article by M. Jean Weber: Une nouvelle theorie de I'acte et ses consequences, which appeared in the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale in September, 1894. It seems that at that date, Bergson 's budding doctrine appeiared to some as an excellent excuse for all the actions of human iv PREFACE nature, licit or illicit, and Bergson ihimself as a new Seneca to new Neroes ! And M. J. Segond in a note in his book on I'Intmtion hergsonienne (p. 144) tells ns tbat M. Ravaisson, towards the same date, asked M. Berg- son if he were to be classed among the adepts of such a brutal naturalism. The attitude of the Bergson of those days was far from being clearly defined; it seemed Janus- faced. And at the same time, this philosopher who only wanted to be a philosopher found himself hailed as the enemy of science and the slanderer of intellect. What is the truth of the matter? M. Bergson 's other books, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolu- tion, soon dispersed the doubts in the public mind. Little by little, in spite of misunderstandings, Bergson appeared as the apostle of conscience, freedom, action and creation. But so many had been that before him, in a different way, it is true, yet groping along the same path, that we are forced to try and explain the immense success of Bergson in France to-day. Bergson is a part of a vast movement of con- temporary French thought. He is not the creator of the movement, but he has profited by it: the great social, literary and philosophic wave has carried him on to fame. He would be the first to acknowledge it, ever ready as he is to take into account the society in which a human being moves, and his natural surroundings.* •That is the explanation of his love of metaphor with which some critics have reproached him. According to Bergson these brilliant pictures are given to us by Nature herself; through them we enter into a more complete union with Reality. That is also the reason why men of letters study him, because he . is so literary himself and so intensely preoccupied with life. Take for example that passage in Time and Free Will: "How do you become aware of PREFACE V Bergson's influence drew additional strength from the enormous impetus in contemporary science and metaphysics, from the idea underlying all the great work of the Nineteenth Century that life is an absolutely original movement, and that truth is more or less biological, always in the making. Mr. Chesterton has a good page in his Victorian Age in Literature where he says that the struggle between the old spiritual theory and the new material theory ended in a deadlock. I should be more inclined to say that the movement ended in a tangent, in escape from the materialist as well as from the spiritual circle. Life is not dne to a synthesis of material elements, nor, for the matter of that, is it a kind of entelechy conceived as an extem£il principle to niatter. Moreover, Darwin had taught that the universe had not been created once for all, Hegel that the Idea was the living energy of an intelligence always on the march: the former saw life as still unfolding itself, the latter saw history as a thing of flux and mobility, since the Absolute is the Becoming. The same poetical thought petrified into a theory could be found, more or less disguised, in such works as Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine;* it is like a seed floating in the air and takes root in every country and in all parts of every country. Adaptiveness might be the formula for such doctrine : the struggle for truth is the life of truth. Therefore, when Bergson came with his announce- a deep passion once it has taken hold of you, if not by perceiving that the same objects no longer impress you in the same manner!" Every great novelist proves the truth of Bergson's words when he tries to show his hero or heroine in the grip of a deep passion. •There is one of the Cahiera de la Qumzavne, Catholicisme et Critique, by M. Paul Desjardins, which is full of the Bergsonian doctrine when read between the lines. vi PREFACE ment that reality is the flux and that things are views of the &ax, he found an audience in an extra- ordinary state of receptivity, because it was already convinced that in the world, as in each of us, there is a vitality which grows and evolves from within. A philosophy which does not wish to use logical exposition, but which appeals to our primordial intuitions and above all to the SBsthetic instinct, had every chance of success in the France of 1890. Of course, many influences were working in the same direction as that of Bergson. Many brooks swelled the waters of the Bergsonian river, before it joined the great contemporary flood which bears us on past the illusions of finalism and mechanism into the kingdom of the unfettered and intuitive Spirit. Thus it would be very rash to tie down the literary movement of the last years of the Nineteenth Century and of the opening ones of the Twentieth to the single name of Bergson. He did not endow it with those dreamy, subtle, suggestive, essentially musical qualities which we admire in it. Symbolist poetry, the art of Barres and of Maeterlinck came before the triumph of the Bergsonian philosophy, and certainly before its influence. Natura non facit saltum. If by Bergsonism we understand the feeling of the unity and brotherhood in life, or even the doctrine of the intuitive method, then Bergsonism was in existence before Bergson. After the Parnassian school which aimed at reproducing the plastic beauty of antiquity, after the Realistic school which sought either to paint society in its various sections, or simply to show human nature at its ugliest, a new literary group formed which had respect for the soul and above all a love of spiritual and mortal life, and which was to be joined by a second group whose cult was action. PREFACE vii So that, leaving on one side the pornographic publications, produced mainly for foreign consump- tion, and the purely worldly novel, the connection between Bergsonism and contemporary French literature is merely a link of harmony. '^'Flaubert, in one of his letters to Georges Sand, says: "Have you ever noticed the current of similar ideas there is sometimes in the air? I have just been reading a novel, Les Forces Perdues, by my friend Du Camp. In many ways it is very like what I am now writing myself."* In any case, if Bergsonism owes its success to a long-felt spiritual need, it must also be admitted that it has singularly helped to bring about the triumph of this tendency. It is a wonderful leaven pervading an enormous mass of literature and changing it into a nourishing substance. The history of literature from 1890 to 1918 is largely the history of a vast reaction on the part of young writers against the mechanist philosophy. Now Bergson, by afiSrming that the reigniug intel- lectualism of his youth misread life with its count- less aspects, and nature with her infinite fecundity ; that our concepts were but schematic designs of a fluid and complex reality; that there was such a thing as Psychological Time, and that we were free precisely on account of this Psychological Time; that life is the ultimate reality; that we live ia a universe in which tout n'est pas donne, in which something new happens at every moment, in which there is freedom at the heart of things, — rendered invaluable assistance to the young generation which was seeking to break the chains which weighed so heavily upon it, •Correspondence III, p. 481. Oeiwrea Oompl&tes de Flaubert. Paris. Louia Conrad, MCMX. viii PREFACE Once again, we must not exaggerate nor attribute to Bergson more than Ms due. Philosophy rules one kingdom and literature another. It would be very easy for a critic to show that Zola's works were being printed in their thousands, while Berg- son's were making their way very slowly. To believe that "to any given poetical tendency there corresponds at the same time a phUosophioal tendency," to quote M, T. de Visan,* is to fall victim to a formula. Consider for a moment the Victorian Age of English literature. At a moment when Darwin and Huxley triumphed in so many minds, there were also writing Carlyle, Ruskin, Newman, Tennyson, Browning, all anti-intellectualists with something of the Bergsonian spirit and before Bergson 's time.f There are too many currents and under-currents in modern society to allow of arrival at absolute truth on this point. The writer, who saw in the pragmatism of William James, or the humanism of Professor Schiller, a proof of Anglo- Saxon mysticism, would be immediately contra- dicted by another writer, who would show that these philosophical movements are the outcome of Anglo- Saxon common sense. However that may be, Bergson found himself in harmony with certain theories of a certain school towards 1890. But when the "lyceens" of 1890-1905 began to write they naturally tried to express what they had been taught by their favorite philosopher *Tancrfede de Visan. L'attitude du lyrisme contemporain, p. 432. Paris. Mercure de France. ■fl have often wondered whether Bergson may not have been profoundly, albeit unconsciously, influenced by these writers, through his upbringing, which was partly English. In any ease one coiUd make a complete study of Browning, giving his work Bergson's philosophy for substratum. The resemoiances are striking even for the most casual reader. See also on this subject Bergson and the Modem Spirit, by G. R. Dodson, pp. 200-1. PREFACE ix — Bergson — or by their professor's favorite phil- osopher — again Bergson. But here once more it would be easy to find among these young men the two types which Flaubert painted for the generation of 1848 in his Education Sentimentale: the Frederic Moreau type, senti- mental, dreamy, and consequently with some lean- ings towards a certain kind of Bergsonisih ; and the Deslauriers type, hardworking, energetic, arriviste, and with leanings toward politics. Just as, according to Bergson, there are two modes of apprehending reality, intellect and intui- tion, so there are two different types of minds, the realist and the nominalist, the intellectual and the mystic, the prosaic and the idealist. The most we can succeed in showing is the recrudescence of mysticism,* and the renewal of poetry in our own day. If to that we add the nxmierous works which have appeared on the reduplication of personality, on psychic phenomena, or spiritism, or occultism, or the idea spread abroad by poets and philosophers that our psychological depths are rich in unexplored treasure, or Comte's two favorite ideas that the living are governed by the dead, and that reason must not be separated from instinct, we see that Bergson *s philosophy had everything to gain from such contemporary states of mind. •We must always bear in mind that, strange as it may appear to some of his followers, Bergaon's doctrine is a protest against mystic- ism. "If by mysticism be meant ( as it almost always is nowadays) a reaction a^inst positive science, the doctrine which I defend Is in the end only a protest against mysticism." {Introd. to the PMloao- phy of Bergson. A. D. Lindsay, p. 19.) For M. Bergson there are other sciences than mathematics; in the biological sciences, for in- stance, there are inquiries which have their own standard and which give us certain and positive knowledge. In reality Bergson is at one with Descartes, whose Oogito ergo sum is not a syllogism, but a thing known of itself. Mind sees itself as a first reality, by an in- tuition which precedes all deduction and every syllogism. X PREFACE One is almost tempted to apply to Bergson Carlyle's words on Diderot: "Grant doubtless that a certain perennial spirit true for all times and all countries, can and must look through the thinkiag of certain men, be it in what dialect soever Let us remember that the highly gifted, high-striv- ing Diderot was born in the point of Time and of Space when of all uses he could turn himself to, of all dialects speak in, this of Polemical Philosophism, and no other, seemed the most promising and fittest. Let us remember, too, that no earnest man, in any time, ever spoke what was wholly meaningless." We might adapt Carlyle by saying, not that a per- petual spirit was created for Bergson, but that a tendency, an impulse, brought him to the height of the evolution of French Thought, of that thought which is always eminently sociable and humane, always "suspicious of the inelasticity of things."* In this sense Bergson has been the conscience of his pupils in the lycee, of his disciples at the College de France, of his admirers in the world, and through them of an important part of contemporary France, and of a time. Through him have been clarified certain ideas which are still half obscure in his contemporaries; above all, his method has imposed itself more and more — a method essentially suited to the French genius, made up of common sense, humanity, kindness and sympathy. The man, who has so rightly emphasized the social function of laughter, has never ceased to be amused by those men who regard life as a pre-arranged programme, and it may be said that the Bergsonian doctrine is above all the doctrine of a mind which is always open to life, and which refuses to be im- prisoned in any system. Omnis determinatio •Bergson: Le Rire. PEEFAOE xi negatio, said Spinoza. That might be Bergson's motto, even as it is that of the best minds of his time. The aim of the following pages is to show that c rtain temperaments at the close of the 19th Cen- tury have felt with Bergson the need of reaction against the mechanism of a purely conceptualist philosophy, and that others have clearly been influ- enced by Bergsonian philosophy and have propa- gated it in their writings.* Bergson will be the first to rejoice in his harmony with some of the best literature of his day: he will see therein proof that he has not missed his way. Books like those of Maurice Barres and Claudel, of two great travelers amid spiritual and material scenery, are well calculated to explain a doctrine which has been wittily called "the doctrine of the cinema."! Omnis comparatio claudicat, and this comparison is really misleading. For the cinema at its best is nothing but a Punch and Judy show in which life is split up into a certain number of tragic or comic scenes, linked together in a fictitious unity, and teaching a somewhat histrionic morality. But in Bergson's philosophy time flows on unceasingly, like an endless and ever new melody which cannot be divided or subdivided, but would vanish away at the first attempt to number its component notes. His- tory might be made to give us the best illustration of Bergsonian time, for History never repeats itself, nor can its phenomena be predicted, yet it is always intelligible, nay, full of pregnant lessons, when in *M. Bergson, in his "notice" on M. F61ix Ravaisson-Mollien, showed very clearly that the tendency of philosophers and scholars who deepen the nature of life is to "reintegrate thought in the heart of nature," and as examples he cites Aug^ste Comte and Claude Bernard. tM. Gaston Kageot. Revue de Paris, February, 1918. xii PREFACE the hands of genius. No one could have foreseen that the Napoleonic empire would arise after Eobespierre 's fall ; and if Waterloo was indeed won on the playing fields of Eton, other Waterloos have been lost on those same fields. The truth of the matter is that neither History nor Time is a pano- rama on rollers wrapping and unwrapping their matter one on to the other. Society is not the creation of pure reason, it was not created by any ' ' social contract. " It is the creation of Time, and this appears as a complex indivisible whole in which every citizen is the con- tinuation of his forefathers.* We are limited, but reality is making itself, world without end. If the philosophy of duration has become the philosophy of free will, if Bergson in a celebrated speech has chastised the German barbarism, which is due to Prussian administration and military mechanism, it is because every philosophical system can be sustained only by a frankly spiritual idea, and that is the greatest homage the universe can render to metaphysics! In this way the moral questions Bergson wished to banish from his books necessarily re-enter.f Mr. Balfour, writing of Bergson, says: "This free con- sciousness pursues no final end, it follows no pre- determined design It is ignorant not only of its course but of its goal ; and for the sufficient reason, that, in M. Bergson 's view, these things are not only unknown, but unknowable *It 1b pleasant to quote M. Barrfes in this connection. Speaking of himself and his companions, he says: "Tout I'univers pour nous, je le vois maintenant, 4tait d4aoss6 en guelque sorte, sans charpente, privfi de ce qui fait la stability dans ses changements." {Stanislaa de Ouaita, p. 13S. Amort et Dolori Sacrum.) ■{■"Humanity will not, and cannot acquiesce in a Gk>dlesB world," p. 118. Pragmatiam and Idealism, by Caldwell William. London. A. & C. Black, 1913. ' ' PREFACE xiii Creation, freedom, will, — these, doubtless, are great things; but we cannot lastingly admire them unless we know their drift." But perhaps Mr. Balfour had forgotten these words of Bergson's: "I see in the whole evolution of life on our planet an effort of this essentially creative force to arrive by traversing matter, at something which is only realized in man, and which, moreover, even in man is realized only imper- fectly. ' '* These words, not to mention the letter to Father de Tonquedec, show clearly that for Bergson, after all, life must have an aim, but at the same time must be always in the making. For otherwise what would become of free-will? Morality enfolds us on every side, or if we will have none of it. Love, or if that be lacking. Life itself would teach. Bergson's disciples, as we shall see, have fully realized this. What happens to-day! The radiance of those countries which have fought for right and freedom is the outcome of the fact that they are the living symbol of the immutable, universal, and necessary conscience of the human race, the sign of those moral forces which will in the end prove of more effect than physical forces in putting an end to strifes whihe Modem Distrust of Religion. CONTEMPOEAEY FRENCH THOUGHT 19 quite a different conception of things, just as the ant, the bee, or the dog around us has a view very unlike ours. As M. Henri Poincare once put it: "Concevez Pesprit humain sous la forme d'une pu- naise inflniment plate et qui se meut sur une sphere parfaite, alors le plus court chemin d'un point a 1 'autre sera pour cet esprit, non pas la ligne droite, dont il n'a pas I'idee, mais Pare de cercle. Et toutes les propositions qui derivent de la ligne droite con- sideree comme le plus court chemin d'un point a un autre n'auront desormais qu'une valeur humaine, qu'une valeur relative."* Thus experiment is powerless to establish irre- futably the truth of a law. When we formulate a law we translate the nature of our mind rather than that of the universe. And thus not only observation and experiment are unable to prove rigorously the existence of laws, but they can only apply to states of consciousness, pure and simple phenomena. How can anyone believe that in a summary he holds all truth, past, present and future, as one holds a quiv- ering bird ia one's hand? And the conclusion of these remarks might be taken from those words of Nietzsche: "It is high time to replace the Kantian question, 'How are syn- thetic judgments a priori possible?' by another ques- tion, 'Why is belief in such judgments necessary?' In effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like our- selves. Though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily — synthetic judgments a priori should not 'be possible' at all; we have no right to them; •Cf. Andrfe Beaunier, "Visages d'hier et d'aujoitrd'hui," Paris, 1911. p. 165. 20 SOME MODEEN FRENCH WRITERS in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life. . . ."* This amounts to saying that a philosophy should have as its principal aim not knowledge, but ser- vice : its end is to make men wish to live. And it is in this way that the philosophy of Renouvier and Secretan has cleared the way for the pragmatism of William James and Professor Schiller and their dis- ciples, as well as for M. Bergson's philosophy of intuition, and that it has given an added impeti^s to Brunetiere's traditionalism and to M. Barres's nationalism. Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, since this philosophy sang the praises of will, of that "dumb conviction that the truth must be in one di- rection rather than another." In spite of the many considerable differences between Bergson and Wil- liam James, both agree in declaring that life is prior to intellect, and that true reality cannot be appre- hended save in the living experience itself. On the one hand Bergson affirms that intuition, by an effort of which we place ourselves from the first in the flow of reality, attains the absolute: on the other the pragmatists declare that we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking be- ings are at work.t Both these theorists — starting from widely dif- ferent points of view — are alike in their aim at plunging us into life "in order to feel our force and also to succeed in intensifying it. "J The doctrine of Bergson is every bit as courage- *Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Helen Zimmern, p. 18. ^ Pragmatism, p. 259. V'Life and Consciousness," Bergson. Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911. CONTEMPOEAEY FRENCH THOUGHT 21 OTIS as that of William James, This in spite of Mr. Kallen 's saying : ' ' For the pragmatist truth is what we live by, not what we rest in : with a sly dig at the Bergsonians who 'rest in the absolute.' " M. Berg- son has rightly protested against such an interpreta- tion of his teaching. "We should not forget that "Wil- liam James said of Bergson, "Reading his books is what has made me hold." Far more important than theories is a man's attitude. Doubtless Mr. Kallen is right when he says, "For James experi- ence is all, each piece of it hanging to the other by its edges, and the whole, self -containing, hang- ing on nothing"; whilst for Bergson life tran- scends experience, and his philosophy with its famous elan vital implies pure metaphysical sub- strata. But the man in the street is not going to try to fathom mystical utterances. He is perfectly impious in his skepticism of theory; and his sound common sense asks only: what is truth, according to these philosophers? Now for BergsoTi and for James the true idea is the idea which pays. No doubt M. Bergson will not express himself in such a brutal way. His philoso- phy has mellowed into metaphysics. The pure air of French culture has sweetened the tough and hard nature of pragmatism. But his philosophy, which looks on matter as the enemy, which takes account of "values," and is content with no doctrine which ignores them, is a philosophy of earnest belief in sincerity, in freedom, in unselfish greatness. "We hear on one side James shouting from his pul- pit : " The possession of true thoughts means every- where the possession of invaluable instruments of action;"* and on the other Bergson whispers in our 'Pragmatism, p. 202. 22 SOME MODEEN FRENCH WRITERS ear, "The Universe is the battle-ground between freedom and necessity." For both of them true philosophy is philanthropy which does not squander its golden words in self- laudation, but invests them in the human heart. The gist of such doctrine is to force us into becoming what we are capable of becoming. To act is to know, — a deep saying. Hence the necessity for training our will ; hence also the neces- sity for training our hearts. "I therefore for one eannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth seeking," James writes, and his will to believe has already worked wonders. There is no such insurmountable barrier as determinism. It is a poor mind that does not see the means to fly over it. Naturalism says, "Tell me what your surround- ings are and I will tell you who you are." But true realism replies, "Tell me what you are and I will tell you what your surroundings wiU be."* On the whole, art and literature have created our *The Philosophy of William James, by Thomaa Floumoy, pro- fessor in the faculty of Sciences at the University of Geneva (author- ized translation by Edwin B. Holt and William James, Jr.), is a very important work for those who wish to understand James's phi- losophy and to differentiate it from that of Secr^tan, Kenouvier and Bergson. Pp. 191-196 are full of recollections: the philosophic tone is laid aside. They include a letter from James to Flournoy con- cerning Eenouvier and Secr^tan. "I entirely agree," he writes, "that Renouvier's system fails to satisfy, but it seems to me the classical and constant expression of one of the great attitudes, that of insisting on logically intelligible formulas. If one goes beyond, one must abandon the hope of formulas altogether, which is what all pious sentimentalists do; and with them, M. Secr^tan, since he fails to give any articulate substitute for the criticism he finds BO unsatisfactory. Most philosophers give formulas, and inadmis- sible ones, as when Seerfitan makes a mimoire sans oubli = duratio tota simul = eternity!" (p. 125; see also Flournoy's interesting remarks). Clearly William James early tired of formulas and the hollow rationalistic method and threw himself whole-heartedly into radical empiricism, because he had given up all hope of understand- ing the world in a logical way. (See The Will to Believe. New York, 1903, p. 29.) , ' CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THOUGHT 23 milieu. We come back to Wliistler's reply to the lady who remarked that a certain sunset reminded her of one of his pictures: "Ah! Madam, Nature is looking up!" In the glorious manifestations of a free art, as they are shown by the masterpieces of a Michelangelo, or a Beethoven, we see, according to Bergson, the final reality of the universe. John Stuart MiU's father was a pragmatist, or a Berg- sonian avant la lettre. "He was fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual circumstances struggling against difficulties and overcoming them."* Bergson, be it said to his credit, has had an intui- tion of the indomitable nature whence we spring. His "vital impetus" is but a device for telling us that mankind has a privileged part in the world and that we must judge our forefathers from a more divine position than that of the moUusk. The an- cients had placed perfection in the normal develop- ment of our whole being, and Bergson and James are classicists in that sense that they put us in an heroic heart about life. The reader sees now how such preaching reacted against the pessimism and maudlin sentimentality of a part of French literature. The Romanticists had been tootling too long on their trumpets ; the day of judgment had not come except for them, and now was the time to sound the healthy drum of action. n A writer very different from Bergson and James, Joseph de Maistre, had said a long time before them : "Man ought to act as if he were able to do every- •John Stuart Mill. Autobiography, p. 5. Longmans Green & Co., 1908. 24 SOME MODEEN FRENCH WEITEES thing, and submit as if he could do nothing." The name of this very interesting thinker brings us natu- rally to the doctrine of M. Brunetiere, for M. Bru- netiere has done little else than repeat and perfect the ideas of Joseph de Maistre ; but he has halted at many stages on the road to religion. No scholar has worked harder at finding truth ; and a very tempest of passion fills his pilgrim mantle as he wanders about. He has been called a man of formulae, and certainly no man was more tossed by the storms of his country; nor has any man listened with more attentive ear to the countless thronging echoes of the present times. At one moment, Comte was his god, at another, Darwin his idol. But his so-called failures only steeled his great heart ; they were the harbingers of his final triumph. His Discours de Combat are not only an exposition of the view that science is incapable of offering an explanation or even an acceptable interpretation of the universe, but also a proof of the real courage of this purveyor of thought for young " normaliens." For a long time he believed in science, and then experience, the very fact that human nature demands a moral code, taught him that all he had written so far was not the real thing. Instead of pursuing the same course as many men, when their prior actions prove too strong and enslave them, Brunetiere started afresh, when well over forty, and dwelt, as his wont was, on the truth he had discovered. Those who knew him tell us that his moral suffering was great; nor was that all, — his religious attitude hindered his university career, and he was never appointed professor at the College de France, as he had had every right to ex- pect. I cannot read his Discours de Combat with- out imagining Brunetiere, like a Greek hero, draw- mg his wounds, while he cries in a lusty voice: "On CONTEMPOEAEY FRENCH THOUGHT 25 ne se debarrasse pas du besoin de croire. II est ancre dans le coeur de I'bomme." And Ms fighting eloquence, ever wielding lance and shield, challenges contest. "II y a de vieilles idees dont la vie de I'hu- manite ne saurait pas plus se passer que de pain." Who said that the wise skeptic is a bad citizen? Such is Brunetiere's opinion. And truly if those old-fash- ioned ideas, as Renan used to call them, morality, love of family, love of fatherland, self-sacrifice, all the generous possibilities, waver for a moment, the whole social structure totters, and the skeptic him- self is hurled into bottomless confusion. Brunetiere is the intellectual nephew of Bossuet, and in his eyes the speaker's art is truly a sacred thing. But there again his spirit of adventure (I should like to un- derline that, for Brunetiere appears to many readers as a kind of scarecrow, old before he was through his teens), his spirit of adventure, then, made him realize that the most up-to-date things are common- places, the daily bread of the mind's life, the sub- stance and fabric of our moral existence. Job's complaint is ever fresh and new ; he struck the deep- est note and the most familiar; yet all our fine es- thetes of yesterday, with their sickly, puling rigma- role and hysterical sadness, are now and for ever forgotten. Eeal culture can be told not by the num- ber of books which have been read, nor by any won- derful and multicolored sensations, nor by kinemat- ographic emotions, nor by far-fetched sentimentality, but by depth of feeling and sincerity. Brunetiere 's speeches are like those old Dutch pictures which are so extraordinarily bracing in their solidity and sto- lidity. It was a grand thing to busy yourself with pots and pans like those old Flemish women, with your face turned towards real life. From this point of view Brunetiere's work sym- 26 SOME MODEEN FRENCH WEITERS bolizes a whole phase in the history of modern con- temporary thought. If he fights so desperately against individualism, it is because the individualist is an obstacle to social life. The egotist leads one merely to a cul de sac. M. Brunetiere is his antago- nist, and the apostle of the two religions — the cult of the dead and worship of the fatherland. "La tra- dition," he says, "pour nous ce n'est pas ce qui est mort, c'est au contraire ce qui vit; c'est ce qui survit du passe dans le present, c'est ce qui depasse I'heure actuelle; et de nous tons, tant que nous sonunes, ce Qe sera pour ceux qui viendront apres nous, que ce qui vivra plus que nous. ' ' And he goes on to show how this survival of the past unites T\dth the future. "Non seulement la religion n'a rien d 'incompatible avec le progres, mais au contraire le vrai progres, ie progres durable n'est possible qu'en aceordance avec la tradition, et par le moyen de la tradition. ' ' The curious thing is that this hatred of individual- ism led Brunetiere to his traditionalism, while an- other great writer, M. Maurice Barres, has become a traditionalist on account of his individualism. M. Barres firmly believes that our personality at- iains its full development only when it is in con- formity with the tradition of our race, and that our ife expands and gains in breadth when it draws its strength from the soil of our own country. It is ;hrough excess of individualism that Barres cher- shes the belief that the best part of our dead lives igain in us, and he has developed this idea with jreat subtlety and poetic power in most of his books. It is really most interesting to see two minds so widely different arrive at the same conclusion. Barres 's influence, I should think, has been the greater of the two. His works, because they are vorks of fiction, appeal to a larger public. They are CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THOUGHT 27 not only true to the human tragi-comedy, but through all the pages there blows the wind of a high way of feeling which places Colette Baudoche on a level with the great masterpieces of French litera- ture. By the side of Barres and Bruneti^re, I should like to place a younger man, an essayist like Barres, a genuine investigator in the realm of thoughts like Brunetiere. M. Andre Beaunier's novels, V Homme qui a perdu son moi (1911) and la Revolte (1914), have been widely read in France, and his literary criticisms in the Figaro and in Revue des Deux Mondes manifest a caustic humor and a sil- very sensitiveness which at times remind the reader of Charles Lamb. Beaunier's recollections of his childhood* remind the reader of Old China, for with him as with Lamb the desire of depicting himself is hi§. real motive for writing. /M. Beaunier belongs, I should say, to that extraor- dinary generation of 1880 (or is it 1895?) intoxi- cated with all ideas and above all with symbolism, and of course in love with the German subjective idealism, as well as with Dante and the primitive Italian painters. His friends might have feared, at a certain moment of his life, that his ever changing and protean mind would never enjoy the cosy ingle- nook of firm belief; and the philistine often won- dered whether so irrepressible an epigrammatist were not laughing at his reader and even at himself. His book Trois Amies de Chateaubriand scandalized all those simple folk who take themselves — and Chateaubriand — too seriously. Truly a chef won- derfully well versed in the delicate art of tickling the jaded Parisian appetite with the cool malignity "See Andr6 Beaunier, des Idies et des Bommes. Deuxihme Sirie. Paris, 1915. 28 SOME MODEEN FRENCH WRITERS of highly seasoned criticism: plenty of cayenne among- the bays of laurel for the subjects of his studies ; and yet behold this humorist, the least nar- row-minded, dogmatic or intolerant of men, become now a stem moralist, what his enemies would call a formalist, a limited man! Is this yet another of the jester's tricks? Far from it. He has become a great believer, and the fact that he may express his faith in a skeptic tone of voice, or in peculiar turns of phrase, only proves the strength of this faith. There is an entertaioing scene, pregnant with meaning, in his book La Revolte, which leaves us in no doubt as to M. Beaunier's state of mind: I mean the conversation between the young heroine and the professor of philosophy. M. Darbenne-Mincenot is evidently what M. Beaunier was himself once upon a time, the philosopher convinced that everything un- dulates and flows, the tired Pyrrhonist who, realiz- ing the abyss between man and his performance, re- fuses to act and spends his life between sleepiag and yawning in the easy chair of skepticism. The vivid portrayal of this modern professor of philo- sophy is a good indication of the light in which M. Beaunier looks at him today. He snaps his fingers in the face of such cui-hono philosophy. In the hun- dreds of books in M. Darbeime-Mincenot's library, life is nothing but a spiritualized, deformed and ab- stract person sprung fully armed from the minds of thinkers, a scheme pure and simple built upon pre- conceived ideas, devoid of justness and proportion. Would to God that it were only a chimcera bombi- nans in vacuo! , M. Beaunier, by admitting the relativity of things lias been led to realize that human strength and wis- dom lie not in extreme dogmatism, in believing true some empty dream or doubtful operation of the CONTEMPOEAEY FEENCH THOUGHT 29 mind, but in avoiding extremes. "Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel, acts the brute." And M. Beaunier, from the day when he understood that lit- erature meant for him the picture of life freed from all the shackles of life (shall we say under the influ- ence of Bergson?), when he understood that a novel must above all be full of true humor, wrote his two masterpieces, I'Homme qui a perdu son moi, and la Revolte. It may be that the atmosphere therein is cold or even cruel, too intellectually exciting; but, then, M. Beaunier has little pity for mankind led astray by knaves or fools. Beside M. Beaunier should be placed the brilliant dramatist, Frangois de Curel, who shows us very clearly what is the soul of the contemporary move- ment. His best known play, la Nouvelle Idole, was first performed in 1899 ; but at that time the French public, accustomed as it was to live in full blooded and complacent paganism, delighting in the verbal orgies of the Theatre litre or the coarse cynicism of Boulevard theatres, was hardly ready to appreciate this new venture. In 1914 and 1915 the play was re- vived and, thanks to the shadows cast by war, met with the success it deserved. The whole point of the play is its question : has a savant the right to sacri- fice to science human lives already condemned by fate ? Francois de Curel, an aristocrat in irony and independence of mind, saw the tendency of the time to worship science, the New Idol, and challenged it. He represents a real wave of French feeling such as is rarely perceived by the outsider who has not lived many years in the depths of a French province — such feeling as Montaigne has so admirably por- trayed when speaking of the stoicism of his poor neighbors. "Quand il s'agit de ne pas crever comme 30 SOME MODEEN FEENCH WEITEES un chien, mais de finir noblement, c'est encore aupres des humbles qui adorent Dieu et des coeurs ardents qui vivent avec ton heroisme que les philosoplies ont a cliercher des le§ons de logique."* We now come naturally to Jules Lemaitre and Emile Faguet. Although Faguet and Lemaitre be- long to another generation than Curel or Beaunier — since Faguet was bom in 1847 and Lemaitre in 1853 — the history of their so-called evolution throws light upon the frame of mind of Curel or Beaunier. The student of French literature sees the same idea taking hold of the mind of so many different men between 1890 and 1910, here remaining a sentiment, there tending to become a fixed idea, almost a law, that he is bound to believe in that doc- trine of compensation so dear to Emerson's heart. It was at the moment when anarchy was at its high- water mark in France, under the name of intellec- tualism, that all these men rose up and declared that they would not be so misgoverned any longer. The more I read Jules Lemaitre — and about him — the more convinced I am that his conversion was a case of patriotism pure and simple. Every grain of his wit went to counterbalance every grain of his adversaries' folly, solely and simply because he loved his Orleanais. Anatole France in his Vie lit- teraire quotes a beautiful page of Jules Lemaitre which goes far to explain the author of Opinions a repandre or the fact of his becoming President de la Patrie frangaise. "Quand j'entends declamer sur 1 'amour de la pa- trie, je reste froid, je renfonce mon amour en moi- meme avec jalousie pour le derober aux banalites de la rhetorique qui en feraient je ne sais quoi de faux, de vide et de convenu. Mais quand j'embrasse de •Lo Nouvelle Mole, last scene. CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THOUGHT 31 quelque courbe de la rive, la Loire etalee et bleue comme un lac, avec ses prairies, ses peupliers, ses ilots blonds, ses touffes d 'osiers bleuatres, son ciel leger, la douceur epandue dans Pair, et non loin dans ce pays aime de nos anciens rois, quelque cha- teau cisele comme un bijou qui me rappelle la vieille France, ce qu'elle a ete dans la monde, alors je me sens pris d'une infinie tendresse pour cette terre ma- ternelle ovl j 'ai partout des racines si delicates et si fortes."* If the masterpieces of sculpture and painting are a fine education (and nobody denies it), why should not beautiful nature — majestic old oaks, a stately river, the play of shadows on rock and cave, grace- ful hills stretching their delicate limbs against an opal sunset, stars seen at night through the branches of a group of cypresses, birches white and moving gently in the breeze like a band of nymphs — why should not this most classical landscape exert an en- during influence upon a sensitive mind? Lemaitre was bom to be a gentleman farmer. He is a part of the soil of France. Every real French gentleman is. Emile Faguet on the other hand is a citadin, the child of cities, and his world is the world of ideas. Just as in the soul of the artist there exists some- thing more delicate, more sensitive, than in the aver- age man which enables him to understand and feel beauty in its deepest sense, so M. Faguet 's mind has an exquisite finesse, a subtle and spiritual scale, that enables him to weigh, reject or accept the gold or dross of ideas. Hence the creation of his books, above all of his three volumes on the moralists and political writers of the Nineteenth Century. "It is to the eternal honor of man," he once wrote, "that a hundred thousand facts shall never prevail *Vie LitUraire, Seme s6rie, p. 154. 32 SOME MODEEN FEENCH WEITEES over one idea." Still, lover of ideas does not mean an ideologist. No man was ever fonder of facts than Faguet. If he took no active part in public affairs, he mixed freely with men and even with houlevar- diers — that is what gives him a certain sense of reality and an unfailing sense of humor. The book he called Political Questions might just as well be named Social Maladies, and should be the vade me- cum of our present-day statesmen. "Science, to whom all men turned to find happiness, has created a rough, violent, terribly agitated and panting world." M. Faguet wrote those words before the great war ; and in their light one would fain inquire : "What manner of German did science make! This world which is so tired, so drunken with un- satisfied desires, this feverish, restless plutocracy powerless to find happiness, cannot exist indefinitely without a moral and intellectual ideal. It was in order to feel under him the solid ground of fact that Faguet devoted all his talent in the lat- ter part of his life to social problems. He stands in that respect for an epitome of all those men of letters who wish to see clearly the problem not of destiny, but of their own destiny. As he said so well, "L'avenir national est une chose autrement impor- tante que I'avenir litteraire." That is why he wrote his Culte de I'lncompetence, and his I'Eorreur des Responsabilites, and so many articles in so many papers. Ill Now M. Faguet is, more than anyone else, a repre- sentative of all those men of letters who, however original they may be, are the product rather than the creators of a movement. Side by side with philo- sophers such as Eenouvier, and great authors such CONTEMPOEARY FEENCH THOUGHT 33 as Baxres, wlio are capable in themselves of origi- nating a movement and being its fountain beads, there are aU those talented writers who, while they undergo the influence of ideas which are in the air at the moment, at the same time give them a fresh impulse. This reactionary revival which we are now considering was begun as early as 1885 and by quite young writers. Critics in general make a great mistake when they pay attention only to the middle-aged — to those men who have already made their way and won their reputations. It is young men who create new move- ments. They are like children who spread abroad the beauty they carry within themselves and are rebellious towards any influence which goes against their grain. Most of us have noticed the imitative- ness of the child, but few have stopped to admire his act of self-defense, his instinctive combativeness, nay, his self-reliance and desire to innovate, his art of improvisation, of creative play. A child has a magnetic nature in subtle relation with the forces of the earth: like the morning sun, he shows us the right way by his profound and resistless sincerity. The real business of the critic is to know what the young men are about. In the present case he must consult the Parisian reviews of 1895 to 1900 in order to realize what were the ideas which swayed the young writers of that time. Before the appearance of the Mercure de France, which is the most impor- tant repertory, and which is to-day more vigorous than ever, there were the Revue Contemporaine, la Vogue, la Revue Independante, and above all the Revue Wagnerienne. The Revue Wagnerienne which was founded in 1885 by Edouard Dujardin and on the staff of which J. K. Huysmans met CatuUe Mendes, Teodor de 34 SOME MODEEN FEENCH WEITEES Wyzewa, L. de Fourcaud, etc., is a very good in- dication of German influence in France. Teodor de Wyzewa, together with Catulle Mendes, was the great apostle of "Wagner. His book, Nos Maitres, in which he has repub- lished articles which had appeared between 1885 and 1895 in the Revue Wagnerienne, la Vogue, la Bevue Independante, la Revue bleue, le Figaro, le Mercure de France, is valuable for the Wagnerian enthusiasm which it breathes. This extraordinarily brilliant young Pole worships Wagner as the prophet of a new order of things. But of course the high priest of all these young men seeking to renew the inspira- tion of the arts is Baudelaire, who, as far back as 1861 in his famous study of Eichard Wagner and Tannhduser, had proclaimed that this music was the expression of all that is most hidden in the heart of man. Together with this influence of Wagner must be taken that of Villiers de I'Isle Adam, an influence so important that it merits a chapter to itself. He reinforced the influence of Germany by the very fact that he expressed Hegelian and Wagnerian ideas in intelligible French. '^ Finally, it would be neglecting the expression of the time that will perhaps live longest if we neg- lected the painters; such men as Puvis de Cha- vannes, Gustave Moreau, Besnard, Whistler, Cazin, Maurice Denis, all of whom aim at expressing the human soul rather than externals and who appeal to our feelings rather than to our eyes. The pleas- ures of the eye are for them an end, but not the su- preme end: they seek rather to awaken by means of these pleasures the profound emotion created in us by fine music and sublime poetry. Indeed, every- things holds together; the world of art, the world of CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THOUGHT 35 ideas, and the world of life act and react one upon another; and were it not for the miraculous action of genius, or of faith interrupting the chain of cause and effect, upsetting our little schemes, we should be tempted to believe in a universal deter- minism. Art itself, which is pure intuition, entire spontaneity, utterly free from self-consciousness, every now and then submits to the influence of environment. Proudhon, in his book, du Principe de I' art et de sa Destination sociale, when studying the work of Courbet, declares: "This critical, analytical, syn- thetic, humanitarian painter is an expression of his time. His work coincides with Comte's Philosophie positive, with Vacherot's Metaphysique positive, and with my own le Droit humain ou Justice immanente; the right to work and the rights of the workman, proclaiming the end of capitalism and the sover- eignty of labor; the phrenology of Gall and Spurz- heim ; the physiognomy of Lavater. ' ' Proudhon was right when he spoke in this way of Courbet, who was a great artist but a shallow mind. But it was precisely against the excesses of this realistic school of painting that Gustave Moreau rebelled. "Je ne crois ni a ce que je touche, ni a ce que je vois : je ne crois qu'a ce que je ne vois pas, et a ce que je sens." It might even be said of this mystic painter with his passion for the invisible, his curiosity about the most elusive expressions of the human soul, ever seeking an emotion by means of philosophic speculation, that he forestalls the philosophy of Bergson. It would of course be highly imprudent to insist upon such a slippery point — painting and literature being arts which employ different means, treat different sub- jects, and appeal to different faculties of our minds. Impressionism is not only a study and evocation of 36 SOME MODERN FEENCH WEITEES modem life, but a study of light, sunliglit, starlight — even gaslight. It has given us the sunshine of Monet, the footlights of Degas, the open air of Ma- net, and also "Whistler's nocturnes. Again, the im- pressionists were influenced by other artists, and not by men of letters : Daumier, Gavarni and Guys were their real masters. Far more important factors than impressionism were at work : the progressive suppression of aver- age fortunes, due to the steady decrease of income and increased cost of living; the growing predomi- nance of the plutocracy and steady weakening of moral forces; the progress of socialism and of an- archy among men of letters culminating in the words of a French poet, Laurent Tailhade, "Qu'importe le sort de vagues humanites, pourvu que le geste soit beau?"* In any case the bourgeoisie was tak- ing more and more interest in labor questions: and that is the explanation of the influence of Russian writers which was so widely felt at this moment, the sudden leaping into fame of Tolstoi and Dostoi'ewski. In 1886 appeared M. Melchior de Vogue's le Roman russe. The book was made up of a series of articles which had appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, with a preface which •See Documents d'4tudes sociales, sur I'Anarchie, par Alexandre Bdrard, Lyon, 1897. "II faut rendre i chacun oe qui lui est d