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PROLEGOMENA 
 
 OP 
 
 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. 
 
>/ 
 
 rilneol. < v-c;\n5. r unt-i t— j b. 3. 
 
 PROLEGOMENA 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 /'BY 
 
 \^ 
 
 ALBEET ilETILLE, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE, PARIS ; AND HIBBERT LECTURER 
 
 FOR 1884. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 BY 
 
 A. S. SQUIRE. 
 
 With an Introduction by Professor F. MAX MULLEE. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBDRGH, 
 
 1884. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTKD BY C. ORKEN AND SON, 
 
 178, STRAND. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book is the reproduction, in a condensed form, of Lectures 
 which I gave at the College de France during some months of 
 the last spring and summer. I have not reproduced them lite- 
 rally, in extenso, because it seems to me that the same forms 
 which are suitable to an oral lesson are not so suitable to a book. 
 That which the Professor says in a lecture in order to be well 
 and clearly understood by his audience, is apt to degenerate 
 into redundancy and prolixity in a book. Eeading allows of 
 more reflection than hearing ; it requires also more rapidity in 
 development. 
 
 I do not claim to have exhausted in these chapters all that 
 might come into a general Introduction to the History of Eeli- 
 gions. There are subjects which those who are familiar with 
 this kind of studies could easily point out which are not even 
 approached, because it is only later that they could be usefully 
 dealt with. At the beginning of a course in which his powers 
 would fail the Professor long before the matter he has to treat of 
 is exhausted, I have sought simply to bring together data and 
 judgments which are most necessary for those who wdsh to 
 follow it profitably. It is a digest to which I may from time 
 to time be allowed to refer, in order not to lengthen the way 
 by fatiguing repetitions or digressions. Misunderstandings will 
 thus be avoided by this statement of the principles and of the 
 
 b 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 tendency which direct my researches in a domain where con- 
 fusion of ideas and of words is as easy as it is frequent. I 
 would venture to hope that, in default of any other merit, the 
 mark of that strictly scientific spirit which should preside over 
 studies of this kind will be found here. I do not consider the 
 very real sympathy which I openly profess for their object as in 
 any way opposed to that spirit. I believe, on the contrary, that 
 the love of relicrion within one's-self — like the love of nature to 
 the naturalist, like the love of art to the theorist of the beauti- 
 ful — is indispensable to the historian of religions. These various 
 affections are not at war ; on the contrary, they nourish and 
 inspire the love of truth. 
 
 ALBERT R^VILLE. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I WAS delighted when I heard that M. E^ville's excellent 
 ProUgomhies de VHistoire cles Religions were to be translated into 
 English, and if I hesitated before acceding to the request that I 
 should add a few lines by way of introducing his book to the 
 English public, it was simply because I remembered the old 
 English saying that good wine needs no bush. 
 
 I do not doubt that all real students of the History of Eeligion 
 have by this time read M. Eeville's book in the original. But 
 the interest in the Science of Eeligion is spreading rapidly and 
 widely, and there are large classes of English readers who seldom 
 see a book which is published abroad, and who are more easily 
 reached by an English translation. 
 
 I hope, therefore, that M. Euville's book in its English trans- 
 lation will be read even more widely in England than it has 
 been ; and I trust that it may help to remedy the injury whicli 
 has of late been done to the Science of Eeligion in this country, 
 both by its indiscriminate enemies and by its indiscriminate 
 admirers. 
 
 Its indiscriminate enemies have often represented that new 
 science as entirely hostile to religion. The author of our book, 
 however, has not only been an active clergyman, but he is not 
 afraid, as the first Professor of the History of Eeligions at the 
 ColUgc de France, to confess his real love of religion. 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But the indiscriminate admirers of the Science of Religion 
 have proved almost more mischievous than our enemies by 
 raising a prejudice against us among men who, though few in 
 number, always tell in the end, and who, from the unscientific 
 way in which the history of religion, or, I should rather say, the 
 evolution of religion, has often been treated in recent publications, 
 have naturally been led to believe that this new so-called science 
 is rather an amusement for amateurs than a study for scholars. 
 Long ago, I ventured to apply to the study of religion what 
 Goethe had said of the study of language, that he who knows 
 one knows none. A man may know his own religion very well, 
 but he is not thereby a theologian, as little as a man is an 
 astronomer because he knows the sun and the moon and the 
 stars that rise above his own horizon. Now in M. Eeville we 
 have a writer who has carefully studied, not his own religion 
 only, but most of the really important religions of mankind, and 
 who never forgets the duty of the true historian to treat all 
 religions, the lowest as well as the highest, with perfect impar- 
 tiality and fairness. 
 
 But greater mischief even than has been done by those who 
 know or who recognize one religion only, has been done to our 
 young science by those who profess to know all religions, whether 
 ancient or modern, whether savage or civilized. This compre- 
 hensive treatment of religions may have its advantages, and may 
 no doubt claim its proper place in anthropological and psycho- 
 logical works. It is full of interest, and even of amusement, 
 but it is simply intolerable in the Science of Religion. In Com- 
 parative Theology, no less than in Comparative Philology and 
 Mythology, it is necessary before all things that whosoever 
 wishes to do any real good, should make himself a scholar, and 
 should acquire not only the knowledge, but also the conscience 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 of a scholar. What should we say of a writer who undertook to 
 teach us anything about Zeus, and was not able to spell his name 
 rightly ? Yet men venture to write about the religions of literate 
 and illiterate nations without attempting to learn even the alpha- 
 bet or the grammar of theu^ languages. C'est magnifiqite, mais 
 ce n'est pas la guerre. 
 
 Lastly, our young science has suffered much from the embraces 
 of that philosophy which tries to know how everything ought to 
 have been, without first trying to know something of what really 
 has been, and which, if facts happen to run counter to its postu- 
 lates, disposes of all difficulties with a self-complacent Tant jns 
 pour Us fails. Having been myself one of the earliest and most 
 outspoken admirers of Darwin's work, and having stood up, even 
 before Darwin, for the theory of evolution, which nowhere, I 
 believe, has achieved greater triumphs than in the Science of 
 Language, I cannot protest too strongly against degrading the 
 name of Darwin by applying it to that pseudo-philosophical 
 sciolism which tries to put evolution in the place of history, and 
 which, instead of descending from the known to the unknown, 
 imagines that we can ascend far more easily from the unknown 
 to the known. Before we have recourse to tlie theories of evo- 
 lution in religion, language, or mythology, we ought surely first 
 to learn what history has to teach us. When that is done, but 
 not till then, there will be time for reasoning out what is 
 required as necessarily antecedent by the very facts which are 
 still within our reach. Let us by all means study history in order 
 to show that there is a unity of purpose, that there is the evolu- 
 tion of an idea in it. But let us not imagine that evolution can 
 defy the authority of history. It was one of the glories of our 
 century that in the study of the earliest history of mankind we 
 had shaken ourselves free from the a priori theories of the last 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 century, the Euhemerism of Banier, the Fetichism of De Brosses, 
 the Infantism of Voltaire, the Animism of Rousseau, and the 
 Savageism {sit venia verho) of Lord Monboddo. If the Science 
 of Man is to descend once more to that low level, it will become 
 again a subject for dabblers, but not for students who have 
 patiently tried to learn the great lessons which the true anti- 
 quities of the world, the tools of man, the languages of man, the 
 religions of man, the earliest laws and literatures of man, are 
 able to teach. 
 
 That is the spirit in which M. Reville's Prolegomena are 
 written — Prolegomena of the history, not of the romance, of 
 religion. We find ourselves throughout its pages, as well as in 
 his other works, Les Religions des Feuples Non-civilis^s, and his 
 excellent Hihhert Lectures, under the guidance of a scholar and 
 an historian ; though he also shows us, when we have come to 
 the Land's End, those dim and distant regions in the growth 
 of the human mind which no history and no scholarship can 
 reach, and where the philosopher finds ample scope both for 
 his reasoning and for his imaginative powers. It is quite true 
 that the human mind must not shrink from embarking on that 
 dark ocean which beats everywhere against the shores of our 
 historical knowledge. All I say is, that those who venture on 
 that perilous voyage which is to lead them to the discovery of 
 the oldest world, should possess not only the boldness of the 
 psychologist, but likewise the caution of the scholar and the 
 tact of the historian, as the only safe compass to guide them 
 across mists and darkness from the safe shore which they leave 
 to the unknown harbour which they hope to reach. 
 
 r. MAX MULLEE. 
 
 Oxford, Oct. 17, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 M. Reville's Preface 
 
 Professor Max Miiller's Introduction , 
 
 PAOK 
 V 
 
 vii 
 
 FIRST PART. 
 
 I, — Religion ...... 
 
 II. — Definition of Religion .... 
 III. — The Primitive Revelation 
 IV. — Primitive Tradition .... 
 
 V. — Other a priori Theories of Religious History 
 VI. — Religious Development 
 VII. — Classification of Religions 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 35 
 49 
 58 
 65 
 89 
 
 
 SECOND 
 
 PART. 
 
 
 
 
 T. The Myth 
 
 . 103 
 
 II. The Symbol and the Rite 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 117 
 
 III. The Sacrifice 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 128 
 
 IV. The Priesthood . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 139 
 
 V. — Prophetism .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 150 
 
 VI. — Religious Authority 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 165 
 
 VII. Theology .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 175 
 
 VIII. Philosophy . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 187 
 
 IX.— Morality . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 198 
 
 X. Art . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 . 209 
 
 XL — Civilization 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 219 
 
 XII. — Science 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 . 225 
 
EERATA. 
 
 Page 4, line 20, insert "the word" before "religion," and for " religion" 
 read "religio.'" 
 
 „ 4, „ 34, for "religion" read "?Wi^io." 
 
 „ 11, „ 18, for "I" read "we." 
 
 „ 12, „ 4, dele "yet." 
 
 „ 14, „ 23, for "feelings" read "feeling." 
 
 „ 27, :, 19, for "vexation" read "perplexity." 
 
 „ 27, „ 33, for "I" read "we." 
 
 „ 27, „ 35, for "I" read "we." 
 
 „ 28, „ 13, for "I" read "we." 
 
 „ 29, „ 24, insert "may be" before "conceived," and "of" after it. 
 
 „ 29, „ 28, for "relation" read "position." 
 
 „ 31, „ 7, insert "who is the" before "object." 
 
 „ 31, „ 16, insert "but" before "that it is." 
 
 „ 33, „ 22, dele "the" before "eminent." 
 
 „ 44, „ 16, for "the" read "its." 
 
 „ 57, „ 16, for "sprung" read "sprang." 
 
 „ 69, „ 3, for "mankind" read "man." 
 
 „ 87, „ 13, dele "already." 
 
 „ 96, „ 25, insert "in the" before "Mosaism." 
 
 ,,169, „ 11, insert "do" between "to" and "that." 
 
 „ 184, „ 3, for "defiance" read " distrust." 
 
 ,,189, „ 5, for " themselves" read " himself." 
 
 ,,195, „ 10, for "saw" read "sees." 
 
 „ 211, „ 9, for "their" read "its" in each case. 
 
 ,,212, „ 12, for "at" read "of." 
 
 ,,227, „ 35, for "moreover" read "however." 
 
 , 26, for "occupied" read " occupies.' 
 
 ').->f 
 
 which are far from being sufficiently understood. AVe shall 
 travel from the surface to the centre, in order to return from 
 the centre to the surface, and so determine with more accuracy 
 the meaning and bearing of certain general phenomena which 
 
 . B 
 
PROLEGOMEJSTA 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 gixBt fari 
 
 I. 
 
 EELIGION. 
 
 A. — Antiquity and the Middle Ages. 
 
 Of all subjects of study, Eeligion is perhaps the one which 
 has suffered most from misapprehension. There is none more 
 constantly under discussion by those who do not possess even 
 the simple elementary knowledge which is indispensable for 
 the formation of a competent judgment. There are hundreds 
 of thousands of minds to whom " Eeligion," " Christianity," 
 " Catholicism," " Theology," are synonyms which they use indif- 
 ferently one for the others. Religion is one of those domains in 
 which the accident is continually confounded with the substance, 
 the accessory with the essential. That is attributed to all hu- 
 manity which is true of only a fraction, and that which endures 
 but for a moment is held to be eternal. 
 
 Hence the necessity, before entering on the historical task 
 which we have set ourselves, of a sort of general survey which 
 may help us in our long journey by defining notions and terms 
 M^hich are far from being sufficiently understood. We shall 
 travel from the surface to the centre, in order to return from 
 the centre to the surface, and so determine with more accuracy 
 the meaning and bearing of certain general phenomena which 
 
 . B 
 
2 RELIGION. 
 
 met us at the outset, but which it was impossible to understand 
 fully apart from their common source. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us ou glancing over a map of the 
 religions of the globe, is their multiplicity and diversity. Creeds, 
 rites, moral precepts or simple religious observances ; fetichism, 
 animism, polytheism, dualism, monotheism, pantheism ; ritual 
 obligations passing from crime to heroism, from prostitution to 
 spotless purity, from cruel immolation of others to complete 
 sacrifice of self — all, principles and forms, produce at first sight 
 the effect of a confused mingling of incongruous phenomena, to 
 which it seems very rash to ascribe beforehand any element in 
 common. 
 
 More than this : we may lay down as a general rule that 
 nothing is so tenacious as a religion, nothing more obstinately 
 defies proscription and all attempts at extirpation, nothing resists 
 with more constancy the contradictory demonstrations of pal- 
 pable reality. History supplies examples of this which are 
 almost appalling. Nevertheless, the number of religions which 
 have become extinct or have disappeared is great. Buddhism, 
 after liaving been for ages the popular and official religion of 
 Hindostan, from a certain date almost suddenly vanishes, and 
 that, as it would seem, without any persecution having been 
 directed against its votaries. The grand religion of Zoroaster, 
 one of the most interesting and beautiful of antiquity, at present 
 numbers only a few hundreds of professors, and is on the verge 
 of extinction. In France, our religious history presents at least 
 four successive stages — the old religion of the soil, on which was 
 grafted a mystic Druidism ; then the religion of the conquerors, 
 who absorbed one and proscribed the other ; and at last Chris- 
 tianity, in its turn the point of departure of new evolutions. 
 The Greco-Eoman, Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies — 
 the Semitic polytheisms of Nineveh, Babylon, Biblos, Tyre and 
 Carthage — the rich pantheon of ancient Egypt — the solar wor- 
 ship of the Incas — all these are dead, gone for ever. And we 
 could add to this funereal list other names less known. So that 
 
ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 3 
 
 religions exhibit this double phenomena of a vitality which we 
 might siippose indestructible, and of a tendency to decay which 
 frequently ends in complete annihilation. Later, we shall have 
 to examine the hidden causes of this contradictory manifesta- 
 tion ; at the moment we content ourselves with noticing a fact 
 which is brought more prominently forward through this very 
 contradiction. 
 
 It is this, that if religions are mortal, religion never dies, or 
 we may say, it dies under one form only to come to life again 
 under another. 
 
 There is, then, underneath and within this multicoloured 
 development a permanent and substantial element, something 
 stable and imperishable, which takes a firm hold on human 
 nature itself. It is like the tendency of man to live in society, 
 or like the faculty of speech, two things which subsist through 
 all changes, all governments, all revolutions of states and races. 
 If we were called upon to write a comparative history of legis- 
 lation, or a general history of art, we should begin by defining 
 the idea of law or of art. In like manner, our first effort now 
 ought to be devoted to ascertaining what Religion, the common 
 cause of all these fluctuating, varied and successive phenomena, 
 is in itself 
 
 If the question is elementary, it is far from being easy of 
 solution. It is with religion, in the abstract sense of the word, 
 as with man himself, as with the state, art, philosophy, and so 
 many other subjects of reflective thought. Their rigorous defi- 
 nition demands sustained effort, which is not always rewarded 
 by success. We must bear this in mind in our summing up 
 of what may be called the history of the definition of Religion. 
 
 The etymological meaning of the word itself does not throw 
 much light on the question, though it contains an indication 
 which we must not overlook. In spite of the objections of some 
 philologers, we persist in thinking that the word religion, de- 
 rived from the Latin religio, conveys the idea of a bond, of 
 something which attaches and binds, and, as a matter of fact, we 
 
 b2 
 
4 RELIGION. 
 
 shall find this idea in the definition which will result from our 
 inquiry.^ 
 
 ^ The Greek does not possess any term exactly corresponding to the Latin religio: 
 OprioKiia, Gtoo'ifiua, tvui^ua, relate rather either to a ritual form of worship, or to 
 the disposition which we call piety. The Greek expression, to. Trepl tov<; Beovg, or 
 TTEpl Tuv 6i6v, that which concerns the gods or god, is too vague to serve as an equiva- 
 lent. The German Gottesdienst, which we find in all the languages of the Germanic 
 family except in English, literally signifies service of God, that is, religious practice 
 rather than religion itself. This is why the philosophers and theologians of Outre- 
 Rhin borrow from us the term religion in their technical works. This, we may say 
 in passing, singularly weakens the force of the reasoning in virtue of which it is often 
 desired to insist upon the absence of a notion, or of a faculty, or of a moral disposition 
 among certain peoples, founding this argument on the fact that their language did not 
 contain the precise word for designating it. 
 
 Etymologists, whose opinion we do not share, refer the term religion to re-legere, to 
 collect anew, re-collect, to take again something in order to devote one's attention to 
 it. It is thus, it is added, that intdUgere means to collect several things, to dispose 
 them, arrange them, comprehend them ; that nec-Ugere {ncgligerc) means not to collect, 
 to leave aside, neglect ; that di-ligere supposes that one has collected, but has put 
 something apart from the others, whence the meaning of liking, preferring, cherishing. 
 Relegere would be equivalent to the French word repasser, revolve (in mind or memory), 
 and in fact this is the meaning which the Latins themselves have assigned to religion. 
 Cicero, for example (De Nat. D. ii. 28, 72), says, in reference to this : Q,ui omnia 
 quce ad cultiun deorum pertinerent dib'genter retractarent et tanquam relegerent, 
 sunt dicti religiosi cx eelegendo, ut eleganter ex eligendo, tanquam a diligendo 
 diligenter, ex intelligendo intelligenter ; his eiiim in verbis omnibus in est vis legendi 
 eadem quce in religioso. 
 
 With all deference, however, to Cicero, whose etymologies often leave much to be 
 desired, his comparison is open to very grave objections. The greater number of sub- 
 stantives formed with intelligere, diligcrc, eligere, yiegligere, take the termination 
 entia, intelligentia, diligentia, elegantia, negligentia ; consequently religcre ought to 
 give religcntia, not religio. Religiosus has so little the meaning of repassant, revol- 
 ving, reviewing carefully, that another Latin, quoted by Aulus Gellius (iv. 9), clearly 
 distinguishes between the meaning of religens and that of religiosus, this last being 
 understood as the equivalent of our word "superstitious:" Religentem esse oportet, 
 religiosum ncfas. Finally, the word religion is employed in Latin in the sense of a 
 sacred or solemn bond which it is not lawful to break, a meaning which is preserved in 
 such phrases as "Religion du scrment," "Religion du drapeau." Religione jusjurandi 
 ac metu Deorum in trstimoniis dicendis commoreri, said Fonteius, ix. 20. 
 
 Agreeing with Servius, Lactantius and Augustine, we think that the word religion 
 must be connected with religare, to bind, to connect with. Pott (Etymol. Forsch. 
 i. 20) objects that religare ought to give religatio, as ohligarc makes ohligatio. But 
 we may i^eply that the termination are of Latin verbs of the first conjugation is not 
 primitive; it represents a-e?'e. This is why the penultimate of substantives formed 
 out of these verbs may vary. We have, for example, opinio by the side of opinari, 
 optio by the side of optare, rebellio by the side of rebellare. Nothing, then, is philo- 
 logically opposed to the derivation of religio from religa-ere, or rather from the root 
 lig, which is common to them. M. Max Miiller, from whom we borrow several of the 
 preceding observations, also appears to prefer this etymology. 
 
ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 5 
 
 But while admitting that religion may be a bond, that tells us 
 nothing of what that bond consists in, nor especially of what it 
 unites or attaches. 
 
 The ancients concerned themselves with religion itself, inde- 
 pendently of its historic forms. For them, in fact, religion had 
 no history. It would be impossible to give this name to myths 
 relating how younger gods were substituted for more ancient 
 deities, like those which told of the dethronement of Uranus, to 
 be replaced by Kronos, and of Kronos again dispossessed by Zeus 
 or Jupiter. These revolutions among their deities formed a part 
 of the traditional mythology which the thinkers of antiquity 
 rarely openly combatted. They saw in it something establislied, 
 secular, venerable and inevitable, to which they had to accom- 
 modate themselves, even while they discerned its puerile and 
 fabulous character. The Greek philosophers knew little of the 
 world, and those who began to know it somewhat better were 
 neither Greeks nor philosophers. What the former knew of 
 Asia, of Egypt, of the regions of the North, showed them nothing 
 which differed essentially from that Hellenic polytheism in the 
 bosom of which they had been born and would die. Eeligion, 
 as distinguished from religions, and as constituting the internal 
 spring of their development, could not be to them an object of 
 study. 
 
 Whenever they did not yield to scepticism or to a grosser 
 materialism, they sought to form a rational idea of the normal 
 relation necessarily existing between man and that higher Power 
 whose will or whose nature determines human destiny. The 
 popular religion appeared to their minds as a form adapted to 
 the intellectual weakness of the masses, in which to present to 
 them the highest truth under a disguise which would render it 
 accessible to uncultivated intelligences. The almost total absence 
 of dogma from the mythological traditions greatly facilitated this 
 position, half scornful, half benevolent. It is especially in the 
 Platonic school, as well as in the Pythagorean societies, that we 
 find this philosophical notion of religion, one which it has been 
 
6 RELIGION. 
 
 sought to revive in our own day, but with no great success, inas- 
 much as it is with religions infinitely more systematized, more 
 dogmatic and more dominant than the old Paganism that we 
 have to do. 
 
 According to Plato, the Absolute is the ideal and real good, 
 the intelligible sun, the action of which results in the formation 
 of matter by means of ideas which impart to it whatever it pos- 
 sesses of reason, order and beauty. The human soul, a combi- 
 nation of the divine and of the material, participates in divine 
 things through the divine element in its nature ; while in like 
 manner, through the material element, it is dragged down to the 
 troubled region of blinding and hurtful passions. The mytholo- 
 gical tendency of his mind causes Plato to mix with this funda- 
 mental notion various elements which find a place rather in the 
 regions of poetry than in the severer atmosphere of a system 
 purely rational (reminiscences of an anterior life, prophetic 
 ecstacy, &c., are among these) ; but it is evident that in his view 
 the religious destiny of the soul, the essence and the end of 
 religion, is 6/xotWis tw Gew, likeness to God, founded on the co- 
 essentiality of the human soul and of the Deity. 
 
 This mode of comprehending religion, already indicated by 
 Socrates and implied in the Pythagorean reform, is typical in 
 the history of the ancient philosophy. We meet it again, with 
 variations which in no way affect the principle, in Stoicism, 
 Alexandrian Judaism, Christianity of the same name, and in 
 Neo-Platonism. It is easy to understand how relations on the 
 whole sufficiently amicable might be established between the 
 philosophical point of view and the popular faith. We must take 
 care not to apply the intolerance of our modern logic to these 
 ancient relations between philosophy and religious tradition. 
 Where we should at once have seen two religions distinct and 
 hostile, the ancients saw but one. It is true that Socrates, 
 Anaxagoras, Plato and others, aroused in a certain number of 
 minds fears which found their relief in actual persecution. This, 
 however, was partly due to political animosity, partly because 
 
ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 7 
 
 the popular polytheism at the time believed itself to be attacked 
 in principle. But the proof that these passing emotions never 
 penetrated very deeply, is found in the fact that tlie very doctrines 
 which had excited them continued to be taught and propagated 
 without any serious opposition being made to them by either the 
 state or the priesthood. The question of the true or false in 
 religion was not then submitted to the conscience of the people, 
 as it has been since. Thence a certain serenity, a benevolent 
 optimism, prevailed in the mutual relations between philosophy 
 and the popular faith. The ancient religions were utterly desti- 
 tute of all spirit of propagandism. The pliilosophers did not 
 distinguish themselves from the people in their observance of 
 traditional rites. The people, on their side, did not look too 
 closely into matters. They were quite contented that poetry, 
 the drama and comedy should be associated with the old myths 
 and the hereditary deities. The philosopliers readily sought 
 support to their systems by pointing out the analogies in form 
 or in origin which the popular tradition offered. Their language 
 is almost always half-mythological. They delighted in personi- 
 fying abstract ideas, a tendency which dates from the time of 
 Hesiod. A personified idea would be indeed unlucky if in the 
 traditional pantheon it could not find some deity whom it resem- 
 bled. Plato could raise his voice against the efficacy which 
 superstition attributes to sacrifices, and against the employment 
 of scandalous myths in the education of youths ; Cicero could 
 exhibit his scepticism in regard to divination, oracles, auguries. 
 This did not prevent either of them from offering sacrifices or 
 taking part in the ceremonial of divination. Herodotus among 
 the Greeks, and Csesar and Tacitus among the Eomans, furnish us 
 with familiar examples of the facility with which they identified 
 the gods of strange or barbarous nations with those of the Greco- 
 Eoman polytheism. As to the grotesque or the decidedly im- 
 moral elements of the mythic tradition, it is to be presumed that 
 the sages applied to them a treatment analogous to that which 
 many Christians in our day use to remove from their consciences 
 
8 EELIGZON. 
 
 the painful impression which many passages in the Old Testa- 
 ment are likely to cause them. They either do not consider 
 them at all, or they complacently interpret them allegorically or 
 in a modified sense ; in no case do they accord to the real sense 
 any iutiuence on their thoughts or life. 
 
 The school of Epicurus is always held to be irreligious, because, 
 in spite of the ■Kp6Xrj\pts, the anteccepta qucedam informatio Deorum 
 which he recognized to exist in the human soul, Epicurus, by 
 banishing the divine power into space without admitting any 
 actual bond between it and humanity, suppressed at the same 
 time all religious relation between the two terms. There was 
 no longer any actual relation between man and the Deity. But 
 the Epicurean in his daily life showed himself scrupulously con- 
 servative in regard to the established religion. With Lucretius, 
 it is true, philosophical thought took a higher flight. Lucretius 
 is not an atheist, as he has been called : he is rather a pantheist ; 
 and one often feels, in reading his great poem, as it were a breath 
 of profound and mystic piety. It is untrue, a wide- spread notion 
 to the contrary notwithstanding, that he was the author of the 
 famous verses which attribute to fear the origin of the earliest 
 beliefs. But while recognizing, in his contemplation of the uni- 
 verse, the mens agitans molem, which separates him entirely from 
 Epicurus, he exhibits, in a far higher degree than the other inde- 
 pendent thinkers of the period, a violent repulsion against the 
 popular religion, and he delights in reproaching it with all the 
 evil it has done to men. This negative point of view could not 
 then, any more than it could now, prepare him for the serious 
 study of what we may call " the natural history" of religion. 
 
 To sum up, the ancients did not and could not acquire an 
 experimental and historical notion of religion in itself, still less 
 of the common cause of its various manifestations. The mate- 
 rials for study were wanting ; and that sort of intellectual sim- 
 plicity which is induced by the absence of contradiction, disabled 
 them from recognizing even the existence of the problem. 
 
 The situation was greatly changed when a new religion placed 
 
ANTIQUITY AND TEE MIDDLE AGES. 9 
 
 itself in antagonism to the old. One thing especially affected 
 the minds of those who, brought np in polytheism, were accus- 
 tomed to attach only a minor importance to the question of 
 truth in religion. The new faith offered itself to their accept- 
 ance in these terms : " Your religion is error, and I am truth ; 
 you are plunged in darkness, while I soar in the brightest light ; 
 your gods are false ; your myths are lies ; your faith is no longer 
 needed on the earth." Such language had never before been 
 heard in the Western world. 
 
 By tlie time that the Christian Church was in a position to 
 speak authoritatively, she was already in possession of an ortho- 
 doxy, that is, of a canonical list of doctrines, which it was neces- 
 sary to profess under pain of exclusion. Although this orthodoxy 
 was then very modest in comparison with what it afterwards 
 became, it none the less contributed to widen the gulf of separa- 
 tion between the two powers. More, the Church had inherited 
 from Judaism a peremptory mode of accounting for the existence 
 and prevalence of the mythological religion. It was purely and 
 simply the work of the devil ; and if any one remarked that, 
 nevertheless, even from her own point of view, the Church ought 
 to recognize the presence of certain divine rays in the thick dark- 
 ness of popular traditions, she replied by the mouth of her most 
 approved apologists, that the devil, this imitator, this "ape" of 
 God, had purposely introduced these into the mass of corruption 
 and lies in order the more easily to seduce mankind. In truth, 
 it was not a religion which she had to oppose ; quite the con- 
 tiary ; there was but one religion, her own. 
 
 It is evident that such an antagonism, softened only in the 
 great Christian school of Alexandria, was no more favourable to 
 a true historical science of religion than the previous state of 
 things. In fact, there was no escape from this narrow dualism 
 until modern times. The Platonizing theory of Alexandria, 
 which numbered amongst its most illustrious representatives 
 Clement of Alexandria and Origen, might have been able to 
 extend the horizon of religious thought. By developing the Phi- 
 
10 RELIGION. 
 
 Ionian idea of the divine word, of the divine thought, embodied, 
 it is true, in the Old and New Testaments, but having dissemi- 
 nated always and everywhere the germs of truth and of morality, 
 it would have been possible to arrive at a comprehensive notion 
 of the religious development of humanity, which might at least 
 have suggested the idea of preparing a history, in the serious 
 meaning of the word. But the Church, with whom orthodoxy 
 became more and more the chief passion, borrowed from the 
 Alexandrian theories only so much as served to support her 
 absolutist pretensions. That is to say, that she identified the 
 Logos, or the divine Word, with her Founder and permanent 
 Chief in such a manner as to claim a monopoly of all religious 
 and moral truth, and she haughtily declined any concession 
 which could have formed a link between her and any religions 
 which had preceded her, or which continued to subsist by her 
 side. Islamism itself was treated as any other Paganism, and 
 the Christianity of the middle ages held that Mahomet was a 
 false god, an idol, a sort of Asiatic Jupiter, raised up by the devil 
 in order to destroy the only religion which had any right to exist. 
 Men did not know any more of the real world in the middle ages, 
 perhaps rather less, than in ancient times. Humanity, that is to 
 say the fraction about whom they knew anything, was Christian 
 and Catholic; the old Paganism was supposed to be slain, abso- 
 lutely dead. Within the Church were certain miserable sectarian 
 movements, of no importance; without, on the frontier of the 
 unknown, was Islamism, always menacing, but always beyond 
 the reach of law : these were the only opposing forces which 
 had to be taken into account, and they did not seem to be of a 
 nature to shake the implicit confidence inspired by the grandeur, 
 the incomparable majesty, of the Catholic Church. The possi- 
 bility of a distinction between Eeligion in itself and Catholic 
 Christianity was never for a moment entertained. 
 
MODERN TIMES. 11 
 
 B. — Modern Times. 
 
 One of the laws of religious history, which it is the most easy 
 to verify, is that which always, sooner or later, establishes a close 
 relation between the religious ideas of men and the knowledge 
 which they have of tlie world. The various mythologies would 
 never have existed, if men in the earliest times had possessed a 
 scientific knowledge of nature. Christian orthodoxy would never 
 have been formulated as it was, if at the time of its elaboration 
 it had been possible to take into account the real place which 
 our poor little planet occupies in the immensity of space. The 
 Church would never have boasted of her universal character, if 
 it had been known in the middle ages that as a matter of fact 
 she embraced only a fraction, relatively very small, of humanity. 
 It is true that a belief, once formed, propagated and invested with 
 traditional prestige, may long resist those facts of a non-religious 
 character which either scarcely agree or are in open conflict with 
 the suppositions on which it is based. But the slow and direct 
 action of these facts is not the less felt in the long run. Already 
 the Crusades had resulted in a diminution of that which I will 
 call the security of faith. 
 
 From the beginning of the fifteenth century, all was changed 
 The resurrection of a world, the discovery of the globe, the open- 
 ing up of the heavens, took place almost simultaneously. Greek 
 and Eoman antiquity comes forth from its grave ; the princes of 
 the Church themselves approve, and can no longer attribute 
 purely and simply to the devil this splendid culture, which is 
 eagerly sought after, and the literary monuments and works of 
 art of which are studied with passionate devotion. 
 
 The earth, in its turn, unrolls itself beyond the range of sight ; 
 the immensity of ancient Asia is discovered with a surprise not 
 unmingled with awe ; the outlines of Africa are traced, but no 
 one as yet dares to sound its mysterious depths ; and there is 
 America, with its two peninsulas. If at least in these countries, 
 
12 RELIGION. 
 
 until yesterday unknown, there had been met only savages, bru- 
 tish beings, or those scarcely emerging from animalism, in whose 
 presence our Christian and civilized Europe could still have che- 
 rished the thought that she was humanity de jure, if not yet de 
 facto ! But no ! Navigators found old societies, ancient civiliza- 
 tions, in Mexico, in India, in China ; old religions also, with their 
 institutions, their rites, their priests, their claims to the posses- 
 sion of divine truth. Added to all these observations were those 
 which result from the progress of physics and astronomy ; that 
 silence of space which appalled Pascal; the insignificance of our 
 planet amid the grand spheres scattered in profusion throughout 
 immensity ; the blue vault of the firmament which is merely the 
 limit of our atmosphere, and which has nothing in common with 
 the celestial seat on which the simple poetry of the middle ages 
 imagined the sun in blissful repose. It is thus easy to under- 
 stand the anxious gaze with which a thoughtful man at tliis 
 epoch would look upon the world and upon himself. Can we 
 contemplate the Melancolia of Albert Diirer, that handsome and 
 robust woman seated among all the instruments of the uew 
 knowledge, and watching gloomily and thoughtfully a sun which 
 disappears behind the horizon, without seeing there the reflection 
 of that involuntary sadness which seizes the spirit when it must 
 say adieu for ever to the dreams of infancy and to the illusions 
 of youth ? May it not be the shattering of the security in which 
 he had hitherto lived which explains the amiable and contagious 
 scepticism of Montaigne ? In him, and in many others, arose 
 a feeling, which continually gained strength, of a disproportion 
 between the absolutist pretensions of the Church and that reality 
 which demonstrates that in the world it is the relative which 
 governs. 
 
 It is in effect since then that the elements of the history of 
 religions begin to accumulate. But much time must still elapse 
 before such a history can be morally possible. The mind for a 
 long time yet will be held back by theological prejudices, or will 
 be rendered cautious, at least as much by the fear of attacking 
 
MODERN TIMES. 13 
 
 SO difficult a subject, as by the severities of the dominant ortho- 
 doxies. Samuel Bochart, Bishop Huet, Jurieu, endeavoured to 
 systematize the knowledge acquired in their time. These attempts 
 are absolute failures. Moreover, no one as yet would venture to 
 break loose from the idea that the religions opposed to that 
 which is taught in the Bible were anything more than that 
 religion distorted and disfigured. The violent quarrels between 
 Catholics and Protestants absorbed the attention of religious 
 thinkers. Cartesianism occupied itself very little, or, to speak 
 more accurately, not at all, with history. Classical studies were 
 limited to the literary form, to the aesthetics of the old civiliza- 
 tion. The Greco-Eoman mythology was of value only to supply 
 graceful symbols, subjects of noble or gallant art, elegant types 
 of architecture or of statuary. No one imagined that they con- 
 tained any elements M'orthy of the notice of thoughtful men. 
 Much travel, many discoveries, added to what was already 
 known, were needed to compel attention to the wide panorama 
 of religions which began to be unfolded. At first these were 
 studied only from the outside, superficially ; they were treated 
 as a repertory of curiosities, as in the great work in seven folio 
 volumes which appeared in 1741 under the title of C6r6monies 
 et coutumes religieuses de tous lespeuples, the chief authors of which 
 were Picart and Antoine Banier. 
 
 The eighteenth century at length emancipated historical science 
 from all those trammels which, especially in the domain of reli- 
 gion, had hindered its development. But it must be borne in 
 mind that this emancipation, inasmuch as it was recent, very 
 imperfectly prepared the mind for undertaking the history of 
 religions with that impartiality which is absolutely necessary to 
 the task. Whatever knowledge was possessed was most often em- 
 ployed in making a breach in Christian tradition. In its desire to 
 make a clean sweep of the errors and abuses which it everywhere 
 discovered, the eighteenth century deemed it necessary in every- 
 thing, and especially in religion, to return as much as possible 
 to nature. But it little imagined that natural religion, the reli- 
 
14 RELIGION. 
 
 gion which humanity was bound to profess in this age of idyllic 
 virtue, in which le contrat social had been elaborated before it 
 became corrupted by the artifices of priests and kings, was nothing 
 else but philosophic deism. It did not perceive that this pre- 
 tended natural religion was merely an extract subtly derived 
 from Christian tradition, the fruit of a civilization already old 
 and artificial, already saturated with criticism and rationalism, 
 quite the opposite of a religion springing up spontaneously in 
 the human mind, still influenced by its primitive inspirations. 
 
 Meanwhile, many of the elements of positive research were 
 already germinating in public opinion. Look at tlie chapter 
 entitled Religion, in the Dictiomiaire Philosophique of Voltaire, 
 We find there glimpses of great promise. For example, Voltaire 
 likens the state of mind of the first men in matters of religion 
 to that which we may observe in children. True, he falls imme- 
 diately afterwards into very grave historical errors. He confuses 
 the Semitic polytheism with others. He believes in a primitive 
 monotheism. He imagines that the sages of Greece and Eome 
 were deists like himself. There is here, nevertheless, from the 
 point of view which we indicate, an intuition of profound just- 
 ness. Jean Jacques Eousseau, inferior to Voltaire in historical 
 insight, surpasses him in analysis of religious fact, in which he 
 attaches to feelings a quite special importance. It is thence that 
 he became the father of a new kind of mysticism, which was not 
 slow in spreading through Germany, and which had this advan- 
 tage, that, detached from traditional dogma, it was in a position 
 to include the non-Christian mysticisms. Nevertheless, in order 
 to form an idea of the chaos which prevailed in the matter of 
 religious history, it will suf&ce to look through the crude truth 
 of the Monde Primitif of Court de Gebelin, one of the best men, 
 the most worthy of esteem, and the most devoted to science, of 
 his own age. When, with new light and more logical precision, 
 Dupuis writes his Origine de tous les cultes (1801), we see again 
 in this last product of the mind of the eighteenth century the 
 perpetuation of its great error, which consists in making calcula- 
 
MODERN TIMES. 15 
 
 tion and subtle reflection intervene where the simple spontaneity 
 of the human mind displays itself without counterpoise. 
 
 Another error of the eighteenth century, not unlike the pre- 
 ceding, is, that it sought in all religion only for its moral teach- 
 ing ; then, governed by polemical interest, it attributed a higher 
 morality to many religions of which their chief title to its esteem 
 was their remoteness in place. It believed, or appeared to believe, 
 with a marvellous docility, in the virtues of bonzes, of mandarins, 
 of lamas, and of talapoins. It desired a religion consisting only 
 of moral precepts, identical with morality. It was too much 
 what Kant calls statutory, that is to say, the age was too ready 
 to think that beliefs and religious institutions could be settled 
 by decrees. Wise men, legislators, enlightened priests, decide 
 that it is for the general good to profess such a belief, to practise 
 such a rite ; they enact, they decree, and all things move of them- 
 selves in the desired direction. This was, we know, one of the 
 illusions of our great Eevolution. 
 
 It was in Germany that the intellectual and scientific progress 
 to which we at length owe a just notion of religious history and 
 of what religion essentially is, took place. 
 
 Lessing led the way by familiarizing his readers with an idea 
 as yet very little understood, that of the religious development 
 of humanity. Eeligious history with him is only the education 
 of the human race, which rises gradually to purer notions of God 
 and of duty. Each historical religion will thus mark a phase or 
 a halting-point in this development. Here is a new idea, which 
 goes far beyond the antithesis of the middle ages, between re- 
 vealed religion, alone worthy of the name of religion, and the 
 soi-disant religions, daughters of lying. There is no longer the 
 salto mortale, the impassable gulf, between the religions. Every 
 religion has its relative legitimacy. But, like a true son of his 
 age, Lessing seeks too exclusively the essence of religions in 
 morality. He everywhere distinguishes between the positive, 
 that is to say the moral teaching, and the conventional, that is to 
 say the dogmas, the rites, the sacerdotal or disciplinary institu- 
 
16 RELIGION. 
 
 tions, which he deems the accessories. In this he is in error. 
 There is no more of the conventional in the dogmas or the ritual 
 precepts of a settled religion than in its moral precepts. Both 
 alike are derived from the religious principle which constitutes 
 its essence. 
 
 Kant shared the same error. We know how this powerful 
 thinker, after having crushed under the teeth of his dialectic 
 harrow all the arguments of anterior theodicies, found the idea 
 of duty alone unyielding and invincible, and how on the immov- 
 able basis of the categoric imperative he built up the famous 
 trilogy — God, Virtue and Immortality. It is thus easy to com- 
 prehend how he found no other substantial element of religion 
 but moral doctrine. But how was it that he did not perceive 
 the contradiction ? His definition of religion in itself consists 
 in saying that " religion is the recognition of our duties as divine 
 commands" ! Divine commands — that is to say, commands which 
 owe their august, irresistible character to their divine origin — in 
 other terms, to their religious character ! Is it not clear that 
 that which was to be defined has been included in the professed 
 definition ? 
 
 Still more than Lessing, whose artistic nature often rebels 
 against the rigour of his theories, and who had also his own 
 mysticism, Kant despised the element, so essential in religion, 
 of feeling. The sort of voluptuousness with which the religious 
 soul can relish the absurd, if the absurd is necessary for the 
 satisfaction of its wants, remains without any possible explana- 
 tion in his system ; and it is especially the too exclusive intellec- 
 tualism of his religious views which provoked the reaction of the 
 mystic sentiment of which first Hamann, " the Magian of the 
 North," an original but eccentric and obscure thinker, and after- 
 wards Jacobi, were the representatives. The latter claimed that 
 the immediate intuition, the sudden possession of the soul by a 
 higher truth, should be the criterion and pre-eminently the reve- 
 lation of divine realities, and he found a way of grasping " intui- 
 tively" the greater part of orthodox doctrines. 
 
MODERN TIMES. 17 
 
 Neither his philosophical nor his religious opponents spared 
 him the well-merited reproach of being arbitrary. His influence 
 as a thinker was small beside that of Herder, the eloquent and 
 poetic founder of the Philosophy of History. At least he shares 
 this glory with Vico. Dying in 1803, we may say that he inau- 
 gurated in Germany and in Europe the knowledge of antiquity. 
 He it was who first saw clearly that our processes of reasoning, 
 our mode of feeling and of understanding things, should not be 
 applied to antiquity, if we wished to form a true idea. It is thus 
 that he has caused poetry to flow abundantly from a thousand 
 unknown springs, and has prepared us to breathe the perfume of 
 the old traditions. Tf the too frequent wandering of his thoughts 
 renders the study of his writings somewhat tedious to French 
 readers, always delighting in clearness and precision, we must 
 not the less admire this disciple of Eousseau, who prepares the 
 way for Hegel. He had in the highest degree the sentiment of 
 that continuous divine action, without interruption or weakness, 
 of which the world is the theatre. History is to him only the 
 prolongation of nature, and the attentive contemplation of the 
 one, as of the other, enables him to grasp their constant laws. 
 
 His notion of religion is in close relationship with this domi- 
 nant principle of his philosophy. Eeligion, he says, is the inter- 
 nal appropriation {das Innewcrden) of the divine activity, which 
 ordains all things in such a manner that we knowingly submit 
 ourselves to this divine order; or rather, religion is in us the 
 inner consciousness of what we are, as men forming part of the 
 universe. We specially remark in this double definition, tlie 
 obscurity and vagueness of wliich are to be regretted, the very 
 legitimate intention of doing justice to that indispensable factor, 
 the world, the not I, of which the theories of Lessing and of Kant 
 took so little account. Nevertheless, • we can scarcely content 
 ourselves with so little. Supposing that we could discover the 
 exact sense of the German abstraction, the Inneiuerden, wliat 
 becomes of this abstruse definition in face of the simple religions 
 of nations destitute of all culture ? And what becomes of " the 
 
 c 
 
18 RELiaiON. 
 
 internal appropriation of the divine activity" in the presence of 
 that religion which occupies so great a place in religious history. 
 Buddhism, in which the divine perfection consists entirely in 
 not possessing the least activity, just as human perfection is 
 found in renouncing every kind of activity ? Eemember, we are 
 seeking for a notion of religion in itself which may find its 
 application, and consequently its justification, in all the historical 
 forms which it may assume. 
 
 Fichte, at first very Kantian in his idea of religion, understood 
 later the synthetic character of all religion so far as the practical 
 reconciliation of tlie / and the not I. But the abstract and 
 cloudy character of his thought, always dominated by a subjec- 
 tivism which never allowed him to affirm unreservedly the real 
 existence of the not I, prevents us from forming a clear and 
 positive notion of what he understood by this reconciliation. 
 According to Schelling, religion was nothing else but God seek- 
 in sf himself throuo;h all the series of intermediaries from brute 
 matter to mind ; it was God in the course of formation, or rather 
 of re-constitution, for the system so original and so eccentric of 
 the great theosoph had as its foundation the idea of a divine 
 fall. In the midst of these speculative orgies, Schleiermacher 
 spoke words of great significance. Applying to religious fact his 
 marvellous power of analysis, Schleiermacher joined Jacobi and 
 Herder in showing that feeling was rightly the seat of religion ;, 
 but he limited the vagueness of this thesis by pointing out that 
 it led up to the consciousness of our absolute dependence on a 
 power which influences us, and which we cannot influence. This 
 definition is in its turn too narrow. If the celebrated theologian 
 had said that in all religious sentiment we find the sentiment of 
 dependence, he would have maintained an undeniable fact. But 
 the sentiment of dependence by itself does not constitute the 
 religious sentiment. Other elements also form an integral part 
 of it, such as admiration, veneration, confidence, love. Purely 
 negative, the sentiment of dependence remains in opposition, in 
 antithesis, and religion distinctly aims at conciliating opposition. 
 
MODERN TIMES. 19 
 
 And besides, without saying coarsely, as Hegel does, that if reli- 
 gion consisted essentially in the spirit of dependence, the dog 
 would be the most religious of all beings, we are justified in 
 objecting to a definition of a fact so specifically human as religion 
 is, when that definition sums up everything in a sentiment which 
 holds so large a place in purely animal life. 
 
 Comte in France, and Feuerbach in Germany, gave importance 
 to another element of religious fact which also they understood 
 in a too limited sense. They relied on the anthropomorphism 
 inherent in all religions to introduce into them all the worship 
 of man by man. Comte, it is true, did not make the individual 
 man the object of the normal worship ; he proposed for our adora- 
 tion man as a species, as humanity, and succeeded in founding a 
 true mysticism on this narrow base. Feuerbach was less of a 
 poet. He boldly propounded the thesis that man could do 
 nothing else in religion than egotistically worship himself. God, 
 he said, is never anything but egoism rejoicing in itself, the 
 Selbstgenuss des Ego'ismus. Man idealizes himself ; he creates his 
 God by making him in his own embellished image. 
 
 We know that as far as regards the first Positivism, the chapter 
 relating to religion was the part Avhich had the least success. 
 There is a very profound feeling of religious reality in this un- 
 hKnuaUc, enveloped in impenetrable mystery, which, in spite of 
 their divergencies, such thinkers as M. Littre and Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer discover on the confines of the field accessible to our 
 knowledge. There, at least, we meet again that which is indis- 
 pensable to every religious notion, the sentiment of the object 
 obtruding on the subject, even though it must obtrude only as 
 the most tormenting and the most insoluble of problems. It is 
 for religious philosophy to investigate whether the necessity of a 
 certain anthropomorphism leads the human mind as by a fate in 
 the sense of error or in that of truth. For our own part, on the 
 historical ground to which we confine ourselves, we must say that 
 neither the theory of Comte nor that of Feuerbach is in harmony 
 with the facts of history. In religion, man has always sought, 
 
 c2 
 
20 RELIGION. 
 
 and with reason, to worship another than himself. Grant for a 
 moment that this worship has always been the result of an illusion, 
 yet this illusion remains as the historical fact, and we seek to 
 know exactly what constitutes it. It is vain in a definition of 
 religion to limit ourselves to man, and to exclude the world as 
 an abstraction. All religion supposes man on the one part, the 
 universe on the other, and aspires to furnish to the former the 
 principle or the method of harmony between him and destiny. 
 
 It is to Hegel, rather than to his system, discredited like so 
 many others, and to the views which he has disseminated in the 
 conscience of our age, that we must revert in order to find the 
 philosophical notion of religion which best accords with the facts 
 of history. 
 
 In conformity with his system, Hegel defines religion as " the 
 knowledge which the finite mind possesses of its essence as an 
 absolute mind." To put it more clearly, the mind of man carries 
 with it the consciousness of being de jure superior to all the 
 limitations which are obstacles to its full development. It tends 
 to become absolute. If it is objected that thus the absolute mind 
 is only tlie product of the finite mind, that is true, replies Hegel, 
 only from a dialectic point of view, which necessarily starts from 
 the finite mind ; in reality, it is the absolute Mind, wdiich is at 
 once the first cause and the final cause, which influences things 
 in order that they may rise to its own height. On this point, 
 we may say in passing, the true view of Hegel has been often 
 misrepresented.^ Historical religions will thus be so many 
 degrees of development of the mind tending to realize the abso- 
 lute which it possesses potentially. It is for the historian to 
 determine for each of these the central idea which assigns to it 
 its logical place in tlie ascending movement of humanity. He 
 
 1 Compare in this connection the enlightened investigation to which Professor 
 Pfleiderer, of Berlin, has subjected the various systems of religious philosophy in his 
 remarkable work entitled RcUfjions-philosojyhic, Berlin, 1868; second edition, revised 
 and corrected, 1878. We are indebted to him for many of the preceding observations; 
 on other occasions we have recorded the coincidences of opinion ou which the learned 
 Professor will allow us to congratulate ourselves. 
 
MODERN TIMES. 21 
 
 will distinguish the religions of infancy, those of peoples without 
 culture ; those of youth, in which the mind already claims a 
 certain liberty, such as Judaism, which is the religion of the 
 sublime ; Hellenism, which is the religion of the beautiful ; the 
 Eoman religion, which is that of law and of finality. Christianity, 
 wliicli is with Hegel the absolute religion, corresponds with the 
 mature age of humanity. To philosophy belongs the task of dis- 
 engaging from the symbols, the myths, the dogmas of each epoch, 
 the idea which they seek to express, but of which they can give 
 only the imperfect formula. For religion and plnlosophy have the 
 same contents ; they teach fundamentally the same thing ; only 
 religion, the daughter of sentiment, of feeling, of imagination, 
 expresses under a symbolic, and consequently inadequate, form 
 the same truth which philosophy will present under a severer 
 form, strictly rational and scientific. We know how, on the 
 strength of tliis theory of the relations between philosophy and 
 religion, Hegel found means to re-constitute the greater number 
 of the dogmas of Christian orthodoxy. The latter, for a moment 
 enchanted with this unhoped-for aid, enthusiastically adopted 
 the new costume. But the first infatuation over, she bethought 
 herself to look in the glass of independent criticism, and disco- 
 vered that she had become unrecognizable. Strauss showed her 
 with a master's hand that she was no longer herself, and the 
 charm was broken. 
 
 We can see in all that has gone before the constant effort of 
 the human mind to attain to a clear and positive notion of this 
 great fact of religion, which it may study henceforth free from 
 prejudices, and of which it more than ever recognizes the im- 
 portance, the universality, and the profoundly human character. 
 We might say that each of the thinkers whose personal point of 
 view we have recalled, has been specially struck with that one 
 of the constituent elements of fact which he has concerned him- 
 self in analyzing, and that his error has been rather to exalt 
 this element than to give it a too exclusive place. The definition 
 proposed by Hegel, the most comprehensive of all, has, however, 
 
22 RELIGION . 
 
 the defect of being too closely bound up with his metaphysical 
 system, and of yielding with difficulty to the exigencies of his- 
 tory. How, for example, can we, without forcing its terms, apply 
 it to Buddhism ? Is it in accordance with reality to apply to 
 the religious development of humanity as a whole these catego- 
 ries of infancy, of youth, of maturity, which would infer a conti- 
 nuous and simultaneous development ? Is there a difference of 
 form only between religion and philosophy, and does the Hegelian 
 philosophy take sufficient account of that practical realism, so 
 different from theoretic abstraction, whence it results that a reli- 
 gion may become philosopliical, but that no philosophy has ever 
 founded a religion possessing true historical power ? And does 
 not the illusion under which the illustrious master fell, when he 
 believed that he had victoriously re-constituted Christian ortho- 
 doxy, already prove that there was much that was arbitrary, not 
 only in his method, but also in the principle of identity from 
 which he set out ? 
 
 It is no doubt as a reaction against the too intellectualist cha- 
 racter of previous definitions that, without recurring to the senti- 
 mental quaintness of the romantic school, M. Max Mliller, whose 
 name is justly entitled to great authority when he treats of religious 
 history, has chosen to put forward as the essence of religion the 
 human faculty of "apprehending the Infinite" under different 
 forms. " Eeligion," says the eminent Orientalist,^ " is a mental 
 faculty which independently, nay, in spite of sense and reason, 
 enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names 
 and under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, 
 not even the lowest worship of idols and of fetiches, would be 
 possible ; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in 
 all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the 
 inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infi- 
 nite, 'a love of God.'" 
 
 M. Max Miiller himself warns us that he offers his religious 
 
 ^ " Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of 
 India:" London, 1878. 
 
MODERN TIMES. 23 
 
 formula rather as a characteristic than as a definition of religion, 
 and he maintains that he is right in putting in relief an element 
 too much neglected by his predecessors, that of mystery, in which 
 the object of religions is enveloped, and which attracts the curious 
 and anxious mind of man by the very reason of its impenetrabi- 
 lity. According to the Oxford Professor, the infinite is only the 
 highest generalization of all tliat is indefinite, supra-sensible, 
 supernatural, absolute or divine. The infinite, he says, is not a 
 simple abstraction,^ since we cannot deduce it from the finite ; 
 it is a reality which we necessarily affirm in affirming the finite, 
 since we cannot place the limited without placing the unlimited, 
 the visible and palpable without supposing the invisible and 
 impalpable, &c. No doubt the philosophical conception of the 
 infinite has not been present to the human mind from the begin- 
 ning. But we meet in it the not yet, the presentiment in the oldest 
 traces of man on the earth. It is only a question of development.^ 
 We incline, however, to think that here again we find ourselves 
 in the presence of an element of religions put forward in a too 
 exclusive manner. Yes, there is in all religion, if not the idea, 
 at least the feeling, the perception, more or less vague, of the 
 infinite, just as there is in all something which appears in the 
 sentiment of dependence, of obligation or of supreme synthesis. 
 But is the feeling of the infinite purely and simply religious ? 
 Observe that the infinite appeals to the religious sentiment only 
 as the attribute of something or of some one. Abstract infinities, 
 infinite time, infinite space, are empty notions, silent to the reli- 
 gious soul. There is need, then, of a reality having for its pre- 
 
 1 "Lectures," &c., p. 28. 
 
 - M. ]\Tax Miiller believes he has found a historical confirmation of his opinion in 
 the name of the ancient Vedic divinity Aditi, the personification of dawn. This name 
 signifies the ab-soluta from a, negative, and diti, feminine participle of dd, dyati, 
 ncctere, to bind. In the twilight, when the dawn brings back light and the sun from 
 mystei'ious regions, primitive thought darted into the beyond, into unknown, illimit- 
 alfle space, where all was preparing. This was a revelation of the infinite. The exj^la- 
 nation is poetical and charming. But the name unbound, might it not simply signify 
 that the dawn or morning light was represented as detained in the prison of night, 
 and freed from its bonds at the moment in which it should re-appear ? 
 
24 HELIGION. 
 
 dicate the infinite, in order that its infinity may add to the 
 religious impression which it was ah^eady prepared to make on 
 the human mind. That which we retain of the characteristic of 
 religion formulated by M. Max Miiller, is the necessity of doing 
 justice, in the definition which we in our turn are about to pro- 
 pose, to this element of mystery and to its powerful attraction, 
 which hold an incontestable and eminent place among the various 
 factors, the convergent action of which has for its result religion. 
 
II. 
 
 DErmiTIOX OF EELIGIOX. 
 
 In these Prolegomena of Keligious History, it must be borne in 
 mind that the question above all others is, not to define religion 
 such as it might or could be, but to disengage its essence and 
 central idea in such a manner that we shall be able to recognize 
 it under all the forms which it may assume in history. 
 
 On this strictly historical ground, and taking into account all 
 that has seemed to us true or defective in previous definitions, 
 we say that Religion is the determination of Imman life hy the 
 sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that mysterious 
 Mind vjhose domination of the tvorld and of itself it recognizes, and 
 to ivhom it delights in feeling itself united. 
 
 I take in turn each of the terms of this definition in order to 
 show its legitimacy. 
 
 What is a determination of human life ? 
 
 Life is made up of a series of multiple determinations of 
 simple existence. All the determinations which modify it, in 
 one sense or another, have for their common cause the need of 
 living, the most imperious of all — that is to say, of preserving 
 existence, of avoiding that which may injure or destroy it, of 
 exercising those active faculties the germs of which are born 
 with us. If we examine the matter carefully, we shall see that 
 the highest morality is involved in the definition. To a certain 
 point in his development, man repels moral evil with the same 
 horror with which, as a matter of course, he does his best to avoid 
 physical suffering and the action of agencies likely to prove fatal. 
 
 It is thus that we can connect with this primordial tendency 
 tlie determinations arising from physical necessities ; then those 
 
26 DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 
 
 ■which, less immediate, nevertheless are much of the same kind, 
 such as lodging, clothing, the perpetuation of the species. As a 
 consequence, man finds himself impelled to procure for himself 
 that with which nature has not immediately furnished him — 
 arms defensive and offensive, means of protection against vicis- 
 situdes of climate and against dangerous animals, tools, instru- 
 ments, furniture. He invents the art of making a fire, he stores 
 provisions, he observes nature, he sees that fruits ripen at the 
 end of a certain period after the plant which bears them has 
 flourished, and that this plant itself flowers only at the end of a 
 certain period after it has borne seed. Thence he imitates nature ; 
 he sows seed, and he waits. Sociable, he develops the chief 
 social faculty, language ; the family, the clan, the tribe, later the 
 city, the nation, spring from that. And then, when his ele- 
 mentary needs are satisfied, man becomes an extremely curious 
 animal. He manifests a strange desire to know everything, even 
 those things the knowledge of which cannot benefit him in any 
 way. This is the point of departure of science. Again, he expe- 
 riences a special pleasure, in regard to which he constantly grows 
 more fastidious, in seeing things combined according to certain 
 laws of harmony and of contrast. This is the beginning of art. 
 Finally, he feels certain sensations of pleasure or of displeasure 
 according as it is a question of one mode of action or of another, 
 independently of any profit which he may derive from either, 
 and he is never more fully conscious of these impressions of a 
 quite special kind than when he feels displeasure after having 
 satisfied a selfish desire at the expense of another, or than when 
 he deprives himself of some wished-for pleasure in order not to 
 injure another. This is the commencement of morals. 
 
 These are the determinations which are among the most general 
 and which have the greatest influence on existence or on human 
 life. The varieties of application belonging to each of them are 
 innumerable. 
 
 But have we done ? 
 
 Suppose that an inhabitant of Saturn or of Sirius, endowed 
 
DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 27 
 
 with intelligence, capable of judging of all that passes among us, 
 but absolutely limited as to his faculty of knowledge to notions 
 of physical wants, of provident labour, of social life, of art, science, 
 morals, had found means to come down to our earth, and to be 
 present invisibly at all that is going on there. He would see that 
 our species has laboured hard since it has been upon our planet ; 
 he would observe our societies, our armies, our governments, our 
 arts, our sciences, our manners, and he would understand all that. 
 He would, however, have a group of terrestrial facts which would 
 be to him absolutely incomprehensible. He would see numerous 
 buildings of various forms opening on certain days at certain 
 hours. Wherefore ? He would see multitudes given to odd move- 
 ments, genuflections, with hands joined, with heads bowed, their 
 food regulated or even abstained from, speaking, or singing, or 
 silent, some men clothed differently from others, images, some 
 hideous, others ravishing, sacrifices, processions, discussions, books, 
 perhaps punishments, perhaps bloody wars, — and the motive, the 
 reason of all this, would escape him absolutely. In vain would 
 he exercise his ingenuity in conjecture. His vexation would 
 be increased if some one should tell him that there is in all this 
 only the quite external surface of a world apart which goes down 
 into the very depths of terrestrial life, whether collective or indi- 
 vidual. He would be compelled to return to his star having 
 understood everything in terrestrial life except these manifesta- 
 tions, which are religion. 
 
 What is then the specific nature of this direction of human life? 
 
 We say that it is connected with the feeling of a lond, not 
 merely of a relation which exists only in theory, logically, philo- 
 sophically, but of a bond positive, concrete — as real, for instance, 
 as the force of gravitation which detains us on the surface of the 
 earth, or as the affinity which exists between our blood and those 
 elements of like composition with which we furnish it by nutri- 
 tion and respiration. I do not at the moment give any opinion 
 on the question as to whether this sentiment is well founded or 
 illusory. I simply attest that it has for the religious man as 
 
28 DEFINITION OF RELIOION. 
 
 convincing evidence and as deep intensity as the consciousness 
 of living in the midst of other men, or of being lighted by the 
 rays of the sun. 
 
 This bond unites the human mind, we say, to another mind. 
 Here let us detach our inquiry from adjacent questions, however 
 grave they may be. We are not going to plunge into the dis- 
 cussion of the great problem of spiritualism or materialism. Let 
 us endeavour to make our meaning clear. In the world of reali- 
 ties two great divisions stand out — that of realities which our 
 senses perceive, or which they may perceive provided they 
 are sufficiently qualified, and that of realities Vi^hich absolutely 
 escape our means of sensible perception even when we multiply 
 their power indefinitely by instruments. I class in this second 
 category the facts of conscience, impressions, feelings, thoughts, 
 volitions, reasonings, dispositions, intellectual, moral, aesthetic, 
 &c. There is a whole series of facts or of realities, imperceptible 
 to our senses, which we range in the category of mind. Attribute 
 it to what you will, say that it is only a form of matter, at the 
 same time taking care that it is not more easily demonstrated to 
 you that matter is only a form of mind, or rather admit that which 
 is our conviction, that for him who would know all and understand 
 all, there is in the depths of our being no irreconcilable dualism, 
 and that this division can be only provisional, conditional on the 
 limitations of our faculty of knowledge. You have the choice. But 
 you cannot prove in the cliiaro oscuro in which we are compelled 
 to live and to reason, that there is any hard and fast line drawn 
 between invisible and impalpable realities and others. Well ! 
 We say that the first are the domain of mind. But we add that 
 this domain is not confined to the interior of man, but that it 
 extends also to the world around him. 
 
 Here, again, let us systematically exclude all metaphysics. 
 Let us maintain simply that which no instructed person can 
 dispute, that the things of the external world are not a confused 
 mass, a medley, a chaos. They have among them fixed relations 
 of all kinds — relations of proportion, of affinity or of repulsion. 
 
DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 29 
 
 of antecedent and of consequent, of reciprocal concomitance or 
 exclusion. Science from the beginning has sought only to know 
 what lies hcncath and within the visible and tangible surface 
 of being in order to formulate these relations. Man, on his side, 
 from the beginning also has been led to believe that there is in 
 the world in which he lives, even though he himself can observe 
 only a small part of it, something more than a motley and con- 
 fused mass of sounds, of colours and of forms, that there is 
 through all a certain order, a certain succession, something which 
 his intelligence recognizes as being like itself. And however 
 gross may be the errors into which he may fall in representing 
 to himself this intelligence or cause which reveals itself in things 
 which he has called law, divinity, cosmic order, secret cause, or 
 even fattmi, genius, numen, mens agitans molem, it still remains 
 that for man, listening as yet only to his instinct, there is face 
 to face with his spirit another spirit manifested in matter, a 
 spirit in affinity with his own — for otherwise he would not even, 
 suspect its existence ; and religion is essentially the bond which 
 unites his spirit to that spirit. 
 
 In fact, the supposition ■with which science sets out, and which 
 she verifies at each step in advance, is identical with that which 
 religion instinctively makes. 
 
 Let us add that spirit, the object of religion, may be taken in 
 a collective or in an individual sense, conceived as impersonal or 
 personal. This distinction, so important in history, in no way 
 modifies our definition. 
 
 This granted, religion springs from the feeling that man is in 
 such a relation in regard to this spirit that for his well-being, 
 and in order to gratify a spontaneous impulse of his nature, he 
 ought to maintain with it such relations as will afford him gua- 
 rantees against the unknown of destiny. Man, in presence of 
 the world, feels himself little, confined, miserable. It is an oppo- 
 sition which imperiously demands its synthesis. For the spirit 
 whose existence man recognizes through and above that which 
 surrounds him, is a superior spirit (we do not at present say 
 
80 DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 
 
 infinite or absolute or perfect, in order not to go beyond the data 
 of strict experience), and of a superiority such as, if he feels 
 himself in harmony with it, he becomes, even he, if not the 
 master, at least the superior, of this destiny, of this unknown, 
 which limits and disquiets him. Assuredly we cannot exaggerate 
 the amplitude of the angle which would contain the innumerable 
 modes in which this relation is represented and realized. Observe 
 only, that from the worship paid by the savage to the fetich 
 to which he attributes the power of securing good hunting or 
 fishing — from the penitent Buddhist, who seeks in the renuncia- 
 tion of all earthly desire the infallible metliod of attaining to the 
 supreme felicity of being no longer conscious of living, to the 
 Eoman making the safety of his country, outside of which he 
 could not imagine life possible, depend upon the punctuality 
 with which the rites celebrated by the Flamens were performed — 
 to the pious trust in a God of mercy of the Christian spiritualist, — 
 all these varieties of religion are to be found between the lines 
 which we have just traced. 
 
 There is, however, a side of the question which is too much 
 neglected in contemporary theories of the origin of religions. It 
 would be very inexact to see in even the earliest form of religion 
 only a calculation based on the need of arriving at a good under- 
 standing with the superior being whose favour we wish to gain 
 in order to govern destiny. This is certainly one of the factors 
 of religion, but not the only one. Always bear in mind that, if 
 man is religious, he is so, not only because he thinks he will find 
 his advantage in being so, but also because he likes to be reli- 
 gious, independently of anything he may gain by it. Those who 
 do not understand this double element of the religious conscience, 
 are thereby excluded from understanding anything of either the 
 genesis or the permanence of religion in humanity. This asser- 
 tion may seem paradoxical ; it is, nevertheless, an incontrover- 
 tible truth. Man likes to worship even gods which frighten him, 
 even those whom he represents to himself under all sorts of 
 appalling forms. We shall return to this point ; at present we 
 
DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 31 
 
 will only say to those whom this enunciation may surprise, 
 Explain why men love the tragic, that which shocks, that which 
 moves them, that which at a certain point fills them with dread ? 
 Why do they, while unwilling to shed a tear, yet resort in crowds 
 to spectacles where they can expect nothing else ? We touch 
 here upon that other element of religion which we call mystery. 
 The spirit, object of religion, is mysterious. 
 
 Man ardently aspires to become more intimately acquainted 
 with, to understand, the governing spirit or spirits which he 
 discerns through things, and wliich he likes to know as his allies 
 against fate, but he soon perceives that he cannot succeed in 
 this. If he rises to the notion of an individual mind, sovereign 
 director and ultima ratio of everything, it seems to him for a 
 moment that all is explained. But soon he is forced to confess 
 that this individual spirit is himself incomprehensible, impene- 
 trable ; that his superiority is not merely very great, that it is 
 immense, infinite, overwhelming, and all the more so when con- 
 templated apart. The angel himself, in the poetic symbolism of 
 the Christian mythology, covers his face with his wings while 
 passing before the throne, the splendour of which he cannot look 
 upon ; and we can see no better in the light which blinds than 
 in the darkness. Man must and can apply to this superior spirit 
 the most exalted idea of wliich he is conscious. This divine 
 spirit no doubt possesses, in full and complete reality, all the 
 perfections of which the human spirit contains the germ or con- 
 ceives the idea. But these perfections themselves only augment 
 the mystery. Reason may despair, but religion loses nothing. 
 It is thence that she causes mysterious chords to vibrate in the 
 soul, chords which seem to tremble in unison with the distant 
 harmony reserved for the eternal spheres. We speak here of a 
 religion already purified, already cleared from the original dross. 
 But we find already very early, as a confused feeling of this truth, 
 that the attraction which the notion of God has for us is due to 
 the very mystery in which his ineffable majesty is enveloped. 
 Do we not see it inspire one of the myths, at once one of the 
 
32 DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 
 
 rudest and the richest in meaning of Hebrew antiquity, that noc- 
 turnal struggle of the patriarch with the mysterious being who 
 refuses to tell his name, to allow himself to be seen, and who 
 leaves him wounded and blessed ? (Genesis xxxii. 24 — 29.) 
 
 This is why it is an error to believe that religion is the 
 daughter of fear, engendered by ignorance. If it was so, when 
 once the object of fear had vanished, religion should disappear 
 also. Assuredly fear had a place, especially in the beginning, 
 in the motives which provoke in man the rise of religion. But 
 it is not alone, any more than is calculation. Let us say, further, 
 that we must take largely into account a sort of secret volup- 
 tuousness, capable of acquiring an extraordinary degree of inten- 
 sity, and which, even when reduced to slender proportions, is 
 none the less one of the chief creative causes of religion. He 
 who allows himself to be entirely subjugated by mysticism will 
 be very ill prepared for the rational study which we undertake. 
 But he who has not known by experience at least something of 
 this charm sovereignly sweet to the soul, will be no better fitted. 
 "We must have the religious ear in order competently to study 
 phenomena of the religious order. How could the man who has 
 no sense of the beautiful ever write the history of art ? 
 
 Eeligion, such as we define it, is inherent in the human mind 
 and natural. We are justified in applying these terms to that 
 which throughout history and over the whole surface of the 
 habitable globe shows itself insejDarable from human nature. The 
 ancients, when they began to look beyond their own country, 
 were greatly struck by this consensus gentium, the result of which 
 was, that in spite of all diversities, they found everywhere a reli- 
 gion. The more acquaintance with tlie world has been extended, 
 the more this observation has been confirmed. Ancient Asia, 
 America, Africa, Malaisia, Polynesia, Australia, the Polar regions, 
 have successively furnished their testimony. Eeligion is a human 
 fact in the strictest sense of the word, and here we are in accord 
 with Benjamin Constant, who, in a work as remarkable for the 
 shrewd and penetrating views which are occasionally found in 
 
DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 33 
 
 it, as it is insufficient and out of date owing to the progress of 
 religious history, has enunciated this principle, constantly verified 
 ever since, that religion is an indefectible and perfectible attribute 
 of our species. 
 
 It is true that in the present day this universality has been 
 disputed. Of late years, we have often heard of savage tribes 
 which are described as being quite destitute of any kind of reli- 
 gious ideas. The detailed discussion of such assertions will come 
 in its place when we approach the religious history of peoples 
 devoid of all culture. At the moment, we will weigh only these 
 two considerations. 
 
 1st. The reports of travellers on the subject of peoples whom 
 they have found without any kind of religion, ought to be received 
 with the greatest circumspection. Too often they base their 
 judgment either on inaccurate information or on very superficial 
 observation. Many of them, strangers to all religious criticism, 
 from the absence of those forms to which they have been accus- 
 tomed to attach the idea of a religion, infer the absence of the 
 religion itself. The number is already relatively great of peoples 
 of whom such things have been said, and in regard to whom 
 later more attentive and better directed inquiry has afforded 
 evidence of the contrary. Sometimes even the eminent narrators 
 fall into the strano-e contradiction of describing the belief in 
 magic, sorcery, divination, of natives to whom a few pages pre- 
 viously they have denied any kind of religious faith.^ 
 
 2nd. A priori, nevertheless the fact itself cannot be denied. 
 The human mind can rise very high, but it sets out very low 
 down. There is nothing to show that man has not passed through 
 an initial period in which, while already possessing some features 
 of its distinctive physiognomy, he did not yet possess what we 
 call religion. But that would not prove anything against the 
 
 ^ This contradiction is especially manifest in the work of Sir John Lubbock, " The 
 Origin of Civilization." Professor Rosk oft', of Vienna, has peremiitorily refuted this 
 kind of ethnographic error in his book. Das Relifjionswcica der rohcsten Naturvcclkcr : 
 Leipzig, 1880. 
 
 D 
 
34 DEFINITION OF RELIOION. 
 
 naturally human character of religion. Might there not have 
 been among the very numerous families of which humanity is 
 composed, some specimens yet existing who might have remained 
 stationary below the level at which the human mind becomes 
 religious ? Or else, that which cannot be denied beforehand, 
 that some of the disinherited tribes may have degenerated into a 
 state akin to that of the brutes ? Or, once more, must we main- 
 tain in regard to the human family, that which is so easy to 
 maintain among ourselves, that men are endowed very unequally 
 from a religious point of view ? There are men whose soul 
 trembles at the breath of religion like the ^olian harp in the 
 breeze, men with whom religious feeling, religious convictions 
 and religious enthusiasm, attain an absorbing intensity. Others, 
 on the contrary, are cold as ice, and remain deaf to that which 
 speaks so powerfully to the first. It is as if a sense were want- 
 ing. Exceptional and accidental facts can never be converted 
 into permanent and fundamental characteristics of the human 
 race. The mathematical capacity of the human mind is not 
 destroyed by the fact tliat children are still incapable of employ- 
 ing it, and that certain savages, it is said, cannot learn to make 
 calculations that are to us elementary. The same may be said 
 of art, of science, of politics, all essentially human. Never allow 
 to the abnormal, the doubtful exception, the weak point, such a 
 value as will cast a slight on the characteristic features of the 
 whole. If we wished to describe the European type, it would 
 not be among tlie goitrous of the Valais that we should seek 
 our models. 
 
 In beginning, then, the history of Eeligion, we start from the 
 fact that religion is a thing essentially human. Unfortunately, 
 before going further, we find ourselves face to face with a theo- 
 logical doctrine which throws itself across our path, and which 
 we must discuss. For according to the solution given to this, 
 the history which we are about to write will completely change 
 its aspect. It is the hypothesis of a ^primitive revelation. 
 
III. 
 
 THE PEIMITIVE EEYELATION. 
 
 If we were writing the history of art, or of civilization, or of 
 philosophy, the question which now meets us would not arise. 
 We should begin with the early and imperfect rudiments of each 
 of these higher products of the human mind, and we should need 
 only to follow their continuous development. 
 
 Our history, on the contrary, is met at the outset by the claim 
 of those who will have it that, in the very beginning of the 
 human race, the creative power revealed to the first men by 
 supernatural means the essential principles of religious truth. 
 If this claim be well founded, our history, for a very long time 
 at least, can be nothing more than an exposition of the degrada- 
 tions and corruptions of this revealed truth. It is only in the 
 event of the case being otherwise that we recur to the conditions 
 of all history. 
 
 It is altogether in spite of ourselves that we engage excep- 
 tionally in one of those theological discussions which we should 
 prefer to avoid. There might be, it is true, neutral ground on 
 which agreement would perhaps be possible. If God has so 
 constituted human nature that at some moment in its develop- 
 ment it must awake to the recognition of a reality superior to 
 purely sensible phenomena, and if this first awaking of the reli- 
 gious feeling must, in virtue of this same constitution of the 
 human mind, lead it by a series of experiences, of reflections, of 
 genial aspirations, to the notion of a Power supreme and super- 
 latively adorable, it is evident that this moment, august above 
 all others, in which a human soul feels itself pervaded, as it 
 were, by a spirit the existence of which it had not previously 
 
 d2 
 
36 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 suspected, is the initial point of a development which must fill 
 history. It matters little, from this point of view, that this dawn 
 of the religious sentiment in the human soul may have been 
 associated with simple and rude notions of the world and of the 
 object of faith. The point of departure is fixed, and the journey 
 begins. In substance, it comes to precisely the same thing to 
 say, God revealed himself in the beginning to man, as soon as 
 man had reached a certain stage in his psychic development ; as 
 to sav, Man was so constituted that, arrived at a certain stage in 
 his psychic development, he must become sensible of the reality 
 of the Divine influence. In this sense, which leaves perfect 
 freedom to history, we also could accept the idea of a primitive 
 revelation. 
 
 But in view of the very narrow interpretation which is habi- 
 tually given to this doctrine, %ve should seem to be playing with 
 words, and to be clothing our ideas in an orthodox dress which 
 does not become them. In fact, the religious schools which 
 maintain the truth of a primitive revelation, are guided by a 
 very evident theological interest. The Catholics hope thus to 
 lay the foundation-stone on which later they will raise the dogma 
 of the infallibility of the Church ; while Protestant orthodoxy 
 believes this doctrine to be taught in the Bible, and that its 
 maintenance is necessary to the authority of the holy book. 
 
 This distinction is connected with the two modes in which 
 the question itself may be looked at. It may be taken at once 
 on its purely theoretic, abstract side, independently of all direct 
 relation with the Church or the Bible ; it may also be sustained 
 directly on what is believed to be read in the first book of the 
 Bible, in Genesis. 
 
 The first method has found an ingenious and subtle defender 
 in M. de Bonald. The originality of his system consists in his 
 making a primitive supernatural revelation the absolute condi- 
 tion of human life, such as it is unfolded in history. It is not 
 only religion which is supposed to have been miraculously given 
 to man, but also language and even the art of writing. And as. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 37 
 
 according to the essential conditions of this system, man thinks 
 only if he is able to speak, it would follow that without this 
 supernatural endowment we should have known nothing, we 
 should have remained sunk in animalism, incapable even of 
 thouoht. 
 
 O 
 
 We might reply to this theory by the plea in bar with which 
 science is always justified in opposing views which rest on an 
 appeal to the supernatural. Here we have, in the first instance, 
 man as yet in all points like an animal, incapable of speech or 
 of thought. Some time after, this man is found speaking and 
 thinking. It is supposed that we are absolutely unable to mark 
 the point of transition from the primitive state to this last and 
 higher state. Have we, therefore, in sound logic, the right 
 to conclude that a supernatural intervention has taken place, 
 and that it lias worked this inexplicable change ? By no means. 
 When we were ignorant of the physical causes of rain, that was 
 not a rational explanation which accounted for the phenomena 
 by attributing them to the special action of the Divine will, and 
 saw the finger of God where we now speak of refrigeration, of 
 currents of air, and of condensation of vapours. 
 
 But, moreover, how, according to this hypothesis, could the 
 Divine power have communicated ideas to man, as yet incapable 
 of speech and thought ? To reveal anything to any one, is to 
 speak to him. It matters little here whether the language be 
 external, striking on the ear, or internal. It is not less necessary 
 to think in order to understand what is communicated to you, 
 than it is in order to communicate what you wish some one else 
 to understand. It is for this reason, among other consequences 
 of this axiom, that a being unable to speak cannot of himself 
 learn to speak. A bird, though his organs may be fitted to imi- 
 tate the sounds of the human voice, does not therefore attain to 
 language. Every child knows what is meant when he is told 
 that he says his lesson like a parrot. As old Philo long since 
 discerned, language is not only thought spoken, it is still more 
 thought tlwiight. If an animal cries and does not speak, it is 
 
38 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 because be has sensations to express, but beyond that he has 
 nothing to say. In conclusion, if man learned to speak, it was 
 because he was able to speak. 
 
 We are told, as a matter of experience, that man speaks only 
 because he has heard others speak ; thence, it is said, primitive 
 man, who never heard speech, could never have arrived at lan- 
 guage if the Creator had not taught it to him, and the example 
 of deaf mutes is quoted.^ Here is the same paradox which we 
 noted above in connection with the human, natural character of 
 religion. We suppose man in possession of his normal faculties, 
 and we are met by examples drawn from exceptional infirmity. In 
 the discussion in which we are engaged, we have a right to require 
 that man shall be taken as he is normally, with ears that hear, 
 with an organization rendering articulate language possible, with 
 that instinct of imitation which we see reproduced in every child 
 born into the world, with a tendency to derive from his organs 
 and from nature all that can make life easier and more agreeable 
 to him, — with, finally, that need, so marked in him, to realize, 
 to represent to himself and to others, the impressions, desires, 
 emotions, aspirations, which agitate him. For language is only 
 one determination of the more general category of the sign. It 
 belongs to the same family as gesture, posture, laughing, crying, 
 grimace, adornment, and all possible manifestations of hidden 
 thought. It is the most usual sign, because it is the most con- 
 venient and the clearest. Ah ! the man whom we have to con- 
 sider is not a deaf mute ! He hears the sounds of nature, the 
 roaring of the wind in the branches, the noise of the waterfall, 
 the song of the brook, the rolling of the thunder, the pattering 
 
 1 Appeal has been made also to the old history related by Herodotus of king Psam- 
 meticus of Egypt, who caused two nurslings to be shut up in a stable alone with the 
 goat on whose milk they were fed. At the end of two years they were found, uttering 
 only the word be'kos, be'los. Thereupon the learned held a consultation, and gravely 
 pronounced that, this word signifying nourishment in Armenia, the language of this 
 country must have been the primordial language. Supposing the history authentic, 
 we can only be astonished that none of these observers bethought himself of remarking 
 that the poor babies articulated the only sound which their nurse had been able to let 
 them hear. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 39 
 
 of the rain, the innumerable voices of animated nature. Being 
 what he is, we may be certain that he will imitate, whether for 
 his pleasure, for his profit, or for his safety. His first speech 
 will be composed of onomatopceia, just as his first writing will 
 consist of rude drawings of the objects which he wishes to indi- 
 cate. And just as the primitive hieroglyphy changes into ideo- 
 graphy — that is to say, as the drawings take an abstract syllabic 
 interpretation, and represent henceforth sounds, no longer objects 
 • — so will the earliest onomatopoeias be changed into words cor- 
 responding to general ideas, and it is into this vessel that man 
 insensibly pours the marvellous instinctive logic of his mind. 
 Every formed tongue is in fact a marvel of unconscious logic. 
 It is all very wonderful, but we do not see a single point in this 
 development where it would be necessary to have recourse to 
 supernatural action in order to pass to the next point. 
 
 But may it not be objected that the doctrine of a primitive 
 revelation of religious truth has lost rather than gained by its 
 association with the untenable theory of M. de Bonald as to the 
 origin of language, and that it would be only just to deal with it 
 by itself? 
 
 It is one of those theories which were in vogue for a certain 
 time when historical studies, especially those concerning remote 
 antiquity, were still in their infancy. It was then still believed 
 that man is very recent on the earth. The proofs of his great 
 antiquity on the globe had not yet been furnished. The earliest 
 records told of a life rational, industrious, well-regulated, quasi 
 idyllic. There did not seem any difficulty in attributing to the 
 first men ideas, already very elevated, of the Divinity and his 
 relations with them, nor any invincible objections against expla- 
 nations of the supernatural order ; so it was allowed that such a 
 hypothesis as that of a primitive revelation was not out of har- 
 mony with what was believed to be known of the primitive 
 world.^ 
 
 ^ A curious specimen of this way of considering pre-historic times may be seen in 
 the work of M. de Rougemout, Le Feuple Primiiif. 
 
40 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 But to-day, when we know that humanity has left traces of 
 its existence in the epochs when the mammoth, the reindeer and 
 the cave-bears still inhabited the central and southern regions 
 of our country ; when undoubted discoveries have revealed the 
 state of barbarism, of extreme grossness, in which our ancestors 
 lived for prolonged periods ; when we have ascertained that the 
 further back we go in the chain of time, so much the more does 
 man approach the animal — we must confess that it is infinitely 
 hard to imagine that in the beginning of this slow and painful 
 development, man, yet plunged in absolute ignorance, was in 
 possession of sublime religious doctrines such as the most pure 
 inspiration has been able to offer to cultivated societies, rich in 
 accumulated experience. Such a contention surprises and per- 
 plexes us. Analogy is w^antiiig. What should we say to those 
 who would claim that, in virtue of another supernatural inter- 
 vention, the first men were in possession of an art such as that 
 which produced the marvels of Greek architecture and sculpture ? 
 or, again, that they had, concerning the constitution of the world, 
 the place of the earth in the universe, the nature of light, ideas 
 identical with tliose which modern science has promulgated ? 
 We should certainly say that such contentions are in the highest 
 degree unlikely ; that nothing affords them either foundation or 
 substance ; that they are in contradiction to all that we know 
 or can conjecture as to pre-historic times; and we should have 
 the right of declining to discuss such hypotheses until the facts 
 which they are reputed to explain are proved to us. It is abso- 
 lutely the same with the hypothesis of a primitive revelation of 
 relioious truth. It is in contradiction to all that we know as 
 to the extremely miserable and uncultured state of humanity 
 anterior to history. We must come to facts, and when they are 
 supplied to us we will discuss them. 
 
 But that is a demand in due form which other partizans of 
 this doctrine would accept by founding it on the testimony of 
 the Bible, a second mode of treating the question which we will 
 examine in its turn. 
 
TEE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 41 
 
 Among the men of note who have maintained the reality of a 
 primitive revelation against those who believe that this doctrine 
 is clearly contradicted by the discoveries of historical science, we 
 must quote Mr. Gladstone, the illustrious statesman, and at the 
 same time an accomplished scholar, in the first rank. We could 
 not choose a better qualified representative of the thesis of a 
 primary religious revelation granted to man by the Creator.' 
 
 The mythologies are, according to Mr. Gladstone, the result of 
 a systematic corruption of earlier doctrines of great sublimity 
 and of great purity. They do not spring, as the modern school 
 teaches, out of the direct deification of natural facts. They are 
 at bottom only the old theistic. Messianic and biblical traditions 
 sophistically re-clothed. God revealed himself in the beginning 
 as powerful, holy and good. The corrupt sense of man retained 
 only the idea of power, and grievously lowered the moral charac- 
 ter of the Divinity. Hence the base tendencies which induced 
 him to recognize this only in those phenomena of nature which 
 most appealed to his imagination. The religion revealed in the 
 beginning contained six great doctrines : 1st, the unity of God ; 
 2nd, a divine Trinity, the three terms of which shared in the 
 same dignity ; 3rd, the promise of a Eedeemer who shoidd 
 deliver man from the curse of sin ; 4th, a divine personal Wis- 
 dom, creating and sustaining the world ; 5th, the connection of 
 the Eedeemer with humanity by his miraculous birth of a woman; 
 finally, Gth, the existence of a wicked being, of the evil one, 
 exercising among men the power of a tempter and chief of the 
 rebel angels. 
 
 Thereupon the Trinity is obliterated in polytheism, the foretold 
 incarnation in anthropomorphism. Zeus, Hades and Poseidon 
 are the caricature of the triune God. The notion of a Eedeemer 
 is reflected in the myths of Phebus Apollo, that of a divine 
 
 ^ The views of Mr. Gladstone on tlie religious origins of humanity may be found in 
 three of his works : Homer and the Homeric Age (1860) ; Address to the University 
 of Edinhuryh (1865) ; Juventus Mundi (1868). They have been the subject of very 
 profound criticism in the learned work on Aryan Mylhologi/, by Mr. Cox. 
 
42 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 Wisdom in those of Athene. Leto or Latona corresponds to the 
 motlier of the Eedeemer. The devil and his following have as 
 pendants the Titans and the monsters of fable, &c. All the 
 Greek mythology can be thus disposed of. 
 
 Again we ask for the proof ; for ultimately this Greek mytho- 
 logy is connected by ties of close relationship with that of the 
 Vedas : it includes several elements having their origin in Egypt 
 and in the Semitic East ; and when we ascend to these various 
 sources, we find ourselves face to face with a religion very simple, 
 very rude, but very directly derived from nature, and we do not 
 discover the least trace of systematic disfigurement of any ante- 
 rior truth. Then it is that Mr. Gladstone and his partizans meet 
 us with the authority of the Bible, and especially of the Book of 
 Genesis. 
 
 AVe could clearly ask them why we are bound to accord to 
 this sacred book a dictatorial authority which would oblige us 
 to subordinate to it the results of purely scientific research. But 
 we will rather descend to the ground on which they take refuge ; 
 we will simply open the Book of Genesis, and see if it contains 
 all that they make it say. 
 
 It is generally agreed in these days that there are in this book 
 two narratives of separate origin, one of which comprises the 
 whole of the first chapter, is interrupted at the third verse of the 
 second chapter, to be resumed only at the first verse of the fifth 
 chapter. 
 
 This first narrative relates the beginning of the heavens and 
 of the earth under that simple, majestic, we might say classic, 
 form, too often spoiled by the efforts which have been made to 
 found upon it modern cosmology and geology. It contains sci- 
 entific errors ou which we need not pause.^ Then, when animals 
 of all kinds have been created in their turn, God said, ''Let us 
 
 ^ It speaks of tbe heaven, tbe firmament, as a solid vault, above which the waters 
 are stored, of the creation of the stars after the formation of the earth and solely for 
 its use, of the appearance of the entire vegetable kingdom before it could be subjected 
 to the action of solar light. 
 
THE PIUMITIVE REVELATION. 43 
 
 make man in our image and after our likeness, and let him have 
 dominion over all animals." It is in this expression, Let us 
 make man, that accommodating interpreters have desired to trace 
 the first revelation of the dogma of the Trinity, not recognizing 
 that this expression is simply the royal plural used in Hebrew, 
 as in many other languages, when kings are understood to speak 
 in virtue of their sovereign power ; or else, and more probably, 
 it was an appeal to the Bcn6 Eloldm, the sons of God, who later 
 are called angels, and are supposed to have been present at the 
 work of creation. Besides, there is not a word to tell us about 
 this supposed revelation of the Trinity having been made to the 
 human pair, who did not then exist, who were created immedi- 
 ately afterwards, and who received no other instructions than 
 that they were to people the earth, to have dominion over tlie 
 animals, and to feed on grains and fruits. Then the Creator, 
 having finished his six days' ^ work, rests. Absolutely nothing 
 indicates the revelation of any religious doctrine to the first 
 human beings. 
 
 As we have said, the narrative breaks off (chap. ii. 3) to give 
 place to another narrator, and is resumed in the fifth chapter 
 only to record the genealogy from Adam, the first man, to Noah, 
 in whose time, the earth being " corrupt and filled with violence," 
 covered with crimes, God resolved to destroy the human race, 
 with the exception of one family, by the deluge. It is then that 
 he again meets the second narrator, without there being any more 
 question than at first of a primitive orthodoxy revealed to the 
 first men. 
 
 It is to the second narrator that we are indebted for the cele- 
 brated details concerning Eden, the first sin and its consequences. 
 Much less concerned than the first with physical origins, he 
 devotes himself in preference to the first evolutions of human 
 life. He represents things in the beginning as though, before 
 the appearance of man, there was neither rain nor vegetation. 
 
 ^ And not geologic periods. The proof of this is, that the Hebrew author connects 
 with this divine repose on the seventh day the institution of the weekly Sabbath. 
 
44 TUE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 But Jahveli, having formed man of the dust of the ground, 
 breathes his own breath into the nostrils of this clay statue, and 
 man becomes a living person. Then he plants the Garden of 
 Eden, where he establishes the man, who may eat of all fruits — 
 among others, of that which ensures perpetuity of existence, but 
 to whom he forbids the fruit which imparts the knowledge of 
 good and of evil. For man, in a state of complete ignorance, and 
 therefore of complete innocence, cannot yet distinguish good from 
 evil. Man is to take care of and to cultivate this garden. There 
 are the animals, which Jahveh, curious to hear how he will name 
 them, causes to pass before him, which determines the birth of 
 human language. Then, as alone of all living beings the first 
 man had no companion, Jahveh took from his side, while he 
 slept, the flesh with which he made the first woman. Old and 
 venerable myth, the infantine crudity of which ought not to 
 hide from us the deep feeling and exquisite delicacy, and Avhich 
 is certainly one of the pearls of Hebrew tradition ! For the rest, 
 our author takes special care to point out that the first pair are 
 as yet strangers to the most elementary notions of morality, and 
 he tells us that they were naked, without experiencing the least 
 shame. 
 
 Then follows the famous scene of the transgression, thanks to 
 which they attain to the conscious distinction of good and of 
 evil ; but not at all in consequence of a divine revelation ; quite 
 the reverse. For the promoter of the transgression, who is not 
 at all the evil one of Mr. Gladstone, nor the devil of later theo- 
 logy, but neither more nor less than the serpent, the first serpent, 
 in the literal sense of the word, insidiously leads the first woman 
 to eat of the forbidden fruit ; she draws her husband into her 
 fault, and the consequences follow.^ They are ashamed of their 
 
 ^ The proof that it is a question here of an animal serpent is furnished further on, 
 when Jahveh punishes successively the three authors of the disobedience. The entire 
 race of serpents are to undergo the punishment which has been drawn down upon them 
 by their first ancestor. Let us say in passing that the characteristic trait of this 
 Jahvist author (we call him so to distinguish liim from the preceding one, who does 
 not mention the divine name of Jahveh until the rise of Moses) consists in this, that 
 
THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 45 
 
 nakedness ; they clothe themselves in leaves, and it is just this 
 which betrays them to their irritated Master. The punislmients 
 which strike them are in the category of generic evils, always 
 afflicting humanity, and denoting, according to the old Semitic 
 point of view, an original fault, of which all men conjointly ouglit 
 to bear the consequences. The serpent is condemned to the 
 necessity of crawling painfully in the burning dust, and to the 
 undying hatred of man henceforth. " The seed of the woman" — 
 and it is in no way a question of individuaKzing this posterity 
 in a single man, or the woman in any one woman — shall bruise 
 the head of the serpent, which shall bruise him in the heel. This 
 is the lasting conflict, while nothing indicates on which side 
 shall be the final victory, and it required great goodwill on the 
 part of the old exegetists to see in that a prediction of redemp- 
 tion. The generic punishment of the woman consists in the 
 pains of parturition and in subordination to her husband. That 
 of the man is summed up in the necessity of prolonged, irksome, 
 ill-recompensed labour, with the dark prospect of that death 
 which he would not have known (or foreseen) if he had remained 
 in his primary ignorance. 
 
 And in order to prevent man from escaping this sentence, by 
 continuing to eat of the fruit of the tree of life planted in the 
 centre of Eden, Jahveh banishes both him and his companion 
 from this garden of delights, and places at the entrance the 
 terrible Kcrubirii^ monsters with flaming swords. 
 
 The narrative continues in the history of the first family of 
 Cain and Abel, prototypes of two races always antagonistic, the 
 sedentary agriculturist and the nomad shepherd. Thence results 
 the first murder and its punishment. The mythic character of 
 
 he recognizes the tendency to progress and its successive realization in humanity, but 
 that each step is accompanied by a moral fall and followed by disastrous consequences. 
 In reality, in his narrative, the serpent had not lied, the eyes of Adam and Eve were 
 opened as he had foretold, and they had acquired the knowledge of good and evil like 
 divine beings. Jahveh is jealous of the progress of man, and takes care that he shall 
 pay dearly for it. 
 
 1 These are what Christian mythology has transformed into cherubim. Few words 
 have undergone a more comi:ilete change of meaning. 
 
"46 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 the story is evident througliout. Cain, condemned to wander 
 over the earth, is afraid of being put to death by those whom he 
 may meet, as if there were other inhabitants of the world besides 
 the Adamic family. He, his wife and his son build a town, which 
 would seem to show that all these proper names have a collective 
 rather than an individual meaning. Note also the mention of the 
 first sacrifices, Cain and Abel offering to Jahveh, each on his own 
 account, the produce of his labour, that which each esteems the 
 most, evidently acting on the idea that the Divinity has the same 
 wants and tastes as man. Nothing is said to indicate that the 
 Divinity himself prescribed this kind of worship. For the rest, it 
 is among the Cainites that the earliest civilization is developed, 
 characterized especially by the employment of metals and the birth 
 of the musical art. But at the same time arise two plagues, as 
 attested by the old song of Lamech, polygamy and war. A third 
 son of Adam, Seth, is the father of another race, and " then began 
 men to call on the name of the Lord ;" but not as the result of 
 a recorded revelation. This narrative, like the preceding one, 
 points out the state of corruption and wickedness of the human 
 race ; only it adds a touch, altogether mythological, of the love 
 which the Bene Elohim, or sons of God, had conceived for the 
 daughters of men. It was from this kind of union that the 
 illustrious heroes of antiquity were born. It has been sought to 
 find in this curious passage a sort of explanation of the formation 
 of other mythologies. However that may be, we come to the 
 deluge, which forms the first standpoint common to the two 
 earliest narrators of the Book of Genesis. 
 
 The deluge is also related in double form, although with some 
 variations, without interest in the question in debate. On leaving 
 the ark, Noah and his family receive a revelation. But in what 
 does it consist ? In this : that man may lienceforward eat the 
 flesh of animals, always on condition of not eating the blood ; 
 that the blood of man shed by man shall be demanded again 
 from the murderer ; and that the rainbow, set it would seem for 
 the first time in the heavens, shall be for all time a guarantee of 
 
THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. ^47 
 
 the intentions of Jahveh, who will not again destroy the human 
 race by a deluge. All this is full of poetry ; but where do we 
 find the primitive revelation of Mr. Gladstone ? 
 
 Anything further which may be adduced from the Bible, as, 
 for instance, the revelations made to the patriarchs, concern only 
 the family of Abraham, and are consequently foreign to the 
 hypothesis of a primitive religious teaching given by God to 
 humanity. There is, then, absolutely nothing in the Book of 
 Genesis to give substance to a claim which, if it had any foun- 
 dation, would make religious history the reverse of all others. 
 In admitting even the historical character of these details, in 
 our view altogether mythical, in supposing that the first men 
 really lived as the narrators in Genesis make them live, we must 
 simply conclude that the first men knew that they had for their 
 master a God powerful, formidable, of changeable will, creating 
 man capable of a progress which he most frequently thwarts, 
 but without anything to prevent man imagining other gods ; 
 indeed, his acquaintance with the Bene Elohim was not precisely 
 calculated to draw him away from polytheism. 
 
 We have made a point, in order not to complicate a discussion 
 already much prolonged and somewhat subtle, of abstaining from 
 everything, in those numerous critical studies of which Genesis 
 has been the subject, which was not indispensable to our argu- 
 ment. It remains to enforce a final consideration, which already 
 has a place in this order of special researches, but which we will 
 sum up as clearly as we can. 
 
 From a religious point of view, the traditions registered in 
 Genesis certainly bear a Hebraic impress. The Israelitish authors, 
 relating the beginning of the human race at a period when mono- 
 theism was for them an incontestable truth, could imagine only 
 monotheists. But is the foundation itself of these traditions 
 strictly Hebraic ? We may question this, and regard them at 
 least as springing from a source whence Clialdea and Persia 
 drew more than one traditional notion. Some indeed maintain 
 that the cosmogonic, Edenic and diluvian traditions were directly 
 
48 THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 
 
 borrowed, modiiied only in the monotheistic sense, at a period 
 relatively recent, by the narrators whose recitals have been com- 
 bined in Genesis. But without entering on a discussion which 
 will meet us later in our course, we may affirm that in every 
 case the traditions of Genesis can apply only to a sufficiently 
 limited group of peoples, those who, according to the Book of 
 Genesis itself (chap, x.), can trace their origin to the three sons 
 of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japhet. This deserves attention. 
 
 Let it be understood, however, that these names do not repre- 
 sent an ethnological division sanctioned by science. In admit- 
 ting that the peoples descended from Japhet correspond to those 
 whom we now call Indo-Europeans — and that greatly exceeds 
 the limits assigned to the progeny of Japhet — we recognize the 
 other peoples indicated in the same nomenclature as Semites 
 and Chamites. But it is necessary that all the races of man 
 shall be represented in the picture. Where are the Negroes, 
 who have in reality nothing in common with the Chamites ? 
 Where are the Touranians, the Chinese, the Malays, the Polyne- 
 sians, the American races, the Hyperboreans, &c. ? This tenth 
 chapter of Genesis, a very remarkable essay on ancient ethnology, 
 and one of the most interesting in the Bible, while it supposes 
 a great enlargement of the very narrow horizon which so long 
 limited the gaze of the Israelites, does none the less indicate that 
 the narrators of Genesis could only reproduce prevalent traditions 
 concerning the beginnings of a fraction merely of humanity. 
 
 This observation, in our opinion, definitively settles the ques- 
 tion. The hypothesis of a primitive revelation of religious truth 
 to humanity, already so improbable, viewed in connection with 
 all that we know of the remote past of our human species, finds 
 no support in the book itself to which its partizans appeal ; and 
 this book, in turn, cannot pass as a document relating the begin- 
 nings of the whole human race. 
 
 We may thus, once for all, strike out this contention from the 
 course of our discussions. 
 
IV. 
 PEIMITIYE TRADITION. 
 
 We have, however, still to examine a kindred hypothesis 
 which, without raising at first sight the same kind of objections 
 as the preceding, will yet not the less cross the path of our 
 researches in a way to compromise their independence, and will 
 end, all things considered, by leading us into similar difficulties. 
 The question now is no longer of a supernatural revelation, 
 but of a tradition — that is to say, of a regular and continuous 
 transmission of recollections going back to the beginnings of the 
 species, which ought to serve us as a criterion for interpreting and 
 utilizing parallel or divergent but less certain traditions. At 
 bottom, and notwithstanding the apparent harmlessness of this 
 new contention, it is once more the tradition recorded in Genesis 
 that it is desired to set up as queen and mistress of all the 
 others, without an immediate appeal to miracle. A little reflec- 
 tion will, however, suffice to discover that in reality this privilege 
 of a unique tradition escaping from all the causes which have 
 rendered the others untrustworthy or contradictory, presupposes 
 a miraculous intervention of Providence quite as much as the 
 doctrine of a primitive revelation. 
 
 "We are required to admit that, prior to all which we call civili- 
 zation, when men were still plunged in the densest ignorance, as yet 
 strangers to the most elementary arts — when, destitute of metallic 
 tools and incapable of cultivating the soil, they were obliged, 
 like the animal, to depend for their daily food on the chances of 
 the soil or of the chase, and were absorbed by the care of finding 
 this in sufficient quantity, like the most backward savages of the 
 present day — they took care to collect and to condense into short 
 
 E 
 
50 PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 
 
 narratives, intentionally addressed to their descendants in future 
 ages, their experiences, their impressions, their recollections of 
 events of which they had been the witnesses or in which they 
 had been the actors, and that they confided this kind of his- 
 toric collection to the memory of their children, who in turn 
 would do the same in regard to theirs. But this primitive tradi- 
 tion became obliterated, obscured and corrupted, among all frac- 
 tions of the human race save one. One version alone remained 
 free from adulteration, conscious or unconscious — one tradition 
 only was preserved through the ages in incomparable conditions 
 of authenticity and of purity, and it is in that exclusively that we 
 must seek for what primitive humanity did, believed and thought. 
 Does not this mere statement produce upon us an effect just 
 like that produced by those theories of the last century, in which 
 our ancestors of pre-historic times were represented as assembled 
 under the shade of virgin forests, to discuss with the gravity of 
 old jurisconsults the principles of le contrat social ? 
 
 Let us, however, disregard this impression. The first question 
 which arises is this : Where must we seek this continuous tra- 
 dition which will allow us to ascend uninterruptedly to the 
 beginning of humanity ? India, China, ancient Persia, Egypt, 
 Syria, America, ancient Greece, the larger part of the nations 
 who have made a mark in history, even certain savage tribes, 
 have each their Genesis. Which shall we choose ? 
 
 We shall be told that there are some points in common which 
 will serve to mark out the line of direction. But that is not 
 at all so simple as we might be tempted to think. There is 
 a factor which would very well explain the greater part, if not 
 all, of these points in common, witliout having recourse to the 
 improbable hypothesis which we are examining. This factor, 
 too much neglected, is the unity of the human mind applying 
 itself to resolve the same questions with the same elements of 
 solution. For example, many local traditions have in common 
 the notion of a deluge. There are others which have not the 
 least knowledge of it. 
 
PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 51 
 
 But if we take account of these two facts, that in all countries 
 watered by great rivers and the scenes of devasting inundations, 
 the same phenomenon has suggested the same idea, and since, 
 to some extent, everywhere there has been a tendency to liken 
 the creation to what occurs every year after the torrents of rain 
 in the spring, or even each day after the morning mists are dis- 
 persed, can we still wonder to find the tradition of a deluge at 
 the commencement of such a large number of mythologies ? It 
 is necessary to be very prudent when one introduces into reli- 
 gious history the elements of borrowing or of distortion. In 
 virtue of the unity of the human mind working on like mate- 
 rials, the closest resemblances reveal themselves between reli- 
 gions and traditions which have never had any relations in 
 history. Thus the religions of the Mexicans and of the Peru- 
 vians, before the arrival of Europeans in America, presented 
 numerous analogies with the solar religions of the old world. 
 There, however, there could be no question either of borrowing 
 or of distortion. Sometimes, indeed, the religious or traditional 
 resemblances between peoples who have never known each other 
 extend to customs which seem to us very odd. Thus the Cotivade, 
 that strange usage which ordains that the father, as soon as his 
 child is born, shall retire to bed and be cared for as a sick 
 person — or, again, the tradition which commands those who 
 have just lost a near relation to amputate a joint of the finger — 
 has been ascertained to exist both formerly and in our own 
 time among populations very remote from each other, quite 
 different in race and manners, who could never have had any 
 relations. 
 
 We have said that it is really the dictatorial authority of 
 Genesis that it is proposed to save by this devious course. If 
 the effort were limited to exalting all that the first chapters of 
 the Pentateuch contain of just intuitions, of profound psychology, 
 and of purity of sentiment, especially as compared with so many 
 other cosmogonies or parallel legends, we should be very ready 
 to subscribe to such eulogiums. But aesthetics and history are 
 
 e2 
 
52 PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 
 
 very different. The singularly high tone of Mosaicism has influ- 
 enced the editorship of the narratives of Genesis ; of that there 
 is no doubt. But that does not prove their high antiquity. The 
 labours of modern critics are far from favouring the idea that, 
 in their present canonical form, their date is very remote. For 
 example, it is difficult to understand why the serpent should 
 have been with the Israelites, up to the time of Hezekiah, a 
 symbol of deliverance and of safety, while their secular tradition 
 made him the inspirer and promoter of evil.^ In any case, these 
 narratives are much later than Moses, whose death is recorded 
 in the book which contains them.^ 
 
 Besides, putting aside for the moment all such problems, the 
 objection which we have already raised to the theory of a pri- 
 mitive revelation handed down in Genesis arises again in all its 
 force ; that is, the book of Genesis recognizes only a small num- 
 ber of races and of peoples, and wrongly regards them as consti- 
 tuting the whole of human kind.^ 
 
 The point of view which we combat has nevertheless inspired 
 many works which have had their day, and which professed to 
 prove that all other traditions circumstantially confirmed the 
 principal statements of Genesis — man made of the dust of the 
 earth, tlie fall, the deluge, the ark of Noah, &c. One of the 
 most celebrated was that published by Cardinal Wiseman, nearly 
 fifty years ago, under the title, " The Connection between Science 
 and Eevealed Eeligion." Geology, still in its infancy, seemed to 
 have been born only in order to illustrate the Mosaic account of 
 
 ^ Comp. Num. xxi. 8, 9 ; 2 Kings xviii. 4. We can, however, apply the same kind 
 of observations to all the Old Testament (historical, prophetic, didactic books). We 
 cannot but be struck by the silence which reigns throughout this literature, extending 
 over several centuries, on the subject of the principal traditions of origin recorded in 
 Genesis. 
 
 - We refer our readers who may be curious to know the most trustworthy results 
 of criticism on the books commonly attributed to Moses, to the great work of Professor 
 Reuss on the Bible, in course of publication by Sandoz and Fischbachei", Paris. 
 
 •* We may point out on this occasion the common error which attributes the pater- 
 nity of the Negro races to Cham. The families which the tenth chapter of Genesis 
 connects with his name do not include the Negroes. 
 
PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 63 
 
 the crefitioii, and comparative philology was simply the demon- 
 stration of the miracle of the confusion of tongues at the base of 
 the Tower of Bal)el. This book, all the statements in which are 
 contradicted in the present day, mainly followed the direction 
 already indicated by the learned of the 17th century, such as 
 Bochart and Jurieu, the pioneers who ventured to approach the 
 religious history of humanity. The idea was that the Bible 
 furnished a historical basis infallibly sure, of which the real or 
 pretended analogies found in other mythologies were so many 
 more or less unfaithful echoes. 
 
 In more recent years, the pre-historic studies which have 
 been devoted to Chinese, Hindoo, American and other antiqui- 
 ties, no longer allow of ventures on such ground. From time 
 to time, nevertheless, we still see the publication of w^ell- meaning 
 essays, the object of which is to demonstrate the antiquity and 
 superior authenticity of the narratives in Genesis as compared 
 with so-called pagan traditions. The most remarkable, as far 
 as we know, is one which appeared in 1856, under the title of 
 Die Traditioncn des Menschengesclilechts (Traditions of the Human 
 Eace), by Herr Heinrich Lilken. We will quote only one speci- 
 men of the author's mode of proceeding, and this quotation will 
 show its arbitrary character. 
 
 At p. 148, Herr Lliken examines the narrative of the murder 
 of Abel, killed by Cain. In that, where we should see, by 
 analogy with other myths of the same nature, the memorial of 
 a sanguinary contest between a race of nomad shepherds and a 
 race of agriculturists, in which the first succumbed, M. Lliken 
 sees an event literally happening as recorded in Genesis ; and 
 thence all the murders related in Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Ger- 
 manic and other mythologies, are in his view only variations 
 from the first fratricide. Abel is the same as Apollo, the pure 
 and the purifier, all the more that in Crete this god was named 
 Abelios, the Hindoo Beli and the German Balder, the handsome 
 young god killed at the instigation of the wicked Loki. He is 
 also Osiris, killed by Typhon in Egypt, and Eemus, killed by 
 
54 PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 
 
 Eomulus in Italy. If it is objected that Apollo was not killed 
 at all in the Greek mythology, he replies that, according to his 
 arbitrary charts, Greek tradition has attributed to Abel-Apollo 
 certain features which belong to Cain. The latter ought rather 
 to have as pendant Hercules, the terrible slayer of oxen. He is 
 asked to notice that, in the Greek mythology, Hercules is a great 
 liberator and just judge. No matter. Hercules is a distorted 
 Cain, to whom the Greeks have given more than one character- 
 istic belonging to Abel. With such a method, there is nothing 
 which cannot be proved. 
 
 The only rational method of studying religious history consists 
 in not assigning beforehand a separate place to any one of the 
 traditions which have prevailed, or which do prevail, among 
 divers races as the expression of their faith in regard to human 
 beginnings. The aesthetic superiority of the book of Genesis 
 has not yet conferred upon it the sovereign authority which is 
 claimed for it. Other religions may be inferior to it morally 
 and religiously, and may yet contain very interesting data which 
 are wantiug to it. For example, there was a primitive invention 
 which more than any other changed the whole aspect of human 
 life, that of fire. The recollection, more or less vague, of a time 
 when man had no knowledge of this elementary art, is preserved 
 in several mythologies. Genesis says nothing about it. AVe can 
 see, on the contrary, in the myth of Prometheus, especially since 
 modern mythologists have traced its beginnings, what a strong 
 feeling in regard to this advance prevailed in Greece, where it 
 was considered that it had raised man near to the gods. 
 
 Let us add that it is found, as the result of a comparative 
 study of religious documents, that as a general rule the myths 
 relating to the first ages of the world are far from being the most 
 ancient. Infant races scarcely concerned themselves with their 
 own past, still less with that of mankind. It is in the age of re- 
 flection that questions are put to which the myths of origins are 
 the reply. It is natural that some very old recollections, which 
 seem to date back to the cradle of humanitv, should then be 
 
PniMITlVE TRADITION. 55 
 
 put on record. Not less natural is it that these recollections, 
 and the ideas incorporated in them, should present themselves 
 henceforth under a mythical form — that is to say, crystallized 
 into a fact, or au event, or a personage — while in reality these 
 ideas relate to permanent states, to periodical facts, or to com- 
 munities of men.^ 
 
 This work is done without method or rule; for it is rather 
 the work of poetry and of the imagination than the result of 
 rational research. This is why myths relating to origin are so 
 easily inconsistent. We have a striking example of this in 
 Genesis itself. We may rememher that the first chapters of 
 that book are the result of the combination of two distinct nar- 
 rations, of which it is easy to indicate what we may call the 
 points of suture. The first ignores the history of Eden and of 
 the first sin, but affirms a fact of primary importance in the his- 
 tory of the antiquities of Israel. It is, that the name of Jahveh, 
 or Jehovah, that which our versions render the Lord, and which 
 corresponds to a notion of the Deity higher and more pure than 
 that of Elohim, was not the name of the God of Israel until 
 the time of Moses, who received the solemn revelation of it in 
 the desert of Arabia, But according to the other narrator, there 
 is nothing of this, and this name had been already invoked by 
 man before the deluge.^ There may be strong reasons for pre- 
 ferring one of these versions to the other, but we are yet far from 
 this marvellously certain primitive tradition, not less marvel- 
 lously preserved in a privileged race. 
 
 We have completely neglected until now a question which 
 may be of great importance from the point of view of religious 
 origins, that of the unity or of the diversity of the human race. 
 The partizaus of a single primitive tradition consider it as deter- 
 mined in favour of the unity. We beg leave to be less affirm- 
 ative. 
 
 Not that we make any claim to solve the problem. We would 
 
 ^ See later on concerning the myth. 
 
 2 Comp. Genesis iv. 26, and Exodus vi. 2, 3. . • 
 
66 PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 
 
 merely take into account two possibilities wliicli open before us. 
 There was a time, and it is not yet very remote, when specialists, 
 emancipated from all extra-scientific authority, were generally of 
 opinion that the theory of unity was not sustainable. Things 
 have much changed since Mr. Darwin's theories have so greatly 
 gained the ascendant, and the impassable voids which separated 
 species are no longer believed in. Thereupon liberal thought 
 has become much more willing to accept the idea of an original 
 unity of all the races of mankind, and, matter for remark, the 
 partizans of canonical tradition are little pleased with this. 
 
 It is now a question for us of taking up a position which 
 will maintain at once the independence of the special science 
 which we study, and its friendly relations with the sciences 
 which so closely touch it. Admitting, what is not proved in 
 such a way as to disarm all opposition, that according to the 
 theory of evolution it might be possible to refer all the varieties 
 of the human race to a single original type, it by no means 
 follows that the same series of slow modifications which have 
 determined the constitution of a human couple on a given point of 
 the earth's surface has happened only at that point. It must be 
 confessed that one is tempted to imagine that each of the great 
 geographical divisions of the globe has witnessed the creation of 
 its " own first man." 
 
 However, in regard to the formidable question which here 
 presents itself, it is proper to start from a point of view which 
 leaves the question of physical origin undecided. Whatever 
 diversities of colour, of osseous structure, or of general develop- 
 ment, may be observed in mankind, all the beings included in 
 it have in common certain faculties of a psychic order peculiar 
 to them alone, such as the art of supplying themselves with 
 tools and arms which nature does not directly furnish, language, 
 the religious faculty and a moral sense more or less delicate. This 
 is what makes man. If a gorilla could make a stone implement, 
 speak, exhibit anything resembling religion, even a grotesque 
 superstition, though he were even more uncouth, more hideous 
 
PRIMITIVE TRADITION. 57 
 
 than he is, we must yet class him among men. This is the true 
 unity ; we need not seek further. Have the ancestors of those 
 whom we cLass under the denomination of men always possessed 
 these faculties and aptitudes ? We do not know. If they have 
 not always had them, inasmuch as they have not had them, they 
 were not men. 
 
 Now we know that human life, reduced to its primary rudi- 
 ments, is of very ancient date on the earth, and that long ages 
 rolled away before it could make any advance upon this very 
 humble beginning of a life already higher than the purely animal 
 life. It seems to us impossible, in the presence of such revela- 
 tions of science, to continue to talk of traditions dating from the 
 cradle of the human race, preserved intact by the pious care of 
 certain families. A miracle would have been required for their 
 formation, and another miracle for their preservation. 
 
 As, however, the original traditions of nations sprung up in 
 an epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is 
 indispensable to consult them, to compare them, and to associate 
 them with other sources of information which are available. 
 From this point of view, the traditions recorded in Genesis pos- 
 sess, in addition to their own peculiar charm, a value of the highest 
 order ; but we cannot ultimately see in them more than a vene- 
 rable fragment, well deserving attention, of the great genesis of 
 mankind. 
 
OTEEE A PRIORI THEOEIES OF EELIGIOTO 
 
 IIISTOKY. 
 
 The two hypotheses of which we have just shown the real 
 worthlessness and untenable character, enable us to judge of the 
 original and fatal injury which theories adopted a priori, without 
 a methodical examination of facts, would inflict on our history. 
 These are not the only prejudices which we have to remove. 
 There are others, less serious, almost puerile, and which seem 
 unworthy of discussion. Nevertlieless, several hypotheses of 
 this category of the second and third rank possess a certain 
 popularity. We might cite as an example the prejudice which 
 maintains that religions are merely the invention of the priests, 
 as if religion had not necessarily and everywhere preceded the 
 priest. We shall see this more clearly when we come to speak 
 of the priesthood, No doubt it has frequently happened that 
 the greatest enemy of religion has been the priest who has made 
 trade and merchandize of it, who has used it as a means of satis- 
 fying his cupidity or his ambition, or even passions still more 
 base. No doubt religious progress is achieved outside of the 
 priests, without them and in spite of them. But that should 
 not shut our eyes to the evidence that if there had not first been 
 religion, there would never have been any priests. On what basis, 
 in the name of what convictions or preliminary notions, would 
 the first priest have established his authority ? Does it require 
 much historical knowledge to recognize that at certain epochs, 
 the human mind having attained a certain level, the priest has 
 responded to needs which he alone could satisfy ; that examples 
 of devotedness, of abnegation, and of moral purity, that eminent 
 
OTHER A PRIORI THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 59 
 
 services rendered to civilization, are not at all exceptional in the 
 history of priesthoods ; and that in regard to this sacerdotal 
 institution, as to so many others, it is necessary to guard against 
 all passionate judgment ? History is a great anodyne ; but in 
 order that it may take effect, it is necessary to free it from all 
 prejudices derived from the controversies of the day and the 
 hour. There are institutions, absolute monarchy for example, 
 which we would not have to-day at any price, but of which, 
 nevertheless, our spiritual ancestors, those who would now think 
 and reason like we do, were quite sincerely zealous partizans. 
 
 There is another a p-iori theory of religious history, arising, it 
 may be, from prejudices of education, it may be from the tendency 
 which inclines us easily to believe that previously to the abuses and 
 the errors from which we have actually to suffer, all went much 
 better, and that the age of gold has always preceded the age of 
 iron. This illusion is of ancient date. It is to some extent 
 repeated in the case of each old man whose life, is much pro- 
 longed. A venerable father of the Church, Cyprian, saw a sign 
 of the approaching end of things in the diminished bloom and 
 flavour of the fruits which he ate in his old age, as compared to 
 those which he remembered having eaten when he was young, 
 forgetting to ask himself whether this might not be the fault of 
 his failing sight and of his worn-out palate. The Hebrew sage, 
 whom we call Ecclesiastes, who had seen and thought much, 
 said,^ " Say not thou. What is the cause that the former days 
 were better than these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely con- 
 cerning these." 
 
 In regard to religious history, this illusion has taken this form : 
 There is an objection to believe that the dawn of religious faith 
 was not of a radiant purity, and that mankind started with a 
 childish polytheism. For example, there is a considerable num- 
 ber of historians who maintain absolutely that the primitive 
 religion was monotheistic, and that polytheism is the corruption 
 of an older and higher faith. 
 
 1 Eccles. vii. 10. 
 
60 OTHER A PRIORI THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 
 
 On what is this contention based ? It is difiicult to see in it 
 anything but the reflex action of preconceived ideas, the inaccu- 
 racy of which we have ah-eady shown. The monotheist idea 
 does not naturally obtrude itself on the mind as yet uncultivated. 
 It supposes reflection, experience, a notion of the world which 
 is not primitive. It is not foreign to the human mind, and the 
 proof of this is that in all mythologies we discern a certain ten- 
 dency, sometimes very marked, to reduce the pantheons to unity. 
 But from this more or less vague tendency to the conscious and 
 deliberate notion of monotheism, there is a long step. The old 
 tliinkers of Greece, of whom it is often sought to make mono- 
 theists in the modern sense, do not deserve this honour. Plato, 
 for example, stopped short at dualism. In the case of that very 
 race which passes as the historical representative of monotheism, 
 we clearly discern that a very long polytheistic period preceded 
 the triumph of the faith in the absolute unity of the Divinity. 
 Before being monotheistic, it was simply monolatrmis, and even 
 that for the religious leaders only, and its history consists chiefly 
 in the obstinate resistance which it offered to the monotheistic 
 idea. If, on the other hand, we consult the most ancient authentic 
 record of religious beliefs which we possess, the Vedas, do we 
 find there the least indication of a primitive monotheism ? 
 
 What may have given the appearance of substance to this 
 illusion is this : In the most distinctly polytheistic religions, 
 most frequently at any given moment only one divinity is wor- 
 shipped at once. The prayers and hymns which are addressed 
 to him are all in his praise. When man worships, it is never by 
 halves. He always attributes all power, all goodness, all perfec- 
 tions, to the object of his adoration at the moment. It is some- 
 thing like the village cur^s when they preach on the fete day of 
 the patron saint. He is always the holiest saint in Paradise. 
 In like manner, the worshipper of Indra or of Agni, of Phcebus 
 Apollo or of Athene, of Diana with her silver bow, or of Aphro- 
 dite with her floating draj^ery, would never fail to confer on each 
 the attributes of absolute sovereignty. It is this which has 
 
OTHER A PRTOIII THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. Gl 
 
 deceived those who, from hymns or prayers expressing sentiments 
 which ought logically to have terminated in monotheism, have 
 maintained the conclusion that those who used them recognized 
 only one sole God. This was so little their meaning, that, on 
 the morrow, when addressing themselves to another divinity, they 
 offered him the same homage, without perceiving the contradiction. 
 It is this phenomenon which led M. Max Miiller to consider 
 that the question. Did mankind begin with monotheism or with 
 polytheism? was an idle inquiry. Primitive humanity was 
 incapable of making any such distinction. The primitive reli- 
 gious idea was hazy, indefinite, implying unity as well as plu- 
 rality, but unconsciously monotheistic at the precise moment of 
 worship.^ Absolute sovereignty being thus attributed to each 
 divinity successively, and all the divinities presenting characters 
 in common (devas, 9eoi), there must result what the learned 
 Professor calls Kaihenotlieism, or more briefly Henotheism, a term 
 expressing the idea of the two tendencies which later diverged 
 into polytheism and monotheism. There were several gods, but 
 each in his turn was god. 
 
 We have nothing to object to this ingenious mode of present- 
 ing very real facts, unless it be that in the end all polytheisms, 
 even the most developed, come under the definition. If the 
 tendency of this henotheism has, as a logical consequence, future 
 monotheism, it is nevertheless undeniable that polytheism is 
 antecedent in fact. The successive transfer of the attributes of 
 absolute sovereignty to several distinct divinities, is precisely 
 what has always characterized polytheism; consequently we 
 cannot deny the original polytheism. We shall see later how 
 monolatry, required by a jealous God, was bound at length to 
 engender conscious and reflecting monotheism. 
 
 Besides this, it would be an error to limit the a priori theories 
 which we must challenge to those which spring only from the 
 intellect. There are other prejudices which are blind from the 
 beginning, and which come into the region of the moral sense. 
 I Comp. "Cliips of a aeman Workshop," I. 27, 28. 
 
62 OTHER A PRIORI THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 
 
 Such is the a priori of men who study religious history only 
 with the preconceived idea of deciding in favour of one or other 
 of the forms of religion which divide mankind in the present 
 day. 
 
 There is another of an absolutely opposite tendency, not less 
 misleading. It is the a priori of men animated by a secret 
 hatred against everything which is called religion, and who see 
 in it only a prolonged aberration of the human mind. It seems 
 to them that always and everywhere religion has been the 
 auxiliary of covetousness, of furtive designs, and of despotisms. 
 They forget that in religion, as in all else, there are two co-exist- 
 ing tendencies — that of the partizans of the past, whatever it 
 may be, seeking in religion a pretext to colour their love of 
 superstitions, of ignorance, of slavery ; and that of the men of 
 the future, who derive, on the contrary, from their religious feel- 
 ing, not only the love of liberty and of progress, but tiho faith 
 in this liberty, in this progress, that faith without which nothing 
 great or lasting is ever done in the world, and which alone rises 
 superior to deceptions and reverses. Do not let us deny the 
 power of faith, that marvellous faculty which enables us to 
 anticipate the realization of the ideal. We ought to be very 
 unwilling to deny it, we who are now only just passing out of 
 a period in our national history in which the only sentiment 
 which made recovery from an apparently irremediable fall 
 possible, was faith in the country. No doubt the history of 
 religions is, in one sense, a history of errors engendered one 
 upon another. In this long development there is no halting- 
 place which does not show us man as the victim of illusions and 
 of dreams. But is there nothing else? Is there not a truth 
 which grows up in the midst of, we might even say by means of, 
 these errors? Of what human ideal is not this the inseparable 
 condition ? If we have in the present day a social and political 
 ideal of justice, of liberty and of philanthropy, do we not admit 
 that the political history of the human race is full of errors and 
 of miscalculations, which have, however, been necessary to the 
 
OTHER A PRIORI THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 63 
 
 development of this ideal ? Shall we suppress law because the 
 history of legislation abounds with absurd, iniquitous or corrupt 
 statutes ? Shall we condemn natural science because up to a 
 period comparatively near to our own it was full of false notions ? 
 Interrogate the history of chemistry, or of physiology, or of phy- 
 sics — through what a long course of errors has not the human 
 mind passed, in order to arrive at the possession of that modicum 
 of truth which we consider as having been acquired in these 
 various domains? 
 
 It is, then, somewhat puerile to say, history proves that man 
 is always deceived by religion, therefore religion is only a decep- 
 tion. The same history shows also the ascending line of reli- 
 gious sentiment, enlightened, purified and rectified continually. 
 True, it took a long time. But what matter, provided it came 
 to pass ? And by what paradox of destiny can it happen that, 
 of all the tendencies of the human mind, the religious tendency 
 should be the only one doomed to end in nothing ? Let us say 
 rather, that there is a whole revelation in the very fact of the 
 persistence with which the human mind, in spite of its demon- 
 strated ignorance and of the consciousness of so many abortive 
 essays, has maintained its direction towards the inaccessible 
 object of its beliefs. To what odd notions the elementary phe- 
 nomena of magnetism and electricity gave rise ! But that did 
 not prevent, formerly any more than now, every magnetized 
 needle, pivoted on its axis, always turning towards the Pole. 
 That was the nature of the needle. In like manner, through 
 all its aberrations, the human mind always turns towards the 
 Divinity. Efforts have been made from time to time to impress 
 upon it a contrary tendency. It has always resisted, and taken 
 again as soon as possible its constant direction. It also might 
 say to us, This is my nature ! 
 
 Eeligious history has not to record superstitions, follies, defor- 
 mities only. It comprehends also noble and splendid elements. 
 In it we find magnificent conceptions and sublime aspirations. 
 In it we hear accents characterized by a purity, a justness, a 
 
64 OTHER A PRIORI THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 
 
 charm so mysterious and so powerful, that we are involuntarily- 
 led to believe that they spring from a source much higher than 
 earth. Eeligious inspiration in its supreme moments yields to 
 no other in boldness and fertility. Morality has suffered from 
 religion ; it has also enormously gained ; and in the present day 
 that is its only solid support in the conscience of the immense 
 majority. Art has for a long time owed its best works to it, and 
 it is not saying too much to affirm that without it philosophy 
 would never have been born. 
 
 Let us then pursue our history of religions without being 
 astonished by the puerilities and the horrors we shall find in it, 
 without setting ourselves beforehand against all that it contains 
 that is great and noble. And perhaps, when we have conducted 
 this study with impartiality, with independence and with lofti- 
 ness of view, we may discern to which side the needle constantly 
 turns, perhaps we may have found the compass. It is only when 
 we are in possession of this wonderful instrument that we can 
 venture in safety on the great ocean. 
 
VL 
 EELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 A. — The Eeligious Sentiment. 
 
 Since we ought by this time to have cleared away all hypotheses 
 which demand for religious history conditions of origin different 
 from those which determine the beginnings of all other history, 
 we have only to apply to it the principle which all analogies, all 
 probabilities, already indicate, the principle of development, in 
 virtue of which everything begins in the form of germ, of rudi- 
 ments full of promise and of marvellous ductility, but as yet 
 very incomplete and very crude, and in a state of rough outline. 
 
 This principle is indeed only the application to human history 
 of the p)rinciple of continuity which is constantly being more and 
 more triumphantly evolved by the conquests of modern science 
 in all directions. It is increasingly evident that "everything 
 hangs together ;" that there is solution of continuity only where 
 light fails us to discern the middle terms ; that we find in the 
 universe neither the immutability of eternal identity, nor the 
 mechanical superposition of unconnected phenomena which a 
 mysterious hand has been pleased to display arbitrarily, but a 
 permanent, logical, internal connection between realities at first 
 sight most dissimilar ; and we have already so often observed 
 this, that an irresistible induction compels us henceforth to affirm 
 that this principle will find its verification even where we cannot 
 at present prove it. 
 
 Continuity in history is not the identity of successive facts ; it 
 is their development. 
 
 But, on the other hand, all development supposes a primary 
 germ, which unfolds, grows, develops forms, modifications and 
 
 F 
 
66 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 applications innumerable, finding the material for its ever-expand- 
 ing manifestation and for its continuous amplification in a multi- 
 tude of elements originally external or foreign to it. It is just 
 the same with the tree which shoots up, swells out and grows tall 
 by assimilating the carbon and the moisture with which the 
 atmosphere furnishes it. But we must not consider the proto- 
 motor germ of this vegetable development as annihilated by the 
 fact of germination and of the beginning of growth. It is that, 
 always that, which is perpetuated in the organism which is the 
 issue of its first operation. Without it, the organism could never 
 have existed ; without the elements which it could draw into the 
 orbit of its attraction, it would have remained inert and unfruit- 
 ful. But it is the initial fact and the guiding force ; it consti- 
 tutes the substantial element to which all the rest is subordinate. 
 
 In all development, then, it is necessary to distinguish two 
 things : first, the substantial principle itself and its internal con- 
 tinuity, manifesting itself by successive growths, modifications 
 and amplifications ; then the external elements which render 
 these modifications possible, and which may thence be considered 
 as so many motive or exciting causes of development. 
 
 What is the substantial, vital element in religious history 
 which represents its soul or permanent principle ? 
 
 If reference be made to the definition which we proposed of 
 Keligion itself, the preponderating place there given to feeling or 
 sentiment will be noticed. It is by that especially that religion 
 is distinguished from science and from philosophy. These are 
 subjects exclusively of the intellect ; and although religion may 
 be the object of a science and of a philosophy, it diflfers from 
 both in its roots. It rests essentially on the awakening, on the 
 calling into activity, of a sentiment sui generis, which impels the 
 intellect to imagine the object of it under forms corresponding 
 to its degree of knowledge, but which springs spontaneously in 
 the soul when placed under certain conditions. This internal fact 
 of the religious sentiment by no means implies that the forms 
 with which it is furnislied by the intellect answer exactly to the 
 
THE RELIOIOUS SENTIMENT. 67 
 
 reality of the object. We can very well feel the effect of beinga 
 or of forces of which we are able to form only vague or false 
 ideas. Man feels, for example, the heat and the light of the 
 sun, even when he has no accurate idea of the nature of this 
 light or of this heat, or of the celestial body which is their source. 
 Feeling is in this case a spontaneous function of the living 
 organism ; a theory as to the nature of light and heat and of the 
 sun could be a product of reason only. It is thus that the sensa- 
 tion caused by an object, only mysteriously defined, may be very 
 lively, very real, and may yet be associated with very erroneous 
 notions in regard to the object itself Moreover, we must bear in 
 mind — for this also is essential — that the sense of the bond which 
 unites the human mind to the superior spirit (or spirits) whose 
 sovereignty over the world and over himself he believes that he 
 recognizes, is a source of secret, though it may be undefinable, 
 comfort, of which those only can deny the reality who have 
 never known it. 
 
 We have already noticed the error into which it is so easy to 
 fall in the present day, when, for want of a sufficiently exact 
 analysis of the religious sentiment, it is possible to see in it only 
 a variety of the sentiment of fear. This last sentiment exists 
 independently of all connection with the religious sentiment ; it 
 m^ay be associated with it ; in fact it is often and widely asso- 
 ciated with it ; but it is very far from exhausting it. It is very 
 true that man seeks in religion the harmonious synthesis of his 
 personal existence with this world which opposes itself to his 
 egoism, whether as a whole, or by its destructive, alarming and 
 painful phenomena. But why require that phenomena of this 
 sinister order should have been the only ones to provoke in 
 man, yet untaught, the sensations and emotions from which 
 religion sprang ? If we apply to the ages of entire ignorance the 
 close analogy, already noted by Voltaire, which should exist 
 between the infancy of humanity and the infancy of each one 
 of us — an analogy which rests on so many verified conformities — 
 we must conclude that the first impressions of mankind ought 
 
 f2 
 
68 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 to present that mingled, confused character, where all is in all, 
 which distinguishes the state of mind in infancy. The little 
 child is at once timid and confiding. His impressions are very 
 lively, and he easily carries every emotion to excess ; he despairs 
 of everything, and is delighted by the smallest trifle. Joy is with 
 him as prompt as grief. Why, then, should it have been different 
 with man, scarcely weaned from the breast of his foster-mother, 
 Nature ? Do not let us invent an unseasonable idyl. It is 
 certain that, in comparison wdth civilized life, the still almost 
 animal life of primitive man was frightful — or at least it would 
 be to us. AVas it so to him ? Nothing authorizes us to think 
 that he was inclined to suicide — rather the contrary. It is 
 more probable that the awakening of the religious faculty was 
 determined by the effect of the discovery which he believed he 
 had made of the existence of superior spirits living and acting 
 in the form of natural objects, and that the feeling which he had 
 towards them was a mixture of uneasiness and of joy, of terror 
 and of confidence. The phenomena favourable to, and the phe- 
 nomena adverse to, his well-being — often the same phenomena, 
 which might be sometimes favourable, sometimes the contrary — 
 would inspire him simultaneously with the two orders of emo- 
 tion. He felt both very intensely, as the child feels everything 
 intensely, and we place ourselves in an inextricable difficulty 
 when we refer to terror only the mingling of various feelings 
 which gave to the religious sentiment its primary character.^ 
 
 Especially let us avoid attributing to the origin of religion 
 too much precision, too many rigorous definitions — in one word, 
 too much dogma. The first religious notions must for a long 
 
 ^ We shall see in another and the next part of this course what we are to think of 
 those savage nations who recognize two orders of divinities, one good, the other wicked, 
 who forget or neglect the first, and assiduously worship only the second. We only say 
 beforehand, that other facts of an opposite significance can be pointed out, and espe- 
 cially that we must be careful of extending to all humanity conclusions which are valid 
 in regard to certain regions and certain races only. It might well be that we are here 
 in the presence of a primordial difference ranking among those which would explain 
 why some races are so worthily develoi^ed in the sense of civilization, while some have 
 remained stationary. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMEXT. 69 
 
 time have been variable, fugitive, indefinable. It may be asked, 
 for instance, what must have been the object of the first worship 
 of mankind ? We answer willingly : Probably any, not all — 
 for of that he had no idea — but any phenomena which had 
 the effect of revealing to him a spirit in relation with his own. 
 As with our little children, the phenomena of food and of light, 
 as well as their contraries, must be counted among the first 
 which would suggest this course of ideas to him. The tree which 
 bore nourishing fruit in abundance, and the return of daylight 
 after each night, must very early have given him the impression 
 of beneficent powers ; then that which moved, that which stirred, 
 that which seemed to live, the clouds and the rivers, coming he 
 knew not whence, and going he knew not whither; the mountain 
 which never moved, but which looked sternly from its inaccessible 
 heights across its white sheet of snow, and on the sides of which 
 were heard voices echoing with mocking or melodious vibrations ; 
 and then the darkness, the storm, the thunderbolt, the inunda- 
 tion, the glacial cold, the devouring heat, everything which 
 seemed to pursue man with the intention of injuring him and 
 of causing him to perish ; the animal, to whom as yet man still 
 felt himself so near, whom he loved or whom he dreaded, but 
 whose proportions, or instincts, or physical faculties, he admired 
 — all this would be the object of that feeling apart which gives 
 rise to the recognition of one spirit by another spirit. The diffi- 
 culty is not to say what man could adore in nature ; it would 
 rather be to point out what he could not. 
 
 But let us never forget that, whatever might be the notion 
 which he formed in his own mind of the divinity, man has 
 always experienced and cherished a special sense of comfort in 
 beino- in normal relation with it, and that even when this divi- 
 nity presented itself to him under terrifying aspects, even when 
 from our point of view it could have provoked in him only feel- 
 ings of horror. We are struck with astonishment in presence of 
 those terrible divinities who feast on human flesh, who tear the 
 first-born from their parents in order to gratify their ogre-like 
 
70 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 appetites or their insatiable wrath. We may, however, remark, 
 that certain notions of the divinity consecrated by certain Chris- 
 tian traditions are scarcely higher. But we may rest assured that 
 while faith in these repulsive divinities endured, man enjoyed, 
 often even at the cost of the heaviest sacrifices, a state of com- 
 fort and of inward enjoyment resulting from the worship which 
 he offered them. 
 
 We have already spoken of the relation which exists between 
 this phenomenon of a religious kind and the taste of mankind 
 for the tragic. This deserves some further explanation. 
 
 What is tragedy ? It is the exhibition by the setting forth of 
 an event, or of a situation, or of a human destiny, of a superior 
 order of things, overwhelming in its irresistible course our petty 
 calculations, our limited previsions, our vulgar wisdom, advancing 
 imperturbably towards its goal without concerning itself with 
 these spiders' webs, and attaining its ends with the fixity, the 
 regularity and the certainty of a planetary movement. Take 
 any, no matter what, example in history or in art of stirring 
 tragedy, and this definition will be justified. 
 
 Most of those who are the spectators of a tragic event or catas- 
 trophe, are unable clearly to describe the profound impression 
 which they receive from it. Their imaginations, their consciences, 
 are stirred, but they do not think of analyzing the signification 
 of this ; they see only the terrible or the grandiose side of tragic 
 things. Nevertheless, there are terrible things which we cannot 
 call tragic — the hurricane, for example, when it passes over with- 
 out causing great misfortunes : and there are grand things, such as 
 the sea when calm, but which again are not tragic. The terrible 
 as such, and the grand as such, are not enough to constitute the 
 tragic element. It is necessary that there should be, in addition 
 to those, the revelation of a law, or of a superior direction of 
 things. The ancient drama for a long time confined itself to the 
 external side of tragedy, showing in it little more than fatality. 
 The oracular utterance of a god, the curse of a father, the punish- 
 ment of a crime, would sooner or later receive their accomplish- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 71 
 
 ment by means, if necessary, of a supernatural intervention. In 
 the present day we require that tragedy shall be logical also ; 
 and we are right ; for it is so. But to-day, as in the old times, 
 it is really the manifestation of the superior law of things which 
 constitutes its value and its true character. A powerful empire 
 which falls, undermined by internal vices long concealed under 
 brilliant appearances ; a benefactor of humanity, who, at first 
 received with acclamation, perishes, the victim of human wicked- 
 ness ; a catastrophe which engulfs the most legitimate hopes, the 
 most tender affections, all that recalls the inalienable sovereignty 
 of the moral order, or the frailty of our best-combined plans, or 
 the necessity of aspiring after eternal spheres as the only region 
 in which the supreme sentence of destiny is pronounced — all 
 this is tragic, and deserves the name. 
 
 Well ! if he is assured of not suffering from it personally, 
 man is led by a secret tendency of his being to love the tragic 
 and to find pleasure in its contemplation. The proof of this is 
 in those masterpieces which have always counted among the 
 highest and the most admired productions of the human mind. 
 This is because there is a mysterious affinity between that mind 
 and this superior order of things which tragedy reveals ; and the 
 more the human mind is developed, the more it is sensible of 
 this emotion which stirs it to its depths. There are many reli- 
 gious ceremonies which are only understood as so many tragedies 
 periodically represented. 
 
 We should not, consequently, be surprised at the charm, at 
 first sight so strange, which may for a long time retain man in 
 his fidelity to religions of terror and of blood. It is not fear 
 alone which gives rise to these ; it is not fear alone which main- 
 tains them. There is, in the beginning and afterwards, the special 
 attraction of the tragic, the enjoyment resulting from the union 
 of the spirit within with the spirit without. All these terrorist 
 conditions claim to realize the conditions and the means of safety. 
 Such are the ceremonies, or the offerings, or the prayers, or the 
 voluntary sacrifices, or the sanguinary immolations, which may 
 
72 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 appease the fury of the terrible god ; and the believer feels him- 
 self happy in thinking that he is henceforth united to a spirit 
 whom he dreads ; he has nothing more to fear from his wrath, 
 but is able, on the contrary, to imagine to himself that he is 
 under the protection of his power. 
 
 Schleiermacher was ri^ht in recognizing the sentiment of de- 
 pendence as forming an integral part of the religious sentiment. 
 In effect, the spirit with which man desires to know himself to 
 be united must be superior to him. Otherwise he could not find 
 in union with him that victorious synthesis of the world and of 
 destiny which constitutes the very essence of religion under all 
 its forms. For the sake of historical truth, we confine ourselves 
 to the idea of superiority. In its development, the religious 
 sentiment raises this superiority to absolute sovereignty. It is 
 under this condition only that the synthesis is legitimate. But 
 this is true only of advanced religions, many contenting them- 
 selves with simple superiority. Nevertheless, we discover here 
 one of the great reasons why the object of human adoration has 
 always been conceived of as a conscious and personal being. It 
 is one of the causes of variety in religion. In proportion as the 
 dense ignorance of early days is dissipated, man discovers that 
 many objects which he took for persons are in reality only things. 
 From the moment in which he is assured of this, he no longer 
 adores them. For the man who feels, who thinks and who 
 desires, will always know himself to be superior to that which has 
 neither feeling, nor thought, nor will. It is the commentary on 
 that grand thought of Pascal on the superior nobility of man in 
 the presence of an unconscious universe, even when that uni- 
 verse can overwhelm him ; man " knows that he must die, and 
 the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe 
 knows nothing of" We see thence that the sense of dependence 
 is religious only when it has relation to a spirit. We depend 
 constantly on forces and on inanimate phenomena which escape 
 our free action — inclemencies of weather, for instance, or 
 diseases. We do not dream of making gods of them. When 
 
TEE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 73 
 
 they were worshipped, it was because they had been personi- 
 fied. 
 
 Schleiermacher's error is in not having seen, or at least in not 
 having taken into account, that in the religious sentiment the 
 sentiment of dependence is intimately mingled with the senti- 
 ment of union, of reciprocity and of mutuality, which is no less 
 essential to religion than the former. It is the mysterious Dein 
 iiiein inscribed on the horn of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 The analysis of the religious sentiment is complete only when 
 we put on the same line these two primary factors, the sentiment 
 of dependence in relation to the religious object, and the senti- 
 ment of union, real or to become real, between this object and 
 the subject. 
 
 In fact, the religious sentiment possesses a savour of its own 
 which can be compared only with itself, like tlie sentiment of 
 the beautiful or of the true. Definition pauses here as before an 
 element irreducible and without analogy. But it is composed 
 ultimately of other heterogeneous elements which it brings into 
 unity, by which it is nourished, and which it stamps with its 
 impress. We may see here a double gamut, or a double series of 
 sentiments, which we may enumerate in their ascending order 
 of intensity. 
 
 There is the gamut which relates to the sentiment of depend- 
 ence, and which we may arrange thus : 
 
 JResped, veneration, fear, dismay, terror. 
 
 There is then the series relating to the sentiment of reciprocal 
 union : 
 
 Admiration, joy, confidence, love, ecstacy. 
 
 We set down ecstacy as the supreme moment of the second 
 series, because the religious sentiment, over-excited in a very 
 impressionable soul, goes to the point of ecstacy, which is one of 
 the religious phenomena the most worthy of notice. 
 
 We may here remark that these two gamuts, one of which has 
 fear for its fundamental tone, and the other confidence, are most 
 frequently mingled in reality. It is sometimes one which pre- 
 
74 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 vails and sometimes the other, but with an infinite variety of 
 shades, of half-tones, and, if we may say so, of quarter-tones. 
 There is a religion of which fear occupies the centre ; another of 
 which the central element is confidence. 
 
 We contend, however, that by means of a careful analysis we 
 can always find something of the one intermingled with the 
 other. 
 
 Take, for example, a devotee of narrow mind, but whom we 
 suppose to be sincere. His religion has for its principal motive 
 a terrible fear of hell, that is, of the devil, who may probably 
 await him there, with all the demons under his command, pre- 
 paring for him all tortures imaginable and unimaginable. This 
 is not a religion of a high order ; it is in our eyes lamentable, 
 we admit. To this man, religion is a terror. Nevertheless, 
 in the earnest fervour with which he performs the rites and the 
 works which his faith dictates as possessing undoubted efficacy, 
 observe an indescribable expression of satisfaction pervading his 
 whole demeanour, and repaying him for all the torments to 
 which he deliberately submits. Do not pity him. It is he who 
 may pity you. Given his state of mind, there is satisfaction and 
 joy in the innumerable exercises the painful burden of which he 
 lays upon himself 
 
 Observe, on the other hand, a Christian spiritualist whose faith 
 raises him above these miserable superstitions, who believes with 
 his whole heart in the promises of the gospel, who fully enjoys 
 the conviction that he is in personal and direct communion with 
 the infinite Eather whose essential attribute is love, while his 
 whole life is filled with the calm, the moral purity and the cha- 
 rity, which such persuasions inspire. We are here at the other 
 pole of the religious sentiment, and yet it would be an exaggera- 
 tion to say that fear, at least in the attenuated form of veneration, 
 does not enter into the religion of this man. 
 
 We have also already remarked that there must necessarily 
 always be something mysterious in the object of the religious 
 sentiment. Man becomes religious under the feeling of an Intel- 
 
TEE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 75 
 
 ligent power superior to himself, but he at the same time recog- 
 nizes that an impenetrable shade envelopes this power on all 
 sides. Mystery, the unknown which perplexes and defies our 
 thirst for knowledge, characterizes the religious object quite as 
 much as his revealed existence. To us, with our education per- 
 meated by rationalism, mystery is not always religious. In 
 history there are mysteries which arouse our curiosity, but that 
 is all. An old castle long uninhabited, the rooms in which have 
 not been opened since times immemorial, and where the good 
 people pretend that the former possessors "walk," inspires us 
 simply with the desire to go and see it. But we are not in 
 reality differently constituted from our ancestors, and when, from 
 those mysteries which excite a smile, we rise to those which 
 shape our destiny, to those which surround the great problems 
 of life and of death, — to those, finally, which, no matter in what 
 system of philosophy or of faith, end always by checking our 
 reason and our researches, we comprehend the close affinity 
 which binds the religious sentiment to that of mystery. If we 
 penetrate into a forest of large trees, where the domes of foliage 
 succeed one another till they are lost to view, where only the 
 sound of our footsteps on the dry leaves disturbs the silence of 
 the depths, are we not seized by that same sentiment of mystery 
 which made the forest in remote times, and notably in our ancient 
 Gaul, the habitual residence of the most august divinities ? It 
 is thus that the religious sentiment associates itself with that 
 of the infinite, charms away its dull vacuity by filling it with a 
 positive reality, and derives new strength from this association. 
 A mystery defined, circumscribed, is only half a mystery ; but 
 religion has for its object undefinable mystery. This sentiment 
 gives a special colour to the religious sentiment, and is insepa- 
 rable from it. 
 
 On the other hand, man never resigns himself to worship the 
 purely unknown. Even when the only affirmation which he 
 ventures to make as to the object of his worship is that of actual 
 existence, it is already another thing than, and beyond, absolute 
 
76 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 ignorance. The object of human religion is necessarily a spirit. 
 Otherwise it would fail of all point of contact ; it would be a link 
 uniting nothing ; it would be nothing. Man, then, with more or 
 less simplicity, with more or less philosophic severity, endows 
 this spirit with characteristics borrowed from his own spirit. 
 This is the inevitable anthropomorphism of which we have 
 already spoken, resulting from the affinity for which man stipu- 
 lates between his own spirit and the spirit which he worships. 
 We find there the common reason of the grossest errors and of 
 the most elevated notions in religious matters. The same spon- 
 taneous postulate which leads the ignorant man to personify 
 trees, stones, rivers, mountains, fire, stars, — the same impulse 
 which transforms a log of wood or a flint pebble into directors of 
 human destiny, — has also caused a Plato, a Seneca, a Leibnitz, 
 or a Hegel, to proclaim the co-essentiality of man and of God. 
 The gospel owes its power to its fundamental principle of the 
 potential kinship between man and the celestial Father. 
 
 Keligious development, though starting thus low, has yet not 
 lost its substantial element in the midst of its secular evolution. 
 Supposing that we could have been enlightened and thoughtful 
 witnesses of its first manifestations, it would have been as diffi- 
 cult for us to predict what would spring from it, as it would be 
 for us now, if daily experience had not taught us, to foresee how 
 the earliest lispings of the nursling who tries to articulate his 
 first syllables should become the clear, full and rich language of 
 the adult. 
 
 We are not on that account the less in possession of the lever 
 which shall raise the world. The religious sentiment, however 
 indeterminate, fugitive, fluctuating, it may have been in the begin- 
 ning, is now established and fixed ; it has unfolded its varied 
 contents, seeking its satisfaction constantly higher. It has not 
 always remained imprisoned in visible and connected nature. It 
 has not always spent itself on 'ridiculous or paltry objects. It 
 lias brought arts, morals, all society, within the sphere of its 
 attraction. It has raised itself to the level of the great forces 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 77 
 
 and phenomena which overawe the world. It has even surpassed 
 them, in placing over them a sovereign spirit which dominates 
 them all. It has assumed a thousand forms ; it has created 
 masterpieces ; it has been the source of magnificent inspirations ; 
 it has produced systems, and peoples have lived for ages under 
 their shelter. Its history will be that of its revolutions, of its 
 variations, of its modifications ceaselessly renewed. We must 
 now consider the determining causes of these historical changes. 
 
 B. — Active Causes of Eeligious Development. 
 
 An historical development is ordinarily produced through the 
 action of causes foreign to its principle, but entering into relation 
 with it and determining new phases and more or less serious 
 modifications. We can satisfy ourselves of this by considering 
 the course of political history or of the history of art. Causes, 
 which had in themselves nothing either political or artistic, in- 
 fluence in the most powerful manner the direction which politics 
 and art shall take, and the transformations which both shall 
 undergo. The same rule applies to religious history. 
 
 The first in date, and perhaps the first also in importance, of 
 these active causes of religious development, is the increasing 
 knowledge of surrounding nature, and later of the world itself in 
 its real greatness and constitution. 
 
 It is clear that at the period of this prodigious ignorance, of 
 which we can scarcely form any idea, man was not, could not be, 
 sensible of that which we call the universal order or harmony of 
 things. In the beginning, man would act like the child, who 
 takes as much interest in a detail as in the whole. It is true 
 that to him this detail which strikes and attracts him is some- 
 thing very important, which hides from him all the rest. In the 
 objects of small importance in our eyes which provoked the 
 awakening of the religious sentiment, primitive man discovered 
 a whole Olympus. A tree, a water-course, a rock of strange 
 form, a mysterious cave, an animal dreadful in aspect, or a very 
 
78 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 clever hunter, would induce in him the idea of one or of several 
 animated beings much stronger, more intelligent and more pow- 
 erful than himself. To understand this state of mind, we must 
 as much as possible free ourselves from all that the accumulated 
 experience of ages has taught us in " lessons on things." Before 
 we are out of the cradle, we inherit from our parents, from our 
 nurses even, however ignorant they may be, a mass of knowledge 
 which seems to us to be immediate, to be acquired by ourselves 
 alone, and to demand, for its possession, only eyes to see and 
 ears to hear. Sometimes, by observing closely, we succeed in 
 finding in our children something of this first innocence of mind, 
 especially at the age at which they wonder that water wets, and 
 they run to see if they cannot outrun their shadows. One eve- 
 ning in the winter, passing along a road edged with trees, 
 through the bare branches of which the moon might from time 
 to time be seen struggling through the clouds, we overheard a 
 conversation between a mother, a woman of the people, and her 
 little boy, who was bent upon knowing what had become of the 
 other moon which he remembered having seen in another shape, 
 and which was gone. The mother had to repeat to him several 
 times that there was only one moon, and that it was always the 
 same which sometimes appeared, sometimes disappeared. The 
 child was still in the mythological age. Let us suppose a group 
 of men as ignorant as this child, having no one to correct their 
 ideas, and nothing to prevent them from imagining that each 
 new moon is a fresh moon. 
 
 Another analogy which it is important to notice. The child 
 avows a deep affection for some damaged toy, for an armless doll, 
 for a wooden horse which has still three legs, but only one ear 
 and one nostril. He often prefers this to those superb toys which 
 the skill of our manufacturers constantly tends to bring nearer 
 and nearer to works of art properly so called. It is evident that 
 children see things, forms, colours, with eyes different from ours. 
 They idealize their toys, they lend them all sorts of beauties and 
 of charms which we do not perceive. This is the secret of the 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 79 
 
 passionate attachment which they experience for a stick wrapped 
 in rags, out of which they make a little girl, and for a block of 
 wood badly shaped and mounted on four sticks, which has to 
 them the effect of a splendid race-horse. 
 
 Just so, in the primitive epochs, the human imagination was 
 disturbed, over-excited even, by phenomena in which it is impos- 
 sible for us to discover what it was which gave them such a 
 power. When we think of the log which for ages represented 
 to peoples already very highly cultivated and very powerful the 
 Lady Hera, Queen of the shining Heaven, we say to ourselves 
 that it was no doubt protected by the veneration of ages, by the 
 most august traditions. But in the beginning, when some one 
 first bethought himself of setting this log in the sun and of 
 presenting it to the homage of his contemporaries, it is evident 
 that this piece of wood spoke to their imagination quite a dif- 
 ferent language from that which it speaks to ours. Nevertheless, 
 this rude symbol is far from dating from primitive times ; it is 
 already part of an organized mythology. 
 
 It is this which renders it so difficult to determine with pre- 
 cision what were the objects of the first religion. No human 
 family, even among the most backward, can be found at the 
 present day in the original conditions of human life. We shall 
 speak further on of the direction which his first observation of 
 his own nature, and of the nature of the things which surrounded 
 him, impressed on the religious notions of man in the sense of 
 animism (the worship of spirits) and of fetichism. Let us con- 
 tinue here to indicate the earliest modifications of this worship 
 of visible nature, which must in all cases have preceded them, 
 and which analysis discovers underlying the faiths which have 
 supplanted it in practice. 
 
 A little more experience, a little more knowdedge of the visible 
 world, will impart a certain notion of the whole in place of 
 exclusive pre-occupation with details. 
 
 Man had not, so far, ceased to attribute conscience and will to 
 material existences, but at any rate those that he endowed with 
 
80 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 these faculties were more worthy of being accounted as masters 
 of destiny. The sky, the sun, the dawn, the stars, the wind, the 
 earth, the sea — all these he had hitherto chosen to personify. 
 Here is the beginning of the great mythologies. But, as the 
 principle remains the same, he does not deny what he has pre- 
 viously believed. Only he subordinates primary objects of adora- 
 tion to the grand phenomena, the superior importance of which 
 he henceforth recognizes. At this stage of general development, 
 beliefs already greatly differ, according to the climates and the 
 regions in which men live. In India, in Greece, in the countries 
 of radiant brightness, of blue sky, the dazzling azure of light 
 which is over everything and dominates everything, becomes the 
 supreme god. In such countries as Syria, Arabia and Egypt, 
 where the sun is the visible master of all nature, he becomes the 
 centre of worsliip. In Middle and Southern Europe, the wind 
 would be a very great god. Dwellers on the sea-shore would 
 naturally have different divinities from those populations who 
 did not even know that the sea exists. 
 
 This is also the moment at which, among peoples endo\ved 
 with a lively imagination, there will be formed, by way of analogy, 
 types and figurative conceptions, which will be gathered up 
 later by developed mythologies. For example, the sky, with its 
 single round sun, produces the impression of a great face pierced 
 by a single eye opening and shutting : it is this which later gave 
 us the Cyclops. Again, the moon, in the form of a crescent, 
 suggests the idea of a pair of horns : nothing more was wanted 
 to make a grand celestial cow, and this conception, so odd to us, 
 will be the initial germ of the myth of lo, the young girl loved 
 by Jupiter and changed into a heifer. In like manner, the 
 stormy cloud became the shield of Jupiter or of IMinerva ; but a 
 shield of goat's skin, fringed, only allowing its outer threads to 
 float in the wind, the segis.^ The waves of the sea, with their 
 rounded backs, have for marine populations the effect of horses 
 or of sheep throwing themselves tumultuously one upon another. 
 
 ^ A-'if, a'lyoQ, goat. 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 81 
 
 Even at tlie present day, while the sailors of our shores call the 
 foamy breaking of the waves in tlie offing sheep (tnoiUons), the 
 Italian sailors call it horses {cavalloni), and those of tlie ^'Egean 
 Sea goats. This explains why in certain maritime regions the 
 god of the liquid element, Poseidon or Neptune, is the breeder, 
 protector and trainer of horses. 
 
 Once arrived thus far, the human mind soon began to drama- 
 tize nature, to see in it, by analogy with human life, all sorts 
 of scenes, graceful or terrible, lively or melancholy. We may 
 here mention a factor the effect of which has been already 
 indicated in the preceding pages, that is, the special genius 
 of races. There are races which have little imao-ination, and 
 whose mythology consequently will always remain very poor 
 — the Kaffirs, for example. There are others, like the Semites, 
 who have no dramatic genius, and among whom consequently 
 the dramatization of nature will always be very much restricted. 
 It is possible to establish a relation of the same kind, although 
 with a much less marked difference, between the old Italian 
 mythology and that of Greece, which so beguiled Italy by its 
 seductive charm that the latter adopted it, as it were, uncon- 
 sciously. The Celtic and Gallic legend has something dreamy, 
 passionate and tender, mingled with paroxysms of jovial or cruel 
 coarseness, as we see in the curious history of Melusina, in the 
 stories of the White Ladies, and in the popular legend of Gar- 
 gantua. The Chinese religion is saturated with ritualism, with 
 monotonous regularity, with practical good sense, and with doting 
 nonsense ; while the German mythology presents that mixture 
 of idealism, of vigour and of sturdiness, with which its last great 
 product, the Nibelungen, is so strongly penetrated. In a word, it 
 is at the moment in which the dramatization of nature begins, 
 that the special genius of the race also begins most powerfully 
 to influence the formation of beliefs and of myths. 
 
 But the knowledge of nature is continually extending. The 
 idea of that which the Greeks called the Kosnios, the idea of 
 the world regularly organized, submitted to a constant order 
 
 G 
 
82 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 always victorious over the attacks of which it may be the object 
 on the part of hostile powers, such as winter, storm, earthquake, 
 &c., — this idea spreads, especially among the most intelligent 
 nations. Immigration, commerce and travels, bring the human 
 families and their traditions more closely together. It is then, 
 also, that the great mythologies begin to be organized. A history 
 of the divinities is elaborated. Their numbers and relations, 
 finally a hierarchy, are assigned to them. A distinction is made 
 between the greater and the smaller gods. In virtue of the con- 
 servative principle of which we have spoken, no previous beliefs 
 are eliminated, but they are more or less harmonized with the new 
 notions. The worship of Zeus or Jupiter having acquired in all 
 the Greek countries a sort of catholicity, but many cities assign- 
 ing to him some other companion than Juno or Hera, who was 
 recognized as his lawful wife, the difficulty was got over by 
 transforming Danae, Leda, Semele, Alcmena, Latoua, Europa and 
 many others, into the mistresses of the king of the gods. Mythic 
 theology is easy of composition. 
 
 Finally, the knowledge of nature still further increasing, its 
 scientific study commences, and the most advanced begin to ask 
 themselves if all this dramatization of nature is anything else 
 than an illusion. Then begins the great bifurcation between the 
 East and the West. The extreme East comes to believe that 
 not only is the dramatization purely imaginary, but that Nature 
 herself is, if not an illusion, at least a wrong or an evil ; it 
 denies its legitimacy, and desires to achieve its negation even 
 in man himself Thence Buddhism and its frightful asceticism. 
 It is the religion of death. In the West, a germ of new life 
 springs up in the bosom of a small and profoundly original 
 people, which began by adoring simply a national god, whose 
 original physical nature it may one day be possible to deter- 
 mine, who should be absolutely invisible to every living eye, 
 and this people, as a result of worshipping him only, has been 
 more readily open than all other peoples to the idea that only 
 their god is God. The idea of nature, of its reality, of its fun- 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 83 
 
 damental goodness, is maintained ; but nothing in nature is any 
 longer worshipped ; the object of adoration is henceforth sivper- 
 natural. We have already pointed out, and we shall not need 
 again to return to it, how, from the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century, a more and more complete knowledge of the world 
 modified anew all traditional beliefs. 
 
 The progressive knowledge of nature is, then, one of the most 
 active motors in religious development. 
 
 We find another in the progress of reason. We have already 
 somewhat anticipated this new order of considerations when we 
 spoke of the organization of divinities and of mythological tradi- 
 tions. Eeason is essentially the friend of unity, of generalization, 
 of system and of symmetry. True, its part in religious history 
 is subordinate, or, to speak more correctly, it is very slow in 
 action. The most irrational religious beliefs may for a very long 
 time resist the most formidable assaults of reason. This is 
 because the religious sentiment still finds satisfaction in them ; 
 and it is difficult to exaggerate the degree of subtlety which it 
 can impart to those who feel the weight of arguments against 
 traditional doctrine, but who also feel the need of escaping from 
 them. At length, however, this satisfaction begins to diminish. 
 The religions which have exhausted their principle, or which 
 cannot derive from it the means of transformation, are doomed 
 to perish after a certain time, unless, indeed, the mind of those 
 who profess them remains stationary. But the day that it gets 
 beyond them, they are virtually condemned. Thus philosophic 
 education by the force of reason undermined the Greco-Eoman 
 polytheism, without being able to substitute a religion for it; but 
 it prepared the mind to receive willingly that which emanated 
 from the anti-polytheistic principle. The reactionary romanti- 
 cism of Julian and his friends was itself permeated by mono- 
 theism. In our day, endeavours are made to restore, at least in 
 form, a religious condition irrevocably passed away. But we 
 might challenge the promoters of this restoration to re-establish 
 certain institutions, or to re-organize certain public ceremonies, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 in whicli, at the time of that simple fervour the disappearance 
 of which they regret, pious souls took delight. 
 
 The progress of the moral conscience is, again, a powerful motor 
 of religious transformation. 
 
 Eeligious and moral development are distinct, and are far from 
 being always on an equality. Sometimes morality is in advance 
 of religion, sometimes the reverse. Mythologies, as a whole, 
 demonstrate that little care was taken that the divinities should 
 be of irreproachable morality. In the Old Testament, notwith- 
 standing the inculcation of a morality relatively very pure, sen- 
 timents and desires are attributed to Jahveh, the Eternal, which 
 are not in any way edifying. But this dualism does not always 
 prevail. Morality seeks a support in religion, and religion finds its 
 principal application in morality. Notwithstanding the defects 
 of character imputed to the divinities, the chief laws of social 
 order, hospitality, the sanctity of an oath and household chastity, 
 are placed under divine patronage. Plato complained of fables 
 which brought discredit on the divinity. Man does not easily 
 tolerate the idea that the spirit whom he worships does not 
 possess moral perfection. The favourite argument of the apolo- 
 gists of Christianity consists in the enumeration of the vices and 
 faults of the gods of paganism. Christianity itself derives its 
 chief strength from the beauty of its morality. In principle, 
 moreover, it does not allow that communion with God is possible 
 outside the pale of that morality. It is thus one of the most 
 powerful agents of dissolution which can precipitate the fall of 
 religions. The generality of men, so often inaccessible to pure 
 reason, are very easily moved by moral arguments. From the 
 moment in which the hidden bond uniting religion and morality 
 is recognized and felt, any notion of God which wounds the 
 conscience is rejected. We do not think, at least if we under- 
 stand the meaning of words, that morality can, without suffering 
 much thereby, dispense with all religious principle ; but in any 
 case, if morality can dispense with religion, we may certainly 
 affirm that religion cannot dispense with morality. 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 85 
 
 Events of a political order must also be reckoned among the 
 active causes of religious development. We do not speak merely 
 of the circumstances in which a conquering or despotic power 
 desires suddenly to change the religion of its subjects. There 
 are results of great political changes the effect of which on reli- 
 gious beliefs is even more certain. 
 
 When we study the religions of antiquity, we are struck with 
 their close connection with the national life. Each city has its 
 patron gods. If it is invaded or conquered, it thence concludes 
 either that its gods have forsaken it, or that they are less power- 
 ful than those of the victorious nation, and they adopt these 
 latter. The reverse may also happen, at least if the victorious 
 nation is inferior in civilization to the vanquished nation, and 
 finds the religion of the latter more beautiful and more attractive. 
 This is not a contradiction ; apparently victorious, it is in this 
 case morally conquered. Sometimes the change of religion arises 
 simply from transplantation, as in the case of the colonists led 
 by the kings of Syria into the depopulated territory of the king- 
 dom of Israel, who thought it prudent to adopt the religion and 
 the god " of the land" (Samaritans).^ Political events may also 
 decide the final victory of one religious tendency over another 
 with which it has long struggled in the midst of the same people. 
 Thus the Jews became permanently monotheists only in conse- 
 quence of the catastrophe which doomed their nation to fall 
 under the yoke of the victorious Babylonian. If some weakness 
 showed itself for a moment under the domination of the kings 
 of Syria, it was the occasion of an accession of energy and of 
 strength for the national monotheism. On the other hand, con- 
 quering Eome, in whose midst the Hellenic religion and the 
 Italian religion had already united, carried this combination to 
 the peoples which she subdued ; and thence new combinations 
 resulted, notably in our own Gaul, where the old Celtic divinities 
 were surprised to find themselves identified with those of Latium 
 and of Greece. We know how considerably the barbarian inva- 
 
 1 Comp. 2 Kings xvii. 24—28. 
 
86 RELIGIOUS DEVELOIMEXT. 
 
 sions augmented the number of the Christian populations. The 
 Eoman empire itself, by the very fact of its creation, had singu- 
 larly opened out the way for Christianity. It had shattered the 
 nationalities, that is to say, the essential forms of the old religions. 
 A sort of amalsfamation of the most heterooeneous beliefs was 
 formed. The West was all at once fascinated by religions of 
 Eastern origin. The idea of humanity gained by all which the 
 narrow patriotism of earlier times had lost. There were, in truth, 
 no longer Gauls, Spaniards, Egyptians, Africans, &c. ; but every- 
 where there remained men. So many circumstances were favour- 
 able to the progress of a religion proclaiming itself superior to 
 national distinctions, and by preference sustaining itself on the 
 general needs and the universal tendencies of the human being. 
 When we study more closely the many causes which have won for 
 Christianity its victory over the old anterior religions, we find 
 nothing miraculous in them ; liistory resumes all her rights ; and 
 we end by feeling surprised, not that paganism was vanquished, but 
 at the obstinate resistance which, all moribund as it was, it offered 
 to the invading power, and at the extent of the revenge which, 
 in spite of its official death, it knew how to take at the expense 
 of the victorious religion. Moreover, we must not regard the 
 establishment of international religions as having suppressed 
 the influence of national character. When we compare the 
 Buddhism of Ceylon with that of Thibet, Persian Islamism with 
 Arab Islamism, Christianity of the North with that of the South, 
 and even without going outside of Catholicism, the most at one 
 with itself and the most centralized of the international churches, 
 that of France with that of Sicily or of Brazil, we can perceive 
 that the nation, and all that which precedes or which constitutes 
 it — region, climate, historical antecedents, collective intelligence, 
 &c. — are always great causes of religious modification. 
 
 It remains for us to point out a last order of facts, counting 
 also among the most influential in regard to the course and the 
 variations of the religious idea. We would speak of the personal 
 action — very powerful and very intense — of men who could have 
 
ACTIVE CAUSES OF RELIOIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 87 
 
 done nothing without the concurrence of the other moving causes 
 which we have enumerated, but in regard to whom it would be 
 contrary to all evidence to deny their immense part in history. 
 These are the men whom the ages and millions of men revere as 
 prophets, revealers and founders of religions. 
 
 The oldest religions are anonymous. The work of their elabo- 
 ration is collective. But it is to be presumed that from all time, 
 in the midst of the most uncultured populations, there were 
 individuals endowed with more imagination, of a more subtle 
 religious sense, of a more fertile poetic faculty, than the mass 
 of their contemporaries, and who contributed, by their relative 
 superiority, to determine the beliefs and the religious life of their 
 kind. Already the mythologies make mention of names them- 
 selves more or less mythic — Orpheus, Nunia, Tiresias, Calchas, 
 &c. — which suppose a personal action of this kind. But, as a 
 general rule, it is not indissolubly connected with proper names. 
 
 It is otherwise in this respect with a certain number of other 
 religions, precisely the most remarkable for the number of their 
 adherents or for their rank in history. Judaism is connected with 
 the person of Moses, the ancient Masdeism with that of Zura- 
 tustra or Zoroaster, Buddhism with that of Buddha, Christian- 
 ity with that of Jesus Christ, Islamism with that of Mahomet. 
 The importance of the bond which joins these various religions 
 to their personal founders is attested by the fact, that the faithful 
 of each of these great religious forms attribute to a quite special 
 revelation, individually received and conveyed by him, that which 
 each of these founders has bequeathed to them of new beliefs, 
 and rest on this contention their legitimacy and exclusive truth. 
 
 Formerly it would have appeared scandalous to place thus on 
 the same line of observation the individual founders of the most 
 important religions which divide humanity. There was a time 
 when Mahomet was never called anything but " the false Pro- 
 phet." From the strictly historic point of view at wliich we 
 place ourselves, we cannot thus prejudge matters. We can only 
 distinguish these revealers as together forming a class apart, and 
 
88 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 wortliy of a quite special interest. That does not mean that 
 after examination we shall not have to set forth the differences 
 which will enable us to decree the palm to him who merits it. 
 But, at the moment, we must keep within the terms of the most 
 severe objectivity. There are anonymous religions; there are 
 religions founded by revealers whose names are known to us ; 
 they are inseparable from their persons — that is enough to cause 
 us to divide them into two distinct groups. 
 
 Now, in each case, the revealer ought to possess in a very 
 high degree religious genius, independently of knowledge, pro- 
 perly so called, and of philosophy. Each revealer was the bearer 
 of a principle incarnate in himself. This principle and its 
 immediate consequences embody themselves in certain forms 
 which are confounded with him in the eyes of peoples who are 
 guided more by feeling than by reflection ; they spread, they 
 unfold, they mingle themselves with everything and penetrate 
 everywhere — and there is another great religion in the world. 
 
 This is because, like all else which springs from sentiment, 
 like art, like morality, like poetry, like patriotism — we may say, 
 indeed, like science herself when she is guided by intuitive 
 perceptions — Eeligion has its inspired ones, men endowed in such 
 sort that the religious sentiment common to all acquires in their 
 case an extraordinary intensity, joined to a great and marvellous 
 clearness of expression, and that they reveal, in the natural sense 
 of that word, that which the multitude suspected, perhaps some- 
 times murmured, but that which no one before them had known 
 how to say in a loud and intelligible voice. By their side and 
 below them, there are men, who also act very powerfully on their 
 kind — reformers, prophets, religious orators. They also come 
 into the category of inspiration. But their part, like their genius, 
 is not to be compared with that of those powerful arousers of 
 consciences which we have enumerated. 
 
YII. 
 CLASSIFICATION OF EELIGIONS. 
 
 The active causes of religious development are then : 1st, 
 increasing knowledge of nature ; 2nd, the genius of races ; 3rd, 
 the progress of reason; 4th, that of the moral conscience; 5th, 
 social and political events ; 6th, the personal action of religious 
 geniuses (revealers, reformers, &c.). We shall now proceed to 
 the classification of historic religions ; but in order to justify the 
 order in which we range them, we must first note the principal 
 phases through which Eeligion passes in its development. 
 
 We need not retract what we have said as to the fluctuating, 
 fugitive character of primary religious intuitions. Probably many 
 centuries rolled away before they were fixed in such a way as 
 to be able to be made the object of a description. We must leave 
 to the pre-historic sciences the care of deciding whetlier, in the 
 dihris which the palteontological races have left in testimony of 
 their existence on the earth, any traces of belief or of worship 
 are found. The most significant of the discoveries which we 
 may place in this order is probably a kind of amulet unearthed 
 in the grotto of the Gourdan, and dating from the age of the 
 reindeer and the mammoth. It is a plate of bone pierced in 
 the centre, probably in order to be worn. Erom the central 
 hole rays diverge, which make this object look like an image of 
 the sun. The same symbol is engraved three times on a staff of 
 office, or kind of sceptre, on which it seems to confer a sort of 
 consecration. There is reason to believe, also, that the custom 
 of trepanning skulls, either living or dead, may be traced to the 
 same prodigious antiquity, and by analogy with a similar custom 
 still in vogue in historic times, it would seem to be connected 
 
90 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 with animist beliefs. The evil spirit dwelling inside a sick mau 
 was to be cast out, or the soul of the dead was to be allowed a 
 way of escaj)e, just as the Iroquois take care to arrange a small 
 outlet to each grave with the same end in view.^ 
 
 This leads us to speak of a subject for a long time relegated 
 to the background in the history of religions, but to which we 
 must henceforth assign a leading place. "We refer to animism, 
 or the worship of spirits, of which fetichism itself is only a 
 modification. 
 
 Man, we have seen, adores only that which he personifies, that 
 is to say, the beings to whom he attributes a conscience and a 
 will analogous to his own. From a very early date he was able 
 to distinguish — not in the sense of an abstract spiritualism, of 
 which he could not have any idea, but in the most concrete 
 manner — mind and body in all the personal beings whom he 
 knew or tliought he knew. The sight of a dead body suggested 
 to him the feeling that that which had desired, spoken, acted, a 
 few hours previously, was no longer there, but still could not 
 have been annihilated. His own experience, founded especially 
 on the phenomenon of dreaming, led him in the direction of an 
 analogous conclusion. Savage races attach great importance to 
 dreams. The savage who is transported in a dream to a distant 
 country, in which he meets persons dead or absent, firmly believes 
 that his soul has really travelled far from his body, that it has 
 seen real beings — in a word, the subjective character of the 
 dream entirely escapes him. Thence this double consequence : 
 the soul can detach itself from the body and live its own life 
 without it, and although of a much more subtle and aerial nature, 
 
 ^ Comp. M. Joly, L^Homme avant les Metaux, Paris ; Germer Bailliere, 1879, 
 p. 306 and onwards. — We need only remark that we have nothing to alter in this 
 statement, whether liumanity had only one stem or several. If it dates back to a single 
 primitive stock, the awakening of the religious sentiment must have occurred in more 
 than one place in regions where the descendants of the first human couple swarmed. 
 If we must admit several — if, as has been said, each continent produced its man — the 
 religious faculty was born, if not simultaneously, at least in parallel lines, in each of 
 the primordial races ; and this parallelism, like the fact of religion itself, enters among 
 the characteristic traits of humanity as much as distinct unity. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 91 
 
 since on awaking one does not see it go and come, it yet lias all 
 the form and appearance of doing this. Almost everywhere the 
 breath furnishes the least material analogy possible by which 
 to indicate the nature of this invisible soul. Also the greater 
 number of the words which serve actually to designate it — Ctine, 
 anima, xf^vx-q, spiritus, irvevfia; Hebrew, rouach, iie^oliesch, &c. — 
 were originally formed on the basis of this analogy ; and our 
 word spirit, which denotes the system of which the soul forms a 
 part, has no other meaning. It thence results to the man given 
 up to the illusions of ignorance, that not only his own soul and 
 body, but also the soul and body of all the natural beings per- 
 sonified by him, can detach itself the one from the other ; that, 
 for example, the invisible spirit of the river, or of the tree, 
 or of the animal, or of the sun, which he adores, can quit its 
 visible form and traverse space in all directions. And as the 
 objects of adoration continually increase in number, it is not 
 surprising that very soon his preponderating religious practice 
 consists in the worship of spirits which people the air. The 
 dead which have become spirits, especially if they are ancestors, 
 are joined to this mysterious army. In fact, almost everywhere 
 the worship of the dead is closely connected with that of ele- 
 mentary spirits. Soon the remembrance of the link which con- 
 nects the latter with natural objects is effaced, and it frequently 
 happens with very backward tribes, such as Negroes, Hottentots, 
 the Ked Indians of North America, &c., that the worship of nature 
 may be, so to speak, supplanted by that of spirits. The religions in 
 which this predominates were formerly arranged under the cate- 
 gory of shamanism, because the shamans are the priest-sorcerers 
 of the Finns and of the Tartars, whose religion is in practice 
 almost entirely concentrated in the worship of spirits. But it is 
 proved that this worship holds a scarcely inferior place in the 
 religions of many other uncivilized peoples, who are neither Finns 
 nor Tartars, and the more general denomination of animism is 
 to be preferred. 
 
 Fetichism, which we shall have the task of studying more 
 
92 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 closely elsewhere, is a particular form of animism ; it is, in fact, 
 its grossest form. This word has indeed been quite wrongly- 
 applied to the adoration of very simple natural objects, such as 
 a tree or an animal. The fetich, a word of Portuguese origin, 
 which comes from the Latin factitius, must, as its essential cha- 
 racteristic, be transportable at will, must belong corporeally to 
 the man, who has usually chosen it, and who attributes to it the 
 power of influencing his destiny. Fetichism is distinguished from 
 pure animism in this, that there is no question of a possible sepa- 
 ration between the soul or spirit of the fetich and its visible form. 
 The only approach to that is this, that the fetich has power only 
 because it is considered as the dwelling of a spirit. It is in reality 
 an animated amulet. The spirit of the fetich has no necessary 
 connection with those natural objects whence have proceeded the 
 spirits preferably adored by animism ; it comes rather into the 
 class of anonymous spirits, or those become such. 
 
 But it is an error to consider fetichism, and even animism, as 
 the primordial religion. They suppose too much reflection for 
 that. They are evidently secondary phenomena, such as, in 
 Christianity, the worship of saints, of the Virgin Mary and of 
 the Sacred Heart. Seeing the Christianity of certain peoples, 
 if we did not know its history, we could believe that Chris- 
 tianity consists in those adorations which are in reality only 
 applications of or deviations from (according to the point of view 
 at which we are placed) the doctrines of the gospeh In order 
 that a belief in the independent spirits of nature should be 
 induced, a certain number of observations and of reflections on 
 human nature itself, which denote something quite different from 
 primitive simplicity, are necessary. In order to believe that 
 spirits or fetiches influence the course of things and modify their 
 order, it is necessary to be alive to the sentiment that there is a 
 course of things, that there exists a natural series, and that we 
 can interrupt it through the intervention of a power higher and 
 stronger than it. All that could not be primitive. There must 
 have been first a worship of nature or of natural objects per- 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 93 
 
 sonified ; thence came animism, which among certain races, and 
 especially among Negroes, was condensed into fetichism. 
 
 This view is confirmed by the fact that we discern more and 
 more clearly the naturist basis of beliefs which flourish among 
 peoples the most given up to animism or fetichism. We can no 
 longer doubt it in the case of the Finns since the great work of 
 M. de Castren.^ We may say the same as to the North- American 
 Indians, and we shall show it elsewhere in regard to Negroes, 
 Kaffirs and Hottentots. 
 
 What is true is this, that the extension and the absorbing 
 nature of this kind of religion has proved injurious to the deve- 
 lopment of a natural mythology among races the least endowed 
 with generalizing imagination. Although we discover traces of 
 fetichism, and especially of animism, in all religions, it cannot 
 be denied that they are passed by and left in the background in 
 those which have prepared and followed the upward movement 
 of the human mind among races the most apt for civilization. 
 
 No doubt, there also, in India, in Persia and in Greece, the 
 natural object personified, in assuming personal form and life in 
 this dramatization of nature which produced the great mytholo- 
 gies, acquired an independence of action which made it impossible 
 that it should be any longer identified simply with its visible 
 appearance. When, for example, the Greeks recounted the 
 prowess of solar heroes, such as Heracles or Perseus, it is abun- 
 dantly certain that they did not absolutely confound them with 
 the sun shining above their heads. But when we examine their 
 legends more nearly, we see that these heroes always maintain a 
 very close relation with the sun. The separation is never absolute. 
 The exploits assigned to them, the romance of which they occupy 
 the central place, their mode of birth, of growth, of fighting, of lov- 
 ing and of dying, all recal their solar origin. The animism here 
 is not self-evident ; it is rather the personification and the drama- 
 tization of the natural phenomenon which are implied. It is this 
 
 ' Vorlesunfjen iiher die Finnische M ythologie, 2 vols. : St. Petersburg, 1853 — 1862. 
 
94 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 whicli has made myths so varied and so rich in meaning. Ani- 
 mism, from an aesthetic and poetical point of view, is very barren. 
 
 Among the Chinese, animism and the deification of the great 
 phenomena of nature, notably of the earth and of the heaven, 
 are developed, so to speak, in parallel lines. It is especially 
 under the form of the worship of ancestors that animism has 
 taken root among this people so obstinately attached to its past. 
 But it has never destroyed what we may call official mythology, 
 of which the very constitution of the vast empire is a chapter. 
 
 Polynesia presents the very rare spectacle of a race remaining 
 in the lowest state of civilization and social growth, who yet 
 nevertheless possess a mythology of a certain richness, and often 
 of great poetical power. 
 
 What is interesting in this new stage of religious history is 
 the very distinct physiognomy which the genius of each people 
 impresses on the religion of nature. That of the Vedas, in which 
 the worship of grand natural phenomena still exists in all its primi- 
 tive fervour and simplicity ; that of Egypt, in which, on the same 
 fundamental but infinitely varied idea, that of the antagonism of 
 life and death, a superior and remarkably endowed race enshrines 
 in sublime surroundings those most degrading superstitions of 
 which Africa has never ceased to be the prolific source ; those 
 of Nineveh and of Babylon, military and imperial mythologies, 
 which, like their sisters of Tyre, of Syria and of Arabia, sacrifice 
 even paternal love, even woman's chastity, to the sovereign 
 power ; those of countries once unknown, where Europe was 
 to find in full vigour a solar religion not less bloody nor less 
 despotic ; that of Italy, where we must distinguish between the 
 religion of that mysterious Etruscan race, whose origin it is so 
 difficult to determine, and the as yet very simple religion of the 
 Latin centre ; those, finally, of Gaul, of Germany, of the Scandi- 
 navian countries, not to speak of others less known — here are 
 the fields which spread themselves out beyond the confines of 
 our vision on the height which we have gained ; and yet just 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 95 
 
 above us another presents itself, more limited in its circumference, 
 but as rich as, if not richer than, all the others put together — • 
 the field of Greek mythology. 
 
 All the mythologies which we have just enumerated are 
 autochthonous, springing from the soil. Greek mythology also 
 has this character, but it more than any other incorporates with 
 itself numerous elements borrowed from Egypt and the Semitic 
 East. It so well impresses its seal upon them, that at first sight 
 it is difficult to perceive their foreign origin. What a difference 
 there is, for example, between the Tyrian and Carthaginian Mel- 
 kart, this brazen god, the devourer of children, the terror of men, 
 and the Greek Hercules, the great lawgiver, the tamer of monsters, 
 the peacemaker, the liberator ! Nevertheless, it is in fact the same 
 god. But that which has most contributed to give to Greek my- 
 thology its character of mythology par excellence is precisely this, 
 next to the incomparable superiority of the Greek mind itself, this 
 power of assimilation, which has enabled it to blend traditions 
 of different origin into one homogeneous whole. When later the 
 Italian mythology was absorbed into its elastic framework, Greek 
 mythology gave proof of the same ductility, and received its 
 poorer sister without doing itself the least violence. 
 
 In proportion as we rise in the religious scale, the relation 
 between religion and morality comes into operation. The Egyp- 
 tian, Latin and Greek mythologies, present very remarkable 
 aspects from a moral point of view. Headers of the learned work 
 of M. Alfred Maury, on Les Religions de la GHce antique, will 
 assuredly not have forgotten the chapter in which the sublime 
 maxims of the religious wisdom of the Hellenes are collected. 
 We could imagine ourselves on the propyleeum of the gospel. 
 Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that among the Greeks 
 morality was never digested into a body of doctrines systema- 
 tized and recognized as an integral part of religious teaching. 
 We shall see elsewhere to what this deficiency is to be attri- 
 buted ; but we discern already the point of departure of a new 
 class of religions which are distinguished from the others in this, 
 
96 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 that the emphasis of the religious life falls on the conduct of the 
 believer, and that they impose upon him, as an essential condi- 
 tion of union with the sovereign Spirit, the observance of a law 
 moral as much as religious. It is this character which serves to 
 define this class of religions as religions of law or legalistic. 
 
 They are six in number, and may be reduced to four. 
 
 We ought to count among them two Chinese religions, that 
 which is connected with the name of Kon-fou-tzeu, and that 
 which springs from Lao-tzeu. We may unite them, in spite of 
 their divergences, under the common denomination of Chinese 
 legalism. Then comes Bralmnanism, the very rich and compli- 
 cated mythology which arose on the basis of the Vedas, but 
 which, systematized and taught in India by the sacerdotal caste 
 of the Brahmans, became a religious, ritualistic and moral law, 
 with sacred books to explain and comment upon it (Brahmanas, 
 laws of Manou). Mazdeism, or the religion of Zoroaster and of 
 Iran (Persia), is a mythology dominated by the principle of dua- 
 lism ; that is to say, that its organic principle is the separation of 
 the world and of divine beings into two hostile camps, each com- 
 manded by a superior god, — Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd for the 
 good, Anromainyus or Ahriman for the bad. Moral obligation 
 is comprehended in the sense that man should be the ally of 
 Ormuzd in his lasting struggle with Ahriman. Thence came a 
 religious, moral and ritualistic legislation, laid down in the Zend 
 Avesta, and especially in its first part, the Vendidad — the Mosaism 
 of the eighth century before our era, and the Judaism which is 
 the codification of it, enriched and systematized, or, if you will, 
 its definitive evolution, determined by the eflfects of Baby- 
 lonian, Persian and Greek conquests. We do not need to recal 
 its eminently legalistic character. But this character is not the 
 only one which distinguishes it. Mazdeism, in its repugnance to 
 Ahriman, physical and moral evil, in its almost exclusive adora- 
 tion of Ormuzd, practically approaches very nearly to monotheism, 
 without setting it up as an absolute principle. With Judaism 
 the monotheistic principle made its first appearance in history as 
 
CLASSIFICATIOX OF RELIGIONS. ^7 
 
 the basis of a popular religion, and the Jewish law is rigorously 
 governed by the requirements of this new principle. 
 
 We should consider Islamism as the younger brother of Juda- 
 ism, with which it presents closer analogies than with Chris- 
 tianity itself, although Judaism was the historical cradle of the 
 latter religion. Like Judaism, Islamism rigorously maintains 
 the principle of the divine unity, and makes that its foundation- 
 stone, but takes away from it the purely national character which 
 Judaism had impressed upon it, in order to make it the principle 
 of a universal or international religion founded by the Arab pro- 
 phet Mahomet. Nevertheless, like Judaism, it is essentially 
 legalistic, and it makes adhesion to its principle, and observance 
 of its ritual and moral precepts, the condition of the supremacy 
 of believers on earth as well as of their happiness in another life. 
 
 We may no doubt regard it as favourable to the general pro- 
 gress that a religious law should be at the same time a moral 
 law, and sanction by its promises and by its threats the fulfil- 
 ment of duties. But there arises a new point of view which 
 determines a new direction of religious thought. Not only do 
 these legalistic religions, by making as much of rites often puerile 
 as of duties, and by ritualizing morality, impose on man a painful 
 yoke which his reason cannot always approve, but they also 
 arouse in him the sorrowful, despairing feeling of his own insuf- 
 ficiency and of theirs also. The legalistic practice does not 
 procure for him the security which it promised, and experience 
 shows him that, judged according to the rigour of the religious 
 law, he will infallibly be condemned. The need of synthesis or 
 of harmony which is at the bottom of the religious tendency of 
 man requires, then, a new satisfaction, and thence the appearance 
 of two great international religions which have this common 
 character of being religions of redemption or of deliverance. The 
 earliest in date is Buddhism, the second is Christianity. 
 
 Buddhism offers us this phenomenon, at first sight very 
 strange, that, differing absolutely from Christianity in its point 
 of departure and in its tendency, it not the less presents us with 
 
 H 
 
98 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 the most curious resemblances to it. We shall elsewhere give 
 the key to these profound differences and close analogies. At 
 present we have to point out this character in common, whence it 
 is that historically we must place them in certain respects in the 
 same class of religions. Both start from the fact that the con- 
 dition of man is unhappy through his own fault, and teach him 
 the means of attaining safety, that is, perfect happiness. Both, 
 consequently, are eminently propagandist, not only from love of 
 truth, but also from love of humanity, which they seek to save 
 from its misery.^ It is very well known that Buddhism, the 
 origin of which dates back to five centuries before our era, is the 
 veritable international religion of Eastern Asia, as Islamism is 
 that of Western Asia and of Africa, as Christianity is that of 
 Europe and of America, whither it was carried by Europeans. 
 Two points, however, widely distinguish Christianity and Bud- 
 dhism, one having reference to tlieir respective points of depar- 
 ture, tlie other to their different religious principle. Buddhism, 
 born on the domain of polytheism, has fought against it, not by 
 rising above nature in subordinating it to a single sovereign 
 spirit, but by reproving nature in principle, and condemning life 
 itself as an evil and a misfortune. It may be asked whether the 
 original Buddhism was anything more than an ascetic morality 
 without religion. In the result, in order to become a religion, 
 it has been obliged to amalgamate with the polytheisms in the 
 ijiidst of which it was propagated, without possessing in itself a 
 power of reaction against the intermixtures which have caused 
 it to lose its true character. The destiny of Christianity has 
 been, and must be, different in this sense, that, being the supreme 
 evolution of an anterior monotheism, in place of suppressing 
 nature and life, it tends, at least in its first principles, to trans- 
 form the one and to intensify the other. 
 
 It is, however, a law of religious history, to which we have 
 
 ^ Islamism is so in a lesser degree, in the sense that it is voluntarily more conquering 
 than missionary. It accommodates itself very well to a state of things which allows 
 other monotheistic religions to exist on the sole condition that territory and power 
 Leloug to the true believers. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIOIONS. 99 
 
 already made allusion, that every new and higher principle is 
 established only on the condition of accepting more or less 
 completely the heritage of the past still existing under other 
 forms. There are in the highest polytheisms evident traces of 
 animism and of fetichism. We find them even in the most 
 pronounced monotheisms and international religions, precisely 
 because these extend among more numerous and more diverse 
 classes of men and are more liable than others to include beliefs, 
 traditions and superstitions,^ foreign to their principles. 
 
 But we see from all this how difficult it is to make a logically 
 correct and methodic classification of religions. There are inter- 
 crossings of principles and of claims which render this operation 
 impossible, and we must content ourselves with an approxima- 
 tion. A religion, elevated in its principle — Judaism, for example 
 — remains confined to the class of strictly national religions. 
 Mazdeism, which is really polytheist, is in practice much nearer 
 to Judaism than it is to the Greek religion. Buddhism is, in 
 truth, a polytheism, and nevertheless it presents a number of 
 characters in common with Christianity, being, like it, a religion 
 of redemption. Whatever may be the principle of classification 
 adopted, we see ourselves reduced to bringing together in theory 
 that which is in fact very distant, or which represents other 
 principles very important and reciprocally hostile. How can 
 we rank in the same historic category Brahmanism, with its 
 florid mythology, and Islamism, with its very severe monothe- 
 ism ? Nevertheless, these two religions are both legalistic. 
 
 From the historical point of view, that which guides all our 
 study, we think it convenient to maintain the fundamental divi- 
 sion, although it is criticised in the present day,between^o/?/</iets^zc 
 and monotheistic religions. There is no question here of necessary 
 or of possible superiority. Historically, monotheistic religions 
 govern the modern world ; their history can be written only on 
 
 ^ Superstition means that whicli survives, persists, and is superfluous, because 
 belonging to a state of mind which the intellectual and moral aristocracy of any given 
 time have passed beyond. It most frequently consists in an application of the prin- 
 ciple of causality, erroneous and contradicted by experience. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 condition of a continual parallelism between their destinies and 
 their reciprocal evolutions. It would be quite impossible to 
 detach the history of Christianity from that of Judaism, or the 
 history of Islamism from that of the other two religions. They 
 thus form a group clearly distinct from all the others, the study 
 of which should be pursued separately. We may characterize 
 them by applying to them categories like those which serve to 
 distinguish the religions forming the polytheistic group from one 
 another. 
 
 This, then, is the general view which we propose : 
 
 I. Polytheistic Eeligions. 
 
 1. The primitive religion of nature, the simple worship of 
 natural objects, which man represents to himself as animated, 
 conscious, powerful, and influencing human destiny. 
 
 2. The animist and fetichist religions^ developed on the basis 
 of the preceding, and peculiar to races in a so-called savage 
 state — Negroes, other African tribes, Esquimaux, Finns, Tartars, 
 American Indians, Polynesians, &c.; always possessing the begin- 
 nings of mythology, and especially remarkable among the Pinns 
 and Polynesians. 
 
 3. The great national mytJiologies, founded on the dramatization 
 of nature, imagining relations between divine beings in accord- 
 ance with those which prevail in human life, and collecting the 
 primitive creeds and myths into one vast whole — the religions 
 of China, of Egypt, of Nineveh, of Babylon, of Germany, of Gaul, 
 of Italy, of Greece, &c. ; a class of religions of which the Vedic 
 mythology presents the simplest form, the Grecian mythology the 
 most refined and indisputably the most beautiful. Probably we 
 ought to place in the same class the ancient mythology of Japan, 
 as yet so little understood; certainly the mythologies of the 
 peoples of the New World, such as they were discovered in 
 Mexico and Peru, belong to it. 
 
 4. The polytheistic-legalistic religions — Brahmanism, Mazde- 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS. 101 
 
 ism, and the two philosophical Chinese religions of Kon-fou- 
 tzeu and of Lao-tzeu. 
 
 5. Buddhism, the religion of redemption, universalist or inter- 
 national ; in principle opposed to polytheism, but in practice 
 irremediably blending with local polytheisms. 
 
 II. Monotheistic Eeligions. 
 
 1. Judaism, the descendant of Mosaism, legalistic and national. 
 
 2. Islmnism, legalistic and international. 
 
 3. Christianity, the religion of redemption, international. 
 
>^coiitr ||art 
 
 THE MYTH. 
 
 It is through the myth that we approach a group of intellec- 
 tual forces and of special facts in close relation with the religious 
 development of man, and we shall meet with it more or less 
 everywhere in the course of our history. 
 
 The myth has been the object of special study only within a 
 comparatively recent period. For a long time it was confounded 
 with the fable. The seventeenth century knew nothing about 
 it; the eighteenth, not much. Nevertheless, we there find glimpses 
 denoting that light was beginning to break. We may quote the 
 lines of the Emile, where J. J. Eousseau says that " man began 
 by animating all the beings whose action he felt," and that thus 
 the universe " was filled with material gods." It is just also to 
 mention the now almost forgotten work of Bergier, Principal of 
 the College of Besan(^on, on the Origin of the Gods of Paganism 
 (Paris, 1767), which somewhat learnedly develops the idea that 
 mythology is a tissue of romances received as real by the ima- 
 gination which invented them. Some memoirs of Freret and of 
 Bougainville also contain indications of a truly scientific notion 
 in regard to the innumerable narratives of mythology. But it 
 was reserved for Germany, much less absorbed than France in 
 political and social questions, to throw light on a subject the 
 difiiculty of which consists entirely in this, that, in order to 
 
104 THE MYTH. 
 
 Tinderstand it thoroughly, it is necessary to transport oneself 
 into a state of mind very different from ours. 
 
 It was not that no one previously had ever asked whence 
 sprang this rich harvest of narratives, which, however, were 
 scarcely known except through the Greek and Latin mythology. 
 The middle ages had their answer quite ready : It was the work 
 of the devil. 
 
 This answer could not satisfy the inquiring and not very credu- 
 lous spirit of modern times, which fell back upon an explanation 
 which appeared so much the more acceptable since it was found 
 to have been already admitted in pagan antiquity. It is what is 
 called evlujnerism, from the name of its author, Evhemerus, a wit 
 of the Cyrenaic school, who lived at the court of the Macedonian 
 king Cassander in the second half of the fourth century before our 
 era. Before his time, certain philosophers of the Ionian school 
 had already traced some lines of the system to which his name 
 is attached. Its tendency was to bring all histories concerning 
 gods, goddesses and deified heroes, to the proportions of real but 
 terrestial and common events. The gods were formerly only 
 men who had powerfully impressed the imagination by their 
 strength, or by their conquests, or by their superior wisdom, and 
 after their death they had been deified. Thus Jupiter was an 
 ancient king of Crete, and the proof of this is, that they show 
 in that island his cradle and his tomb. The same method was 
 applied to all the Hellenic gods, and nothing seemed more simple 
 than to submit all the mythologies of the world to this convenient 
 rationalism. 
 
 Among the moderns, also, evhemerism counted its partizans, 
 especially in the eighteenth century, and even since. Certain 
 mental affinities explain this momentary success. Evhemerus 
 is to us one of the ancients ; to his contemporaries he was a 
 free thinker, emancipated from vulgar superstitions ; in reality, 
 his was one of those too ingenious minds who understand every- 
 thing except the simplicity of those ages which were governed 
 by spontaneity. If he had had more knowledge of religions, he 
 
THE MYTH. 105 
 
 would have known that the Cretan Jupiter, born and dying, is in 
 the same category with many other divinities of Western Asia, 
 whose worshippers in no way concerned themselves with the kings 
 who may have reigned in Crete. He would have known that this 
 Jupiter, bearing everywhere almost the same name, is found in 
 Italy, in Asia Minor, in Germany, even on the banks of the Indus. 
 And what a paradox to explain the origin of gods by the deification 
 of men ! As if, in deifying a conqueror, a hero, a sovereign, it 
 was not done with the idea of making him equal to existing 
 gods ! In reality, this explanation explains nothing, and it has, 
 moreover, tlie misfortune of being extremely commonplace. 
 ^Esthetics, no less than science and reason, protest against it. 
 
 As this system, although banished from serious mythological 
 science, has yet some partizans, conscious and unconscious, we 
 will show, by an example easy of comprehension, what becomes 
 of the most tragic myths when the method of Evhemerus is 
 applied to them. 
 
 All the world has heard of the miserable Ixion, who perpe- 
 tually revolves in the depths of Tartarus on his burning wheel. 
 He endures this frightful fate, says the Greek mythology, as a 
 punishment for the sacrilege he committed in aspiring to the 
 favours of Juno (Hera), the wife of the king of the gods. Jupiter, 
 who sought to prove him, created the phantom Nephele (cloud), 
 giving her a likeness to Juno. Blinded by his passion, Ixion 
 fell into the snare, and thus drew upon himself his terrible chas- 
 tisement. To us, through comparison with other analogous 
 myths, the sense of this myth is transparent. Wherever in 
 mythology it is a question of a burning wheel which turns, it is 
 certain that it has to do with the sun. This sun is often under- 
 stood, in the myths which concern him, as a great criminal, 
 because he appears to be so very unfortunate. According to a 
 certain set of ideas, he must indeed have committed a great fault 
 to have deserved the punishment which consists in revolving 
 perpetually, without knowing a day's respite. Later, these 
 representations of an unhappy, guilty and punished sun, were 
 
106 THE MYTH. 
 
 transferred to Tartarus. But that in no way changes the 
 original meaning of the myth. Ixion, the sun, passionately 
 loves the cloud which he gilds, which he embraces with his 
 rays, which he would bear away with him to his nocturnal 
 retreat. But this cloud is only a vapour, which is dissipated 
 under his embrace, and he remains in the presence of angry 
 heaven, which condemns him to turn and to burn for ever. 
 Quite a tragic poem might be disentangled from this old drama- 
 tization of a natural phenomenon. 
 
 Let us now see what this becomes in one of the latest works, 
 written from the evhemerist point of view, Le Didionnaire de la 
 Fable, by FrM. No^l (1823, fourth edition) : 
 
 "It is not diflicult here to separate the historical from the 
 fabulous. A king, surnamed Jupiter, generously accorded hos- 
 pitality to Ixion, who ungratefully returned this benefit by black 
 perfidy, and fell in love with the queen. But the king put a 
 slave named ISTephele in his wife's place, and was no longer in 
 doubt as to the criminal intentions of his guest. Ixion, having 
 subsequently boasted of having rendered the queen susceptible of 
 his desires, was banished from the court, and led afterwards a 
 wandering, sad, restless life, hated and despised by all the world." 
 Here is one of the most tragic conceptions of Greek mythology 
 transformed into a petty story in the style of the Decameron. 
 
 Evhemerism is a system of absurd explanations, and we must 
 resolutely reject its principles if we would understand anything 
 of the old mythologies. It was after its absurdity and emptiness 
 had been guaged that attention was turned to another explana- 
 tion, which had at least this in its favour, that it supposed as 
 much simplicity as imagination on the part of the inventors of 
 myths. 
 
 Let us imagine a period in the history of the human mind in 
 which the imagination shall be sufficiently lively, and general 
 ignorance sufficiently great, for the phenomena of nature to pro- 
 duce the effect of animated scenes : nothing more is needed for 
 myths to appear. If, for example, the sun appears like some 
 
THE MYTH. 107 
 
 being, the red clouds of evening like a herd of great red oxen, 
 and the spring vegetation like a lovely young girl, does it require 
 an extraordinary effort of imagination to fancy things thus : the 
 sun is a herdsman, for he has a drove of oxen which he feeds in 
 the evening ; at the same time he loves the fresh spring, and he 
 prospers in his love ; but this love is fatal to the poor child, who 
 dies under the caresses of her celestial lover ? Here is the central 
 idea of a complete solar myth. 
 
 Or, again, if we know a large rock named Actteon, which the 
 dog-days, like so many devouring animals, despoil of its verdure, 
 burn and destroy, and if this great rock projects its shadow across 
 the trees over the neighbouring river at the hour when the moon, 
 Diana, with her silver bow, refreshes herself in the clear waters 
 far from indiscreet gazers, shall we have great difficulty in pic- 
 turing to ourselves the mythological scene which shows us the 
 too curious Actaeon torn by the dogs which the enraged Diana 
 urged against the bold youth who had surprised her 
 
 Le soir, un pied dans I'eau?^ 
 
 The whole question is reduced, then, to knowing if there was, 
 in fact, an epoch of the human mind in which tilings could pre- 
 sent themselves to it in this manner, — in which it could see in 
 nature so many little and great dramas, which were at bottom 
 only poetic interpretations of nature, but which it took for so 
 many positive realities. 
 
 Such a question is solved beforehand by the very existence of 
 myths ; only it must be understood that they are not born all at 
 once and complete. The developed and complete myths were pre- 
 ceded by simple viythic elements going back to the primary intui- 
 tions of the imagination. A somewhat complicated geometrical 
 theorem is demonstrated by means of anterior simpler theorems ; 
 these, in their turn, are only the methodical applications of defi- 
 nitions and of axioms previously laid down. It is the same with 
 myths. In each of them we discover the elements of which it 
 
 ^ Alfred cle Musset, Ballade a la Lime. 
 
108 THE MYTH. 
 
 is composed. Primitive humanity, reduciug all visible pheno- 
 mena to the analogy of animal or human life, translated its 
 impressions into the forms which experience suggested. To it 
 the lightning was sometimes the coils of a gigantic fiery serpent, 
 sometimes the spear, or the hammer, or the sword, which a 
 celestial warrior, hidden behind the storm-cloud, brandished. 
 In the thunder it heard the war-cry or the terrible anger of the 
 hero, or the sound of his chariot and horses, or the roaring of a 
 lion, or the bellowing of a colossal bull. In the sounds of the 
 wind it recognized the howling of a pack of hounds, urged on by 
 mysterious huntsmen ; while, according to the populations and 
 their chief occupation, the clouds which passed across the distant 
 sky were milch cows or lambs, grazing under the care of their 
 shepherd, the sun, or the boats of the celestial fishermen, or even 
 fish, or swans, or aerial dragons. According as the storm and its 
 floods were looked upon as fertilizing or devastating, they sug- 
 gested either the idea of the marriage of heaven and earth, or of 
 war between the bright and beneficent heaven and the monsters 
 of darkness issuing from black depths. These are so many 
 simple mythical elements.-^ 
 
 There is as yet nothing specifically religious in these poetic 
 imaginations ; but they hasten the moment in which the spirit 
 of man will feel itself in the presence of celestial spirits analo- 
 gous to itself, its superiors in power and masters of its destiny, 
 Man is led by that means to think that there exists a relation 
 between these spirits and himself, and to behave himself in the 
 way which the feeling of this relation would suggest. A lively 
 interest induces him to concentrate his curious attention on their 
 manifestations. He associates them, he groups them, he sees 
 those who seek his favour or those who oppose him, those who 
 love him or those wdio hate him ; and he is henceforth in the 
 presence of dramas, joyful or sad, which he amplifies indefi- 
 nitely. If especially this s23ontaneous work goes on in the 
 midst of a race of lively, ingenious, poetical spirit, stories of 
 ^ Comp. Pfleiderer, ReligionsjpMlosojihie : Berlin, 1878. 
 
THE MYTH. 109 
 
 divinities of every kind will be innumerable. Many will relate 
 to the same natural object understood in different ways. The 
 sun may be described as beautiful, bright, devouring; as a purifier, 
 a warrior, a conqueror of monsters, as irresistible, a great travel- 
 ler, &c. Thus we discover him in all the myths of which Phoebus, 
 Helios, Phaeton, Esculapius, Perseus, Bellerophon, Hercules, 
 Theseus and many others are the heroes. The moon, in the same 
 mythology, is simultaneously presented to us as Artemis, Selene, 
 Hecate, lo, Pasiphae, Europa, each of wliom has her history. 
 Uranos, Kronos, Jupiter, are all three heaven, but heaven dif- 
 ferently understood, as sheltering, or as ripening, or as shining. 
 The distinction between the visible object and the personal spirit, 
 which it is believed may be discerned in it by detaching at a 
 certain point this spirit from its base material, opens a still 
 larger field for dramatic invention.^ 
 
 But this detachment leads to another very important result. 
 Logically, the dramatic representation ought to begin again each 
 time that the phenomenon which gives rise to it recurs. It is 
 not so. It becomes the description of an event which has hap- 
 pened once, at a certain moment of time, on a point of space, 
 and which will not happen again. In reality, Hercules ought 
 to die each time that the sun disappears amid the flames of his 
 setting, as though he would force himself away from the black 
 tunic of clouds which obscure him. 
 
 But in the mythology it is only once that the sun, the van- 
 quisher of monsters and the liberator, consumes himself in order 
 to escape from the tortures which the tunic of Dejanira causes 
 him to endure. Each time that in the freshening breeze which 
 precedes the dawn the thousand stars of the firmament grow pale 
 
 ^ As an example, the well-known myth of Pallas Athene associates a certain number 
 of elements accepted beforehand : the dark sky is a sick man ; the clap of thunder is 
 a blow from a hatchet or hammer dealt by a divine blacksmith ; the pure light which 
 follows the storm comes from the face of heaven looking like a bright young virgin ; 
 the shield which she like her father bears is the fringed cloud by which she is preceded ; 
 light is the spear with which the divine virgin victoriously repels the monster, &c. 
 See how, from this association of simple elements, a dramatic myth may arise. 
 
110 THE MYTH. 
 
 and seem like so many closing eyes, Hermes with his l5n:'e lulls 
 to sleep Argus with his thousand eyes watching the moon lo, too 
 well loved by the shining heaven. Each time that the purple 
 heaven sends down its golden rain on the gloomy earth which it 
 fertilizes, the king of the gods has found his beloved Danae. But 
 no : mythologically all this happened only once, and this is one of 
 the laws of frequent application in the history of religious ideas, 
 this condensation in one fact, accomplished once for all, of things 
 or of experiences which in reality recur very often. 
 
 That being granted, we can understand that the myth may 
 lend itself to ideas other than those which are furnished by 
 visible nature considered as animated. A natural form, at one 
 moment of the history of the human mind, and of representative 
 and theoretic thought, it will serve also for the expression of ideas, 
 of principles and of observations suggested by other experiences 
 than those derived from visible nature, and of moral truths already 
 become philosophical. Thence a second class of myths, less ancient 
 than the first, inasmuch as they denote more experience and reflec- 
 tion. This is why we see them appear specially in monotheistic 
 religions which have a tendency to banish the mythology of nature. 
 The Old Testament contains several, notably the myth of Eden, 
 which brings together and reduces to one single event the general 
 conditions of the development of the moral nature of man. The 
 myth of the mysterious wrestling of Jacob with God belongs to 
 the same category. Others have in view the explanation of a 
 fact bearing vipon human destiny, like the narrative of the Tower 
 of Babel, which seeks to account for the diversity of languages ; 
 or the justification of a reform or of a religious prescription, like 
 the myth of the sacrifice of Abraham, which clearly tends to 
 destroy the custom of the immolation of the first-born. These 
 myths also evidently present the character of reduction to a 
 single incident of that wliich is continually occurring. AVe find 
 this always. The purpose which inspires them is didactic rather 
 than representative, and they may serve as the transition between 
 the myth properly so called and history. The Greek mythology 
 
THE MYTH. Ill 
 
 also includes myths of this kind. The most celebrated is that of 
 Prometheus, the inventor of fire, the promoter of civilization and 
 of human progress, the object therefore of celestial anger, and 
 tortured by a fearful punishment. Prometheus is the personifi- 
 cation of the p-amantha, that instrument which dates from such 
 high antiquity, and which is still in the present day used in India 
 to obtain the sacred fire.^ But personified, the myth expresses 
 just the same idea which we have already remarked in Genesis, 
 that human progress is a usurpation of the divine province, and 
 that he who promotes it pays by new tortures for the almost 
 sacrilegious boldness of which he has been guilty. 
 
 These are the considerations which lead us to give this 
 definition of the myth : 
 
 The myth is either the description of a natural phenomenon 
 considered as the exponent of a divine drama, or else the incor- 
 poration of a moral idea in a dramatic narrative. In both cases, 
 that which is permanent or frequent in nature and in humanity 
 is brought together into one event accomplished once for all, and 
 the drama, although invented, is looked upon as real. 
 
 This last characteristic, the attribution of the character of 
 reality to narratives of pure imagination, is that which is essen- 
 tial to the myth. It is that which chiefly distinguishes it 
 from the fable and the allegory. The fable is also a dramatic 
 narrative, in which a moral idea, a truth derived from experience, 
 is found incorporated; but it is invented with a purpose, and 
 propounded without any claim to pass as a reality. When 
 Lafontaine relates the dialogue of the Fox and the Crow, it does 
 not occur to his mind, any more than to that of his readers, that 
 fox and crow have ever really held such discourse. The allegory 
 is also a work of methodic reflection, composed in full conscious- 
 ness of its imaginary character. By using prolonged and con- 
 nected analogies, it explains other things than those which it 
 
 ^ This is a block of wood pierced with a hole, into which a stick is introduced ; 
 a thong round the stick allows it to turn rapidly i^erpendicularly to this hole. The 
 friction disengages great heat, and the wood li^jhts. 
 
112 TEE MYTH. 
 
 narrates. The parable is itself a kind of allegory, and neither 
 the author nor the hearer is the dupe of this method. The myth, 
 on the contrary, is a work of credulous simplicity, of which the 
 shell and the kernel are inseparable in the minds of those who 
 relate it, as in the minds of those who hear it. It is we moderns 
 who, in our need of analyzing everything, distinguish in it idea 
 and form. In remote antiquity this idea and this form were one. 
 
 "We must not be astonished if we come across myths which 
 surprise us by their ingenious direction or even by their profound 
 philosophy. This is often the character of spontaneous products 
 of the human mind. The language which we speak is a philo- 
 sophic marvel, and we can scarcely surmise the period in which 
 we began to lisp it ; no more could our ancestors who bequeathed 
 it to us. The human mind when it works thus spontaneously 
 is a philosopher, just as the bee is a mathematician when it con- 
 structs its cells, as the beaver is an architect when he builds his 
 hut. We must, it is true, distrust any tendency to see in myths 
 anything but what is there, and to transform them into depths 
 of wisdom. The charm which is peculiarly their own belongs 
 precisely to their simplicity, to the absence of critical reflection. 
 It was a gross error of the learned to imagine, as they too often 
 did, that the myths had been methodically composed by judicious 
 priests, wise men, or primitive philosophers, who sought to teach 
 the multitude that which otherwise they could not have under- 
 stood. The unknown authors of the myths were the first be- 
 lievers in them. They were more poetic than the rest ; that is 
 all the difference. 
 
 When once the general idea of myth had been grasped by 
 science, people became infatuated by it. Soon nothing but myths 
 were seen from one end of history to the other. It sufficed that 
 a narrative presented mythical elements or parts in order to 
 find in it only a myth from the beginning to the end. Thus, 
 though Strauss never committed this extravagance, the forlorn- 
 hope of the Hegelian Left went so far as to deny any kind of 
 reality to the evangelical history, and contended that the very 
 
THE MYTH. 113 
 
 person of Jesns Christ was simply the fruit of mythological ima- 
 gination. This kind of exaggeration was very suitably met by 
 the witty pamphlet which undertook to demonstrate that the 
 application of the mythic theory to the history of the First 
 Empire resulted in proving that Napoleon I. never existed. In 
 fact, it said, all this history is only a solar myth. The conqueror 
 comes from an island — that is to say, from the sea — disappears 
 in another island in the far West. His mother is named Lsetitia, 
 a symbolic name which may designate the dawn. He had twelve 
 marshals, who are the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Setting out 
 very low, he rapidly rose to his zenith. In his character of solar 
 hero, he fought great battles, accomplished wonders, gained the 
 most splendid victories ; but, finally, he came to an unfortunate 
 end. In one word, this pamphlet is the caricature of an exagge- 
 ration ; but it warns us that it is well to determine the signs by 
 which the mythic character of a narrative may be recognized. 
 
 There are some myths which immediately declare themselves 
 as such. When a narrative, formed in a time in which there 
 were no historical documents, is composed of things evidently 
 impossible, absurd, and contrary to all experience — when, never- 
 theless, it has for ages been a part of a whole body of beliefs, and 
 it is possible to interpret it by connecting it with some pheno- 
 menon of visible or moral observation — we cannot hesitate as to 
 its nature. 
 
 In the second place, a narrative apparently mythic must be 
 received as something other than a myth, when we possess docu- 
 ments or monuments contemporaneous, or nearly so, which attest 
 its historical reality. This does not indicate that all that it 
 contains is historical ; but it is the business of criticism to dis- 
 tinguish that which bears the impress of reality from that which 
 does not bear it. 
 
 In the third place, myths form a very numerous family, spread 
 over the entire globe, but presenting everywhere many analogies. 
 When, for example, in Greece, in Italy, in Gaul, in Germany, in 
 India, in Mesopotamia, in America, in Polynesia, &c., we find at 
 
 I 
 
114 THE MYTH. 
 
 least one traditional narrative which makes the moon the sister, 
 or the betrothed, or the jealous lover, or the victim, or the rival, 
 of the sun, it would certainly be lost labour to seek the prince 
 and princess whose history could give birth to this way of look- 
 ing at the two stars. There is a sort of mythic language which 
 is very quickly learned, and the modifications of which we can 
 follow through space just as the philologer follows with his eye 
 tlie transformations of a root reproduced in a whole group of 
 languages. 
 
 The most difficult cases are evidently those of narratives of 
 mythic appearance, which come to us even in the midst of his- 
 torical epochs and of communities in which the mythological 
 genius was, we might say, extinct. The best method to follow 
 in such a case is to assure ourselves of the reality of facts ante- 
 cedent and consequent to that the character of which is doubtful ; 
 then to see whether, the latter being admitted, we can pass 
 logically, by a natural transition, from these antecedents to these 
 consequents. It is the internal logic of history which serves in 
 such cases as a touchstone. For example, the moral and religious 
 state of the Jewish people in the times which immediately 
 precede the evangelic history is well known. The formation 
 of the Christian Church in the years which follow it — a forma- 
 tion proceeding from the simultaneous, sometimes mutually 
 hostile, labours of the direct apostles of Jesus on the one hand, 
 and of the apostle Paul on the other — is also an incontestable and 
 documentary fact. Now it is easy to show that, in order to go 
 from one to the other, it is necessary to pass through a series of 
 intermediate points which confirm, not the details (these are a 
 separate study), but the main outlines, the essential features, of 
 the history of Jesus. This history may thus contain mythic parts, 
 but as a whole it is real. 
 
 We might offer the counter-proof by asking ourselves what 
 degree of reality ought to he attributed to the narrative of the 
 Acts, according to which the first disciples were unexpectedly 
 invested on the day of Pentecost with the faculty of speaking 
 
THE MYTH. 115 
 
 all the languages of the world without having learned them. 
 Nothing which precedes and nothing which follows the event 
 related is of a nature to confirm its historical reality. 
 
 The mytJi and the legend are often confounded, and, in fact, 
 they touch each other very nearly. The primary sense of the 
 word legend is, " that which may be read." It was thus that in 
 the middle ages they preferred to designate the lives of the 
 saints, several compilations of which existed. The most cele- 
 brated is the Golden Legend of Jacques de Voragine. Then, and 
 not without cause, the legend came to mean a history, tradi- 
 tional, pojDular, marvellous, but more or less imaginary, and 
 having no serious title to the acceptance of enlightened men. 
 In this sense we may say that the legend contains the myth. 
 The latter is in its nature legendary. But the legend properly 
 so called seeks, above all, to interest, to astonish ; it is not 
 necessarily dictated, like the myth, by the unconscious desire of 
 interpreting a natural phenomenon, or of giving expression to 
 a moral truth. There are mythic legends containing mythic 
 elements which they have picked up by the way. Thus the 
 legend of the house of Lusignan has been incorporated with the 
 poetic myth of the fairy Melusina, a lunar myth which dates 
 from high antiquity. 
 
 There are, in like manner, "mythic histories" — that is to say, 
 histories relating a veritable fact, but joining to it mythic ele- 
 ments or even entire myths. Thus the history of the emancipa- 
 tion of primitive Switzerland is enriched with the incident ot 
 AVilliam Tell, the skilful archer, who is no other than a solar 
 hero. It is surprising to find this romance in Scandinavian 
 countries, whence in all probability it came to Helvetia, brought 
 by an immigration from the North. 
 
 Let us remark, finally, that the faculty of mythic produc- 
 tion is sure to decrease in proportion as reflection and a spirit of 
 generalization are strengthened. Modern races are as barren as 
 can possibly be imagined in mythology. As, however, the dif- 
 ference is enormous between the intellectual processes of the 
 
 i2 
 
116 THE MYTH. 
 
 instructed few and those of the ignorant masses, we can esta- 
 blish the existence, even in epochs relatively modern, of the out- 
 lines of myth, if not of entire myths. The Wandering Jew and 
 Pope Joan may serve as examples — one personifying the lament- 
 able destiny of the Jewish people, the other giving satirical 
 expression to the sense of scandal aroused by the learned cor- 
 ruption of the Pontifical court. It is not only Germany who 
 believes in her emperor Barbarossa, asleep with his knights in a 
 cavern, whence he shall one day come to restore his empire. In 
 our own campaigns, the immortality and the certain return of 
 the first Napoleon were for a long time believed in. In 1848, it 
 was not impossible to find peasants who still had faith in them. 
 
II. 
 
 THE SYMBOL AND THE EITE. 
 
 What we have said as to the myth shows that it owes its 
 appearance to that faculty which distinguishes the human mind, 
 and which we designate as the analogical intuition. 
 
 Analogy is the relation which allows the association of two 
 things distinct, irreducible the one into the other, resembling 
 each other very remotely, often even not resembling each other 
 at all, and which nevertheless produce upon us impressions so 
 similar that the sight or the idea of the one immediately arouses 
 a thought of the other. Analogical intuition is the faculty of 
 perceiving this kind of relation. Animals do not appear to 
 possess it. They may be sensible of resemblances ; and many 
 implements of the chase — not to speak of the artifices of the 
 savage, who so well imitates the gait and appearance of certain 
 animals that he glides into the midst of them without their per- 
 ceiving him — are founded on this possibility. But the analogy 
 escapes them. Never, for example, does a stream suggest to them 
 the idea of a serpent, nor a ray of sunshine that of an arrow.^ 
 
 Man, on the contrary, never ceases to discern analogies between 
 the most dissimilar things. His language is full of them ; 
 and all those expressions which rhetoricians have classed under 
 the name of t^-opes or figures of speecJi rest solely on analogi- 
 cal intuition. A " heart of stone," a " honeyed tongue," the 
 " collision of interests," the " torrent of passions," &c., are some 
 examples taken by chance which could be indefinitely multiplied. 
 
 ^ If tbe dog bays at the moon, is it not simply because he takes it for a person, from 
 its likeness to a human head, and that he deems it a great impertinence on the part 
 of the moon thus to wander through the dwellings and the grounds of which he haa 
 charge ? This is an illusion of resemblance, and not of analogy. 
 
118 TEE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 
 
 It must even be admitted that this facility of perceiving ana- 
 logies may go too far. There are some which have struck the 
 human mind only at certain periods and in certain countries, 
 and which are very diificult to comprehend. When, for example, 
 the poet of Canticles likens, with a view to compliment her, the 
 nose of the Shulamite woman to a tower which overlooks the way 
 to Damascus, it is difficult for us to see the relationship which 
 may exist between the two terms of the comparison.^ 
 
 It is analogy, we have seen, which has furnished the mythic 
 elements, the grouping and association of which under a drama- 
 tized form have made complete myths. It is analogy also which 
 gives rise to the symbol, undeniably akin to the myth, always 
 distinct and capable even of surviving it. For there are purified 
 religions whence the myth has disappeared ; while there are 
 none, and we can scarcely conceive of any, which could dispense 
 with the symbol. 
 
 A symbol is an act or a thing which represents by analogy 
 either an object of faith or the various shades of religious sentiment. 
 
 Thus the act of kneeling to pray, or of striking the breast when 
 confessing sin, or of crowning oneself with flowers in order to 
 present to the deities sacrifices of thank-offerings — these all are 
 symbols corresponding to certain religious dispositions or expres- 
 sing them. In like manner, a serpent gnawing its tail, the image 
 of the infinite, which has neither beginning nor end ; a statue of 
 Ganesa with an elephant's trunk, the elephant being the wisest 
 of animals, as Ganesa is the wisest of deities ; the fetich of the 
 Negro, which he paints white on the day wlien he commemorates 
 the deceased, because, in the belief of the Negro, white is the 
 colour of departed spirits, — are all so many symbols expressing 
 beliefs or representing their object. 
 
 ^ We may observe here that the language of gallantry is an old offender, and that 
 the woman whose attractions accurately reproduced the descriptions given of them in 
 its refined style (the figure of a wasp, a brow like ivory, a neck like a swan, &c.) would 
 be a perfect monster. In Greece, if we may believe certain epithets, it was a point of 
 beauty to have eyes like an o.\, and the young Arabs gallantly compare their mistresses 
 to a " camel." 
 
THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 119 
 
 What is the psychological origin of the religious symbol ? It 
 is connected with the need which man experiences of materializing 
 and of expressing his impressions, his sentiments and his convic- 
 tions. We have already seen that it is to this tendency, joined 
 to the physical conformation of man and to his social aptitudes, 
 that the faculty of language is due. In fact, language is a sign, 
 and forms part of the same family as gesture, expression of fea- 
 ture, screaming, crying, laughing, the posture of the body, &c. 
 Man, by nature, is expansive. If prudence does not forbid him 
 — often, indeed, when it does — he finds pleasure in giving to his 
 feelings a corresponding external form, or that which seems to 
 him such. It is to that end that he sings, that he dances, that 
 he draws, and that he adorns himself; and the more nearly he 
 approaches the state of nature, the more imperious is this need. 
 It is also intensified by social life. Man delights in showing 
 himself before others and among others. He loves to propagate 
 in their souls the sentiments by which he is moved, and to feel 
 in himself the sympathetic propagation of sentiments which 
 animate them. The enthusiasm of crowds when they are under 
 the influence of a common emotion ; the contagious effect of 
 feeling entertained by a group hitherto under much restraint ; 
 the lively pleasure which we experience at the sight of a spectacle 
 of which a great number of our kind are witnesses with us — 
 these are so many consequences and confirmations of this law of 
 our nature. 
 
 Therefore, given the religious sentiment, with its diverse 
 shades, with its intense vividness, it was certain to engender 
 signs of manifestation, either individual or collective. It must 
 seek to find vent in, and to strengthen itself by, sympathy. This 
 it is which has produced symbols. 
 
 The word symbol has its history.^ In ancient Greece, the 
 words and agreed signs by which those initiated into the mys- 
 
 ^ From the Greek (jvpfSoXov, from crvv, with, and (3aX\en>, to throw, to throw 
 together, and, by extension of meaning, that which is admitted by a group or an 
 iissociation, and that which represents their unity. 
 
120 THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 
 
 teries recognized each other were thus called. Later, the same 
 word served to designate the dogmatic formularies recognized by 
 the adherents of the same religious society (Apostolic symbol, 
 Nicsean symbol, Lutheran and Eeformed symbols). In actual 
 language, it designates any act or any object in which we agree 
 to recognize a religious or moral signification. 
 
 Eeligion must naturally give scope for a great number of sym- 
 bols. We know that it is essentially synthetic. It seeks to 
 reconcile the human mind with the non-ego which is opposed to 
 it, by means of its union with the higher Mind which it discerns 
 in things ; and man loves to cherish the consciousness of this 
 union. Thence, that which gives it substance, a sort of visible and 
 tangible reality, that which helps man to realize its certainty, 
 ought equally to give him pleasure. By symbol, man gains the 
 assurance that he is in harmony with the Being whom he wor- 
 sliips. In a foreign land, do we not dearly love to see the flag of 
 our own country waving ? Nevertheless, this strip of cloth adds 
 nothing to the liveliness of our patriotism. No matter. These 
 colours of the absent country, by means of all with which they are 
 associated in our hearts, bring her before our eyes, and awaken 
 the feeling of our union with her. The simple shaking of hands 
 is a symbol of mutual goodwill, frequently a deceptive symbol, 
 as all symbols may be. But that is neither its fault nor theirs. 
 In its original intention the symbol is always sincere. 
 
 There will thus be in religion symbols of submission, such as 
 the act of bowing, of uncovering the head, of kneeling, of pros- 
 tration, &c., all attitudes expressing with more or less energy the 
 dependence which the being worshipping recognizes as defining 
 his relation with the Being worshipped. Before him, he becomes 
 small, humble, grovelling in the dust. 
 
 There will also be symbols of religious grief, such as would 
 cause him to clothe himself in mourning garments, or to cover 
 himself with sordid vestments, or to put ashes on his head, in 
 accordance with the experience that the man who is a prey to 
 violent grief neglects himself, and pays no attention to the 
 
THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 121 
 
 manner in which he is clothed. It is this which secures to 
 fasting also a great place in religious symbolism ; at least, among 
 the associations of ideas which have led to the adoption of this 
 widely-diffused symbol, one of the most frequent, perhaps the 
 most general, has been the desire to express sorrow. A man 
 absorbed by grief disdains nourishment. 
 
 There are, on the contrary, symbols of religious joy. Thus in 
 many religions we see the worshippers deck themselves with 
 leaves or flowers, wreathe the sacred places, and abandon them- 
 selves to joyous dances. There were many of these symbols in 
 the great mythological fetes celebrating the return of the sun 
 above the horizon, or that of spring. In those times especially 
 in which morality and religion were yet quite distinct things, 
 these outbursts of sympathetic communion with resuscitated 
 nature extended even to orgies, revels, and the letting loose of 
 the grossest appetites. 
 
 We ought to mention also the symbols of purity or of purifi- 
 cation. The water of baptism, which was administered in early 
 times by immersion, and not as now, except among the Baptists, 
 by simple aspersion, represented the complete purification of the 
 neophyte. In the same category, again, we may mention the light 
 of lamps or of wax tapers, fire in general, white vestments and 
 white flowers, such as the lily, the orange-flower, and yet again 
 the sheep, with its white fleece newly washed, &c. 
 
 Let us further notice the symbolism which seeks to express 
 the sentiment of mystery, of the unknown, of the incomprehen- 
 sible. In ancient initiations this was very prominent. In certain 
 religions, the worshipper approached the divinity only with his 
 head enveloped in linen many times folded, in order to express 
 that he knew himself to be incapable of fathoming the unfathom- 
 able, and that he abandoned all pretence of submitting to human 
 reason the august and terrible power whose protection he soli- 
 cited. We find a feeble echo of this order of ideas in the pre- 
 ference which is accorded in the present day to religious edifices 
 in which a mysterious obscure light reigns, and in which the 
 
122 THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 
 
 coloured glass windows at once diminish and idealize the light 
 of day. 
 
 There are a large number of animal and vegetable symbols 
 which occupy a great place in mythological religions. The trees 
 which remain green throughout the year, which thus triumph 
 over the causes of destruction and of death to which the others 
 succumb — the ivy, the myrtle, the box, the mistletoe, the laurel, 
 &c. — seemed to reveal a divine power, or to be specially favoured 
 by the gods. Thence the idea of revering them at first as divine 
 beings, then simply as symbols and attributes of those who were 
 regarded as the source or the patrons of the natural life — Dyo- 
 nisius, Helios, Aphrodite, &c. The Israelite, rebellious against 
 monotheism, preferred to sacrifice " under the green trees." By 
 a close analogy, the pomegranate was consecrated to Hera, or 
 Juno, as a symbol of fecundity, and the crown of oak-leaves to 
 Mars as a symbol of vigour. We know the part which the 
 mistletoe played in the religion of our ancestors. As the depo- 
 sitary of vital or divine force, it was in their eyes a sort of 
 panacea, a remedy for all evils. We know also that there were 
 animals placed in relation to certain divinities. There is even 
 ground for supposing that before representing the gods under 
 human form, the ancients had attributed to them animal forms. 
 Thus the fish-gods of Syria and of Babylon are the gods of 
 fecundity and of multiplication. If the owl is the bird of Athene, 
 it is because, with its round, glaucous, glistening eyes, enabling 
 it to see clearly in the dark, this bird is associated with the idea 
 of penetrating light like that of the dawn, or that which shines 
 again after a storm. If Hera, or Juno, the spouse of Heaven, 
 has for her symbol the peacock, with its starry tail, it is because 
 an analogy was seen between this appendage of the beautiful 
 blue bird and the sky which at night, hiding its body of blue, 
 displays its constellated orbs in infinity. 
 
 But of all symbols, the most interesting are those which we 
 shall call symbols of imitation, by which the worshipper seeks to 
 imitate the divinity in order the better to unite himself to it, by 
 
THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 123 
 
 living, so to speak, as the divinity himself lives. This is the 
 beginning of a very special and very important chapter of reli- 
 gious history. We see already appearing in the distance those 
 identifications with the divinity of which the communions, dif- 
 fering in name as well as in meaning, Mexican, Buddhist, Chris- 
 tian, are the various forms. Here tlie symbol begins to lose its 
 character of a representative sign, in order to become the means 
 of the realization of the union desired and enjoyed by the religious 
 sentiment. 
 
 For example, in certain mythologies it has been observed that 
 all the stars move, turning round the earth and following their 
 regular courses. Nothing more is wanted for these movements 
 of the stars to be likened to a rhythmic and complicated dance. 
 The consequence will be a religious dance in honour of " the 
 army of the heavens." The dance will develop in a manner 
 apparently entangled, but nevertheless methodical. There were 
 several sacred dances having this character of imitation of the 
 movements of the stars ; among others, that of the Labyrinth, 
 which was danced in Crete and at Delos. The labyrinth itself, 
 with its thousand circuits, was a symbol of the starry heaven, 
 and the dance of the same name must have been a sort of ani- 
 mated representation of it. Elsewhere the sun is likened to a 
 burning wheel, which revolves and travels from one end to the 
 other of the heavens and of the year. It is while revolving thus 
 that he diffuses over the earth life and fertility. Well, in many 
 places they have tried to imitate the sun. A common wheel, 
 wrapped in straw, has been set on fire and made to roll all burn- 
 ing across the country in order to increase its fruitfulness. It is 
 not very long since this custom was still practised in the plains 
 of Poitou, and a yet shorter time since, each year in the spring, 
 the vine-dressers on the banks of the Mosel made a wheel of this 
 kind to roll from the top to the bottom of their vineyards in the 
 direction of the river. If it reached the water, and the flame was 
 there extinguished, that was the presage of an abundant vintage. 
 
124 THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 
 
 as if the sun had promised to shine that year throughout the 
 course of the fine season. 
 
 In otlier places we find in full paganism an obscure and rude 
 tendency to monotheism. It is maintained that the divinity is 
 not in reality either masculine or feminine, that it is of both 
 sexes or of neither. Thence arise monstrous symbols, mutila- 
 tions, or indescribable impurities. 
 
 We might prolong this list of symbols of imitation indefinitely. 
 If in the creed we find something which resembles a divine 
 drama, we may expect that the worship will reproduce some 
 indications of this drama which may even pass for its repetition. 
 On the anniversary of the death of Adonis, loved by Venus, who 
 was no other than the beautiful young sun of Spring put to 
 death by the fierce wild boar of Winter, the women, in their grief, 
 tore tlieir hair before the emblem of the young god prematurely 
 taken away ; they imitated Venus, and were ready to frolic in 
 the following spring, roving through the country like mad crea- 
 tures, when tliey had the certainty that he had come to life 
 again. In an order of ideas infinitely more elevated and purer, 
 we find an analogous i)henomenon in the stigmatists, like Francis 
 d'Assisi, who bore on their bodies the bleeding marks of the 
 crucifixion. In the last century, in those communities in which 
 Jansenism was dying out after a paroxysm of exaltation, one of 
 the most highly appreciated devotions was to have oneself cru- 
 cified like Christ. 
 
 The symbol, then, may lose its nature of emblem or of simple 
 analogy, and pretend to all the reality of that which at first it 
 only signified. It is this which engenders idolatry, which must 
 not be confounded, as it so often is, with polytheism, from which 
 it is very distinct. Idolatry consists essentially in the adoration 
 of the image as if it was the divine person itself. It is clear that 
 in the beginning every divine image of recent fabrication was 
 understood only as a symbol. It was little by little, on the 
 strength of rendering it divine honours, that the ignorant people 
 
THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 125 
 
 identified it with the real object of their worship. When we 
 think of the innumerable relics of which so many religions claim 
 to be in possession, it is inadmissible that bad faith, specula- 
 tion, silly credulity, could have succeeded in so many places in 
 propagating the absurd. We, at least, incline strongly to the belief 
 that many of these relics have been figurative representations or 
 symbols, and that, by the aid of ignorance, they have passed later 
 for realities. 
 
 Symbolism is, then, quite a language, as rich as it is varied, of 
 which we must learn in some sort the vocabulary and the gram- 
 mar if we would understand religions. Christianity has quite 
 as many symbols, especially under its Latin and Oriental forms, 
 as any other religion. If we had to analyze the Mass, we should 
 see that, with the exception of the sacrifice which occupies the 
 centre, everything in this ceremony is a succession of symbols, 
 from the vestment of the priest to the waving of the censer by 
 the children of the choir. 
 
 It is the symbol which has produced the form of w^orship, 
 because it is that which has made the rite. 
 
 A rite is an assemblage of symbols grouped round a religious 
 idea or a religious act, intended to enhance its solemn character 
 or to develop its meaning. Just as a myth is the grouping of 
 mythic elements associated under a dramatic form, in like man- 
 ner a rite is the grouping of several symbols converging towards 
 one central idea. Thus we have the rite of baptism, funereal 
 rites, sacrificial rites. EituaUsm is that tendency which consists 
 in attaching a very high value to the accomplishment of sym- 
 bolic ceremonies; while the opposite tendency, Puritanism, or 
 Spiritualism, seeks to re-act against this importance easily becom- 
 ing superstitious attributed to material symbols. Both tenden- 
 cies are equally natural. This explains why two men, both 
 sincerely religious, may entertain the most opposite opinions in 
 regard to the value of a form of worship. The pious Catholic 
 will find his edification, his religious nourishment, in the opulent 
 
126 THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 
 
 symbolism of his Cliurcli ; while the Calvinist turns away from 
 it with a sense of painful repulsion, as if it were a profanation. 
 
 Let us take, from the manner in which sacrifices were cele- 
 brated in ancient Rome, an example serving to show us how a 
 collection of symbols may form a rite. We leave on one side 
 the idea of sacrifice itself, which was not at all symbolical. But 
 all the externals with which it was surrounded were only sym- 
 bols. Thus the sacrificer was to be clothed in white — symbol of 
 j)urity. He was to be crowned with the leaves of a tree conse- 
 crated to the divinity to whom the victim was to be offered — 
 symbol of union with it. If the sacrifice was offered to obtain 
 some divine favour, the priest must go with his hair dishevelled, 
 his girdle untied, his feet naked, because he ought to present 
 himself as a suppliant. The animals offered must be of fine 
 quality, healthy and freshly washed — symbol of deference and 
 of decorum. They were ordinarily chosen from among those 
 which the divinity preferred, or which were consecrated to him, 
 so that at least, in order to enter by another way into his favour, 
 these animals may not be of those which he would immolate in 
 his anger. A herald commanded silence — a mark of deference 
 and of respect. The profane — that is to say, those who were 
 not in tbe ritual condition required in order to be present at 
 the ceremony without invalidating its efhcacy — were ordered to 
 withdraw. The priest threw over the victim a salt dough ; for salt 
 is a symbol of union, it prevents dissolution, and the dough is 
 the bread which is eaten with the flesh. It was necessary also 
 to offer drink, and a cup of wine was brought ; of this the offi- 
 ciating priest drank and made his assistants drink ; the rest he 
 poured on the head of the victim. That done, the fire was lighted 
 — symbol of purification. The victim was placed in front of the 
 altar, and the cultrarms, servant of the priest, killed it with one 
 blow of the axe. It was desirable that the victim should not 
 make any resistance when he was led up, otherwise his repug- 
 nance to approach the altar might have the appearance of revolt 
 
THE SYMBOL AND THE RITE. 127 
 
 against the divinity ; and for the same reason it was wished that 
 he should die without uttering any cry. His throat was imme- 
 diately cut ; his blood was received in cups, which were poured 
 out on the altar ; for the blood was the life properly so called. 
 Then they stretched the victim on the sacred table ; they skinned 
 it, they cut it up ; and that done, they either burned the whole, 
 in the idea that, ascending to heaven with the smoke, it was 
 transformed into celestial food, or they burned a part only, 
 sharing the rest between the sacrificer and his assistants. It was 
 thus a repast which they imagined themselves to be sharing with 
 the divinity. Finally came ablutions, liturgical formulae, and 
 dismission in due form. 
 
 We omit many other details. On this general canvas, many 
 other special symbolical ceremonies might be sketched, according 
 to the nature of the sacrifice or that of the god to whom it was 
 offered. We have said enough to show how a great number of 
 simple symbols have formed a whole, an organic whole — in one 
 word, a rite. If religious symbolism is a language, if simple 
 symbols correspond to the vocabulary and the grammar, we may 
 say that the rite is its syntax. 
 
 But we have seen how the symbol at length loses its purely 
 analogical character to become a positive reality, a means of 
 realizing the unity between man and the divinity. On the other 
 hand, there are objects and acts at first invested with an intrinsic 
 and concrete value, later preserved only as symbols. We now 
 proceed to study the origins and the meaning of that which has 
 too often been considered as a pure symbol, — of that which, on 
 the contrary, in the greater number of religions constitutes the 
 practical centre of the form of worship, and the means pre-emi- 
 nently of that union to which all religion aspires. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SACEIFICE. 
 
 All religions consider sacrifice, more or less transformed, as 
 pre-eminently the means of realizing the union of man with the 
 divinity. The only exceptions to this are the philosophical and 
 rationalistic religions, which place it in the same category as the 
 symbol ; but they count for very little in religious history. In 
 all polytheistic religions, the universality of sacrifice is as un- 
 questionable as its preponderance. In monotheistic religions it 
 is transformed, but it remains. Islamism, which perhaps of all 
 the monotheistic religions accords it the smallest place, has yet 
 its sacrifices in connection with the pilgrimage to Mecca and the 
 yearly feast of Bairam. Among the Israelites, we know with 
 what luxuriance of details the law determined the number, the 
 kind, the dates and the celebration of sacrifices. If, after the 
 destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, the Israelites no longer 
 sacrificed, it was because the same law strictly interdicted any 
 celebration of sacrifice elsewhere than in the temple ; but, in 
 theory, sacrifice always formed a part of the Jewish religion, and 
 in fact the Jewish Easter, the immolation of the Paschal lamb, is 
 a family sacrifice. Among Christians, the belief is general in 
 the sacrifice of Calvary, with which is connected the redemption 
 of the human race. Catholics think that they repeat it in each 
 Mass; and Protestants, who reject the idea of sacrifice in the Mass, 
 insist with redoubled zeal on the sacrificial Piederaption which 
 forms in some sort the nucleus of the Protestant orthodox theory. 
 
 Under all its forms, sacrifice is the offering to the divinity of 
 that which is considered likely to dispose him favourably towards 
 
THE SACRIFICE. 129 
 
 the offerer, or towards those to whom the offerer desires that 
 good should be done. 
 
 If we refer to our definition of religion, we may remember 
 that the human mind is religious through the feeling of a bond 
 which unites it to the divine spirit, and of which it loves to feel 
 the consciousness. 
 
 But man is not always sensible nor certain of this union, and 
 he likes to think that he may draw it closer. He may find that 
 it is weak — he seeks to fortify it ; that it is destroyed — he desires 
 to re-establish it. Already adoration, homage and prayer, meet 
 these various desires. But, in primitive times especially, man, 
 judging his divinities by himself, considered that words alone 
 did not merit a good gift from them. Tlience, and very naturally, 
 he determined to make them presents. 
 
 What shall he give to his divinities ? That which he likes 
 the best himself And as in primitive life, as with the savage 
 of the present day, the great pre-occupation, the fixed idea, is to 
 have something to eat — and next, good things to eat — the offerings 
 which man makes to his god are always fine fruit, cakes, honey, 
 wine, milk, butter, oil ; finally and specially, the flesh of animals. 
 It is thus that Genesis affords us a glimpse of the first offerings. 
 This is the point of departure of sacrifices ; and naturally, in 
 virtue of the same ideas, man will add to his alimentary gifts 
 offerin({s belonains^ to the domain of the other senses, such as 
 ornaments, flowers and perfumes. The Eed Indian, before setting 
 out for the chase or for war, lights his pipe, and blows his first 
 whiffs towards heaven, because, being a great lover of tobacco, 
 he believes that he is making himself agreeable to the great 
 Spirit by allowing him to inhale its vapours. For the same 
 reason elsewhere odorous resins, incense, myrrh, are burned. 
 But these offerings of perfumes are merely accessories beside the 
 offering of food, which is the principal. Euripides and Plato had 
 already remarked that the way to insinuate oneself into divine 
 favour was the same method which succeeded so well with the 
 
 K 
 
130 THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 great ones of the earth, Awpa 6eoi)S Tret^et, Swpa atSoiovs /Saa-tXrjas} 
 
 We find the same idea in the verses of Ovid on the similarity 
 of the mode of gaining favours in heaven and on earth : 
 
 Numera, crede mihi, capiunt hominesque deosque 
 Placatur donis Jupiter ipse datis.^ 
 
 But these satirical remarks belong, in Greece as in Eome, to 
 an age of reflection and of rationalism. It would be a miscon- 
 ception to attribute them to the primitive age, in the depths of 
 which the institution of sacrifice has its roots. In the beginning, 
 sincerity walked hand in hand with simplicity. 
 
 It is important to distinguish two elements of a moral 
 kind, fundamentally distinct, which are associated in this old 
 custom. The first is the perfect egotism of calculation. Man 
 gives to his god only in order that he may receive, and reckons 
 upon receiving much more than he has given. That would go 
 far towards the material development of sacrifice. The other 
 sentiment which manifests itself, and which also would lead 
 towards the ideas which were later entertained in regard to sacri- 
 fice, is that man definitively despoils himself, deprives himself, 
 and imposes a sacrifice upon himself — in one word, renounces 
 that which pleases him — even if it does not at once result in 
 pleasing his god. 
 
 Tliis is in no way contrary to that view which makes him 
 also immolate to his adored divinities that wliich he regards as 
 the object of their hatred. If, for example, he sacrifices horses 
 to Poseidon or Neptune, the god of the sea, because the waves 
 resemble horses galloping one after the other, he will put to 
 death before the altar of the sun-god the animals which the latter 
 seems to hate because he cannot endure the sight of them, which 
 he seems to pursue, because they flee from the light, such as the 
 wolf, seen chiefly at night and in winter; rats and mice, the 
 
 1 Plato, De Rep. iii. 399; comp. Euripides, Medea, v. 934, 
 
 2 Ars Am. iii. 653. 
 
TEE SACRIFICE. 131 
 
 friends of darkness ; or the devastating wild boar, in honour of 
 goddesses personifying the fertilizing sun. It is always some 
 immolation which is supposed to be acceptable to the deities, or 
 some repast worthy of being offered to them. For it is supposed 
 that they have no objection to feed on the flesh of beings abhorred 
 by them when living. The altar itself is in reality a table, the 
 table of the divine banquet.^ 
 
 On this simple base arose numerous diversities of application. 
 The sacrifice may be simple and frequent, a comb of honey, a bowl 
 of milk, a libation, that is, some drops of the liquid which one is 
 about to drink, and of which one gives a part to the gods ; or on 
 certain solemn occasions it may attain to frightful proportions, 
 as in the hecatomb, in which the blood of a hundred oxen flowed. 
 There are besides motives of various kinds which determine the 
 sacrifice. If the object be to render the divinity favourable to 
 some enterprize, a sacrifice of propitiation is offered. If it be 
 desired to express gratitude, there is the sacrifice of thanksgiving. 
 Further, as it is known that there are terrible gods, destroyers, 
 jealous of the life and of the happiness of men, there is the 
 sacrifice of app)caseriicnt. It is here that cruelty and simplicity 
 closely touch ; and it is to these religious terrors that we must 
 specially attribute the prolonged maintenance of human sacrifices 
 which as we ascend to remote antiquity we find everywhere, and 
 which were long considered the most ef&cacious safeguard of 
 peoples and of families. They played in some sort the part of fire. 
 
 Here arises a question which has been very often discussed in 
 the present day. Anthropophagy seems to have been, if not 
 universal, at least endemic in the beginning of all races. This 
 odious custom is preserved, as we know, among the most back- 
 ward races, those most nearly approaching animalism. Among 
 many of them it is always associated with religious rites and 
 occurs only exceptionally, without relation to the ordinary cus- 
 
 ^ It is in connection with this idea of a repast oflfered to the divinity and shared 
 with him that sacrifice became the sanction of treaties of alliance between individuals, 
 families and peoples, or, as with the Hebrews, of the national alliance with Jahveh. 
 The divinity was thus at once witness and contracting party. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 toms. Thereupon it has been said that anthropophagy never was 
 anything but a religious rite. But tlie question is only trans- 
 ferred. How came man to imagine that the flesh of his kind 
 could be agreeable to the divinity ? That could happen only 
 because he himself considered it as a great luxury. To resolve 
 such questions, we must strip ourselves of all our hereditary 
 antipathies. Experience shows that man, assured of sufficient 
 food, is horrified at the idea of feeding on human flesh. But it 
 shows us also — the history of shipwrecks, of famines, and of pro- 
 longed sieges is evidence of this — that, goaded on by furious 
 hunger, man, even when civilized, can reconcile himself to this 
 terrible extremity. Now under the conditions of primitive life, 
 as still in the present day among savages, periods of famine were 
 frequent. Necessity must often have compelled beings who had 
 not our profound repugnance ; and competent observers have 
 learned, by interrogating anthropophagists in various places, that 
 to one who is unprejudiced, human flesh is of all the most 
 savoury.^ 
 
 If, then, we affirm the close relation which unites cannibalism 
 to religious sacrifices and rites, we do not err ; but the immola- 
 tion of human victims would never have been invented if it had 
 not been believed that they were meat worthy of being offered 
 to the gods.^ The religious custom supposes the physical custom, 
 and it is natural that it should be preserved as a religious custom 
 long after it had disappeared from manners and tastes. It is the 
 property of religious customs, which have become traditional, to 
 perpetuate themselves even when they no longer answer to con- 
 temporaneous ideas. 
 
 ^ We have been privately informed by a captain in tbe Dutch navy, that having had 
 occasion to converse with some aged natives of certain islands of Malaysia, in which 
 cannibalism was not abolished until within a date relatively recent, he had received 
 from them the declaration that they i-emembered with delight the repasts of human 
 flesh which they had eaten in their youth. 
 
 - It is in virtue of another set of ideas, in no way contradictory to the first, that 
 the custom was established of immolating domestic animals, slaves and women, in 
 order that ihey might join their defunct master or husband, and continue to serve hiin 
 in another existence. 
 
THE SACRIFICE. 133 
 
 Here, again, even in tliis monstrous aberration, we may discern 
 the double element of sacrifice, a revolting egotism and a renun- 
 ciation which the offerer imposes on himself. Such at least is 
 always the case when a human sacrifice, full of sadness for those 
 who accomplish it, is in question. They may say to themselves 
 that the more the sacrifice costs the offerer, the more certain is 
 its efficacy. It is this sentiment which underlies the phrase 
 which is attributed to Louis XIV., overwhelmed by reverses, 
 " After all that I have done for God !" It is thus that, notably 
 among the Semites, they have come to place above all others the 
 sacrifice which parents make of their own children, and especially 
 of the first-born. Mosaicism had great difficulty in extirpating 
 this horrible custom among the Israelites. We know that at 
 Carthage and in the Phoenician towns, in time of calamity, they 
 took the children of the chief families in order to sacrifice them 
 to the national gods. Evidently, if the prejudice had not been 
 stronger than all objections, rich and powerful families, wielding 
 authority in ordinary times, would not themselves have enacted 
 such laws. We must put in connection with this set of ideas 
 the tragic episode of the war which the combined kings of Israel, 
 of Judah and of Edom, made against ]\fesa, Icing of Moab.^ It 
 is this Mesa of whom the Museum of the Louvre possesses an 
 extremely curious stela. Wlien this Moabite king, driven back 
 into his capital, saw his affairs in a desperate state, he took his 
 eldest son and sacrificed him on the ramparts in sight of the 
 enemy. "Then," we are told, "there arose great terror among 
 the children of Israel, who withdrew into their own country ;"2 
 that is to say, they considered the divinity as conjured by such 
 a terrible sacrifice, and forced, as it were, to declare himself for 
 the king Mesa. 
 
 Among all the nations who advanced in civilization, human 
 sacrifice ended by becoming the object of reprobation. In more 
 than one religion, compensations, a kind of succedanea, were 
 found for it. Circumcision is one of these. Among our Gallic 
 
 ^ 2 Kings iii. 26, 27. ^ According to the true rendering of this passage. 
 
134 THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 ancestors, who preserved human sacrifice until the Eoman con- 
 quest, it had been ah^eady modified so far that they sacrificed 
 criminals, and added innocent people to them only when their 
 number was insufficient. Later, instead of complete immolation, 
 they confined themselves to making an incision sufficient for 
 blood to flow. This was substituting the symbol for the reality. 
 Among the Greeks, myths such as those of Atreus and of 
 Thyestis, of Lycaon and of Iphigenia, suppose at once human 
 sacrifices and the repulsion which caused them at length to be 
 abolished. We may connect with the same transmutation the 
 bloody flagellation of the young Spartans before the altar of 
 Artemis. In the biblical tradition, the narrative of the sacrifice 
 of Abraham derives all its interest from the substitution which it 
 legitimatizes of an animal for a human sacrifice.-^ At Eome, 
 the emperor Augustus was obliged to enact laws for entirely 
 abolishing human sacrifice, and it was necessary to renew them 
 under Trajan. 
 
 But already, long before, especially where religion had been 
 penetrated by morality, sacrifice had received a new signification. 
 In the beginning, man sought simj)ly to satisfy the aj)petites of 
 divinities supposed to be sensual, or to turn away the fury of 
 gods given to destruction. But when he represented to himself 
 the divinity no longer as distributing only physical good or evil, 
 but also as the guardian and the avenger of the moral law, the 
 divine anger, the reflex of the remorse which smote the conscience, 
 could be appeased only by a special sacrifice, the sacrifice called 
 expiatory, the idea of which survived the disappearance of all the 
 others and bequeathed a dogma to Christianity. 
 
 There was already an idea of substitution in the sacrifices of 
 appeasement of which we spoke previously. The divinity was 
 
 ^ Assuredly we Lave great difficulty in representing to ourselves the state of mind 
 of parents able to believe themselves religiously bound to sacrifice their children. 
 And yet is there any radical difference between that state of mind and that of parents 
 in a time still less remote who, taking no account of the repugnance or of the despair 
 of their children, condemned them to the slow suicide of the cloistral life under the 
 pretext of thua expiating their own faults ? 
 
THE SACRIFICE. 135 
 
 animated by murderous designs against a tribe, a city or a nation ; 
 then victims were substituted for tlie tribe, the city, or the nation 
 menaced, and it was tliought that the divinity, satisfied, would 
 spare it. Analogous reasoning prevailed in the domain of 
 the moral law. It was considered that it did not essentially 
 concern divine justice that the punishment of faults committed 
 should fall precisely on the guilty ; what did concern it was that 
 it should fall on some one, that it should have its accomplish- 
 ment. That is the common foundation of expiatory sacrifices, of 
 which the lustral sacrifice, or sacrifice of purification, is only one 
 variety. Such ideas might be accepted in a time when the per- 
 sonal character of faults committed was still very ill understood, 
 and when there was no objection seen to the idea of making 
 innocent beings perish in order to spare the guilty from merited 
 punishment. 
 
 It is true that certain experiences may give to this point of 
 view a sort of superficial justification. The fact is that, in virtue 
 of the solidarity which links together human destinies, the con- 
 sequences of faults committed descend at each moment on others 
 than their authors. Human imperfection has also very often 
 this sad issue, that the best men, those who dominate others by 
 their sanctity and their genius, are exposed to the attacks of 
 prejudice, of narrowness, of superstition, of egotistic interests 
 menaced by their generous enterprize. Plato has already made 
 this melancholy remark in his wonderful passage on the just 
 man misunderstood and persecuted. He no doubt thought of 
 Socrates. The anonymous prophet who preached hope to the 
 captive Jews on the banks of the Euphrates, and whose pro- 
 phecies our canonical Bible joins with those of his predecessor 
 Isaiah, consoled himself for the sufferings endured by the group 
 of faithful Israelites, by seeing in it the condition of the redemp- 
 tion of the whole nation and its future restoration. In this sense 
 these faithful ones were the expiatory victims of the sins of the 
 people; their sufferings paid the ransom of all. Finally, it is 
 easy to show that Jesus himself, when the prospect of perse- 
 
136 THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 cution and of a violent death not far off presented itself to his 
 mind, understood in like manner their necessity, and consequently 
 their conformity to that mysterious order of things to which he 
 religiously bowed. 
 
 This it is which will transform sacrifice by raising it into another 
 sphere, more tragic, more ideal, than that in which ordinary 
 sacrifices remained confined. Upon this was grafted the dogma 
 of redemption, the history of which we shall take in its turn ; 
 for it has a history, and a very curious one, which often descends 
 from the heiri;ht on which it should have remained in order to 
 assimilate itself to the ancient sacrifices, but which, taken according 
 to its primary idea, easily comes into the philosophy of history.^ 
 
 On such ground as this, we are very far from the vulgar sacri- 
 fices consisting of material offerings made to the gods in order to 
 conciliate their goodwill, and it is difficult to explain their con- 
 tinued existence into epochs in which the intellectual level on 
 which such a belief could arise had been left behind. In Greece 
 and elsewhere there were protests against the traditional custom. 
 In the Old Testament we are struck with the number of passages 
 which formally dispute the necessity or the efficacy of sacrifices.^ 
 But for a long time these protests had no appreciable effect. 
 Sacrifice remained as before the centre of public and private 
 worship. Not only have religious traditions a very persistent 
 life, even when the general belief no longer sustains them,^ but 
 
 ^ It is to be regretted that the Christian Church has not adopted the view put forth 
 hy Origen, who saw in the sacrifice of Christ the divine type and, so to speak, the 
 culminating point of all that devotion and unmerited persecution to which humanity 
 owes its deliverance and its progress of all sorts. 
 
 ^ Comp. Isaiah i. 11 — 13, Ixvi. 1 — 3; Jeremiah vi. 20 and following verses, vii. 21 
 and following verses ; Hosea vi. 6 ; Amos v. 21, 22 ; Micah vi. 6 — 8 ; Psalms 1. 8 — 14, 
 li. 16, 17 ; Proverbs xxi. 3. 
 
 ^ We may, for example, assure ourselves of this, by seeing how funereal rites are 
 long preserved among peoples who have become absolute strangers to the ideas which 
 determined their first institution. In many places, notably among the Jews, stone 
 continued to be the obligatory material for instruments dedicated to religious use long 
 after the use of metals had become general. The spruce-fir, always green in December, 
 and the box-tree of the octave before Easter, continue to play their parts in the midst 
 of innumerable Christian f;imilies who do not susjject their absolutely pngan origin. 
 
THE SACRIFICE. 137 
 
 also, in default of any other expression as popular and as univer- 
 sally accepted, of sentiments of adoration, there was in favour of 
 sacrifice the prejudice that it was the normal, regular form of reli- 
 gious worship. Enlightened men of the classical ages considered 
 sacrifice as the sacrum properly so called, which they must respect 
 and observe under pain of impiety. Thus, even in our day, 
 scepticism and even rational incredulity do not prevent many 
 of our contemporaries from celebrating traditional rites in the 
 efficacy of which they do not believe. 
 
 It is especially in reference to sacrifices that we may maintain 
 that law of transformation which, from a strange ignorance of 
 history, it is contended is foreign to religion. What a change of 
 ideas must have taken place for that which formed the centre of 
 practical faith to have become so completely alien to our turn 
 of mind that, if it was suggested to restore among us these rites 
 so long sacred, we should have difficulty in repressing our 
 laughter, or still more our repugnance ! Can we imagine our- 
 selves obliged to be present advisedly at the slaughter of a sheep 
 or of a pair of pigeons, with the idea that the most august of reli- 
 gious acts was being accomplished before us ? Sacrifice conti- 
 nues theoretically, as we have said, greatly honoured in Judaism ; 
 but it is only theoretically, becaiise the Mosaic law which ordains 
 and regulates it, always interdicts its celebration elsewhere than 
 in the temple of Jerusalem. But if the Israelitish nation again 
 recovered possession of the land of Canaan, and if they for a 
 third time rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem, how hard it would 
 be in the present day to restore the daily celebration of ancient 
 sacrifices ordained by the law, and to impress them with a reli- 
 gious character ! If we could see oxen and cows, rams and 
 lambs, continually entering the sacred precinct in order to be put 
 to death there, would it produce on us the effect of a temple or 
 of a slaughter-house ? 
 
 Note that the people who have taught us to suppress sacrifices 
 under their ancient form in the religious life, are precisely the 
 Jewish people. It is they who first instituted in their syua- 
 
138 THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 gogues a popular worship, very graceful and without sacrifices. 
 This innovation, one of the most remarkable and the least re- 
 marked in history, took place during the Babylonish captivity, 
 at a time when the pious Jews, deprived of their temple, and 
 consequently of the possibility of celebrating the legal sacrifices, 
 must either abstain from all worship or invent a form which could 
 dispense with them. It was thus that they invented the syna- 
 gogues, where they could be edified by the Word, by instruction, 
 singing and collective prayer, but where they did not sacrifice. 
 Those who, profiting by the liberating edicts of the Persian 
 kings, returned to the country of their fathers, no doubt rebuilt 
 the temple and re-established sacrifices ; but they brought back 
 also the worship of the synagogues, which had become a necessity. 
 These multiplied throughout the Jewish territory. The most 
 humble village had its own. And when other events or the desire 
 of gain dispersed numerous swarms of Jews throughout a great 
 number of countries, the synagogues were opened at the same 
 time as their counting-houses. The ancient world had never 
 seen such a thing. The Christian Church is the daughter of the 
 synagogue. The gospel could never have been conceived by the 
 sacerdotal spirit which dominated the temple and which cele- 
 brated sacrifices. It was in the synagogues — and thanks to their 
 more elastic and more liberal forms — that it was propagated. The 
 first Christian churches are only dissenting synagogues. Their 
 oroanization is founded on that of the Jewish communities. 
 Indirectly, the mosque proceeds from the same source. 
 
 Sacrifice has thus become something quite different from what 
 it was in the beginning. Mysterious and supernatural fact, the 
 object of faith and no longer of sight, whether with Catholics or 
 Protestants, accomplishing itself henceforward in a transcendent 
 sphere, it has no longer anything but a historical descent and a 
 moral bond in common with sacrifices such as were known in 
 ancient times. But yet it occupies a central place in orthodox 
 Christianity. 
 
IV. 
 THE PEIESTHOOD. 
 
 Eeligious development has not only led man to seek guaran- 
 tees and reparative means of union with the Divine Being in 
 acts determined and calculated to secure his goodwill — it has 
 also led to the constitution of the priesthood, or the selection of 
 a certain number of men, invested with special religious func- 
 tions, alone capable of fulfilling them, and without whose min- 
 istry the desired union is considered impossible. The word 
 sacerdote, sometimes proposed in order to designate these func- 
 tionaries under a general term, not having been adopted, w^e have 
 only the word priest answering to the same idea. 
 
 This word, etymologically, is not happy. It comes from the 
 Greek preshuteros, which has nothing sacerdotal about it, and 
 means simply ancient, aged. In the Jewish synagogues, as in 
 the first Christian churches, the presbideroi, or elders, designated 
 by their co-religionists to direct the spiritual and temporal inte- 
 rests of the community, presided over the assembly of the faithful, 
 but they derived their powers only from the delegation which the 
 community conferred upon them. They were not at all priests 
 in the modern sense of the word. They were called also episcopoi, 
 overseers, whence the Trench word ^veqice, and the English word 
 hlslioj). Towards the middle of the second century of our era, the 
 title of episcopos, or bishop, in the singular, became that of the 
 president or sole chief of the preshuteroi. Hence the superiority 
 of the bishop over the simple presbuteros, or priest. But the deve- 
 lopment of dogma and of Christian worship more and more intro- 
 duced into the Christian Church a very characteristic sacerdotal 
 element ; the word priest signified thenceforward something else 
 
140 THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 than cMcr, and included the possession of sacerdotal dignity. It 
 is under this acceptation that the term has remained in our lan- 
 guage. All priests are not bishops, but all bishops are priests. 
 Sacerdotalism is thus the function, the priest is the functionary. 
 
 What is the definition of sacerdotalism ? 
 
 It is the religious institution in virtue of which the union of 
 the ordinary man, of the laity, with the Divinity can be effected 
 only by the intermediate agency of other men invested with a 
 special character, which places them in immediate relation with 
 it and allows them to connect others with it. Sacerdotalism is 
 essentially a mediation, a necessary mediation, and a mediation 
 which cannot be effected except by those who are invested with 
 it.^ It is this double character of necessity and of monopoly 
 which we must endeavour to understand before entering upon 
 the history of sacerdotalism. 
 
 The greater number of historical religions have a priesthood — ■ 
 that is to say, the greater number set apart a class of men whose 
 intervention is supposed to be necessary for the establishment of 
 normal relations between man and the Divinity. But however 
 general may be this institution, we cannot say that it has the 
 same title to be considered primitive as, for example, sacrifice. 
 It is to sacrifice especially that it owes its establishment, although 
 other causes also have concurred in forming it. But wherever 
 we can go back to the primitive conditions of societies, we see 
 that the priesthood properly so called was as yet unknown. 
 Each one, or preferably the father of the family or the chief of 
 the tribe, sacrificed at first on his own account and for the benefit 
 of those belonging to him. This can be shown in the case of the 
 Greeks and of Semitic and Vedic antiquity. The history of the 
 patriarchs and the book of Job furnish us with proofs of the 
 
 ^ For this reason it is an abuse of terms to apply tlie designation of priests, or 
 necessary intermediaries between man and God, to ministers or simple officers of non- 
 sacerdotal religions, such as Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, &c. In .Judaism there 
 was the Aaronite, the Levite, the sacrificer, who was priest or necessary intermediary. 
 The rabbi can be only teacher, adviser, helper. It is the same with the Protestant 
 minister. 
 
THE nilESTHOOD. 141 
 
 same thing within the reach of all. We may see also that, as 
 the petty clans or tribes of remote ages united to form peoples 
 and nations, this function of sacrificer was attached to the chief 
 or the king who personified the city or nation. The king-priests 
 are a common feature of early antiquity. Nevertheless, very 
 early also, and even in some places in the very dawn of history, 
 we find priesthoods distinct from the political or military power, 
 forming and succeeding in concentrating in their hands, along 
 with religious authority, all the essential functions of worship. 
 
 How can we explain this phenomenon ? 
 
 In the lower stages of religion, even in our own day among 
 peoples strangers to civilization, we may remark the frequency 
 of the tendency to consider certain individuals more highly 
 endowed than others, of a more lively imagination and of a more 
 subtle religious sense, as more nearly related to the Divinity, 
 better qualified consequently to interpret his will, to predict his 
 designs and to indicate what must be done in order to be in the 
 desired relationship to him. It may even happen that what 
 would be in our eyes a proof of physical and mental inferiority 
 may pass with these men, still profoundly ignorant, for a sign 
 of superiority and of divine vocation. Thus ecstacy arising from 
 a nervous paroxysm, hallucination, certain kinds of madness, 
 produce on men remaining at this level the effect of possession 
 hy a superior spirit. Even without descending so low, we may 
 remark how the least superiority imposes on a community de- 
 prived of culture. He who, by chance or by tradition, knows the 
 curative virtue of some simples, can speak in picturesque and 
 flowing language, without being embarrassed in finding expres- 
 sions — he who is familiar with charms, incantations, mysterious 
 formuloe, &c. — immediately acquires great authority over his kind. 
 It is thus that, not only among the Finns and Tartars, to 
 whom this commencement of sacerdotalism has too long been 
 exclusively attributed, but among all uncivilized nations, there 
 exist sorcerers, conjurors, magicians and diviners; and we know 
 too well that the race is by no means extinct in the lower depths 
 
142 THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 of our own civilized society. But, at least among savages, charla- 
 tanism alone would not account for the frequency or the perma- 
 nence of the phenomenon. It is more probable that the sorcerer 
 himself was the first to believe in his own supernatural powers. 
 Much more were ignorant populations disposed to resort to his 
 ministry in order to approach the gods, to deprecate the effects 
 of their ill-will, or to secure their favours. 
 
 This is, however, not yet sacerdotalism properly so called, with 
 its exclusive pretensions and its character of necessary media- 
 tion. We might say that the singing sorcerer of primitive epochs 
 and religions represents the type as yet confused, the amalgam 
 as yet unformed, of what will be later the priest or the prophet, 
 the poet or the scholar, the artist or the physician. Out of this 
 will come the priest. 
 
 Men for the most part seek union with the Divinity, but they 
 regard it rather as a thing which ought to be than as a thing 
 that is. Either they feel too ignorant to know how they can 
 realize it, or they feel morally unworthy to place themselves in 
 immediate relation with the Divine Spirit. Those who appear 
 to them bolder and more confident, especially if they justify this 
 assurance by superior knowledge (pretended or real), seem to 
 them to be the object of the marked preference of the gods. 
 They find, then, the security which they need by leaning in 
 some sort upon these favourites of the Divinity, who will shield 
 their insufiiciency and their unworthiness. It is in this senti- 
 ment of timidity, of apprehensive weakness, that in all time and 
 everywhere the great power of sacerdotalism will reside. 
 
 More than that. We have just seen the leading place which 
 sacrifice occupies in religious history, and how almost everywhere 
 it is held to be pre-eminently the means of union or of re-union 
 with the Divinity. We know how it became the centre of a very 
 complicated ritual. The mode of sacrifice, the presages to be 
 derived from the immolated victims, the hymns, the formulae and 
 the special prayers — all that was much too difficult for the ordinary 
 sort of men. Nevertheless, it was believed that if things were not 
 
THE PRIESTHOOD. 143 
 
 done punctually and regularly, the sacrifice would lose its efficacy. 
 Hence the desire, the necessity, of having sacrificers knowing the 
 ritual and neglecting nothing, so that all may be done in confor- 
 mity to rules. In the ancient commentaries on the Vedas, we see 
 clearly that the sacerdotalism of the Brahmans arose out of the 
 necessity of having a professional class able to celebrate the sacri- 
 fices, which had been considerably amplified since the times of 
 innocence in which Arya each morning threw butter on her hearth 
 in order to regale the powerful Indra or the pure Agni. This pre- 
 possession in favour of ritual, joined to the idea that the present 
 could be agreeable to the Divinity only if it were offered by the 
 hands of those whom he specially favoured with his preference, 
 ended in constituting the priesthood by establishing a class of 
 men who alone were considered qualified to sacrifice, so much so 
 that every sacrifice accomplished without them was held to be 
 an invalid act, and soon, indeed, a sacrilege. 
 
 Naturally this class of men, owing to their distinguished func- 
 tions, were greatly venerated. They received honours, privileges 
 and exemptions. They lived a separate life ; they had their own 
 interests ; and it is easy to conceive that in remote epochs — thanks 
 to their superior position, to their leisure, to the praiseworthy 
 ambition of their principle of justifying these advantages by a 
 real superiority — this class consecrated itself more willingly than 
 any other to what was already called science, to collecting the 
 old traditions, digesting annals, determining dates, the divisions 
 of the year, and that enormous source of influence, the popular 
 calendar. Thus it was that in so many places the priesthood 
 were the first depositaries of all the higher knowledge. We see 
 this in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, in Persia and in old Gaul. 
 Something analogous was reproduced in our own middle ages. 
 Finally, in those religions in which moral prepossessions were 
 closely united to religious thought properly so called, the clergy 
 were considered not only as the sole authority who knew how to 
 enlighten and direct the conscience, but also, and above all, as 
 the only one who could grant divine absolution. It is this last 
 
144 THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 privilege especially which rendered them so powerful wherever 
 they could exercise it, even in those periods in which they 
 possessed no marked intellectual superiority. 
 
 To sum up : on the basis of a simple superiority, native, or 
 acquired by certain men in the midst of their fellows who were 
 still profoundly ignorant, these are the three elements of that 
 which constitutes sacerdotalism : 1st, the sentiment of fear, of 
 uncertainty, or of unworthiness, general among the mass ; 2ud, 
 the extreme importance attached to sacrifice and to the ritual con- 
 ditions of its celebration ; 3rd, the prestige vested in this class, 
 who for a longer or shorter time concentrated and monopolized 
 the higher knowledge, the want of which was felt, but which no 
 one else possessed. 
 
 As a final analysis, that which produced sacerdotalism is the 
 sentiment of the incapacity of ordinary man, who does not believe 
 himself capable of being or of doing what is necessary to realize 
 union with the Divinity. 
 
 See also why in all time and in every country, the autonomy 
 of conscience, the progress of general knowledge, the growing 
 sentiment of human dignity, have been followed by a diminution 
 of sacerdotal authority and power. 
 
 Let us add, that according to the manner in which it has been 
 constituted, the priesthood has developed its characteristic fea- 
 tures in an extreme form, or has presented only an enfeebled 
 imaoe of them. 
 
 Thus we have hereditary priesthoods, privileges of race, of 
 tribe, of family. The Hindu Brahmans, the Levites and the 
 Aaronides, come into this category. Every Brahman is born a 
 priest. No doubt, in order to exercise his sacerdotal functions, he 
 must pass through schools and initiations ; but the fundamental 
 quality required is to be the son of a Brahman. The priesthood in 
 such a case forms a caste. Ordinarily the origin of this kind of 
 priesthood dates from some warlike struggle, invasion or civil 
 war, terminated by the destruction of the vanquished, and pro- 
 curing, either for a fraction or for the whole of the victors, a 
 religious ascendancy of which the possession of the priesthood is 
 
THE PnTESTHOOD. 145 
 
 the consequence. Time effaces the memory of this origin, and 
 the religious prestige is henceforth enhanced and maintains its 
 position in the popular belief. Among the Israelites it was a 
 long time before the sacerdotal privilege was recognized. In the 
 most ancient times — that is to say, after the establishment of the 
 tribes of Israel in Canaan — there was a tribe of sacrificers named 
 from Levi, and they probably owed this distinction to the pre- 
 ponderating part which they had acted by the side of Moses the 
 liberator. But for a long time this priesthood had nothing ex- 
 clusive. Whoever would might sacrifice. Samuel, Saul, David, 
 who are not Levites, sacrifice when it pleases them. It is only 
 later, and owing to the persistent efforts of the Jahvist party, 
 that the Levites attain to a monopoly of sacrifice. Later still, 
 the high-priesthood is confined to a part of this tribe, that which 
 was supposed to descend directly from Aaron. The priesthood 
 in Israel was thenceforward an essentially aristocratic institu- 
 tion, and remained to the end true to that character. 
 
 Elsewhere, on the contrary — among the Eomans, for example — 
 the priesthood was a magistrature of the city conferred by popu- 
 lar election. Such was at least the mode used in Rome to desig- 
 nate the pontiffs and the priests of highest rank. The hereditary 
 feature, so marked in the two preceding examples, appears again 
 in the fact that the priesthood at Rome was for a long time 
 accessible only to patricians. It is easy to understand that in 
 ancient times, and when the priesthood owed its prestige spe- 
 cially to its superior knowledge, consequently to transmitted 
 traditions, heredity might pass for the natural condition of 
 their scrupulous preservation ; to which was joined the idea, 
 then so easily accepted, of superiority of blood being proved by 
 social superiority. It was only after a severe struggle that the 
 plebeians ended by gaining on this point, as on so many others, 
 equality with the patricians. In every case the fundamental idea 
 of this system is, that the city chooses within itself those whom 
 it believes the most worthy to represent it before the gods. 
 
 In other places, again, the priesthood is open to all ; but in 
 
 L 
 
146 THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 order to be invested with it, it is necessary to submit to a certain 
 number of preliminary tests, to receive a special education, to 
 bind oneself down to a regular life ; and after all that, the prede- 
 cessors of the new member confer upon him the powers of which 
 they themselves are in possession. To the idea of heredity suc- 
 ceeds that of continuous transmission. As examples, we may 
 cite in ancient times the Egyptian priests and the Gallic druids ; 
 and in modern times the priests which Christian churches have 
 admitted to the priesthood. 
 
 Of all the countries of high civilization, Greece least felt the 
 influence of the priesthood. She owed this, in the first instance, 
 to the absence of political centralization ; afterwards, to the variety 
 in the forms of her priesthoods, which could never constitute a 
 caste, or one of the great powers of the state. We find, in fact, in 
 the priesthoods of ancient Greece the various types which we have 
 just noticed. In the beginning, it is the heads of families or of 
 tribes who are the sacrificers. Later, the dignity of priest and 
 of king is united. The monarchies disappear, the royal priest- 
 hood disappears with them ; but in many places the priesthood 
 remained a privilege of the local aristocracy ; and as a religious 
 memorial of the ancient state of things, there were priests who 
 joined to their name the honorary title of king, Bao-iAei's. At 
 Athens, the archon-king had only the second rank among the 
 archons, but he was charged with all that concerned religion. 
 His wife even received on that account the title of queen, 
 Bao-iAtWa, and presided in that quality at certain ceremonies. 
 Analogous facts are found in other Greek cities. But there were 
 also priesthoods instituted for the worship of certain divinities, 
 which remained a patrimony of certain families. Thus the 
 descendants of king Codrus retained the high-priesthood of the 
 sanctuary of Eleusis. The Eumolpides and the Boutades are 
 also sacerdotal families.^ For the rest, at Athens as at Eome, 
 sacerdotal functions could devolve only on the eupatrides or 
 
 ^ Comp. Religions de la Grece Antique, par M, Alfred Maury, Vol. II. ch. xii. 
 
THE PRIESTHOOD. 147 
 
 descendants of the old families. The plebeians did not succeed, 
 as in Eome, in sharing this distinction with the patricians, but 
 they got special priesthoods created on their own account. There 
 were, finally, in the neighourhood of several sanctuaries — notably 
 at Olympus — sacerdotal schools in which novices were instructed 
 in order to prepare them for the functions of sacrificer. They 
 had to acquire an accurate knowledge of the preparation of the 
 victims ; the Athenians, indeed, satirically compared them with 
 cooks. But other studies also were imposed on the future priests. 
 All this demonstrates that in Greece there were priesthoods of 
 all kinds, and explains to us why the Greek priesthood never 
 attained to that unity of organization, of doctrine and of inte- 
 rests, which made priesthoods elsewhere such a formidable power. 
 
 It is especially through priesthoods that the history of religion 
 and that of civilization touch. We need not discuss theologically 
 the principle and the primary idea of the priesthood. Some regard 
 the priest and his indispensable mediation as forming an integral 
 part of all religion worthy of the name ; others, on the contrary, 
 think that the priesthood represents an inferior stage of religion, 
 and that by right, as in fact, every man ought to be in direct 
 immediate relations of union with God. From the strictly his- 
 torical point of view, the relative legitimacy of the priesthood 
 depends altogether on the need which there is of it, and it is 
 thus that its action, sometimes beneficent, sometimes pernicious, 
 is explained. 
 
 It is to the sacerdotal corporations, or to that which resembled 
 them, that the first great discoveries which have rendered civili- 
 zation possible — the first astronomical observations, writing, the 
 first calculations and the first annals — are due. Their utility is 
 especially manifest when we think of all the risks of loss and of 
 oblivion which these elementary inventions ran in the midst of 
 peoples as yet destitute of culture. How many things could be 
 discovered and perpetuated only under the shadow of the sanc- 
 tuary ! We moderns know how much our civilization owes to 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE PEIESinOOD. 
 
 tlie clergy of the first centuries of the middle ages. We might 
 very well say that in epochs of extreme rudeness the very exist- 
 ence of men who continually represent a certain ideal of know- 
 ledge, of religion and of sentiments superior to the dense vul- 
 garity of material life, is something. Art is not less indebted 
 to .them. Those old clergy loved it ; they made use of it in 
 their own interest; but not the less did they call forth those 
 great works which posterity contemplates with admiration and 
 despairs of imitating. 
 
 But we must not forget that all sacerdotalism rests on the 
 feeling which the mass have of their own incapacity. And if 
 this sentiment goes on diminishing, if the progress of knowledge 
 and the evolutions of religious thought cause men to rise above 
 their former level, then from the constitution of the priesthood — 
 if it, essentially conservative, becomes stationary and ends by 
 being overtaken and passed by — an inevitable conflict ensues. 
 The priesthood, by its conservative instinct, by fidelity to the 
 faith of which it is the guardian and which it sees menaced by 
 the movement of mind, remains attached to another social ideal 
 than that which is forming around it. It tries to suppress 
 this, to stifle it at its birth, to limit its application. An ever- 
 growing quarrel arises between it and the society of which it 
 forms part ; and as, although weakened, it has still at its disposal 
 a formidable force, the strife between it and the new spirit 
 becomes desperate and often degenerates into war to the death. 
 
 Sacerdotalism is an institution very tenacious and very re- 
 sistant ; but there are two things which have a more vigorous 
 life than even it, although it contends that their existence 
 depends upon its preservation, and those are human society and 
 religion. Experience has already more than once proved that 
 both the one and the other can very well dispense with it. It 
 too often forgets that even in the religious order it has a compe- 
 titor in prophetism, the origin and transformations of which we 
 are about in turn to study. Sacerdotalism has its origin in the 
 
THE PRIESTHOOD. 149 
 
 sentiment that it was necessary. It must, then, take care not 
 to become useless. On the day when it so acts as to be hurt- 
 ful, it will have signed its own death-warrant. Such is the 
 lesson of history, and the only one which it belongs to us here 
 to point out. 
 
V. 
 
 PEOPHETISM. 
 
 The title which we give to this Chapter is justified by the rule, 
 A ])otiori dmominatio. We rank under this name all which 
 comes into the phenomena of individual inspiration ; and among 
 these phenomena, prophetism, in ancient times, is the most ori- 
 ginal and the most worthy of being studied. In addition to this, 
 we shall see that it belongs also to contemporary facts. If it has 
 lost its ancient name, it has spread itself out into several distinct 
 branches which represent to the modern mind the same number 
 of constituent features as formerly. 
 
 It is always necessary to agree as to the sense of the words 
 p'ophetism and prophecy. In the common acceptation, a prophecy 
 is a prediction ; prophetism is the art or the gift of predicting the 
 future with certainty and even in detail. In reality, prophetism 
 goes far beyond this mean definition. It is essentially the indi- 
 vidual religious conviction expressing itself under the influence 
 of exalted religious feeling. 
 
 Popular error is never destitute of all foundation. At first, 
 when speaking of the prophets, we think of the Biblical writers 
 who bear that name, and we are accustomed to regard them as 
 men who received supernatural light in order to announce before- 
 hand the coming of a Eedeemer, his incarnation, and even the 
 details of the evangelical history. It must be confessed that the 
 Jewish commentators have always had great reason to protest 
 against this mode of interpreting their prophets. The fact is, 
 that there is not a shadow of a miraculous prediction in the books 
 called prophetic ; there are previsions, which are not at all the 
 
PROPHETISM. 151 
 
 same thing — previsions some of which were very exact, others 
 which have not been confirmed by the event. 
 
 But the illusion dates from long ago. The beginnings of pro- 
 phetism, rude like all religious origins, show us that the first 
 phenomena which could come into the category of individual 
 religious inspiration were specially utilized as serving to unveil 
 the future, a thing to which man in ancient times attached great 
 importance. This is one of the most notable differences which 
 may be observed between the religious tendencies of antiquity 
 and those of modern times. We have ideas, forms and religious 
 ceremonies, which antiquity had also. That which we abso- 
 lutely lack in the present day, even in those churches the most 
 nearly related to the past, is the oracle, the augur and the predic- 
 tion. At least, that which sets up a claim to resemble it is rele- 
 gated by every sensible man into the class of idle puerilities, and 
 no contemporaneous clergy patronize divination. 
 
 In the beginning it was otherwise. In that need of synthesis 
 which is at the bottom of the religious sentiment, man, influenced 
 by the desire of reconciliation between the course of things and 
 his individual destiny, sought and believed he had found in 
 certain phenomena of an order at once physical and psychical, 
 the means of charming the unknown future into revealing before- 
 hand what it would unfold. 
 
 Here, in fact, physiology and psychology have each a word to 
 say. We know that there are certain physiological conditions 
 which give rise to a certain exaltation of feeling, and that, reci- 
 procally, this great exaltation of feeling brings about those phy- 
 siological conditions in which the individual more or less loses 
 all control over himself, and finds himself taken possession of 
 and subjugated by that state of feeling. Then either he is 
 plunged into a comatose state, into a sort of mute ecstacy ; he 
 remains indifferent to the reality which surrounds him, seeing 
 things which we cannot see, hearing sounds which we do not 
 hear, without anything which he experiences finding any external 
 interpretation ; we perceive at least nothing of his extraordinary 
 
152 PROPHET ISM. 
 
 condition except the rigidity of his limbs, a certain contraction of 
 features, his eyes lost in space or turned inwards as if they were 
 following an internal vision ; or, on the contrary, his tongue is 
 free, his power of speech is increased tenfold, and a man who in 
 his ordinary state speaks with difficulty, begins to speak with a 
 facility, a fluency, often even with a poetic eloquence, which 
 enchants the listeners. 
 
 That there is in such a state an element of unhealthy over- 
 excitement is incontestable, since all self-control is suppressed or 
 at least weakened. But do not despise the humble beginnings 
 of great things. When exaltation of thought does not go beyond 
 the point at which man can command himself and knowingly 
 guide himself, it becomes the source of the finest productions of 
 the mind. The manifestation of genius in art, in poetry, in elo- 
 quence, and the enthusiasm which makes heroes and martyrs, 
 and inspires sublime acts of devoteduess, all spring from it. 
 
 It is true that this source may for a long time send forth 
 turbid waters, before being purified by reflection and moral feel- 
 ing. In religion, as in other domains, the primitive phenomena 
 of individual inspiration are to some extent violent, excessive, 
 and consequently morbid. It may be supposed that in remote 
 antiquity they were less rare than in the present day. Among 
 many savage races they are even now very frequent. As it 
 grows older, humanity increases in reflective power and in self- 
 possession. The accumulative experience of ages has rendered 
 us distrustful of all unreflecting impulse. We allow ourselves 
 to be governed by the emotions of the moment less readily than 
 the ancients did. We may remark, however, that this is true 
 only of the class to which we belong. If we penetrate into the 
 lower strata of our population, we still meet with phenomena 
 of the ecstatic order. 
 
 Eeligious enthusiasm was much stirred up by such phenomena 
 in ancient times, and, reciprocally, corresponding physiological con- 
 ditions were attributed to a religious cause. A sort of momentary 
 delirium was supposed to be the divine power taking possession 
 
PROPHETISM. 153 
 
 of the patient. It was discovered that there were physical means, 
 such as fasting, for inducing this state of exaltation ; and this is 
 why we so often see fasting held to be a preliminary condition 
 of divination. The oracle of Delphi owed its foundation to the 
 discovery that those who for some time inhaled the vapours 
 ascending from a certain natural spring were soon found to be in 
 a state of over-excitement, which made them utter words listened 
 to as mysterious, because they were believed to be dictated by a 
 divine being. Po^ophetic furore was the expression used to desig- 
 nate this state of nervous and intellectual paroxysm. Eacine 
 well understood this side of ancient prophetism : 
 
 Entre les deux partis Calchas s'est avanc6, 
 L'oeil farouche, I'air sombre, et le poil h^risse, 
 Terrible, et plein du dieu qui I'agitait sans doute. 
 
 From the mouths of those thus inspired there issued more than 
 once in very ancient times discourses characterized by picturesque 
 eloquence, tragic poetry, or passionate admiration of nature. In 
 these was sought some revelation of the future. 
 
 In order to entertain this idea, it sufficed to believe in the 
 divine origin of this exalted language. ]\Ioreover, it often happens 
 that, in these exaltations of thought and feeling, the inspired 
 person rises to a certain clear-sightedness which has nothing 
 supernatural in it, but which leads him to announce catastrophes 
 or deliverances in general terms, which his audience immediately 
 makes specific. He speaks with a complete conviction which 
 overawes, without enumerating the middle terms through which 
 his thought passes before coming to a conclusion, something like 
 the young mathematical prodigies who solve by intuition very 
 complicated problems. Among ignorant races, prevision easily 
 passes for miraculous divination, and, as so many other analogies 
 prove to us, the previsions falsified by the event are more quickly 
 forgotten than those which are confirmed by it. 
 
 Among the Greeks, tradition has preserved the names of some 
 illustrious diviners — Amphiaraiis, Tiresias, Amphictyon, Cassan- 
 
154 PROPEETISM. 
 
 dra — and, historical or not, they show the importance attached 
 in primitive times to this gift of divination. They were the 
 fxavTels, whose professional name is derived from /^atVo/iat, to be 
 in a rage, to be delirious. They had raised divination to the 
 height of an art. It was this perhaps which slowly killed it, 
 just as rhetoric at length extinguished eloquence. The Greek 
 diviners acquired a great reputation even beyond Greece. Their 
 influence was still powerful in the epochs in which the most 
 enlightened class were undeceived in regard to them. The 
 art of divination extended also to presages, to auguries which 
 could be drawn from accidental phenomena, a singular applica- 
 tion of the idea that there exists an order of things which deter- 
 mines details as well as the whole. They believed themselves 
 able to divine the direction which this order would take by 
 interpreting the meaning of trivial incidents, just as we can cal- 
 culate the range of a projectile by measuring a fraction of the 
 curve which it describes. It was the divine language of things 
 which it was necessary to try to decipher. It was thus that at 
 Dodona they predicted the future by listening to what was said 
 by the venerable oaks, whose leaves rustled in the wind, at the 
 entrance to the sanctuary ; and that everywhere they imagined 
 that they could discern the hidden meaning of things by inter- 
 roGiatincc the entrails of animals who had been sacrificed. As 
 might be expected, in proportion as it departed from its primi- 
 tive simplicity, artifice and charlatanism increasingly mingled 
 with this pretended science. However, it did not always fail 
 in good faith. The principle of divination was long admitted, 
 even by men very superior to the common herd. "Delirium 
 {jxavla) is not always an evil," said Plato ;^ "on the contrary, 
 the greatest benefits come to us through delirium inspired 
 by the gods." "It must be," said Diodorus of Sicily,^ "that 
 human souls possess something of divinity; for it sometimes 
 happens that they predict the future, and that by the phantoms 
 
 1 Phasdre, 547, ed. Bekker. 
 
 ^ Liv. xxxvii. Fragui. 15; comp. Liv. xviii. c. 1. 
 
PROPHETISM. 155 
 
 which the imagination creates they see beforehand what is about 
 to take place." The Latin, not less superstitious, but less ima- 
 ginative and more sober in idea than the Greek, never had any 
 diviners as remarkable or as loquacious. He knew only unskilled 
 augurs who could not answer questions except by Yes or No, 
 without fine phrases ; while the Greek soothsayers predicted 
 the future in beautiful verses and copiously. Collections were 
 made of their predictions. The famous Sybilline Books, so 
 carefully preserved at Eome, appear simply to have contained 
 the centos of old Greek oracles, which the Eomans revered as a 
 revelation concerning the destiny of their republic. 
 
 Often also it happened, and this was the case with the Pythia 
 of Delphi, that the words pronounced in the artificial or sponta- 
 neous delirium of exaltation were incoherent, presented no con- 
 secutive meaning, and had need of interpretation. This was in 
 Greece the office of the prophet so called. Thus was the priest 
 designated who was charged with arranging and explaining the 
 incomprehensible oracle. It was thence that the word passed 
 into the religious vocabulary of the Hellenist Jews and into the 
 Septuagint version. 
 
 We see in Greece what became of individual inspiration 
 utilized solely by curiosity concerning the future. It descended 
 to the rank of a trade ; and if prophetism had never risen above 
 this superstitious level, it would no more have recommended 
 itself to our favour than the astrology with which so many 
 people in the sixteenth century were infected. But it was 
 destined among another race to rise much higher, to originate 
 the reforming tendency in religion, and to open the way of 
 progress in the sense of spiritualism and moral purity. Thence 
 it became one of the great forces of the human mind. 
 
 Developed mythology, or the systematic dramatization of 
 nature, is essentially Aryan; ancient prophetism is essentially 
 Semitic. This belongs to the same tendency of race which has 
 given birth to great epics and great dramas among the Aryan 
 nations, whilst the Semites are in the highest degree lyrical. 
 
156 PROPHETISM. 
 
 That is to say that, influenced by a very lively sense of his per- 
 sonal independence, the Semite likes to express what he feels, 
 what he believes, what he prefers, without taking into account 
 that he himself may thus displease the traditional authorities 
 or the social powers under whose regime he has to live. The 
 ego predominates in him. Prophetism is in the religious order 
 that which lyrisra is in poetry. It depends, before all, on the 
 individual, on his disposition, and on his personal emotions. The 
 prophet is not a priest tied to a sanctuary, the slave of a tradition. 
 He is an individuality. 
 
 We have the advantage of possessing numerous documents, 
 bequeathed by the most remarkable, from the point of view of 
 religious history, of the Semitic nations, which enable us to follow 
 the successive transformations of prophetism from its origin to 
 its complete development. As everywhere else, it begins by this 
 kind of spasm, at once nervous and psychic, combining enthu- 
 siasm and delirium. We cannot furnish a more evident proof of 
 this than by quoting the words which, as a preliminary refrain, 
 introduce the prophecies of Balaam, the renowned prophet sum- 
 moned to the banks of the Euphrates by the king of Moab to 
 curse or to bewitch the tribes of Israel who had invaded his 
 territory : " Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man 
 whose eyes are open hath said : he hath said, which knew the 
 ways of God and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which 
 saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having 
 his eyes open."^ 
 
 Here we have the language of a visionary ; and if the sacred 
 tradition of Israel represents Balaam as animated by evil inten- 
 tions, we must not forget that it in no way disputes his character 
 of prophet, and that it even makes him the passive instrument 
 of the will of Jahveh, who puts into his mouth blessing when 
 he desired to utter curses. 
 
 The prophetic state is, then, according to this old narrative, 
 an ecstatic state of second sight, independent of the will of the 
 
 ^ Comp. Numbers xxii. — xxiv. 15, 16. 
 
PROPHETISM. 157 
 
 prophet. Also the ancient name of the prophet in Israel is the 
 seer, the man who sees in his moments of inspiration that which 
 escapes the view of the vulgar. One thing may be noted, and it 
 is confirmed elsewhere by numerous experiences extending to the 
 present day, that there is something contagious in these special 
 states of body and of mind. The same Israelitish tradition has 
 recorded, in connection with king Saul, an incident which a 
 knowledge of the character of this prince, who had nothing at 
 all of the prophet in him, would lead us to consider as very rare 
 in his life. Saul having come into the midst of a group of seers, 
 all of whom had abandoned themselves to prophetic ecstacy, was 
 seized by the contagion and began to yrojilusy with the rest. 
 And as a result, this saying remained in the memory of the 
 people, " Is Saul also among the prophets ?" 
 
 We see then that, in its origin, the prophetism of Israel was not 
 distinguished from phenomena of the same kind which we have 
 been able elsewhere to verify. The difference which manifested 
 itself later consists in this, that prophetism did not degenerate 
 among the Israelites, as among the Greeks, into a mere trade, 
 destined to fall more and more into charlatanism. Individual 
 inspiration, under the influence of religious principles and of 
 higher morals, was purified from this dross. Laying aside the 
 suspicious forms of hallucination and of delirious vision, the 
 Israelitish prophet became a convinced enthusiast, animated only 
 by great ideas, just indignation and a sincere patriotism. In place 
 of the semi-epileptics of primitive ages, appeared preachers, poets 
 and divine singers, who were the censors and consolers of the 
 people, a kind of tribuneship without official title, the whole power 
 of which resided in the prestige of character and the support lent 
 by conscience. It is there that the difference between prophet- 
 ism and sacerdotalism shines forth. In contrast to sacerdotalism, 
 the tendencies of which are always conservative, prophetism is 
 essentially reformatory. Sacerdotalism is aristocratic, prophetism 
 is democratic. It takes the part of the poor against the rich, of 
 the weak against the strong, of the people against their kingly 
 
158 PROPHETISM. 
 
 oppressors, of strict monotheism against the polytheistic and 
 idolatrous corruptions of pure religion — finally, against sacerdo- 
 talism, which compromises and disgraces it by its rapacity or by 
 its ambition. There are still here and there some features which 
 recall its origin, something abrupt and sudden, in the appearances 
 of the prophets. He who in the evening was only a herdsman or 
 an ordinary citizen, begins the next day to preach, to discourse, 
 to censure kings, judges, priests and nations. The prophet 
 Elijah does nothing but appear, and disappear in order to appear 
 again, and always in some unexpected way. When Amos of 
 Tekoa was possessed by the spirit of Jahveh and began to pro- 
 phesy, the priest Amaziah, whom his free speech offended, said 
 to him, " thou seer, go, flee thee away into the laud of Judah, 
 and there eat bread and prophesy there : but here is the king's 
 chapel, and it is the king's court." Then Amos answered, " I 
 was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son;^ but I was a 
 herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit : and the Lord took 
 me and said unto me. Go, prophesy unto my people Israel."^ 
 We here find an echo of that rude accent which characterized 
 primitive prophecy. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is much changed. The prophet is self-pos- 
 sessed ; and if he always speaks by inspiration, in beautiful 
 language poetic and imaginative, we can no longer reproach him 
 with being only a visionary, a man of illusions. Far from fur- 
 nishing arguments in favour of superstition, it is he who fights 
 against it. We incontestably owe to the prophets the finest 
 fragments of Hebraic literature, and they were the promoters of 
 the religious progress by which we all benefit in the present day. 
 Shall we quote the splendid vision of Elijah the Tishbite, when, 
 flying from the persecution of king Ahab, he retired into a cave 
 of Mount Horeb, hoping that there Jahveh would appear to him ? 
 We see in this vision, in symbolic form, an abridged development 
 of the religious idea. A mysterious voice said to the prophet, 
 "Go forth, and stand on the Mount before the Lord. And behold 
 
 ^ That is, disciple of a prophet. " Amos vii. 12 — 16. 
 
PROPHETISM. 159 
 
 the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the moun- 
 tains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the 
 Lord was not in the wind : and after the wind an earthquake ; 
 but the Lord was not in the earthquake : and after the earth- 
 quake a fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire : and after the fire 
 a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his 
 face in his mantle, and went out and stood at the entering in of 
 the cave."^ 
 
 This is very fine. The God of the prophet is not the visible 
 phenomenon, magnificent or terrible, which ravages, which de- 
 stroys, which devours ; he is not the storm, nor the earthquake, 
 nor the fire which consumes ; he is the " still small voice," which 
 the religious ear perceives and enjoys, which the eye cannot see, 
 but to which the soul listens with delight as well as with reve- 
 rence. Mysticism, however legitimate or wholesome, has never 
 sounded sweeter chords. 
 
 It is the eminently religious principle of prophetism, its direct 
 and immediate relation with tlie divine spirit, which renders it 
 confident and powerful in its reformatory work. Another pro- 
 phet, Isaiah, son of Amos, rose against the superstition of sacri- 
 fices. That which a priest would never have said, he taught — that 
 the true service of Jahveh consisted in doing right, in succouring 
 the unfortunate, in redressing injuries, and not in multiplying 
 immolations. " To what purpose is the multitude of your sacri- 
 fices unto me ?" says Jahveh himself through the medium of his 
 prophet ; " I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat 
 
 of fed beasts Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an 
 
 abomination to me, your new moons and your sabbaths 
 
 Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear : your hands 
 
 are full of blood Wash you ; cease to do evil ; learn to do 
 
 well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
 plead for the widow." ^ No religious teaching had ever uttered 
 such exalted language. It was one of the first outbursts of the 
 reforming spirit in religion. 
 
 1 1 Kings xix. 11—13. 2 jgaiah i. 11-17. 
 
IGO PROPHETISM. 
 
 Proplietism in Israel was very patriotic. It foresaw the mis- 
 fortunes which were about to fall on its unfortunate country ; 
 but it rendered her the greatest service which can be rendered 
 to a ruined country, that which consists in maintaining the 
 sacred fire of patriotic faith, hope and confidence in the national 
 destinies ; and in the presence of a people ready to abandon 
 themselves to despair, it struck the note of the Sursum corda. 
 We know something of that. In the very midst even of the 
 apparent annihilation of his nation, the prophet Ezekiel con- 
 ceived his magnificent vision of the resurrection of dry bones, 
 which were re-animated, joined together, clothed with flesh, and 
 once more filled with the sounds of life the immense plain over 
 which the silence of death had previously reigned.^ Again, it 
 was Isaiah, in the presence of Babylon the Great, so proud of her 
 riches, her power and her impregnable walls, that Babylon who 
 seemed to have for ever rivetted the chains of Israel's captivity, 
 who described what will happen when she in her turn must submit 
 to the yoke of the conqueror and descend to the pit, the subter- 
 ranean vault in which the dead sleep. Then, in a magnificent 
 prosopopseia, he paints the astonishment of the dead when they 
 see the daughter of Babylon, the star of the morning fallen from 
 heaven, arrive among them. " How ! art thou also become one 
 of us ?"^ It is in him also that we detect the hint of the first 
 rationalism. How he satirizes the idolaters who make to them- 
 selves deaf and blind gods ! " The carpenter stretcheth out his 
 rule ; he marketh it out with a line ; he fitteth it with planes, 
 and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the 
 figure of a man, according to the beauty of man, that it may 
 remain in the house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketli 
 
 the cypress and the oak Then shall it be for a man to burn : 
 
 for he will take thereof and warm himself ; yea, he kindleth it 
 and baketh bread ; yea, he maketh a god and worshippeth it ; he 
 maketh it a graven image and falleth down thereto. He burneth 
 part thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he eateth flesh ; he 
 ^ Ezekiel xxxvii. ^ Isaiah xiv. 
 
PROPHETISM. 161 
 
 roastetli roast and is satisfied : yea, he warmetli himself and 
 saith, Aha, I am warm ; I have seen the fire : and the residue 
 thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image : he falleth down 
 unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deli- 
 ver me, for thou art my God."^ And again : " They lavish gold 
 out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a gold- 
 smith, and he maketh it a god They bear him upon the 
 
 shoulder ; they set him in his place and he standeth ; from his 
 place shall he not remove ; yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can 
 he not answer."^ 
 
 No doubt, even in Israel, prophetism did not always maintain 
 this high level of religious sentiment and sound reason. It had 
 also its share of defects and of narrow-mindedness ; it frequently 
 made terms with the abuses which it ought to have opposed ; its 
 patriotism was often unjust or chimerical. Men who live only 
 for their one idea are rarely clever politicians, and help to foster 
 great illusions. We find also by the side of the sincere and 
 disinterested prophet, the nahi, as he henceforward called him- 
 self — that is to say, inspired — the pretended " seer," who adapted 
 his visions to his covetous desires or to his ambition. Every 
 allowance being made for defects or infidelities, the prophetism of 
 Israel none the less remains one of the most remarkable pheno- 
 mena of religious history, and we owe too much to these inspired 
 men not to be indulgent to their errors. 
 
 If it be characteristic of sacerdotalism to endure under forms 
 always identical, it is even more the essence of free prophetism 
 to be intermittent, to shine at one moment with the brightest 
 lustre, then to be extinguished in order to appear again under 
 other conditions. The Israelite prophetism gradually became 
 extinct after the return from Babylon. The scribe, the man of 
 law, of tradition and of the letter, succeeded it, and undertook 
 to interpret the text in place of propounding it. But it had its 
 revival. If we seek among the constituent elements of the people 
 and of the history of Israel for that which engendered the move- 
 
 1 Isaiah xliv. 13—17. ^ ig^iah xlvi. 6, 7. 
 
 M 
 
162 PROPHETISM. 
 
 ment whence the gospel arose, it is evidently prophetism which 
 we must select. Jesus was a prophet in all the force of the term. 
 It is this which best defines his person and the nature and the 
 tendency of his teaching. It is always the same principle of 
 internal individual persuasion, which respects sacred tradition, 
 but which knows how to emancipate itself from it when it comes 
 in the way oifidjihiunt, or of innovations suggested by a purer 
 and more refined religious feeling. Traditionalists, formalists, 
 the priests — that is to say, Scribes, Pharisees, and the sacerdotal- 
 ism of Jerusalem — were all soon in opposition to Jesus. 
 
 Prophetism was not confined to the limits of the Israelitish 
 nation. Analogous phenomena are frequent among other Semitic 
 races. Islamism, the second of the great universalist religions 
 which Semitism bequeathed to the world, springs from the same 
 source. The Arab reformer Mahomet is also and especially a 
 prophet. 
 
 In other regions and among other races religious progress is 
 also brought about by the action of prophetism, although under 
 different forms. There is, in spite of all differences, a close 
 analogy between the Israelitish prophet and that Buddha who 
 abandons his rank, his riches and his princely life, in order to go 
 about preaching deliverance, the abolition of caste, the emanci- 
 pation of nature, and a morality of sublime purity. When Greco- 
 Eoman paganism, on the point of dying, endeavoured to reform 
 itself, it was a kind of propbet complete in all parts which it 
 strove to create in order to regain its lost ascendancy. Apollouius 
 of Tyana was a prophet, almost a pagan Christ. 
 
 Prophetism is, then, a reforming religious power more widely 
 spread than is ordinarily believed. But all these characteristics 
 are ancient ; they belong to a bygone period, to a state of mind 
 far removed from our own. Has it ceased to exist ? 
 
 In our view, it has only changed its name, and has been divided 
 into several distinct branches which were united in the besfinning 
 and formed only one common trunk. 
 
 The successors of the ancient prophets are those great religious 
 
PROPHETISM. 163 
 
 individualities who have made their mark in history as liberators 
 and reformers of oppressive traditions. 
 
 To prophetism also it belongs to carry out the great enter- 
 prizes of moral reform attempted in the name of a religious 
 principle. When Theodore Parker, the illustrious American 
 preacher, sacrificed his learning, his repose, his safety, even his 
 life itself, in order to plant throughout the Union the banner of 
 freedom for the slaves — when he raised his powerful voice 
 against the evils and the infamies of slavery — when he repeated 
 on each note of the gamut, to a nation which began to listen 
 only when he was about to die exhausted, "You are on the 
 brink of a red sea, of a sea of blood" — Theodore Parker was a 
 prophet, and resembled the prophets of the old time in being 
 misunderstood. 
 
 There was an element of the prophet also in St. Bernard when 
 he sought to reform the Church both in its head and in its 
 members. There is prophetism in all really eloquent religious 
 preaching ; for the prophet, from the simple ecstatic seer which 
 he was in the beginning, became an impassioned preacher. 
 
 Finally, primitive divination itself is not without its counter- 
 part in our times. If the ancient prayer which pointed out to 
 the divine Power what he should do for our good, is summed 
 up in the act of implicit faith which consists in saying. Thy will 
 be done ! the ancient claim to divine the future in its details 
 and its possible accidents is enlarged and rationalized in the 
 philosophy of history. This kind of study does not enable us 
 to predict what will happen to-morrow or the next day, nor 
 to satisfy puerile curiosity like an almanac or an ecstatic som- 
 nambulist, but to deduce from the confused course of events 
 the permanent laws of history. It is by this method that we 
 may foresee the consequences which the tendencies, the faults, 
 or the good deeds of nations entail upon them. Political science 
 will be originated when a sufficiently wide generalization from 
 an adequate number of facts shall have shown the certain result 
 of the guiding causes of national life. Already ancient prophet- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 PROPHETISM. 
 
 ism, in its later period, inclined to that side. Its last echo was 
 the Apocalypse, a strange and stormy composition of obscure 
 design, which has, however, had much light thrown on it in the 
 present day, showing it to be of very simple interpretation, and 
 laying bare the illusions of its authors. It was none the less 
 the first attempt at a systematization of history in accordance 
 with a certain symmetry. 
 
 In one word, prophetism is not dead ; it expands and is per- 
 petuated under other names. Eeligious reform, religious spi- 
 rituality, emancipation from oppressive authority, war against 
 corrupt institutions, religious poetry, the philosophy of history, 
 &c., are various titles of its representatives in the modern world. 
 It is the old trunk which has spread out into branches. 
 
VI. 
 EELIGIOUS AUTHOEITY. 
 
 Whether religion be purely mytliological, or legalistic, or 
 dogmatic, it always engenders a certain number of common 
 beliefs of wliich every one who lives under its influence ought 
 to take cognizance. ■; 
 
 In speaking of the first ages of religion among the human race, 
 we stated that there had certainly been among primitive tribes 
 individuals more highly endowed than the rest, possessing more 
 intense religious feeling, a more lively imagination, who would 
 determine the ideas of their kind by giving them a concrete, 
 precise and figurative form, which they would not have found 
 by themselves, but which they had adopted without reflecting 
 about it. The reason of this easy acceptance is, that fundamen- 
 tally the initiators shared the intuitions and notions which were 
 common to them along with those around them. They gave a 
 fixed form to that which existed already confusedly in the soul ; 
 and, in fact, religious progress was never effected otherwise. The 
 first direction given to thought is always very powerful. Say to 
 a young child when showing him the moon, " See this head, this 
 mouth and these eyes which look at you !" — the child sees the 
 head, the mouth and the eyes, and shows them to his little com- 
 panions. At Geneva may be seen the emperor Napoleon I. buried 
 up to his chin in the eternal snow of Mont Blanc. It is some- 
 what difficult to bring oneself to realize it, but when we are 
 once at the right point, and have seized the resemblance, we see 
 it always, and cannot understand why we did not see it at once. 
 In like manner, with primitive humanity, the first mythological 
 notions, uttered by poets unconscious of their poetry, became 
 
166 RELIGIOUS AVTEOEITY. 
 
 the property of those who heard them. Fathers and mothers 
 transmitted them to their children. Succeeding imaginations 
 found themselves urged in the same direction. These notions 
 acquired the character of truths or of axioms which no one 
 questioned, and thus a tradition arose. 
 
 This tradition, once formed, derived great force from the 
 feeling which isolated man has of his weakness, especially in 
 religious matters. It obtruded itself on succeeding generations 
 with a prestige which time, as it went on, could only increase. 
 It registered the narratives which the old never wearied of 
 repeating, nor the young of hearing. It recommended rites, 
 observances, sacrifices, the first signification of which had been 
 long forgotten, but which were scrupulously performed, because 
 this was the hereditary custom. The more destitute of critics 
 was the age with which it had to do, so much the more authori- 
 tative was tradition. It is very rarely that a savage knows the 
 meaning of his religious customs. Almost always, when he is 
 asked for explanations, he contents himself with replying that 
 his fathers taught him to act in this way, and he is surprised 
 that such an answer does not satisfy the inquirer. When, in 
 fact, the origin of a tradition is sought, the age of simple faith 
 has already passed away. In such an age, tradition has autho- 
 rity in virtue of its antiquity, or, better, of its apparent eternity. 
 For in minds little developed, antiquity and eternity are con- 
 fused. The man who has never travelled and never read, ima- 
 gines that people everywhere see and think as he does, and that 
 they have always thus seen and thought. Our own age is certainly 
 the one of all others in which an interest in history has been the 
 most generally diffused. We carry this taste even into our fur- 
 niture. Antiquity scarcely knew it. The greatest painters up 
 to the last century had no idea of it. This explains the docility 
 with which successive generations accept the tradition trans- 
 mitted to them, and never even think of examining it in order 
 to ascertain whether it is worthy of belief 
 
 In religion, especially, the power of tradition is great ; for it 
 
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 1G7 
 
 idealizes tlie most common things by giving them the stamp of 
 antiquity. A brick of modern manufacture does not attract our 
 notice ; but if it comes from Babylon or Nineveh, we contemplate 
 it with devotion. Eeligious creeds and religious symbols become 
 more venerable when they are embalmed in anti(][uity. They 
 seem thus to enter into the order of eternal things. As long as 
 the spirit of criticism remains unaroused, innovation appears 
 irreligious. It is this veneration for the ancient which explains 
 more than one strange usage in religious rites and customs. 
 Why, for instance, in many a religion, are iron instruments 
 proscribed in all which concerns religious acts properly so called, 
 and only stone ones admitted ? This must date from the time 
 in which metal instruments were introduced. They were easily 
 adopted in ordinary use. But there seemed something audacious 
 and sacrilegious in using them in religious ceremonies also. In 
 our own day, we have seen pious persons shocked at the idea 
 of lighting our old churches with gas, as if this worldly, com- 
 mercial light, of recent invention, was less religious than the 
 old smoky lamps flickering beneath the arches. There, again, the 
 synthetic character of religion reveals itself, seeking to connect 
 the individual with the Eternal Spirit. While all passes away, 
 changes and disappears, it seems to man that in allying himself 
 with something which persists, he unites himself to the immu- 
 table. 
 
 We must admit, on the other hand, that this docility in regard 
 to tradition is associated with a very moderate regard for truth. 
 We do not know whether the legitimate horror which intolerance 
 inspires in those who are sufficiently instructed to know the 
 lamentable pages which it has added to the book of history, has 
 not often prevented historians and philosophers from perceiving 
 a thing which is nevertheless very evident — that it is to the 
 excess of religious fanaticism that we owe the importance ever 
 since attached to the question of truth in all departments. Tlie 
 executioners have been not less instructive than the victims. 
 That men, incapable of crime in all other respects, should allow 
 
168 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 
 
 themselves to be carried aM'ay to the extent of pitiless fury 
 against those whom they accused of denying the truth, proves 
 the value which they attached to it; and we may with good 
 reason ask ourselves if the passionate love of truth in all things 
 which has produced modern science would have been possible, 
 or at least would have become very general, if Europe had not 
 passed through centuries of intolerance. It is the fact that anti- 
 quity was acquainted with this noble passion in a much less 
 degree than we are. 
 
 But before coming to that, in developed religions, man, with- 
 out calling tradition in question, perceived that it ran the risk of 
 being changed or lost if nothing was done to protect it against the 
 causes of change or of oblivion. Naturally it was the priesthoods 
 or the corporations of priests who furnished the usual conservators 
 and continuers of ancient traditions. A class of men living apart, 
 bound by their profession to know the theory and practice of 
 religious things better than all others, would be held pre-emi- 
 nently fitted to be the depository of tradition. The authority of 
 this tradition thence became sacerdotal authority. The ordinary 
 man, in his weakness and in his ignorance, must appeal to the 
 priests in order to know exactly what he must believe and do. 
 The priest was quite disposed to add this incalculable power to 
 that which he already possessed as sacrificer and indispensable 
 intermediary. It would have been conferred upon him even if 
 he had refused it. The priesthood has often been accused of 
 ambition and of love of rule ; and the fact is that it has only 
 too often laid itself open to such an accusation. But we cannot 
 conceal that this has been much oftener an effect than a cause. 
 
 The authority of the priesthood was greater still where for a 
 long time it retained the monopoly of that knowledge which was 
 the most indispensable to social life, when it had to fix the 
 calendar, to establish the laws, to digest the annals. If its power 
 was less in Greece than everywhere else, that was not only 
 because it failed in organization and centralization, but it was 
 because it never had exclusive possession of enlightenment. The 
 
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 169 
 
 care of the religious traditions was confided at least as much to 
 the poets as to the priests. This is why, throughout all anti- 
 quity, Greece was distinguished among all nations as the country 
 of free thought. 
 
 In Eome, religious tradition was an affair of the state, like the 
 priesthood itself The senate was by right its guardian. That 
 body legislated for religion as for everything else ; and when the 
 Greco-Eoman paganism persecuted, it did so from essentially 
 political motives. 
 
 The case was otherwise in India and in Persia, where the priest- 
 hood defended the truths of which it was the guardian for entirely 
 religious reasons. In order to that, as in other regions where it 
 assumed the same part and made the same claims, it raised the 
 superiority which it claimed to the absolute ; that is to say, it 
 laid claim to infallibility, as though its doctrinal decisions had 
 been dictated by the Divinity himself. Thus orthodoxies were 
 formed ; that is, systems of belief held to be right, pure from 
 all alloy, and offered as indispensable of adoption by all who 
 would live in communion with the divine Power. And such 
 is the need of authority in matters of religion, that this claim 
 was admitted not only in the bosom of Christianity, but in many 
 other religions, and notably in Brahmanism and Buddhism. In 
 the Christian Church, the episcopate once constituted, considered 
 as the sole competent guardian of apostolic tradition, set up in 
 oecumenical or general councils for the infallible organ of truth. 
 The tendency to recognize authority, without having many other 
 proofs of its legitimacy than the need man has of it, did not stop 
 there. The time came when it was found that the councils met 
 rarely, were difficult to assemble, that they were not always in 
 accord, that their decisions allowed of differing interpretations, 
 and that it would be much better to possess a permanent living- 
 organ of eternal truth, and it was sought to centralize in a single 
 man, in a single bishop, the authority previously dispersed through- 
 out the whole body of the Church. And in spite of obstacles, of 
 resistance and of innumerable objections, the partizans of this per- 
 
170 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 
 
 sonal infallibility carried it through, because their position, based 
 on the need of authority, was logically sound. We have not yet 
 done. The infallibility of the Pontiff to be complete and quite 
 reassuring, supposes his impeccability. For, in fact, it is of little 
 use to possess a personal infallible organ of eternal truth, unless 
 it is certain that he would never from motives of personal interest 
 withhold nor alter that truth. This is the final and the inevitable 
 result of religious authority conferred upon the priesthood. 
 
 But this sacerdotal privilege is not the only form which the 
 authority of tradition has assumed. There is an intermediate 
 method, less rigorously logical, and thence leaving more scope 
 for intellectual freedom and for varieties of thought, arising also 
 out of the need of settling precious traditions, of preserving them 
 from oblivion and change, and of transmitting them to posterity 
 as the touchstone of faith. We allude to sacred books. 
 
 Not all religions have them, but many among the most impor- 
 tant possess tliem. Brahmanism has its Yedas and its laws of 
 Manou ; Mazdeism has its Zend Avesta ; Buddhism, its Tripitaka 
 (the three baskets) ; China has its Kings ; Islamism, its Koran ; 
 Judaism, its Bible, which is also that of Christianity, with the 
 addition of the New Testament. 
 
 Sufficient information as to the way in which the greater part 
 of these sacred books or holy scriptures was formed is wanting. 
 But analogy allows us to suppose that one and the same law of 
 formation directed their appearance. We know very well how 
 the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and of the Christians were 
 codified, and that is enough to enable us to give an account of 
 the process followed in editing or in arranging the others. 
 
 Why, for instance, did the Jews, who in the time of ancient 
 Israel dispensed with sacred books, proceed to form them in the 
 period which elapsed between the return from captivity and the 
 Christian era ? 
 
 We have already seen, in speaking of the contemporaneous 
 institution of synagogues, that with the Jews it became a ques- 
 tion of not losing the memorials of the past, menaced as they 
 
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 171 
 
 were by revolutions, deportations, and all that had destroyed 
 the national existence. Prior to the great catastrophe, several 
 writings had already been composed. There were collections of 
 laws — one especially, the sudden appearance of which in the 
 reign of king Josiah made a great sensation. Other codes had 
 been drawn up during or shortly after the captivity. A collec- 
 tion of these was made in combination with several historical 
 narratives turning on the antiquities of Israel. From this work 
 resulted the Pentateuch, or, as the Jews say, the Law. There 
 were a certain number of prophets whose discourses had been 
 committed to writing. These discourses were added to this first 
 collection. Finally, there circulated a considerable number of 
 hymns, of sayings, of annals and of chronicles. This made a 
 third division, which was not hermetically closed like the first 
 two, but which in the time of Jesus Christ already included the 
 books which actually compose it in the Hebrew Bible. The 
 mere fact of uniting all these books, differing in date and con- 
 tents, was not enough to confer upon them the dignity of sacred 
 books. They simply formed a library of great interest in regard 
 to the political and religious history of the Israelitish nation. 
 But they were very speedily used in the worship of the syna- 
 gogues. Every day some fragment of these venerated books 
 was read, commented on and explained. These books were 
 then placed on a real pedestal and set apart from all others. 
 They became pre-eminently the Scripture, the Bible, or the Book. 
 They came to be considered as the source and the foundation of 
 beliefs, and this conferred upon them a quite special and unique 
 character. At length the people deified them as much as books 
 can be deified — that is to say, they considered them as dictated 
 by the mind of God himself. This was the point of departure of 
 a number of rabbinical subtleties. They went so far, for instance, 
 as religiously to reproduce the faults of copyists which had crept 
 into the text, and to discover a world of mysteries in the number 
 of letters which each of the writings in the sacred collection 
 contained. 
 
172 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 
 
 The origin of the New Testament does not differ essentially 
 from that of the Old. It also is composed of different books, 
 written by various authors at different dates, and certainly none 
 of these authors foresaw that posterity would join his work with 
 twenty- six others in order to form a new Holy Scripture. This 
 work of union dates from the second century, when the Christian 
 churches were invaded by Gnostic doctrines, a mixture of Oriental 
 speculation, of polytheism and of Christianity, very much the 
 fashion at that period — religion has its fashions and its tempo- 
 rary infatuations — which threatened to drown Christian tra- 
 dition in a deluge of strange notions and bewildering dreams. 
 A conservative instinct led to the desire of possessing written, 
 incontestable monuments of the Christian teaching of early 
 days, and a certain number of gospels, epistles, apostolic his- 
 tories, &c., dating or supposed to date from the age of the 
 apostles, was collected. This collection, which was not defini- 
 tively settled until later, but which very early contained the 
 principal books of which it is now composed, thence became 
 the model, the official document, of true Christian tradition. 
 These books, like those of the Old Testament, were read in the 
 religious assemblies. There was no delay in conferring the same 
 sacred character upon them. 
 
 In the beginning, there was no sort of conflict between the 
 sacerdotal authority, complete in all parts, and this authority 
 of the book which each one could read. On the contrary, the 
 Christian priest was the principal collector of the new selection 
 and gave his sanction to it. He made it the text of his teaching, 
 and believed that he found in it confirmation of his authority, 
 only he more and more reserved to himself the right of deter- 
 mining its interpretation. He founded Christian orthodoxy on 
 those texts henceforth considered canonical, and he forgot abso- 
 lutely that they presented several very different types of doc- 
 trine. But it is an illusion, common to those who read the 
 sacred books without a spirit of independent criticism, not to see 
 the doctrinal differences which distinguish some from the others. 
 
BELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 173 
 
 See what now happened. The living and speaking anthority 
 of the priesthood gained the ascendant over the anthority of the 
 book, which was less and less read. Christian tradition, like all 
 prolonged tradition, angmented and loaded with heterogeneous 
 elements, deviated in many respects from its primitive lines ; and 
 the moment came in which the book, which had not changed, 
 found itself in disagreement with the priesthood, which had 
 greatly changed. Such was the antagonism which broke out in 
 the Eeformation. To sacerdotal tradition, Protestantism opposed 
 the tradition deposited in the holy book. 
 
 An important step towards the emancipation of religious 
 thought was certainly then taken. A book, serving as the basis 
 of a religious society, ought to be read ; and to read, is already 
 to arouse reflection, examination and individual decision. Every 
 Protestant, with a Bible in his hand, soon became a pope. Then, 
 as this Bible was not always clear, not always in agreement with 
 itself on all points, dogmatic differences were not slow to arise. 
 We may remark here that, in its enthusiasm for its traditional 
 written chart. Protestantism, like Judaism, fell into veritable 
 bibliolatry. It made the Bible a miraculous writing, and, as its 
 adversaries often reproached it with, a paper pope. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is to this ardent study of the Bible that we 
 owe the scope of historical criticism. Nations who are educated 
 in this reading acquire ideas concerning antiquity — concerning 
 other races than their own — concerning the manners, customs, 
 ideas of ages long gone by — of which nations submitted to sacer- 
 dotal authority remain destitute. It is not at all the result of 
 chance that the great works of historical criticism and of com- 
 parative history have until now been carried on much more 
 actively in Protestant countries than anywhere else. They find 
 a public which interests itself in them, prepared beforehand to 
 like and to understand them. 
 
 Finally, the ultimate result is evolved from these researches. 
 There is no more of the supernatural in the authority of the sacred 
 books than in that of the priesthood. According to periods, 
 
174 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY. 
 
 populations and states of mind, these two authorities have 
 shown themselves in turn beneficent or oppressive. Eeligion 
 itself is independent of both. Both have been specially con- 
 stituted as protectors of tradition. The sacred books in each 
 religion remain pre-eminently the documents which enable us 
 to go back with certainty to their principle and to their original 
 spirit. Whatever is the worth of a religion, that is the value 
 of its sacred book. In virtue of this, the Bible remains always 
 worthy of our respect and of our liveliest interest. Nothing 
 can prevent it containing a great number of those words which 
 humanity will never forget. But it has no right — we may add 
 that it makes no claim — to enchain the liberty of the mind. 
 
VII. 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 The word theology has not a very good reputation in contem- 
 porary France. Many persons understand by it a science which 
 they say is no science — in this sense, that it is governed by doc- 
 trines laid down a priori which do not leave it any real liberty of 
 examination — a science consequently factitious, which is taught 
 in the seminaries to young men destined to an ecclesiastical 
 career, but which truly scientific men can never take seriously. 
 This definition is much too limited ; it confuses a particular form 
 of its object with the object itself; and from our point of view 
 we energetically challenge it. 
 
 It would not be very logical to strike out from the course of 
 scientific studies those branches of knowledge which are not 
 universally recognized as positive and susceptible of exact de- 
 monstration. There are people who believe neither in medicine 
 nor in pliilosophy. We consider, however, that it would be 
 very unwise to eliminate those studies from the programmes of 
 instruction. 
 
 Everywhere, where observation establishes a group of facts, 
 visible or invisible, linked together by an internal relationship, 
 forming a class apart in the midst of all others, there is room for 
 a special science. 
 
 Thus religion is the common cause of a mass of facts distinct 
 from others — creeds, myths, symbols, rites, traditions, sacrifices, 
 priesthoods, sacred books, &c. — and this mass constitutes the 
 religious domain properly so called. Consequently, since the 
 human mind has had capacity and leisure, it has looked at this 
 with curiosity, it has sought to examine it, to understand it and to 
 
176 THEOLOGY. 
 
 bring it into the forms and categories of reason ; thence has arisen 
 a special branch of human knowledge, to be called theology, or the 
 science of God — more exactly, of all which concerns the divinity. 
 
 This science had not very brilliant beginnings, any more than 
 its sisters. Much less ancient than its object, since it brings 
 intelligence and reflection definitely into action, it bears, like all 
 the sciences at their outset, that stamp of imagination, of poetry 
 and of arbitrariness, which may charm aesthetically, but is anti- 
 scientific in the highest degree. This is not a sufficient reason 
 for disputing its existence. The true scientific spirit, for a 
 moment caught sight of in ancient Greece, is in reality a very 
 modern thing. 
 
 In the very fact of the elaboration of a myth, or of the organi- 
 zation of a rite, there is a work of arrangement and of systema- 
 tization which proceeds from reflection. Where a religion turns 
 in preference towards animism, and consequently towards sorcery, 
 there are special theologians who claim to know the formulae, 
 the incantations, the mysterious signs, which compel the spirits 
 entreated to intervene in a certain manner in human affairs. 
 Where a religion gives rise to a complicated ritual, he who 
 knows the rites well — the priest who knows the hymns which 
 must be sung — how the victim is to be sacrificed and his entrails 
 are to be interrogated — how he must be skinned and cut up on the 
 altar — at what precise moment it is right to arrest the burning 
 and to distribute to those present the portion which they share 
 with the divinity — this priest, this great master of religious cere- 
 monial, is learned in his part and has his theology at his fingers' 
 end. Finally, when curiosity is aroused in the mind before it 
 has lost its native credulity — when it seeks to know accurately 
 all those beautiful histories which are related concerning gods 
 and goddesses and their descent, and concerning the beginnings, 
 those especially of the tribe or of the city — the theologian will 
 be the priest or the poet who knows all that and who narrates it 
 in order, in a language worthy of the subject, in fine flowing 
 verses, harmonious or tragic. 
 
THEOLOGY. 177 
 
 For this reason, in Greek antiquity, the first theologian of 
 renown is Hesiod, who described the beginnings of the world, of 
 gods and of goddesses, their loves, their wars, how men lived at 
 first, and how the great Olympian gods, gods in the regular order 
 of things, ended by getting the better of monstrous disturlnng 
 powers, born of the first embraces of Heaven and Earth. Here 
 we have a very primitive theology, which consists in a poetic 
 account of old traditions and in their arrangement. 
 
 So long as we remain in the region of mythology, theology 
 can scarcely be anything else. This arrangement has its special 
 methods. For instance, it reconciles the different traditions 
 revolving round the same natural fact, by establishing a relation 
 of paternity between the different gods whom they concern. 
 When Hesiod says that Kronos is the son of Uranus, and Zeus 
 the son of Kronos, that is the same as saying that Uranus, 
 Kronos and Zeus, are in fact the same being, Heaven. When 
 it is related that the august Jupiter offered to others besides his 
 rightful companion, Hera, the homage of his passion, translate : 
 Hera, the goddess of the ethereal heights, was considered in 
 most cities as the wife of Heaven ; but in more than one place 
 another companion was assigned to Heaven — the Earth, under the 
 names of Demeter, Ceres, Leda, Danae, Latona, &c., and that 
 without thinking any evil. The poet of Ascra was not, however, 
 an isolated phenomenon. Before his time, itinerant singers 
 hawked about poems analogous to his, though probably less 
 complete ; and we find even in the Eig-Veda hymns which are 
 nothing but attempts at systematization of the first Aryan 
 mythology. 
 
 It was quite otherwise when philosophy had been born. In 
 Greece, as in India, it formed a sort of philosophic theology, 
 the characteristic of which was to introduce, under the forms, 
 in the myths and the creeds, of the popular religion, ideas pro- 
 ceeding from philosophic speculation, but which, with some com- 
 promises, were amalgamated with the traditional forms, and 
 appeared as making only one with them, 
 
 N 
 
178 THEOLOGY. 
 
 Among the philosopher-theologians of antiquity, we may name 
 Pythagoras, who almost founded a religion, and in whom little 
 was wanting to give to the West a sort of Buddha. Plato also 
 contributes to theology, in the sense that he often interprets 
 the popular traditions conformably to his own speculative ideas. 
 Varro among the Eomans, and Plutarch among the Greeks, come 
 rather into the list of reciters and narrators. In India also 
 schools flourish which are at once philosophic and religious, 
 applying to the Vedic and Brahmanic traditions principles de- 
 rived from sources external to them. We discern there the 
 Vedanta philosophy, implying a sufficiently decided monotheistic 
 tendency ; the Nyaya philosophy, occupying itself specially with 
 logic and the sources of knowledge ; the atomistic philosophy, 
 called Vaiseshitra ; and the system of pantheistic, even atheistic, 
 tendency of Sankhya. None of these philosophies appear sepa- 
 rated from the Vedic religion ; on the contrary, each claims to 
 be its true interpretation. 
 
 Among the Jews, theology as a science was long unknown. The 
 prophet, the psalmist, or the wise man of sententious speech, 
 determined the direction of religious ideas among them. The 
 Jewish theologian appeared with the lawyer, the scribe and the 
 rabbi, chiefly in the character of interpreter of and commentator 
 on the sacred books, particularly of the law. This primary 
 Jewish theology, which produced the colossal work of the 
 Talmud, is essentially a jurisprudence. But this book led to 
 others. The Judaism wliich followed the captivity admitted 
 doctrines which the old Mosaism did not know, or of which it 
 possessed only the germs, such as the belief in good or bad angels, 
 in Satan, in the Messiah, and in a future life under the form 
 of corporeal resurrection. The rabbis for the most part adopted 
 these innovations, arranged them in order and propagated them. 
 Judaism, at the time when Jesus appeared, was thoroughly im- 
 pregnated with them. 
 
 The same Judaism, but this time in Egypt, furnishes us with 
 a new and very curious proof of the influence of philosophical 
 
THEOLOGY. 179 
 
 ideas on the theological elaboration of religious ideas. We speak 
 here of the school of Alexandrian Judaism so called, of which 
 Philo the Jew is the most eminent representative. In him, the 
 Old Testament and Plato meet and combine. The foundation is 
 Platonic, the form is Biblical ; but the foundation modifies the 
 form, and reciprocally. What especially distinguishes the theo- 
 logy of Philo is that, without knowing anything of Christianity, 
 by the simple application of his Platonic ideas to Hebraic tra- 
 dition, he proclaims the theory of the Word, the Son of God, 
 the intermediary between creation and the absolute Divinity, 
 divine thought emitted before all time, and since then endowed 
 with a personal existence, the revealer of truth, the redeemer of 
 men. It is the Logos or the Word which, in the mind of the 
 Alexandrian Jew, came forth from the absolute Being by an in- 
 effable generation, just as, according to mythology, Pallas Athene 
 sprang from the forehead of her father Jupiter. But what pro- 
 digious progress this speculative theory made ! Hardly half a 
 century had passed when an evangelist applied it to the person 
 of Jesus. Two centuries later, the question which agitated the 
 world was whether the Word or Son was, or was not, consub- 
 stantial with the Father ; and the emperor Constantine, more 
 disturbed by this difference than by the barbarians who thundered 
 at the gates of civilization, assembled at his own cost the first 
 great oecumenical council, and signed the famous formula of 
 Nice, which proclaimed, in opposition to Arius, the consubstan- 
 tiality of the Father and of the Son. 
 
 From this moment we enter fully on the theological period. 
 For a long time theology will be the favourite intellectual occu- 
 pation of both Pagans and Christians. Neo-platonism was espe- 
 cially a theology. The old paganism, on the eve of extinction, 
 suffered its last spasm, its final resistance to the death-agony 
 which had begun. The pagan reaction numbers very distin- 
 guished names — Libanius, Hierocles, Porphyrins, the emperor 
 Julian, who also was a theologian. But this artificial theology 
 had no chance against the Christian theology, which was however 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THEOLOGY. 
 
 not much more natural or scientific, but which had this enormous 
 advantage, that instead of being the theory of a dying religion, 
 it was that of a religion still young and possessing confidence and 
 hope. We must never confound the value of the great move- 
 ments which carry away humanity with that of theories of 
 learned pretensions which may be based upon them. If our 
 French revolution had waited, before acting upon the world, 
 until one or more thinkers had given it a scientific formula, it 
 would have been waiting still. 
 
 There are two facts to be noticed at the point at which we 
 have arrived in this outline sketch of the history of theology. 
 The first is, that it is intimately connected with tlie history of 
 philosophy. In reality, theology ceases to be a simple arranged 
 statement of, or a mere commentary on, tradition, only when it 
 takes possession of that tradition in order to look at it in the 
 light of philosophic principles, and to submit it to forms corre- 
 sponding to those principles. The second is, that the results of 
 this application of philosophical theories to the objects of reli- 
 gion become in their turn an integral part of the traditional faith, 
 and obtrude with the authority of immutable tradition on sub- 
 sequent theology. Dogma is born. 
 
 We have already remarked this very important element in the 
 history of religious ideas, that the establishment of the Christian 
 Church in the midst of populations fed on the old polytheistic 
 traditions had given an importance till then unknown to the 
 question of the true and the false in religion. We have shown 
 with what indulgence, which underwent only some momentary 
 interruptions, polytheism regarded this alternative. Prepossession 
 in favour of truth became so strong that, in Christianity especially, 
 we see a phenomenon also unknown to antiquity, the ardent 
 search after orthodoxy, that is correct belief. We have shown 
 how this ardent search invested the Christian priesthood with 
 the privilege of infallibility, and that orthodoxy consisted in 
 adhesion to the decrees issued by the councils or assemblies of 
 bishops. These decrees — those at least which aimed at deter- 
 
THEOLOGY. ISl 
 
 mining the text of doctrines — became dogmas) In theological 
 language, a dogma is move than a doctrine, a disputable opinion 
 to be modified in substance and in form. It is something abso- 
 lute and invariable ; and it is on the adhesion yielded to dogmas 
 promulgated by the Church that orthodoxy depends. Conse- 
 quently the explanation, the demonstration and the defence of 
 dogma will be, until the moment when this authority shall be 
 theologically disputed, the proper duty of theology. 
 
 We know how in the middle ages theology was the absorbing 
 science, which comprehended all the others and was honoured 
 by an undisputed pre-eminence. Then philosophy was declared 
 its humble servant, ancilla thcologice. It was not remarked that 
 if the mistress had not first been in the school of her servant 
 she would have had nothing to say, and would have continued 
 to submit to her influence. The divinity of Jesus Christ and 
 the divine Trinity imply a large element of Platonism ; original 
 sin, the redemption, the authority of the Church, the value of 
 sacraments, the merits of the saints and their reversion to tlie 
 faithful, &c., depend upon the principles of realism, which make 
 out of the generality, out of the common element of collectivity, 
 out of the idea of a whole, a concrete reality which is again 
 Platonism. It is true that all these beliefs, in old times theolo- 
 gical theses, had been raised to the dignity of definitive dogmas. 
 But among chosen spirits, faith aspired after rational expres- 
 sion, fides qucereiis intellectum.. Then arose scholasticism, the 
 
 ^ The word dogma, ^6yf.i.a, signifies primarily simply a plausible opinion, a thesis 
 sure of approval. The Stoics gave it a stricter sense in applying it to decrees defining 
 articles of the sovereign law or moral precepts. Cicero, Acad. Qacest. iv. 9, gives us 
 this explanation of it : Qua {sapientia) neque de seipsa duhitare debet, neque de suls 
 decretis quce philosophi vacant SoyfiaTa, quorum nullum sine scelere prodi potest. 
 . . . Non potest igitur duhitari, quia decretum nullum falsum j)ossit esse, sapientique 
 satis non sit non esse falsum, sed ctiam stabile, Jixum, ratumcsse debeat, quod movere 
 nulla ratio queat. A little further on, ibid. 4-3 : Ne incognito assenliar, quod mihi 
 tecum est dogma commune. It is in the same sense that we find the word used by 
 Mai'cus Aurelius, 'Etc tavrov, ii. 3 : ravra aoi ap/ot-w, ctti ^uyfiara tarw. Tliis 
 philosophical acceptation of the word dogina arose, according to all appearances, fium 
 the term, &/ck, ckooKrai, it seems, or it has seemed good, it is resolved, which is put 
 at tlie head of decrees emanating from public authorities. 
 
182 THEOLOGY. 
 
 daughter of Aristotle, but knowing very little of her father. 
 During several centuries there was a series of formidable doctors 
 who consecrated a phraseology of great subtlety and vigour to 
 definitions and demonstrations of the dogmas of the Church. 
 It was among them that the dawn of free thought threw its 
 first ray, thanks to Maitre Abelard, much more celebrated in 
 the present day through his misfortunes than through his Sic 
 et Non. Nevertheless, the Sic et No7i, the Yes and the No of 
 tradition — as if she could contradict herself! — was an event. 
 Bernard de Clairvaux, a mediocre theologian, but a great preacher 
 and a man of incomparable ardour, had as it were a vision of 
 the ravages which this rising criticism would one day make in 
 the edifice consecrated by ages. Twilight lasted long ; and 
 while it still continued, the majestic Somme of Thomas Aquinas 
 appeared, an alarming work of credulous analysis and of scho- 
 lastic dulness. We might describe it as an immense Gothic 
 cathedral without taste or grace. It has never been surpassed 
 in its kind, and it is not without good reason that it is com- 
 mended as the last word of human wisdom for those who 
 believe that the safety of humanity is bound up in the reli- 
 gious idea as it was understood and developed by the angel of 
 the school. Thomas Aquinas had rivals and even adversaries, of 
 whom Duns Scotus was one. The quarrel of nominalism and 
 of realism, originally only philosophical, re-acted upon theology. 
 The nominalist doctors were usually of a much less assured 
 orthodoxy than the others. But Christian theology remained 
 without any notable change until the Eeformation. 
 
 Then there was a bifurcation, a Catholic theology and a Pro- 
 testant theology, guided by different principles and having dif- 
 ferent ends in view. About the same period, sciences of various 
 names detached themselves, like so many children emancipated 
 from the lap of their foster-mother, who, less alert and less shrewd, 
 had great difficulty in following them and often relinquished the 
 attempt. Theology was scarcely more than a science of appli- 
 cation, studied by those who sought to enter the service of 
 
THEOLOGY. 183 
 
 one or other of the two Churches. Dogma was on both sides 
 the principal study, to which all the others were subordinate. 
 In the mean time, Protestant orthodoxy was establishing itself 
 with a rigour almost as exclusive as that which distinguished its 
 rival ; and when we study its history, we perceive that it had, 
 after its bold movement in the sixteenth century, its middle age 
 and its scholasticism during the seventeenth and a great part of 
 the eighteenth century. We see again that dreary, circumstan- 
 tial and subtle method of discussing dogma, of which the doctors 
 of the middle ages furnished the model. Let us add, that the 
 controversy between the two hostile Churches absorbed the 
 thoughts and labour of theologians almost entirely. 
 
 However, we already see two tendencies developing which are 
 destined to be very powerful in the future. Protestant theolo- 
 gians, in their criticisms on the Catholic dogmas of transubstan- 
 tiation, of sacraments in general, of the infallible authority of the 
 Church, opened the way for a bold rationalism which could not 
 fail to extend itself to their own orthodoxy. The Socinian school 
 did not hesitate to shiver it into fragments. On the other hand, 
 led away by controversy into making the Bible the religious 
 authority sovereignly deciding all differences, they read and 
 studied it much, without daring to apply to it the processes of 
 independent criticism. The veneration of which the Bible was 
 the object went even to superstition, even to the deification of 
 the book. 
 
 This explains why independent biblical criticism arose outside 
 Protestantism, through the labours of an excommunicated Jew, 
 Spinoza, and an erudite priest, Eichard Simon. To the timorous 
 objections which were made to the latter from the midst of the 
 Catholic Church, he replied that Protestant theologians, having 
 no other basis than the Bible to support their doctrines, were 
 compelled to put it outside discussion ; but that Catholic theo- 
 logians, founding their teaching on continuous tradition and the 
 infallibility of the Church, were much freer to investigate the 
 origin and method of composition of the books of the Bible 
 
184 THEOLOGY. 
 
 without departing from orthodoxy. This specious reasoning did 
 not prevent the usual defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, Bossuet 
 among others, from shaking their heads in defiance, auguring 
 nothing good from this " libertine criticism which threatens to 
 invade everything." Eichard Simon was censured, molested and 
 somewhat persecuted ; and his example was so little encouraging 
 that he remained without successors. The valiant Benedictine 
 school of the last century published some very remarkable works 
 of erudition relating to the first centuries, and hunted out, as 
 was then said, a certain number of male and female saints ; but 
 it exerted no influence on ecclesiastical theology properly so 
 called. The inheritance of Eichard Simon was acquired chiefly 
 by Protestant theologians. It could not in the end escape them 
 that the Bible itself, in its formation and in the way in which it 
 has reached us, rests on the principle of tradition. Who gathered 
 together the different books ? Who decided that these books, and 
 no others, ought to compose it ? Who has guaranteed to us that 
 in course of time no curtailments and no additions have been 
 made ? These questions were bound to obtrude themselves, and 
 to compel Protestant theology to treat them scientifically. 
 
 In the mean time, philosophy had been enriched and trans- 
 formed. Through Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz, it had put 
 in circulation many new ideas and methods. Once more the law 
 which ordains that theology shall always sooner or later yield to 
 the ascendancy of philosophy, was about to be verified. Pro- 
 testant theology had its Leibnitzian, or rather Wolfian, period, — 
 Wolf, the disciple of Leibnitz, having chiefly contributed to pro- 
 pagate the ideas of his master in the Universities. The prestige 
 of traditional dogma had much diminished, and we in France can 
 scarcely form an idea of the incredible mass of learned works 
 which German theology produced in the two neighbouring domains 
 of biblical criticism and of ecclesiastical history. Later still, 
 German theology had its Kantian period, then its Hegelian period ; 
 then it underwent a reaction in the sense of a return to old dogmas. 
 But the ancient dogmatic theology, founded at first sight on the 
 
THEOLOGY. 185 
 
 authority of a revealed dogma, no longer existed. Since then we 
 have seen the profession of theology, such as we understand it in 
 the present day — that is to say, a whole formed of critical, histo- 
 rical and philosophical knowledge — concerning itself wdth all reli- 
 gious matters, and specially, but no longer exclusively, with the 
 origin and the history of Christianity. The course, the first lessons 
 of which are to be found in a condensed form here, is in truth a 
 course of theology, but of theology absolutely laic. We recognize, 
 indeed, in truly scientific theology, that Christianity cannot be 
 understood, that the Bible cannot be soundly appreciated, except 
 on the condition of comparing the one and the other with the 
 religions of the whole world, with their traditions and their sacred 
 books. This point of view in no way invalidates the legitimacy 
 of the theological studies pursued in view of the ministry in any 
 church. All things being equal, it is infinitely better that the 
 ministers of a religious society should be instructed and scienti- 
 fically prepared for their functions, than that they should be left 
 without defence against the illusions of ignorance. But we can 
 claim for the position in which we have placed ourselves the 
 advantage of entire disinterestedness, and we measure our sym- 
 pathies for ecclesiastical or for applied theology by the degree of 
 independence and of really scientific spirit of which they give 
 proof. 
 
 To sum up : theology is to religion what all methodic know- 
 ledge is to a determinate group of facts. Sometimes in advance 
 of progress in other directions of the human mind, sometimes 
 in the rear, theology passes through three phases : in the first, 
 it records and arranges traditions; in the second, it defines, 
 demonstrates and develops the dogmas in force in a religious 
 society; in the third, it gradually emancipates itself from the 
 dictatorial authorities which limit the free scope of religious 
 science, and, except in the case of its special application to reli- 
 gious societies at present constituted, it moves henceforth as 
 boldly and freely in the field of inquiry as any other branch of 
 knowledge. Finally, whether the philosophy by which it is 
 
186 THEOLOGY. 
 
 inspired be ancient or recent matters little ; it is the fact that 
 theology is always determined or modified by the course of 
 philosophical ideas. Dogma itself is never anything but philo- 
 sojDhical interpretation embalmed in a sacred formula of tradi- 
 tional facts. 
 
 It is, then, above all necessary, in order to grasp the true rela- 
 tions between religion and theology, to take account also of the 
 relations of the former to philosophy. 
 
VIII. 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 We should be greatly embarrassed if, among all the definitions 
 which have been given of philosophy, we had to choose that 
 which would be considered as the most exact. Most frequently 
 the proposed definition has been true only from the point of view 
 of the particular system of which it formed a part. On the his- 
 torical ground on which we have the right, or rather the duty, of 
 remaining, we take the whole of the works which, by common 
 consent, are ranked under the category of philosophical works. 
 We observe that they all have as a condition full liberty of 
 thought ; that they take their rise first of all from intellect, while 
 religion takes its rise in the first instance from feeling ; that they 
 are ordinarily consecrated to the search after first principles, 
 while establishing themselves, consciously or not, on the sum of 
 the knowledge acquired at the moment at which these attempts 
 are perfected ; that, finally, that which concerns the soul, the 
 thinking ego, human destiny, forms part of their field of inquiry 
 to a quite special extent. 
 
 Thence, historically, we have the right of thus defining philo- 
 sophy : it is the free search after higher truth in the world and 
 in man on the basis of acquired knowledge in general and of 
 observation of human nature. 
 
 The affinity between religion and philosophy arises from this — 
 that both aspire after the highest or sovereign truth. Eeligion 
 springs from the spontaneous sentiment of it which man pos- 
 sesses, and which he interprets first of all without reflection, as 
 also without method, under the preponderating influence of the 
 imagination. Philosophy springs from the need which man 
 
188 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 experiences of correcting by rational formulfB the inspirations of 
 feeling. They are, however, two sisters, offspring of the human 
 mind, and each of them in her own way renders homage to this 
 impulse which urges the human mind to seek the supreme unity 
 of things, to seize it when it believes it has found it, to set to 
 •work again when it perceives that it does not possess it. Of 
 what importance from this point of view are the aberrations 
 whether of philosophy or of religion ? Each has a great charge ; 
 but it is not the result which we must weigh ; it is the tendency 
 and the effort ; and the two efforts are parallel. 
 
 Nevertheless, their harmony is often disturbed by bitter and 
 fierce disputes. 
 
 Eeligious tradition, always formed in a period of relative igno- 
 rance, proposes to the reason assertions which the latter after a 
 certain time can no longer admit, which even offend it. Sometimes 
 a religious genius, reforming and transforming religion, raising 
 the religious level of the soul to a height previously unknown, 
 removes the difficulty, and becomes the point of departure of a 
 new tradition. But such an event is very rare. Long periods 
 pass during which religious tradition remains unchanged. Each 
 time, also, discontented reason seeks the satisfaction which tradi- 
 tion refuses her, and seeks it outside the latter. 
 
 Philosophy, consequently, from, its first appearance, presents 
 itself in a condition of detachment from religious tradition, and 
 starts from a supposition more or less hostile to it. Our attention 
 has been called to the fact that where, as in Greece, the authority 
 of this tradition is ill-defined and hazy, theoretic antagonism is 
 only feebly felt. Nevertheless, the example of Socrates and of 
 some other thinkers of antiquity is there to prove to us that 
 this antagonism might very easily pass into action and assume 
 a tragic form. 
 
 It is always by a compromise that philosophy and religion 
 can live on terms of peace for any length of time. Philosophy 
 accepts the forms and symbols of tradition, and translates its 
 speculations and its favourite ideas into traditional language. 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 189 
 
 We see remarkable examples of this in India, among the Pytha- 
 goreans and the Platonists, in Neo-platonism and in Alexandrian 
 Judaism, which was persuaded that Plato and Moses were in 
 complete accord, although it unfolded a system in which neither 
 Plato nor Moses would have recognized themselves. Tradition 
 then becomes philosophical, and philosophy becomes a theology. 
 But that cannot continue indefinitely. This agreement is more 
 diplomatic than real. New evolutions of free thought may place 
 it in an antagonism to tradition also penetrated by philosophical 
 ideas. It may besides happen, and it does happen, that philoso- 
 phy may be irreligious in its tendency. 
 
 It is so when it rests on chance as the last word of things. In 
 truth, that synthesis which is the fundamental claim of religion, 
 its raison d'etre and its constant ambition, is no longer possible 
 if, instead of a centralizing and co-ordinating principle of things, 
 thought has nothing for its supreme standpoint but this irrational 
 category, absolutely opposed to the most imperious postulate of 
 the mind, which we call chance. This is why in pagan antiquity 
 the philosophical school which was always the most suspected 
 in the eyes of religious men was Epicurism. It mattered little 
 that, more or less seriously, Epicurus admitted the existence of 
 the gods. He recognized no real connection between them and 
 the world ; and as for the latter, its existence, its organization and 
 its continuance, arose from a fortuitous concourse of infinitely 
 numerous atoms involved by an undefinable force in an eternal 
 fall. Such a system is irreligious, because it banishes mind 
 from the universe. Eeligion knows not to whom or to what 
 to cling. Since there is no more any thought in the world, 
 human thought cannot attach itself to anything analogous to 
 itself. Nothing any longer answers to the idea of permanence 
 or of immutability. Man cannot logically find a standpoint even 
 in the admission of eternal laws affecting the very essence of 
 things. If the universe is in effect nothing but a fortuitous com- 
 bination, who may assure us that this combination may not to- 
 morrow, in an hour, or even in a moment, have exhausted its 
 
190 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 chances of duration, and that the kosmos, the organized world, 
 may not be replaced by an indescribable chaos in idu oculi ? 
 
 This will always be the weak side of a purely atomistic phi- 
 losophy, even when it has more than once usefully re -acted 
 against the hollow speculations of a metaphysical system too 
 disdainful of experience. We may add that philosophy has very 
 rarely made atheism a principle. It is an abuse of words to 
 address this reproach to schools which, like the positivism of the 
 present day, simply conclude our mental impotency in the search 
 after the final cause. It is not detracting from this theory, sup- 
 posing it admitted, to ask the question, IFhat next, and next ? — 
 and in default of a reply which shall in all points satisfy the 
 requirements of strict logic, to collect and question the indica- 
 tions of human nature, with its needs, its spontaneous tendencies, 
 and its aspirations towards the ideal. 
 
 As a rule, however, religion finds itself more in harmony with 
 philosophies which possess a metaphysical system in itself reli- 
 gious, and which can give a reason to man when he desires to 
 unite himself with the sovereign spirit, the supreme being, the 
 constant thought and director of things, the real ideal, or any 
 other name which it suits him to apply to the being whom 
 ordinary language calls God. It is thus that Platonism and 
 Stoicism in antiquity — the systems of Descartes, of Spinoza, of 
 Leibnitz, of Kant and of Hegel — have given a great imj)ulse to 
 religious thought and have powerfully modified it. But we must 
 not, therefore, say that it is philosophy which makes religion. 
 That is not true in the beginning ; it is only to a certain 
 extent true in the sequel. Philosophy can influence only the 
 doctrinal theory of religion or theology. Each system of phi- 
 losophy has its day. It appears ; it puts itself forward ; then 
 it falls to pieces and gives place to another. Only the really 
 powerful systems of philosophy do not disappear without leaving 
 in the general thought some elements which survive them, and 
 which become henceforth a part of the general inheritance. Has 
 not Plato bequeathed to us idealism ; Descartes, the autonomy of 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 191 
 
 the mind; Spinoza, anti-dualism; Leibnitz, the idea of substantive 
 force ; Kant, that of the sovereignty of duty in life ; Hegel, that of 
 becoming or of developing by the opposition of contraries ? So 
 many indestructible furrows ploughed on the field of the mind, 
 so many precious pearls with which the treasury of humanity 
 is enriched, and which henceforth form part of its inalienable 
 dowry. 
 
 But before these religious thinkers themselves, religious tra- 
 dition often recoils in fear, and through the medium of its official 
 theologians declares violent war against them. 
 
 This tradition, impregnated with philosophical ideas of the 
 past, would intrude itself as a supernatural revelation, and does 
 not intend that it shall be lawful to seek truth outside itself. 
 The autonomy of the mind seems to it hostile to the rights which 
 it arrogates ; with still greater reason when this philosophy teaches 
 doctrines in open opposition to its dogmas. Then it accuses 
 it, not only of temerity, but even of impiety and of blasphemy. 
 It assumes the offensive. It demands from the wisdom of this 
 world an account of its errors and of its extravagances, and pro- 
 claims itself infinitely more rational than its rival.^ Too often it 
 
 ^ We still remember very distinctly an address which we heard more than thirty 
 years ago in Paris, in the Church of the Assumption. The preacher was that Father 
 Ventura who had his season of celebrity, and whom a certain reputation for liberalism 
 had preceded amongst us. An Italian, he spoke French with a marked accent, but 
 with much facility and even with elegance. His subject was the demonstration of 
 the superiority of Catholic theology over philosophy. With unpitying eloquence and 
 real erudition he enumerated all the errors, all the nonsense, all the follies, of which 
 philosophy had been guilty from ancient times down to our own day. It was an 
 interminable string of blunders, of which several very comic ones almost provoked 
 the laughter of the numerous audience assembled in the sacred place. At bottom the 
 effect was saddening, inasmuch as one was present at the caricature of poor human 
 reason. The audience, educated young men for the most part, seemed much struck 
 with it. Could not the preacher have foreseen that among them he might probably 
 find some who were also studying theology, and that, without any pretension to know 
 all that it could teach them, they knew enough already to feel that his argument miglit 
 be turned against him, and that if one was to set in a line all the errors committed 
 by theologians — and among the number are some very lamentable ones — we should 
 encounter a list at least as long as could be drawn from philosophy ? We quote this 
 example to show that it is not in small points, in detail, that it is desirable to treat 
 these great questions. With such a method we can never escape recriminations. 
 
192 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 does not hesitate to seek confirmation of the victory which it has 
 adjudged to itself, in recourse to weapons which are anything 
 but rational, which impose the silence of fear, not that of acqui- 
 escence. 
 
 We are happily delivered from any such apprehension. But 
 the struggle in the domain of ideas is not finished and will pro- 
 bably never be finished. It recurs again in that of liberty and 
 of authority. From our historical point of view, we cannot 
 discuss the relative legitimacy of either the one or the other 
 of these two claims. Eelative or historical legitimacy supposes, 
 not an absolute right, but a relative right depending on the 
 wants which any institution or power is alone in a condition 
 to satisfy. The fact is that, since the day in which reflection 
 dominated individual and collective life, it has been no more 
 possible to dispense with religious tradition than with pliilosopliy. 
 What would the ignorant multitude do without a certain autho- 
 rity, telling them at least which path to follow ? And what 
 stifling despotism, what mortal stagnation, when authority is not 
 tempered and in the end rectified by liberty ! We think we 
 need not affirm that, wherever the battle is being fought, we are 
 on the side of liberty. In the best regiment there are always 
 some soldiers who do it little honour ; and perhaps, taking them 
 all in turn, we should find in each of them vices of constitution 
 or of character. But in time of war we do not pause before 
 such details. We look, before all, at the banner; and if this 
 banner be that of national independence, of our country and of 
 freedom, it is not the moment to talk about trifles ; we rush on to 
 fire with the rest, and we think only of the great ideas which its 
 symbolical folds represent, and of all the brave men who are ready 
 to die in its defence. 
 
 But it is not being unfaithful to the cause of liberty to try if 
 we cannot find the terms, if not of an impossible agreement, at 
 least of a modus vivendi which would allow of the maintenance 
 of pacific relations. It is clear that there can be no question of 
 a submission which would be equivalent to suicide. The first 
 
PHiLOsopnv. 1 93 
 
 condition of the indefinitely prolonged truce which we should 
 like to see accepted on both sides is the persuasion that we must 
 resign ourselves to the co-existence of the two adversaries. Tra- 
 ditional theologians have often denied the right of independent 
 thought, but can we say that philosophers and their partizans 
 have always done justice to the opposite point of view ? 
 
 We have said that dogmatic theology always arose from the 
 fusion of philosophical doctrines with elements furnished by 
 tradition. It has many times happened to philosophy not to 
 recognize itself in dogma, and while believing that it was fighting 
 against a foreign power, it was upon itself that it directed its 
 blows. Then it was said. It is the fault of the theologians ; why 
 did they not present their philosophical doctrines under their 
 authentic form ? Why have they mixed up and disguised them ? 
 Simply because theologians did not deal with abstract theory, 
 but with concrete, positive religion, having to do with real life. 
 
 Take, for instance, from the historical point of view, and with- 
 out seeking either to confirm or to oppose it, the dogma of the 
 divinity of Jesus Christ. This dogma is the result of two great 
 movements of idea, one of purely philosophical origin, the other 
 of religious origin. The latter has for its point of departure the 
 sentiment of a divine ideal of moral beauty, of purity, of obe- 
 dience and of heroism, such as is revealed in the person of Jesus. 
 This sentiment is carried very far, becomes enthusiastic, and very 
 soon finds its Jewish formula in this expression : Jesus is the 
 Messiah. After his death he is the Eisen One who now dwells 
 in heaven. The apostle Paul arrives upon the scene. Already 
 the historical features of the Son of Man begin to be effaced in 
 the dazzling nimbus with which the veneration of his followers 
 has surrounded his head; and although still forming part of 
 humanity, the Christ of Paul is so heavenly, so sublime, that he 
 begins to leave history in order to enter into metaphysical regions, 
 and to become the centre, the means and the end of creation. 
 Jesus, borne up by the enthusiasm which he has inspired in his 
 disciples, then slowly rises towards God by a continuous ascent. 
 
 
 
194 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But in the midst of Hellenic Judaism, and without any relation 
 of origin with the gospel, a metaphysical theory arose and was 
 also propagated, that of the Word, this God of second rank, this 
 organ of creation and of revelation, who concentrates in himself 
 and disj)lays to the world the divine idea as opposed to matter, 
 to the flesh and to darkness. The religious movement which 
 led to the exaltation of Jesus coincides with the philosophical 
 movement of which the theory of the Word is the essential idea. 
 Scarcely a century had rolled away and already the fusion took 
 place. Jesus, ascending to God, meets the Word, which descends 
 from him ; soon they become only one ; and evangelical history 
 in its turn is transmuted into the same sense by the pen of the 
 Philonian author of the fourth Gospel. 
 
 There is thus a confluence of philosophy and of religion, which — 
 after interminable debates, after Sabellius, Paul of Samosatus, 
 Arius, Macedonius and others, had been rejected by the episcopal 
 majority; after Nice, after Constantinople, Ephesus and Chal- 
 cedony — ended at last in the orthodox dogma of the Trinity as it 
 is unfolded in the creed attributed to Athanasius, the Quicumque. 
 
 As a result of this, if later philosophy feels bound to attack 
 this dogma, it ought not to forget that after all it was philosophy 
 which gave rise to it. If it had not produced the metaphysical 
 theory of the Word, the first Christian generations would not 
 have been led away by it, and would not have applied it to the 
 person of Jesus. Such was the prestige exerted by this person- 
 age, that both sides, Jew and Greek, thought they could not too 
 highly honour him. The Jew, who could conceive nothing supe- 
 rior to his Messiah, said. It is he ! And when Christianity began 
 to speak Greek, the Greek, who could conceive nothing higher, 
 after God, than the divine Word, also said, It is he ! But it must 
 be admitted that, if there is a culprit, it is Platonism. It is 
 because they desired to think philosophically, because they sought 
 to arrange their creeds, their sentiments and their primitive tra- 
 ditions, in a rational form that Christian thinkers applied the 
 notion of the Word to Jesus Christ. 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 195 
 
 But, then, whence comes it that dogma, born of the engrafting 
 of philosophy on religion, extends and expands under conditions 
 with which philosophy and reason have nothing to do ? 
 
 The chief cause of that is, that dogma seeks to satisfy other 
 needs than those of reason. If it is possessed by a notion or by 
 a philosophical theory, it is not for the sake of the lovely eyes 
 of philosophy, but for the exclusive satisfaction of the religious 
 sentiment. That done, it marches onwards, bold, imperturbable, 
 not stopping even before the contradictory or the absurd, often 
 even enjoying it with transport, as if it saw there a mark of 
 divine favour. That does not prevent it from employing in 
 its course a number of notions and of definitions which it bor- 
 rows from philosophy, but its logic is absolutely controlled by 
 the end at which it aims. It has raised Jesus so high, that it 
 has made of him a divine being. Let us admit that it is right. 
 It will not henceforward be content until it has established at 
 Nice that the Son is of the same substance with the Father. 
 That again will not suffice. This eternal Son is incarnate, and it 
 is because he is made man that he has worked out the salvation 
 of men. It is thence necessary to maintain his true humanity 
 not less carefully than his divinity. Ephesus and Chalcedony 
 are the complement of Nice, and from them will go forth the 
 doctrine of " the two natures," or of the God-man, possessing at 
 once, distinctly and yet without separation, the divine nature 
 and the human nature in the unity of his person. That is not 
 yet all. The human nature is endowed with will, the divine 
 nature also ; and what would happen if the human will and the 
 divine will contradicted each other in the person of the God-man ? 
 To escape this peril, the monothelites claim that in him the divine 
 will exists alone. But to suppress the human will is to do 
 violence to the integrity of human nature. Orthodoxy, fixed at 
 this point at Constantinople in 680, thus consists in believing 
 that there are in the God-man a divine will and a human will, 
 but that the human will is always and necessarily in accord with 
 the divine will. All that is excessively subtle, but inexorably 
 
 o2 
 
196 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 logical in view of the end pursued. On the other hand, it cannot 
 be denied that throughout this history philosophy plays a great 
 jDart, although subordinated to the religious sentiment seeking its 
 satisfaction ; and while this sentiment retains its power and its 
 prestige, the objections of reason will have little influence on 
 dogma. 
 
 We might make the same remarks on other dogmas, such as 
 that of the Fall, or of the Eedemption, or of the authority of the 
 Church. Historical science is still very recent, since it does not 
 date beyond this century. It has, however, produced in Germany 
 works of the highest order on the History of Dogma. These 
 show clearly the persistent advance of the human mind on the 
 domain of religious thought. They show also how dogmas are 
 born, how they grow and spread, how at last they decline and 
 end by dying. That last moment comes in which they have 
 nothing more to say to the religious sentiment. Then reason 
 resumes all its rights, and judges as a monarch. There are dogmas 
 in Christianity which have become extinct, as, for example, the 
 nearly approaching end of the world. There are others which 
 tend to extinction, such as those which maintain the existence 
 of demons and the reality of their relations with men. What 
 educated and sensible man in the present day still believes in 
 sorcerers ? 
 
 To sum up : Eeligion, the daughter of spontaneous feeling, and 
 Philosophy, the daughter of free reason, are two sisters of unequal 
 age, who often quarrel, but can never dispense one with the 
 other. According to our view, there is a common ground on 
 which, the legitimacy of the principle of each of them being 
 admitted, it would be possible to establish a continuity of pacific 
 relations and of reciprocal services. There should be, on the 
 religious side, gratitude for the part which philosophy has always 
 taken in the development of religious thought and in the intel- 
 lectual forms which give it its normal expression ; on the philo- 
 sophical side, a sympathetic rallying to the most liberal and the 
 most scientific evolution of religious thought in a fixed period. 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 197 
 
 But even outside this solution, for wliicli only a small number 
 on each side are sufficiently prepared, the conviction that the 
 co-existence and the mutual action of these two great powers 
 form a part of the normal, natural and necessary development 
 of the human mind, already suffices for mutual regard to replace 
 former acrimony, and of this conviction religious history fur- 
 nishes peremptory demonstration. 
 
IX. 
 MOEALITY. 
 
 Eeligion, which aspires to secure to man the harmonious 
 synthesis of his personal life with the universe, of which he 
 occupies one point, thence finds itself in close relation with those 
 higher conditions of human life which lead to the triple category 
 of the true, the good and the beautiful. When studying its his- 
 torical relations with theology and philosophy, we looked at its 
 relations with the true ; we must now consider those which it 
 sustains with the good — that is, with morality. 
 
 From the historical point of view, morality may be defined in 
 two ways : either it is the realization in life of the ideal of good 
 such as man conceives it, or it is the philosophical theory and 
 the rule of this realization. 
 
 Clearly, we have to concern ourselves with the history of 
 practical morality rather than with the systems of moralists. 
 Morality is much older than moralists, just as religion by a 
 long way preceded theologians. "We must devote some moments 
 to an inquiry into its origin or its principle. We here find 
 ourselves in the presence of two theories. One supposes that 
 morality springs from a natural disposition of the human mind 
 to make the judgments which it applies to acts and intentions 
 depend on a notion sui generis, that of duty, which must not be 
 confounded with any other, not even with that of utility. The 
 other will have it that it is only a transformation of this notion 
 of the useful. The numerous variations, the very contradictions 
 in the moral sense, the desire of explaining everything in human 
 nature without having recourse to principles existing outside it 
 and certain sensual and materialistic tendencies, have led some 
 
MORALITY. 199 
 
 people to see in morality only a superior form of intelligent, expe- 
 rienced egotism, which discovers at last that it is more advan- 
 tageous to resist blind allurements, and to submit to that which, 
 in the sequel, takes the name of duty. For instance, every man 
 has an innate tendency to appropriate everything within his reach 
 which can procure him comfort. As far as that goes, every man 
 is the plunderer of his neighbour. Homo liomini lupus. He 
 began in that way, it is said ; but with growing reflection he per- 
 ceives that such a system, very far from increasing his comfort, 
 diminishes it, and that, in the name of his own interest well 
 understood, it will answer far better to lay down a general rule 
 that each one shall enjoy only the fruits of his own labour, or 
 of that which he can peaceably obtain from otliers by way of 
 voluntary exchange. Thence the social precept which forbids 
 theft, and the constitution of a social force to prevent it or to 
 punish the thief Generations succeed and are brought up with 
 the idea that theft is an evil thing ; the evil thing becomes dis- 
 graceful ; and by heredity the precept becomes axiomatic in the 
 conscience. The same genesis is applicable to all other moral rules. 
 We must begin by admitting that historically this second 
 point of view can be supported by many apparent confirmations. 
 It is a fact that, wherever we can trace them, the beginnings 
 of morality, like those of religion, are very humble. In the 
 present day among populations who have remained very nearly 
 in a primitive state, the elementary principles of that which 
 constitutes morality for us seem for the most part wholly un- 
 known. There are others among whom that which seems to us 
 a frightful crime — infanticide, for instance, or parricide — is a 
 usual and lawful thing. We cannot dispute either the influence 
 of education or that of heredity. Finally, we know the cele- 
 brated utilitarian reasoning : there is only one impulse, one 
 motive in man ; each loves himself above all ; if a man happens 
 to act under the inspiration of love for his friend, it is because 
 he would suffer if he acted otherwise, because he finds hap- 
 piness in the sympathetic act; it is always his own satisfac- 
 
200 MORALITY. 
 
 tion that he seeks ; and the only difference between him and 
 the vulgar egotist is reduced to a difference of taste. 
 
 All that is very true, but nothing in it all will account for the 
 moral sentiment. Vauvenargues, in the last century, had already 
 observed that the question was to distinguish those who love 
 themselves well from those who love themselves ill. The unity 
 of motive in no way explains the diversity of direction. Here- 
 dity, education and custom, are very powerful in determining the 
 permanence of characteristics of race ; but how will they explain 
 the first appearance of these characteristics ? Say that morality 
 is formed by the action of moral educators — is not this to reason 
 like those who maintain that religion was primarily the work of 
 the priests ? And if we cannot imagine the effect of any educa- 
 tion on beings who are not capable of being educated — in other 
 terms, if all education implies that the end which it proposes 
 to itself already virtually exists potentially in the being who 
 receives it — what could moral education do for man if he had 
 not been endowed with the moral faculty ? Let us take care 
 that we are not led away by words. Utilitarian experience may 
 very well teach us that a society in which theft is prevented and 
 punished, finds itself in a much happier position than if it allowed 
 it free scope unpunished. But it will never convince us that we 
 ought to subordinate ourselves and to sacrifice ourselves to the 
 general interest and abstain from theft, if we could commit it 
 quite safely. If we deceive ourselves in our calculations of self- 
 interest, we may experience vexation ; but this sentiment has 
 nothing in common with that of moral orief or of remorse. What 
 do we say ? When we hesitate as to the judgment to be pro- 
 nounced on those of our actions the consequences of which are 
 to be regretted, we are happy if we can say sincerely that we 
 have been unskilful or improvident, but that we had no bad 
 intention. The sentiment of moral innocence thus consoles us 
 for defective utility. Utilitarians too often forget that there is 
 uo logical connection between the experience of the useful and 
 the moral facts which they contend spring out of it. The greater 
 
MORALITY. 201 
 
 part of us may certainly be more than once in a position to 
 recall the old adage, " Fais ce que dots, advienne qui 'pourra !" 
 Substitute for this noble motto, Do what is most useful to you, 
 come what may — do you not see that you change it into a maxim 
 by which the vilest rascals would profit ? 
 
 We must, then, in morality, as in religion, recognize in the 
 human mind a spontaneous disposition, sui generis^ arising from 
 its natural constitution, destined to expand in the school of 
 experience, but which that school can never create. 
 
 This expansion, however, is not more primitive in humanity 
 than in the case of a child newly born. It is not more astonish- 
 ing to see primitive or undeveloped people commit without any 
 remorse what we should call a great crime, than it is to learn 
 that they can consider as personal and adorable beings so many 
 inanimate things which are completely strange to the life of the 
 mind. Mark always, that if a people absolutely destitute of 
 any religious notion has never been discovered, we also know 
 none whose moral life is absolutely nil. On this point also we 
 must renounce the beautiful dream of the last century. There 
 is no more a primitive morality lovely and pure, than there 
 is a primitive religion simple and free from error. Morality, 
 like religion, began very low to rise very high ; and in the two 
 spheres, the progress made by one part of the species, or by its 
 chosen ones, does not prevent the rest from long remaining in 
 the prejudices and the ignorance of a prior age. There are super- 
 stitions in morality as well as in religion. 
 
 This parallelism in moral development and in religious deve- 
 lopment does not prevent religion and morality being in prin- 
 ciple, and during a great part of their history, independent. It 
 in no way follows from the definition of them that they must 
 necessarily coalesce. Religion desires to realize the synthesis of 
 the human spirit and of the superior spirit whose existence and 
 sovereignty man believes that he discerns in the world. There 
 is nothing there which is beforehand and specifically moral. It 
 may even happen that, with the idea of attaining to the union 
 
202 MORALITY. 
 
 which he seeks with the divine spirit, man may have recourse 
 to means which morality rejects. To that end he represents to 
 himself the object of his adoration in such a way that, in order 
 to please him, he believes himself obliged to perform acts which 
 his conscience condemns in relation to his kind. Nations who 
 have for ages renounced anthropophagy, have long persisted in 
 offering human victims as food for their gods. In certain sanc- 
 tuaries, thousands of women have made the grievous offering of 
 their chastity to divinities of fierce sensuality ; and if man ima- 
 gines that his god demands before all things an undivided domi- 
 nion for his orthodoxy, he devotedly abandons himself to the 
 crimes of fanaticism, and inoffensive and gentle beings become 
 like ferocious animals. 
 
 Morality, in its turn, forms and unfolds itself independently 
 of religious tradition. The gods of paganism are dissolute, arbi- 
 trary, vindictive and pitiless. That does not prevent their wor- 
 shippers from attaining notions of moral purity, of justice and of 
 clemency, which definitively take their place in the general con- 
 science. The Old Testament very often speaks of a terrible 
 Jahveh, a destroyer, wreaking fearful vengeance on those who 
 have offended him ; nevertheless, on this very ground sprang up 
 the morality pre-eminently of mercy and of pardon. In short 
 we see every day that the real morality of men is by no means 
 necessarily proportionate to the intensity of their religious 
 feelings. 
 
 But let us guard against supposing this reciprocal indepen- 
 dence as definitive and absolute. Eeligion in the end attracts 
 morality into its sphere, and morality investigates and corrects 
 religion. Everything, in fact, is interdependent in man and in 
 history, as in the world. The first intervention of the moral order 
 in the religious order, and reciprocally, took place when man 
 rose to the notion that his gods are the founders and sustainers 
 of the general order of the world. If the world is not chaos — 
 if day, night, seasons, follow a regular course — it is because the 
 gods watch over and maintain the order of things against the 
 
MORALITY. 203 
 
 ill-omened powers who would disturb it. But it is not only in 
 the physical world that order should be maintained by divine 
 power — it is also in human society, in the family and in the 
 city. There also the law of order is laid down. Who has 
 ordained it ? Who maintains and sanctions it ? The gods. And, 
 according to the polytheistic method of the division of divine 
 labour, the developed mythologies attribute the care of certain 
 moral laws to certain divinities. Vesta is the protectress of 
 domestic happiness ; Juno presides over conjugal fidelity ; Jupiter 
 chastises perjurers and the violators of hospitality ; and the ter- 
 rible Eumenides pursue to the ends of the earth the unpunished 
 criminals who fly from the presence of their crime. 
 
 Elsewhere — in Persia, for instance — physical evil and moral 
 evil form only one single whole ; it is the same with physical 
 and moral good ; and religion consists in a continuous drama- 
 tization of the struggle between these two powers. This dualist 
 notion is carried into Christianity, in which for so long the prince 
 of darkness and of evil, Satan, was considered as an actual rival, 
 a furious antagonist, of the Eternal Father. In China, the con- 
 servative laws of the empire are emanations from heaven. In 
 India, Brahmanism envelopes the whole life in a network of 
 precepts. Morality is nothing more than the systematic appli- 
 cation of the religious idea to life. By a rebound, in the original 
 Buddhism, morality supplants religion. At least Buddhism, 
 which denies on principle all concrete religion, admits a sove- 
 reign moral order, and logically ought not to recognize any other 
 sovereignty. 
 
 This entrance of moral prepossession into the sphere of reli- 
 gious beliefs will have the effect of determining in a very exact 
 sense the direction of ideas relating to a future life. Life beyond 
 the tomb, which also formed a part, though sometimes in a very 
 vague way, of the universal beliefs, assumes another character 
 when seen from the moral point of view ; it becomes the place 
 of divine rewards. This forms a new chapter of religious 
 history. 
 
204 MORALITY. 
 
 The connection between religion and morality becomes still 
 closer in monotheistic religions. There is there no longer any 
 division of divine labour. Everything — the physical world, 
 human society, human personality — has but one master, and that 
 master all-powerful. Moral order is his work by the same right 
 and as completely as the visible order. Obedience to the moral 
 law is, then, essentially a religious duty. Per contra, the progress 
 of moral ideas re-acts upon the notion which is formed of their 
 supreme source. In monotheism, man does not admit that there 
 can exist any moral perfection which would not coincide with 
 the divine will. Consequently his religious ideal rises and 
 becomes purified at the same time as his moral ideal. We may 
 even say that in the gospel religion and morality are no longer 
 easily to be distinguished. At least, when by the light of modern 
 criticism we go back to the personal teaching of Jesus, we find 
 this cliaracteristic trait, that upon the basis of the monotheistic 
 principle and of the affinity of nature between man and God (an 
 affinity which is expressed by the filial relation of man with 
 God), the religion of Jesus moves on independently of dogma 
 and of rite, consisting essentially of strictly moral provisions and 
 applications. 
 
 We ought to ask ourselves if morality has gained or lost by 
 this close alliance with religion. The answer to this question, 
 so much debated in the present day, cannot be very simple. In 
 a general way, we may say that the characteristic of the religious 
 sentiment, when it is associated with another element of human 
 life, is to render this element much more intense and more 
 powerful. Who does not know the exceptional vigour which 
 patriotism, the spirit of sacrifice, sustained activity and devotion 
 under all its forms, borrow from their alliance with the religious 
 sentiment ? Seeing that the moral weakness of man is as evi- 
 dent as the necessity for the moral life, we have the right to 
 conclude from this simple observation that as a general rule 
 morality gains in attractiveness, in power and in strength, by its 
 alliance with religion. 
 
MORA LI TV. 205 
 
 But it cannot be denied either, that too often unenlightened 
 religion has perverted the moral sense or weakened it. 
 
 Thus the external sanction promised to morality by so many 
 religions often risks the debasement of human morality to the 
 level of the most utilitarian calculation. Good, to be done, ought 
 to be loved for its own sake ; evil, to be seriously avoided, ought 
 to produce horror. Could we put much confidence in the probity 
 of a man whom fear of the police and of the law alone prevented 
 from stealing ? So, paradise and hell correspond to really moral 
 notions only when they are divested of their mythological garb, 
 and we are convinced of the truth that the good man carries 
 heaven in his heart — and that if the wicked man is not in hell, 
 hell is in him. The only consideration in exteniiation of this judg- 
 ment is, that in the infancy of the mind, individual or collective, 
 it is difficult to rise to this height of view. As an apostle has 
 said, childhood is the age of law, which encourages and punishes ; 
 in the age of reflection, it is the charm of goodness and its 
 suj)reme beauty, which preaches morality. 
 
 In the second place, the junction of morality and of religion 
 often leads to that exaggeration of morality called asceticism. 
 This is the principle in virtue of which the natural appetites and 
 desires should be not only controlled and governed, but fought 
 against, weakened and as far as possible annihilated. Asceticism 
 invents suffering where nature itself has not provided it. It 
 condemns comfort as a thing in itself reprehensible. The reduc- 
 tion of the body to the condition of a corpse would be its ideal. 
 Most of the religions which have assigned a large place to moral- 
 ity have foundered on this rock, especially Brahmanism, Bud- 
 dhism, and the Christianity of the middle ages. Not only has 
 true morality had nothing to gain from the extravagances of 
 asceticism, not only does this religious error render man incapable 
 of acquitting himself of his duties towards human society, but 
 too many instances prove that, there as elsewhere, nature, which 
 yields to rational order, revolts against violence. We recall the 
 words of Pascal, so true in spite of their coarseness, concerning 
 
206 MORALITY. 
 
 what happens to man, who is neither angel nor beast, when he 
 conceives the unfortunate idea of wishing to become an angel. 
 
 A third kind of wrong which religion can do to morality occurs 
 when it does not -distinguish morality from ritualism. Eeligion, 
 • we have seen, always gives birth to a certain symbolism, and this 
 symbolism to a ritual. Nothing can be more legitimate up to 
 the moment in which confusion, ordinarily suflficiently self-inte- 
 rested, arises between moral duty and ritualistic observance, and 
 this moment arrives when religion establishes equality between 
 the two obligations. Often there results, from the extreme im- 
 portance attached to the performance of the rite, this very demo- 
 ralizing consequence, that the punctual observer of the rite is 
 considered to be more nearly united to God or to the normal 
 ideal of life, notwithstanding terrible violations of the moral law 
 of which he may be guilty, than the good man who has neglected 
 or refused to submit to ritual obligations. The rite may thus 
 become an anaesthetic of conscience. Exactly the same remark 
 applies to religions which make orthodoxy or the accuracy of 
 belief a primary obligation imposed on man. 
 
 It is, then, by utilitarianism, asceticism, ritualism, and the 
 absorbing prejudice in favour of orthodoxy, that the alliance of 
 religion and of morality may be injurious to the latter. The evil 
 effects of this alliance proceed from an evil direction given to 
 religion itself. Eeligious history records, along with these devia- 
 tions of the religious sentiment, the rectifications which the pro- 
 phetic spiritualist and reformer suggests and ends by achieving. 
 
 Finally, let us notice the important part which the moral view, 
 once developed, has taken in the modification and direction of 
 religious thought. 
 
 Man, in possession of a moral sense of some delicacy, is not 
 slow to perceive that he is always, do what he may, inferior to 
 his moral ideal. In the religions which promise a reward founded 
 on moral merit or demerit, the fear of divine chastisement adds 
 a very considerable weight to all that which urges man to seek 
 in religion the synthesis of the contradictions of destiny. It is 
 
MORALITY. 207 
 
 that which gives rise to all the expiatory rites which occupy so 
 large a place in the history of religions, and to the doctrine of 
 an original fall, which we discover elsewhere than in Christian 
 tradition. It is the same feeling also which has given so much 
 power to religions offering a redemption to man — that is to say. 
 a means or method of returning to peace with them. This is the 
 domain in which mythology longest endured, as may be seen in 
 the history of the dogma of redemption ; it is also that in which 
 religious philosophy can best succeed in disengaging the sublime 
 truth which it expresses with more or less clearness throughout 
 the definitions of traditional dogmatics. 
 
 We have not to take part in the debate going on in the present 
 day between the adversaries and the partizans of what is called 
 independent morality. We have shown that we have little taste 
 for these radical divisions which are claimed to be established 
 between neighbouring questions, which may be distinct, but 
 which always end by joining together again when their lines are 
 prolonged. It is clear that this question will be resolved differ- 
 ently according as it is looked at from the social or from the 
 individual point of view. The want of evidence of religious 
 truth, which arises from the very fact of the extreme diversity of 
 creeds, makes us unable to seek in a religious doctrine the foun- 
 dation or the principle of social life. On the other hand, no 
 society could subsist if it did not start from certain principles 
 determining the social relations of its members, and these prin- 
 ciples come into the sphere of morality. It may be said perhaps 
 that moral truths are not always more evident than religious 
 truths. That is true ; but there is here a force majeure ; and 
 society, which gets on very well with several religions, could not 
 adapt itself to several public moralities. From the social point 
 of view, morality is, then, independent of all the rest, and ought 
 to be so considered. 
 
 But, from the individual point of view, the question which the 
 spiritual tribunal of each one of us is alone qualified to decide 
 is, whether we ought not to congratulate the man who derives 
 
208 MORALITY. 
 
 from his religious convictions, freed from narrowness, from utili- 
 tarianism and from superstition, the source, the charm and the 
 vigour of his moral life. Without condemning any one, but per- 
 suaded that for most men the alliance thus understood between 
 religion and morality cannot but be salutary, we pronounce in 
 the affirmative. 
 
X. 
 
 AET. 
 
 Art is the domain of the beautiful, as morality is that of the 
 good, and religious synthesis ought to include it also among 
 its various tributaries. Numerous definitions of it have been 
 given. The only one which can embrace all its forms — which 
 applies to arts of sight, such as dancing, architecture, sculpture 
 and painting, as well as to arts of hearing, like music, poetry 
 and eloquence — is that which sums it up as the penetration 
 of the ideal and of matter effected by the will and the labour of 
 man. 
 
 It has been sometimes sought to reduce art to an imitation as 
 exact as possible of nature, and this definition is found in Plato 
 and in Aristotle, who in proposing it have not given proof of great 
 perspicacity. Still life deception would then be the end of art. 
 If architecture had done nothing but imitate nature, it would 
 have produced only grottos, beavers' huts, bee-hives, ant-hills 
 and birds'-nests. Music would have limited itself to offering 
 us warblings, hummings and croakings. Even in arts such as 
 painting and sculpture, where imitation is of unquestionable 
 importance, it is necessary that it should derive its inspiration 
 from art. 
 
 The wax figure, which resembles the living body to such an 
 extent as to challenge the greatest masterpieces of statuary, can 
 never be worth so much from an artistic point of view as the 
 smallest terra-cotta in which the genius of a true artist is revealed.'- 
 
 1 This is why, even in portraits, photography, however highly perfect it may be, 
 even if it should paint colours with as much accuracy as it draws lines, will never 
 replace the pencil. The reason is, that the expression of the face constantly changes, 
 
 P 
 
210 ART. 
 
 It results from the definition given, that religion and art are 
 by nature independent of each other, but this independence does 
 not exclude intimate and frequent relations. 
 
 Art, for instance, will penetrate into the religious domain 
 much more easily than into the philosophical, because religion 
 is a concrete and real thing, while philosophy is the reign of 
 abstraction. How can any one clothe in artistic forms the moral 
 theory of Kant or the dialectics of Hegel ? Eeligion, the daughter 
 of sentiment, which seeks its rational expression in theology, 
 but which, always preserving its mystic nature, speaks to the 
 heart and to the imagination not less than to the intellect, will 
 lend itself infinitely more readily to the exigencies as well as to 
 the efforts of art. 
 
 Art and religion met very early in symbolism. We may 
 remember that the symbol rests on the sentiment of an analogy 
 uniting together things of very different nature, and giving 
 visible and tangible form to ideas which have, however, nothing 
 really in common with the object which they profess to repre- 
 sent. Symbol is, then, like art, the combination of an idea and 
 of a sensible object. Only this combination is merely external, 
 a simple juxtaposition, while art is the penetration of one by 
 the other. The symbol tends to become a work of art, and art 
 furnishes the most beautiful symbols. 
 
 But a long time must elapse before religion and art coincide 
 at the point of coalescing in finished works, and in some sort 
 combining their two natures. Eeligion begins by demanding 
 genuine service from art. The first symbols are ordinarily very 
 rude. The menhirs, pious images made of clay to represent 
 some divinity, the idols of savage nations, have nothing in com- 
 
 and that the art of the portrait-painter, whether he taies it into account or not, con- 
 sists in seizing the central expression, that to which all the others relate, that which 
 photography can never give. There are portraits which some find very like, others 
 pronounce failures. Why ? It is because the painter could reproduce only an accidental 
 expression of the subject. This central expression, which the portrait-painter seizes 
 when he has the genius of his art, does not exist in reality. It must be imagined, 
 Bot copied. Art is, then, something quite d liferent from simple imitation. 
 
ART. 211 
 
 mon with art. This is so because the religious impression and the 
 sesthetic impression fundamentally differ. In the churches which 
 admit the worship of holy images, is the devotion of the crowd 
 directed towards the masterpieces ? Would it be the Madonna 
 of Eaphael, or the Descent from the Cross of Eubens, or the 
 Moses of Michael Angelo, which would attract the mass of wor- 
 shippers ? Not at all. The crowd neglects them, and greatly 
 prefers to offer its adoration to vulgar images, which appeal much 
 more forcibly to their dense sense and to their imagination, which 
 delights in the mysterious rather than in the beautiful. 
 
 In tlie midst of relative civilization, and when the means of 
 execution are well perfected, art is still the subordinate of symbol. 
 We may apply this remark to the religious art of ancient Egypt, 
 of India, of China and of Asia Minor, with their monstrous divi- 
 nities, in which the animal type combines with the human type 
 to result in hideous compositions — gods and goddesses with eight 
 arms, to show that their action extends everywhere ; human 
 busts, surmounted by the head of a bull, or of a dog, or of a 
 hawk ; colossal sphynxes, with a human head coming out of a 
 lion's neck ; goddesses of enamelled clay, with bodies covered 
 with breasts, as if they would thus indicate that the immovable 
 earth is the universal mother, &c. 
 
 Architecture attained perfection much sooner than the other 
 arts, entirely through subordinating itself to the exigencies of 
 a religious idea. This arises from the forced simplicity of its 
 means of expression. The Babylonian temple, with its super- 
 posed stories, directed towards heaven, as though it would reach 
 thither — and when the Hebrews became acquainted with the 
 great temple of Babel, they had no doubt that such had been 
 the intention of its builders — has something very imposing in 
 its effect. It expresses haughtiness, pride of sovereignty, and 
 expresses it well. The Egyptian temple, with the avenues of 
 towering sphynxes which led to it — its massive masonry — its 
 dimly-lighted apartments — its sanctuary, inaccessible to ordinary 
 mortals — is the eloquent symbol of a religion which makes 
 
 p2 
 
212 ART. 
 
 special appeal to the sentiment of mystery, and wliich insists on 
 the calm regularity of the divine life — the type of what human 
 life should be. The immense temples of India — not built, but 
 hollowed out of the interior of granite or porphyry mountains, 
 subterranean cathedrals — well denote the colossal, paradoxical 
 character of the Brahman religion, in which man seeks less to 
 rise towards the divinity than to enter into it, in order to be 
 swallowed up in it. It is in the Greek temple that pure art 
 displays itself in intimate harmony with a religion of light and 
 of serenity. It is in Greece also that mythological monsters are 
 humanized and take the actual human form, which made Hegel 
 say that the sphynx at GEdij^us was nothing else than the reli- 
 gious enigma j)ropounded by Egypt and solved by Greece. 
 
 But there, again, we see that religious development and that of 
 art remain really distinct, even when they seem to blend toge- 
 ther. If the Greek religion excels in beauty all others of anti- 
 quity, it is far from having attained the highest rank in other 
 respects. It always remains very puerile in its principles, and 
 its moral influence is very small. In return, other religions 
 which are superior to it from the point of view of earnestness 
 and of moral influence, show themselves rather antipathetic to 
 the arts — at least to the arts of sight, such as sculpture and 
 painting. 
 
 Art, precisely because it has a sensible or material aspect, may 
 be a danger to religion quite as much as an auxiliary. Here 
 we must always make a distinction. There are religions which 
 reject works of art, somewhat as the fox in the fable disdained 
 the grapes. When, for example, Tacitus tells us of the Germans 
 that they refused to represent their gods under human forms, 
 we may ask how they could have contrived to sculpture or 
 to paint them. The same question may be put in reference 
 to the nomad Semites of the patriarchal periods. But it was 
 not the same with the Persians in the time in which Mazdeism 
 so greatly flourished, nor with the Israelites after the Babylonish 
 captivity, nor with the Mussulmans ; and among Christian 
 
ART. 213 
 
 churches we may remark a salient and well-known difference on 
 the subject of the intervention of certain arts in religious worship. 
 
 In antiquity, this rejection of the arts relating specially to 
 sight is associated with the sentiment that any material form 
 given to the divinity belittles him, and has in consequence the 
 effect of profanation. And, from the religious point of view, 
 the most artistic of profanations remains always a profanation. 
 Among the polytheists of Greece and of Eome, there were not 
 wanting reflecting minds who regretted that the vulgar piety 
 was linked as it was with material representations, and who 
 recalled with satisfaction that in the early times religion dis- 
 pensed with idols. It is, in fact, the consecration of divine 
 images in places of worship which almost inevitably instigates 
 in the mind of the ignorant crowd what is called idolatry — that 
 is, adoration, no longer of the divine Being represented by the 
 image, but of the image itself elevated to the rank of a conscious 
 person. Thence also they adore as many distinct divinities as 
 there are renowned images of the same divinity. This explains 
 the implacable war which the prophets and the partizans of 
 strict monotheism, in Arabia as well as in Israel, declared against 
 "graven images." This repugnance did not extend to other arts 
 which did not suffer from the same objection, such as archi- 
 tecture, music or poetry. There are on this point very subtle 
 gradations in the religious sentiment. Thus the Greek Church, 
 faithful to Byzantine tradition, willingly admits pictures painted 
 without perspective, while it rejects statues — that is, it tolerates 
 colour and proscribes relief. 
 
 It is remarkable that in the history properly so called of Chris- 
 tianity, we see the reproduction of various phases which run 
 through the religious sentiment in relation to art in religious 
 history in general. Primitive Christianity, in reaction against 
 polytheism, repudiates images and removes them from its sanc- 
 tuaries. Still, art very early made its way into the Church by 
 the door of symbolism. We see this especially on the tombs in 
 the catacombs. Little by little, this symbolism ascends to the 
 
214 ART. 
 
 light of day and penetrates into the places of worship, not with- 
 out provoking some opposition/ and at the end of a certain time 
 it becomes confused with art. From that time the veneration of 
 images has a large place in Christian worship. This custom 
 is of great help in the work of converting barbarian masses. 
 There was, however, a very energetic reaction in the East in the 
 time of the iconoclastic emperors, and in the West under Charle- 
 magne, when the Council of Frankfort sought to interdict the 
 worship of images. But it was not of long duration, and the 
 Catholic of the middle ages could appeal to all the arts to display 
 the magnificence of the city of God descended upon earth. Abuse, 
 it is true, showed itself closely allied to use, and the schism of 
 the sixteenth century widely divided Christianity on this point. 
 
 It will, then, be interesting to examine a little more thoroughly 
 the question of the relation of art and of religion, not, of course, 
 to discuss theologically the question in debate between the two 
 principal forms of Christianity, but to understand how the reli- 
 gious sentiment has been able in the domain of art to adopt two 
 such opposite courses.^ 
 
 While art, defective, it is true, and without elevation, lent 
 itself in India to materialize the poetic religion of the Vedas, so 
 superior in its purity to the extravagances and quaintnesses of 
 
 ^ One of those incidents which denote how orthodoxy may vary with epochs is that 
 which St. Epiphanus, the great destroyer of the heretics of his time, relates of himself. 
 He indignantly tore down a velum hung at the entrance of a sanctuary in Palestine, 
 on which was painted a picture of Christ or of some saint. (Epiph. ad Johann. 
 Hierosol. 0pp. II. 317.) 
 
 ^ In considering the above, we may thus distinguish between Catholicism and Protes- 
 tantism : Catholicism is the expansion of the Christian idea; Protestantism, its concen- 
 tration. In the first, the Christian idea spreads itself as far as possible over every- 
 thing at the risk of volatilization, even of loss by spreading itself over that which 
 it ought to repress. In the second, the Christian idea comes back, as it were, upon 
 itself, seeks to seize anew its primary energy at its source, at the risk of ending in 
 a narrow Puritanism, excluding all which is not itself. If we will take account of 
 this distinction, which does homage to the relative greatness and legitimacy of these 
 two large branches of Christianity, at the same time that it indicates beforehand their 
 dangers and their defects, we shall be able to explain most of the differences which 
 separate them, and understand also how the most sincere piety on the one side is 
 scandalized by that which supports and strengthens the other. 
 
ART. 215 
 
 Brahmanism, it raised the religion of the Greeks to the highest 
 degree of perfection of which it was capable. The nature and 
 the forms of a religion may, then, undergo grave modifications in 
 consequence of the application of art to its visible manifestations. 
 But so much the more may we ask whether, in proportion as the 
 religious sentiment ascends, it does not detach itself from certain 
 arts which had long afforded it real satisfaction, or rather — and 
 that really comes to the same thing — if all the arts lend them- 
 selves in the same degree to serve as the expression or symbol of 
 a religious sentiment become more delicate and purer. 
 
 We have mentioned dancing among the arts. It is so in fact. 
 It is the penetration of the common walk and gesture by a 
 certain ideal of measure, of rhythm, of harmony, with a view 
 to expressing a thought. Dancing has been among all nations a 
 religious art. Even at the present day populations called savage 
 know scarcely any other. With us, dancing is an art only at the 
 opera, in the kingdom of the fairies ; elsewhere it is simply an 
 amusement enjoyed by the young. Nothing would be more con- 
 trary to our ideas of everything than to endeavour to make it 
 once more a part of religious ceremonies. Why ? 
 
 Because, of all the arts, dancing is the least independent of its 
 material form, which is the human body itself and its locomotion. 
 Instead of elevating its subject and transfiguring it, it tends on 
 one side to lower it. It is difficult to take in earnest the man 
 who dances ; he is so like a jumping Jack. He seems to resign 
 all liberty in order to submit himself servilely to a measure and 
 a cadence which are imposed upon him.^ Louis XIV., who was 
 a great master in all that concerned personal dignity, discounte- 
 nanced the custom which required the king of France to figure 
 in the ballets. In a word, the material in this art too much 
 conceals the ideal for the purified religious sentiment to be able 
 to find expression in it. 
 
 1 It is on this account that at the present day, even at the opera, the male dancer 
 is infinitely less appreciated than the/ema/e dancer, woman not losing grace of motion 
 so much as man when subjected to a slavish rule. 
 
216 ART. 
 
 Dancing is not the only art which has suffered from the same 
 incoherence between it and the religious sentiment revealing 
 itself after a certain time. Another art, much more noble, the 
 appanage of all civilization, and more than ever appreciated 
 among ourselves — the dramatic art — gives rise to a like obser- 
 vation. It is of religious origin, in Greece as in modern Europe. 
 Among us, at the beginning, it was approved and encouraged by 
 the Church. Then it detached itself from the latter, separated 
 itself, in proportion as it attained excellence, and the Church 
 ended by condemning it. If even this severity w^ere relaxed, it is 
 no less true that no one now would dream of restoring to this art 
 the part in Christian worship which in former times was assigned 
 to it. Without doubt, the infinitely greater liberty which the 
 dramatic actor displays as compared with the dancer — the effort 
 of intelligence and of observation which he must make to identify 
 himself with his part — the infinite resources of which he must 
 avail himself in order to awaken the whole gamut of human 
 sentiment — all this raises the dramatic art incomparably higher 
 than that of dancing. Nevertheless, if it is a question of repre- 
 senting beings who are the objects of religious veneration, a 
 certain uneasiness takes possession at once of the author and of 
 the spectator. We endure the devil on the scene, because we 
 scarcely believe in him ; but we could not bear to see Christ 
 there, because, even in the absence of faith, we venerate him ; 
 and if any one sought to edify us, as in the middle ages, by 
 setting a beautiful girl to ride upon an ass, or by dressing her in 
 such a way as that she may represent the Virgin Mary, we should 
 all, believers and unbelievers alike, see in it only a profanation. 
 There, again, the ideal and the artistic material can no longer 
 penetrate each other ;^ there is jarring — that is, there is a dis- 
 proportion between the person who is to be represented, the 
 sentiments which his thoughts arouse, the ideas of which he 
 
 1 The animated representation of the Passion, periodically performed in the village 
 of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, which is said to be very successful, proves by its ex- 
 ceptionality how much this kind of driuna has become foreign to our actual ideas. 
 
ART. 217 
 
 forms the centre, and his visible representation. The part is 
 always too high, the actor too low. 
 
 This must be one cause of a quite similar, though less generally 
 admitted feeling, through which the religious sentiment turns 
 aside from seeking in pictures and statues the kind of satisfac- 
 tion which it demands in worship. We do not mean by this to 
 say that the same man who objects to worship images (pictures 
 or statues) does not taste enjoyment of the highest order in con- 
 templating them from an artistic point of view. But then it is 
 the ideal of the painter or of the sculptor which he admires ; 
 his own individuality is not concerned in it. If there seems to 
 him disproportion between the work and his idea, his religious 
 feeling is not wounded by it. On the other hand, it must be 
 understood that all do not share this repugnance ; and, espe- 
 cially if the worshipper is accustomed to accept passively the 
 religious ideal which is imposed upon him, he will be much less 
 sensible of this disproportion than the man who has laboured to 
 form this ideal for himself 
 
 On the other hand, arts such as architecture, because of the 
 simplicity of the idea which it expresses — music, the most imma- 
 terial of all the arts — poetry and eloquence — this last peculiarly 
 appreciated in monotheistic teaching and propagandist religions — 
 are of undisputed religious application. They have also the advan- 
 tage, as M. de Eemusat has very judiciously observed, of produc- 
 ing a collective effect — that is, inHuencing the great mass ; and 
 religious sentiment finds quite special pleasure in large gather- 
 ings. 
 
 To sum up : religion and art are two independent spheres, the 
 constant and reciprocal penetration of which history shows us ; 
 and the more an art causes its ideal side to predominate over the 
 material which it employs for its manifestations and the more it 
 aims at collective effect, the more also its alliance with religion 
 is admitted and enjoyed by the religious sentiment. 
 
XI. 
 CIVILIZATIOIS'. 
 
 Civilization is tlie resultant of all the efforts which man 
 makes to live the true human life, superior to the instinctive 
 and animal life — in one word, the life of the spirit. 
 
 Here, again, we find ourselves in the presence of a difficulty 
 of definition. Civilization is not one of those well-marked cate- 
 gories which are clearly distinguished from all which is not 
 them. There is nothing very evident except the two ends of the 
 chain. When we hear of peoples who ignore clothing, the culti- 
 vation of the soil, even elementary industry — who live solely on 
 the fruits of the forest, roots, the chances of the chase and of 
 fishing — among whom the law of the strongest alone rules — we 
 say without hesitation that they are savages. If, on the contrary, 
 we see a settled industrious people, organized in such a way that 
 the weak are protected against the violent, that they construct 
 edifices and cultivate the arts and sciences, we should with the 
 same certainty acknowledge that this is a civilized peoj)le. 
 
 In fact, civilization thus understood is as yet the portion of 
 a minority only of the human race, and races absolutely savage 
 are very rare. But shall we call the Negro tribes civilized, be- 
 cause they are ordinarily sedentary and agricultural ; Kaffirs and 
 Hottentots, because they possess numerous herds ; the Esquimaux, 
 because they are clothed, and because they take care to lay in a 
 store of dried fish and train oil ? 
 
 This would be absurd ; nevertheless, they are above absolute 
 savagery. 
 
 We should be tempted to say rather that civilization begins 
 from the moment when a people possesses a history. Savage 
 
CI VI LIZ A TION. 219 
 
 peoples have in fact no history. Years and centuries pass with 
 them in the monotony of an existence always the same, giving 
 rise at most only to vague mythical recollections. Civilized 
 peoples have a history, hecause their life, incomparably richer and 
 more full of incident, passes through crises and revolutions which 
 are prominent points in their development. But this would be 
 to take one of the signs of civilization for civilization itself 
 
 Let us add that, even where it displays itself most powerfully 
 and strikingly, civilization is never finished. It marches onwards 
 towards an ideal always very remote. This ideal is composed of 
 knowledge, of morality or of justice, and of beauty. And in 
 proportion as this is approached, the principle of justice joined 
 to that of humanity requires that participation in civilized life 
 should become more and more general. If anything militates in 
 favour of our modern civilization as compared with the ancient, 
 it is this universalist characteristic — equality in the best sense of 
 the word — which distinguishes it. It is not enough for us, as it 
 was for the ancients, that the higher life of the spirit should be 
 the lot of a few privileged ones ; we mean that all shall more 
 and more participate in it. We desire that the sun of the spirit, 
 like that of nature, shall shine on the whole world. 
 
 As a consequence of this view, we recognize the beginnings of 
 civilization wherever we find institutions having the culture of 
 the spirit as their end. Thenceforth the wild stock may be con- 
 sidered as having been grafted. It will now depend on many 
 circumstances whether it will bear fruit quickly, good fruit, and 
 abundantly. But from this moment we may say that civilization 
 has entered upon its heing. The culture of the spirit is, then, 
 the index of an actual and advancing civilization. 
 
 But this culture in its turn supposes conditions which are not 
 yet civilization, but which are indispensable to its growth ; and 
 these conditions resolve themselves into two fundamental ones, 
 personal security and the division of labour. 
 
 If we transport ourselves into the mode of existence of tribes 
 entirely destitute of civilization, we see that both these conditions 
 
220 CI VILIZA TION. 
 
 are reduced to zero. The savage lives in perpetual apprehension 
 of the causes of destruction which menace him, and he must 
 himself make his own weapons, his hut, his canoe, his tools. 
 Association does not make individual efforts converge towards 
 an end of collective interest. It is only in view of some fighting 
 or hunting expeditions that the savage elects a chief. Primor- 
 dial progress is thus that of a military and judicial organization 
 which shall protect the individuals associated in the primitive 
 clan or horde, and which shall deliver them from this permanent 
 state of defiance and of fear. Then they will be able to labour 
 in some security. Labour, in its turn, will bring about its appro- 
 priate division ; for diversity of skill and of power will not be 
 long in revealing the superiority of the products of the most 
 practised hands in any kind of definite work. Divided labour 
 induces exchange, consequently commerce ; this leads to the 
 adoption of a representative sign of value. Finally, individual 
 security increases with the sense of resources in excess of needs 
 which accumulated labour procures. Man no longer fears dying 
 of hunger, or being devoured by wild beasts, or being brutally 
 destroyed by one stronger than himself. 
 
 It is then that new and higher wants, of which no one had pre- 
 viously dreamed, arise. Man has henceforth security, leisure 
 and taste, to exercise his intellect and to relish enjoyments 
 which he never knew before. Useful arts, those which augment 
 his power, his gains, his safety — reading, writing, and calcula- 
 tion — lend a charm to his existence, and urge him in the direc- 
 tion in which, having become in their turn the simple means 
 of progress, they render science, politics and art possible. In 
 that way the conditions of primary security go on improving. 
 He sets himself to make roads, to cross the sea, to transport to 
 distant regions the products of the soil, in order to bring back 
 those which the soil does not produce. Intercourse is established 
 between all the branches of the human family. The relations 
 of nation to nation become marvellous agents of progress. The 
 edifice of civilization is raised. Let us note these two essential 
 
CIVILIZATION. 221 
 
 points — the solidarity established first between the members of 
 the same human group and then between the difierent groups ; 
 secondly, the incessant, productive labour, indefinitely multiply- 
 ing its results — which form the necessary, permanent base of this 
 edifice. But it has for its highest crown the triumph of justice, 
 of truth and of beauty, on the earth. Simply material civiliza- 
 tion does not rise above the category of mere means. 
 
 From these very general considerations — which, however, in 
 our opinion, recommend themselves by their accuracy — result 
 the notions which we must maintain concerning the relations of 
 religion and civilization. This is a subject in regard to which 
 there is in the present day no lack of exaggeration on both sides, 
 one side considering civilization the fruit exclusively of religion, 
 the other looking upon the latter as almost its worst enemy. 
 
 History confirms neither of these absolute pretensions. 
 
 We had reason to see in one of the early parts of our course, 
 that the only thing which explains the strange separation of the 
 populations of the globe into civilized nations, or those qualified 
 to become civilized, and into nations incapable by themselves 
 or through contact with others of attaining to civilization, is a 
 primordial difference in the religious intuition of the world. It is 
 certain that there is no civilization the cradle of which was not 
 religious. Even in the present day we cannot define the civil- 
 ization to which we ourselves belong except by the name of 
 Christian civilization. There is a community of moral atmo- 
 sphere which we all breathe, whatever may be our individual 
 views, which surrounds unbelievers as well as believers, and the 
 reality of which we never recognize more fully than when we 
 are transported into regions holding another tradition. This 
 atmosphere, whatever one may say, is of Christian origin. 
 
 Further, if it is true that civilization proceeds from the solida- 
 rity which is established among men, and which succeeds the 
 unsocial isolation of savage life, it ought also to be true that all 
 which tends to take them out of this isolation, to bring them 
 together, to lead them to live a life in common, ought also to be 
 
222 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 favourable to the civilizing movement. On this account, religion, 
 as a powerful means of bringing together and of uniting men, 
 entreating them on that behalf even in virtue of this tendency to 
 inquire into the sympathetic echoes and the concordant emotions 
 which we have observed in the religious sentiment, ought to 
 have been, and in fact has been, a great agent of civilization. 
 
 If, further, civilization aims at an end superior to that which 
 would consist solely in developing material well-being — if it 
 aspires after realizing the full life of the spirit — religion has been 
 and always is the vehicle which carries man far from the com- 
 monplace of simply animal life, and enables him to discover 
 horizons of supreme beauty, of which he brings back a deep 
 impression, elevating his thoughts, purifying his tastes, preparing 
 him for that life of the spirit of which religion itself forms a part, 
 and which is the real end of civilization. 
 
 Finally, labour, which is properly speaking the generator of 
 civilization, is a moral fact, since it supposes effort, foresight and 
 self-control. The savage is always extremely idle. Keligion, 
 which concerns itself with the moral province, acts thus also in 
 this way as a civilizing element. 
 
 The special history of each religion will show how it has been 
 able to widen or to contract the scope of civilization by the prin- 
 ciples which it has propagated, and by the applications of them 
 which it has made to social life. 
 
 We say widen or contract, because in fact religious influence 
 has not always borne happy fruit. For example, instead of 
 bringing men together, of uniting them in the sentiment of their 
 solidarity, it has many times succeeded in separating them into 
 bitterly hostile camps and in sowing fanatical hatreds. Eeligious 
 persecutions, religious wars, religious punishments — those hor- 
 rible things which would make one believe in Satan if it were 
 possible to believe in him — are in all our memories, and it is 
 unnecessary to dwell upon them. 
 
 Religion has always been prejudicial to civilization when it 
 has cherished a spirit of superstitious routine, which places itself 
 
CIVILIZATION. 223 
 
 obstinately in the way of all scientific progress, of all social 
 reforms, of all the freedom claimed by the human spirit. 
 
 It has been its enemy, whether, as in antiquity, it has sanc- 
 tioned the letting loose of the most shameless passions, or whe- 
 ther, inspired by an absurd asceticism, it has turned man aside 
 from marriage, from the family and from labour. 
 
 In other words, religion is civilizing only if it is in harmony 
 with the conditions of civilization. That is, if it can so adapt 
 itself as not to be in conflict with the necessities and the ideas 
 which each new period of human history sees disclosed. An insti- 
 tution, a religious form, which at its first appearing may have 
 been eminently civilizing, may later be like the leading-strings 
 which helped us to take our first steps, but which would sin- 
 gularly hinder us now if we had still to wear them. The inves- 
 tigation of the social effects which each religion has produced 
 will be an interesting chapter in the studies which we devote 
 to the history of religions, and we see in accordance with what 
 principles we may be able to form a sound judgment. 
 
XII. 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 All that lias gone before justifies us in abridging what we 
 have to say in the name of history concerning the relations of 
 religion with that other queen of the human mind, science — that 
 is, the methodical, experimental and constantly verified know- 
 ledge of facts of all kinds that the world oflers to our observation. 
 
 Eeligion, under all its forms, proposes to man a synthesis 
 between him and the non-ego, by uniting him to the spirits, or 
 to a sovereign spirit, which governs all beings. Man delights in 
 the consciousness of this union, and consequently it pleases him 
 to cherish it and to keep it alive by all the means at his disposal. 
 
 But the form under which he represents it to himself, the 
 conditions which he believes necessary to its reality, depend 
 upon the notions which he has formed of this world, in which 
 he has felt the active presence of the divinity. Hence, in 
 the beginning, religion is clothed in forms suggested by a very 
 imperfect knowledge of things. For a long time these forms, 
 become traditional, are identified with religion, and it is not 
 difficult to suppose that the latter is indissolubly bound up with 
 the childish ideas in the midst of which it has had its birth. 
 
 Science, then, even in virtue of its progress, cannot at the end 
 of a given time do otherwise than unsettle religious traditions, 
 in so far as they imply false ideas which had been previously 
 formed concerning the world and the mode in which it is consti- 
 tuted. The alterations which have thus to be made in the frame 
 necessarily change the picture considerably. Then arises another 
 illusion, which consists in believing that religion itself perishes 
 
SCIENCE. 225 
 
 with its traditional form. History shows that in such a case it 
 never fails to be transformed, and that it does not die. 
 
 It would, nevertheless, be an error to think that there is always 
 and necessarily a conflict between religion and science. On the 
 contrary, they can count up periods of union and of reciprocal 
 support. It was most frequently among the primitive priest- 
 hoods that the first lines were drawn of what we call science. 
 It was very confused and very elementary ; but this embryo 
 science was all the more precious inasmuch as there was no other. 
 It must be said also that the scientific spirit, with the ardour and 
 the complete independence which we recognize in it, is in truth 
 quite a modern thing. Even during all that great period of 
 civilization commencintr with Pericles and ending]; with the 
 Eoman empire, in spite of the labours of such men as Aristotle, 
 Archimedes, Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny and certain astronomers 
 and geographers, science continued very timid, and did not suc- 
 ceed in changing to any marked extent the ideas which had been 
 formed of the world. Even among those who were detached 
 from the vulgar polytheism, the pagan principle, the tendency 
 to personify the inanimate, still exercised a great influence, and 
 nothing could be more opposed to scientific progress. For ex- 
 ample, even learned men would explain the phenomena of tides 
 as the resj)iration of the sea, which alternately raised and lowered 
 its vast bosom. The best taught of the ancients looked upon the 
 stars as animated and conscious beings. The bent of the mytho- 
 logical spirit still remained among those who had repudiated 
 mythology itself. 
 
 Jewish monotheism, which freed the mind from this kind of 
 polytheistic prejudice — which summed up all divine existence 
 and divine power in the only God, supreme over all the world — 
 ought, it would seem, to have given greater encouragement to 
 the awakening of the scientific spirit. But it also had its draw- 
 backs. Itself quite strange to experimental and methodic sci- 
 ence, it sought in divine power the immediate cause of all 
 phenomena. If the thunder rolled, if the sun followed his course^ 
 
 Q 
 
226 SCIENCE. 
 
 if the seasons succeeded each other, it was because God thus 
 willed it, and that took the place of any other explanation. 
 
 The idea has been suggested that it was Christianity which, 
 by absorbing the mind and occupying it in the exclusive domain 
 of religious discussion, had distinctly arrested the sciences which 
 were about to take their u]^ward flight. This is not true. 
 Christianity became absorbing only at the end of the third cen- 
 tury. It was not till then that it touched the higher social 
 classes, the only ones in regard to which there could be any 
 question of scientific development. During all the previous 
 period, if the ancient world had been really capable of it, this 
 development would have come into action ; but it found no place. 
 After that time, indeed, theological controversies occupied all 
 minds j then the barbarians arrived, and the night was long and 
 dark. 
 
 We have said and we repeat, in spite of the paradoxical appear- 
 ance of the assertion, that it was the orthodox intolerance of 
 the Church in the middle ages which impressed on Christian 
 society this disposition to seek truth at any price, of which the 
 modern scientific spirit is only the application. The more im- 
 portance the Church attached to the profession of the truth — to 
 the extent even of considering involuntary error as in the highest 
 degree a damnable crime — so much the more the sentiment of 
 the immense value of this truth arose in the general persuasion, 
 along with a resolve to conquer it wherever it was felt not to be 
 possessed. How otherwise can we explain that science was not 
 developed and has not been pursued with constancy, except in 
 the midst of Christian societies ? Does not this remarkable phe- 
 nomenon denote the indirect influence at any rate of previous 
 education ? The fact is, that it is only in virtue of this ruling 
 passion that very religious men, such as Bacon, Copernicus, 
 Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Newton and Linngeus, were able to lay the 
 foundations of the edifice which we admire in the present day. 
 
 We need not enlarge on the lamentable history of the conflict 
 which every one knows. The Church, which had at first smiled 
 
SCIENCE. 227 
 
 at the early efforts of modern science, became alarmed for its 
 tradition, founded on a notion of the world which this science 
 modified from day to day. Like the Wagner of the German 
 poet, it w^as terrified because it could not send back to its 
 prison the genius which it had unchained. Eather it claimed 
 to direct it itself, to dictate to it what it should say, to impose 
 silence on it. Vain efforts ! Science has been victorious over 
 tradition. God did not create the world in six days ; Joshua 
 did not make the sun stand still ; the latter, any more than the 
 moon and the stars, was not fixed in the firmament by the 
 Creator's hand in order to give light to the earth ; Jonah was 
 not able to live in his great fish ; and the clever and contempt- 
 ible Pope Alexander VI. would have done better not to have 
 divided the world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese, 
 giving the latter all the East and the former all the West. But 
 to what good end do we multiply all these examples ? We are 
 still engaged in this conflict of science and of religious tra- 
 dition. And what it is important to say is, that neither reli- 
 gion nor science will die of it, and that, as neither can dispense 
 with the other, the philosophic mind ought to consider the means 
 of compassing and of favouring their co-existence. 
 
 Science has certainly a right to the most complete autonomy. 
 Her admirable conquests justify all her claims in this respect, 
 and we may look upon the cause of her full and entire liberty 
 as gained. 
 
 On the other hand, a certain modesty becomes her. Her pro- 
 gress, however considerable it may be, does not prevent her from 
 coming in contact on all sides with the unknown. Further, she 
 ought to guard against decreeing for herself an apotheosis which 
 more than once already the course of time has invalidated. What 
 will our contemporary sciences be in the eyes of our successors 
 in the year 2000 ? If the scientific movement goes on as we 
 hope it will, they will be for them what the science of the seven- 
 teenth century is for us, as yet little developed in spite of real 
 and important progress. The results of science, moreover, have 
 
228 SCIENCE. 
 
 "been very far from negative for the religious soul. Our heaven, 
 in which numberless worlds gravitate like dust — the incalculable 
 periods during which all that now exists was preparing — all 
 these imposing grandeurs of time and space which science has 
 revealed to us — have they not furnished food for the religious 
 sentiment which it never tasted before ? He who never ceases 
 to feel the breath of God throughout the immensity of the uni- 
 verse, has the right to re-assure himself in view of all the disco- 
 veries yet to be made ; and fortified by the experience of ages, 
 he may console himself by the fact that whenever man has suc- 
 ceeded in seizing truth in the world, he has uniformly found it 
 a hundred times more beautiful than anything that he had 
 dreamed. 
 
 But, above all, it is well to recognize that definitively, and 
 when thoroughly understood, religion in itself and indepen- 
 dent science never ought to be hostile, because in fact they 
 do not respond to the same needs and cannot be substituted 
 the one for the other. If science springs out of the intel- 
 lectual need of knowing the real and the true in everything, 
 religion meets aspirations of another kind which are not less 
 natural, less inherent in the human spirit. Science proceeds 
 methodically, using hypothesis provisionally only, always subject 
 to experience. It is essentially analytic ; and it is on that account 
 that it cannot end in the universal synthesis which the spirit 
 nevertheless also demands. No ; even were there nothing hidden 
 in the facts with which it occupied itself — if it could pass with- 
 out a moment of uncertainty from the formation of nebulee to 
 that of the latest infusoria, it would have attained only to a 
 certain part ; and the universe is more than a part, it is infinite. 
 How, then, will science experimentally disengage the unity bind- 
 ing together the totality of beings ? How will it determine the 
 whole course of a river, the source and the mouth of which 
 equally escape it ? Science, sovereign mistress in the domain of 
 the finite, cannot go beyond it without contradicting itself It 
 sometimes happens to some of its least qualified representatives, 
 
SCIENCE. 229 
 
 influenced as they are by their exclusively analytic habits of 
 thought, to imagine that they alone have made the synthesis, 
 because they have carefully enumerated the facts, little and great, 
 the series of which constitutes the object of study. You have, 
 let us suppose, demonstrated that there are only mechanical, 
 physical and chemical laws in action in the human body, and 
 that formerly men were dreaming when they spoke of vital force 
 or of animal spirits ; you have labelled all the parts and all the 
 convolutions of the human brain, and have determined with pre- 
 cision the function of each of them in mental operations. It is 
 wonderful ; but do you think that you have by that means given 
 the shadow of an explanation of life and thought? And the 
 convergence and the guiding cause, and the source of harmony 
 and of permanent co-ordination, where is it ? It is there, how- 
 ever, and it escapes you. Much more would it be the case if it 
 were a question of the synthesis of the universe ! 
 
 It is then that Eeligion, not merely in one only of its traditional 
 forms, but in its fundamental and persistent claim, speaks in its 
 turn. "That which you cannot do," it says, "I do ; that which you 
 dare not utter, I proclaim ; the immense void which your greatest 
 researches always leave, I fill. I am the indestructible aspi- 
 ration of the human heart. I am the voice of the depths of the 
 soul. I am the bond which unites human dust to absolute 
 thought ; and in this bottomless abyss, on the edge of which, in 
 virtue of your very processes, you inevitably arrive, I perceive the 
 supreme reality, that which truly is ; I hear from the unfathom- 
 able gulf a voice which calls me ; I see a light which attracts me. 
 Ah ! I may be deceived in the ideas I form. It may be that I 
 possess very little — only symbols, only reflections. What matter ? 
 Are you very sure, men of science, that you know exactly the 
 nature of the sun, and does that prevent you from lighting your- 
 selves by his light, from warming yourselves by his heat ? In 
 like manner, I venture to affirm the reality of my object, inde- 
 pendently of the ideas which I try to form of it, and that satisfies 
 me. Continue your useful, your admirable labours. You worship 
 
230 SCIENCE. 
 
 the Eternal in seeking your aspect of truth ; leave me to seek in 
 Him the complete ideal, the presentiment of which raises me 
 from earth, the prevision of which procures me ineffable delights, 
 and let us live in peace." 
 
 It is the ardent effort of humanity to respond to this myste- 
 rious appeal that we shall endeavour to narrate. 
 
 C. Green & Sod, Printers, 178, Strand. 
 

 
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