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 BOOK 232.9.B46 c. 1 
 
 BERGUER # SOME ASPECTS OF LIFE OF 
 
 JESUS 
 
 3 T1S3 DDDbbMVb 5 
 
^" --' ^ ( 
 
 S: 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 FROM THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ' 
 PSYCHO-ANALYTIC POINT OF VIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGES BERGUER 
 
 Lecturer at the University of Geneva 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELEANOR STIMSON BROOKS 
 
 AND 
 
 VAN WYCK BROOKS 
 
 a 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 /87Jt 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 
 
 THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
 
 RAHWAY. N J 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It is not the object of this work to repeat what has 
 already been said, and well said, by others. It makes no 
 attempt to follow that fashion of modern erudition which 
 delights in reopening questions that have been settled in 
 order to settle them again with a great parade of impressive 
 citations. Nor does it attempt either to raise or to solve 
 all the theological, critical, or practical problems which the 
 Life of Jesus presents. Its aim is at once more modest 
 and quite different. 
 
 Having had occasion to investigate, during a course of 
 lectures at the University of Geneva, some aspects both 
 of the so-called primitive religions and of the Oriental re- 
 ligions that invaded the Roman Empire at about the same 
 period as Christianity, the author was much struck with 
 the unexpected light which the new methods in psychology 
 cast upon these religions and with the very suggestive re- 
 semblances between them which these methods brought to 
 the surface. Since then a deeply cherished inclination has 
 impelled him to attempt to apply these methods to that 
 great event which, for nearly twenty centuries, and because 
 it ordains and directs the evolution of the human con- 
 science, has dominated the history of the world. 
 
 In the face of the deformations to which the churches 
 themselves have only too often subjected Christianity, it 
 is supremely interesting to return once more to the original 
 documents which we possess concerning Christ and to focus 
 upon this great figure all the lights of modern science. 
 It is obvious that researches in this domain must be con- 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 ducted with great prudence and with the utmost humility. 
 
 There are some minds that will perhaps fail to find in 
 these pages what they are seeking: a re-statement, a sift- 
 ing, and a solution, in the traditional scholastic manner, 
 of the questions raised by the theologians. This is not 
 because the author is unaware of the value of the exegetical 
 and critical method of work, or because he attaches small 
 importance to it. On the contrary, he will avail himself 
 of it in large measure wherever this labour has arrived 
 at certainties, or at least at conclusions that have a high 
 degree of probability; but it has seemed to him that there 
 is a better course than to retrace forever the beaten paths. 
 On such a subject no source of investigation ought to be 
 neglected. Beside theology there is room for psychology. 
 The author will therefore attempt to apply the method and 
 the discoveries of the latter to certain aspects of the life 
 of Jesus, not with any pretence of arriving at definite con- 
 clusions, but rather with the less ambitious hope of under- 
 standing a little better a history which, for the very reason 
 that it interests us in the highest degree, distresses us at 
 times because it still contains, as many feel, so much that 
 is obscure and remote. 
 
 The following pages were not planned with the intention 
 of publication. They formed the subject of a course of 
 lectures delivered at the University of Geneva during the 
 winter term of 1917 and the summer term of 1919. To 
 this is due their rather abrupt and informal character. 
 When one's desire is not so much to produce a definitive 
 work as to arouse reflection, to invite corrections and to 
 stimulate the production of more complete works, it is better 
 to give one's thoughts immediately to the public rather 
 than to await indefinitely the sacred hour when irrefutable 
 conclusions will detach themselves from it as ripe fruit falls 
 from a withering tree. It is by passing from hand to hand 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 that the torch of life keeps its flame; by retaining it too 
 long one runs the risk of handing on to those who come 
 after one nothing but a few ashes and a little burned-out 
 rosin. With these feelings, the author offers the present 
 volume to souls who seek, love, and labour, in the hope 
 that their researches, their love, and their labour may ex- 
 tend its lines and fill in some of its lacunae. 
 
 May he be permitted to recall, with great respect, these 
 words of a master whose last lectures he had the privilege 
 of hearing: 
 
 "Our theology in the French tongue takes particular de- 
 light in the external sphere of material and historical fact, 
 either in order to defend it with the arguments of authority 
 or to attack it with the arguments of critics; it tends to 
 avoid the inner world; one would say it was not familiar 
 with this world, that it did not feel at home there. 
 
 "It must be brought back to it, acclimated in it, made 
 fast to it. It must understand the nature of that faith which 
 is not sight, that faith which is based on the inward aspira- 
 tions, the primordial conditions of the spiritual life, the 
 feeling of personality, of life, of plenitude, of glory. To 
 move in this world of faith is to find it more real, more 
 living, much more real, more living than the other; and by 
 moving in it, by surveying it, by investigating it one reaps 
 as much edification as enjoyment. Let us turn our re- 
 ligious and theological thought in this direction. But if 
 we are to advance here we must desire neither to be or- 
 thodox nor to be liberal; we must desire to be intrinsically 
 Christian, that is to say theologians to whom nothing that 
 is inward and true in orthodoxy is alien but whose method 
 remains that of a sovereign liberalism. I mean by this 
 last word the truly independent liberalism of a spirit that 
 has freely arrived and firmly taken its stand at the heart 
 of things, and that has not allowed itself to be turned aside 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 either by fanatics or by literal-minded detractors. May I 
 be allowed, in closing, to wish such a spirit for the younger 
 generation!" ^ 
 
 1 BouviER, Aug., Dogmatique chretienne, publiee d'apres le cours 
 manuscrit et les notes de I'auteur par Edouard Montet. Paris, Fisch- 
 bacher, 1903,, vol. II, pp. 122-123, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE iii 
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 CHAPTER I. METHOD 5 
 
 1. Theology 5 
 
 2. Psychology 7 
 
 3. Psycho-analysis 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. CHRISTIANITY AND THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS . . 27 
 
 1. Parallelism of the Psychic Prodromes of Christianity 
 
 and the Mystery-Religions 33 
 
 2. The Symbolism of the Mysteries : Its Relations with 
 
 That of Christianity 38 
 
 3. Diflference in the Outcome of the Two Prophetic Lines 59 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS ... 65 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE DENIERS OF THE HISTORICITY OF CHRIST . . 75 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE DOCUMENTARY VALUE OF THE GOSPELS . . 87 
 
 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE BIRTH OF JESUS 95 
 
 1. The Date 95 
 
 2. The Place 97 
 
 3. The Circumstances 99 
 
 4. Psycho-analysis and the Study of Myths and Legends 105 
 
 5. Application of the Two Methods of Psycho-analytic 
 
 Interpretation to the Accounts of the Birth of Christ 123 
 
 CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH I30 
 
 1. Influences 130 
 
 2. Jesus in the Temple at the Age of Twelve . . .142 
 
 CHAPTER III. BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 1 53 
 
 1. The Baptism 153 
 
 2. The Temptation 161 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE TEACHING OF JESUS l8o 
 
 I. Its Form i8o 
 
 "V, 2. The Parables 184 
 
 3. The Essence of Christ's Teaching: The Kingdom and 
 
 the Messiah 190 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE MIRACLES 20I 
 
 1. The Explanations 204 
 
 2. The Healings 206 
 
 3. Miracles of Which the Moral Import is Obvious . 214 
 
 4. Miracles of Which the Moral Meaning is Difficult to 
 
 Grasp 225 
 
 CHAPTER VI. THE TRANSFIGURATION 228 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 238 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. THE DEATH OF JESUS 256 
 
 CHAPTER IX. THE RESURRECTION 270 
 
 1. The Documents 271 
 
 2. The Event 280 
 
 APPENDIX. THE POETRY OF JESUS 295 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS . . . .315 
 
 INDEX 325 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Most of the Lives of Jesus which have been published 
 begin with more or less lengthy considerations of the ante- 
 cedents of the gospel history. They try to envisage the 
 life of Christ from a double point of view, that of the his- 
 tory of religions and that of the history of Israel. We shall 
 disregard here everything that concerns Judaism and the 
 religion of the Old Testament, not because we do not con- 
 sider that it presents a problem, and a most important 
 problem, but simply because the question has been very 
 satisfactorily and adequately treated and because its ele- 
 ments are easily accessible to those who wish to investigate 
 it.^ 
 
 For the same reason we do not consider it incumbent on 
 us to write a detailed historical treatise on the religions 
 which ended and, as it were, reached their summit in Chris- 
 tianity. It has seemed to us more interesting to give our 
 special attention to the Greco-Roman paganism under the 
 form which it had assumed at the moment when Chris- 
 tianity entered into direct relations with it, that is to say 
 the Mystery-Religions. Here again we have no intention of 
 describing in detail the vast movement of thought and affec- 
 tivity which took shape in Hellenistic syncretism and the 
 Mystery-Religions.^ We shall confine ourselves to indicat- 
 ing in a note the sources from which one may draw in order 
 
 1 Cf. the various Lives of Jesus in French, German and English 
 (bibHography at the end of the volume). 
 
 2 Such a description, to be interesting, would require considerable 
 space. We have made it the subject of a course of lectures which 
 might serve in a way as an introduction to this book but which we 
 cannot think of transcribing here. 
 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to form an idea of it, and we shall assume that our readers 
 are familiar with the principal aspects of that great current 
 which, in the first centuries of our era, came to mingle its 
 waters with those of the Christian current. 
 
 It may be added that if we have been led to dwell on 
 the Mystery-Religions it is not because of the historical 
 influence they may have had on Christianity, but rather 
 because of the identity of the psychological development 
 that one observes in both these movements. 
 
 As a matter of fact, almost everything has already been 
 said that can be said about history and historical influences. 
 On the other hand, a great deal remains to be said about 
 the psychology of paganism as well as that of Christianity, 
 and about their relations. Here the question is not so much 
 one of reciprocal influences as of a similarity in psycho- 
 logical processes, a question of analogy and parallelism in 
 development. If, as Tertullian said, "the soul is naturally 
 Christian," one should find the traces of this "nature" in 
 paganism itself, and it appears indeed as if this might be 
 the case. It is therefore a psychological and not a historical 
 interest that has led us to insert in this introduction a sec- 
 tion on the Mystery-Religions; and this quite special direc- 
 tion of our interest suffices also to explain and justify the 
 omissions of which we have already spoken. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 METHOD 
 
 § I. THEOLOGY 
 
 Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, it was 
 the custom to consider religion and the different religions 
 as so many intellectual verities the grounds of which were 
 to be demonstrated or rejected by means of logic. Christian 
 theologians sought to prove the superiority of Christianity 
 to the other religions by establishing the superior value of 
 its dogmas, supporting the truth of these dogmas on proofs 
 of an intellectual order. Save for a few exceptions (for 
 example, those mystic souls who insisted and have always 
 insisted upon the life and the reasons of the heart) every 
 one believed that the essential thing in religion was to 
 remain convinced of the legitimacy of certain intellectual 
 beliefs. Such is the dogmatic conception of religion. "All 
 the religions which preceded Christianity are false and in- 
 ferior," said the theologians, "because their dogmas, their 
 rites, their beliefs, their ceremonies are either ridiculous or 
 cruel, or bear the stamp of superstition, or are morally 
 false." The variations on this theme were, to be sure, very 
 numerous and of many shades, but they all led back, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, to the same leitmotiv: religion, 
 and every religion, is an assemblage of truths or errors 
 which reveal themselves as true or false to an intelligence 
 that is sufficiently skilled to judge them. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that this conception has been alto- 
 gether abandoned even to-day. It remains that of the 
 great mass of the people; it is undoubtedly still maintained 
 by many ministers and preachers; it forms the basis of all 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 sorts of apologetical efforts which, though often clumsy, 
 are very well-intentioned. We may add that it is responsi- 
 ble for the ruin of many sincere lives which have run 
 aground on this rock of intellectualism in the sphere of 
 religion and which, unable to arrive at an intellectual syn- 
 thesis of their personal experiences and the dogmas of 
 Christianity, have made it a matter of conscience to relin- 
 quish a faith which they have not always been able to un- 
 derstand. 
 
 The best of our Protestant theologians, however, have 
 already appealed for another method and centred their 
 hopes upon its appearance.^ Gaston Frommel, speaking of 
 a special point in the Christian experience, exclaims: "A 
 great deal might be said on this point; there are many ob- 
 servations that might be made about it which, alas, have not 
 yet been made, made, I mean, with due method and rigour. 
 In these matters Christian theology is still on trial. It has 
 never done what the natural sciences have done: it has 
 not profited by the treasure of the experiences of eighteen 
 centuries of faith which have made Christianity a part of 
 humanity. It has remained doctrinaire, speculative or cau- 
 tiously historical, instead of becoming inductive. It has 
 not yet arrived at the exact and rigorously scientific results 
 which it might have reached if it had made use of the 
 accumulated riches of the hundreds and thousands of Chris- 
 tian lives that have been lived from the first centuries down 
 to our own day. As a result, lacking the records and the 
 carefully attested, verified, and classified facts, it is obliged, 
 when it enters this domain (which is that of the theology 
 of the future), to take its stand upon commonplace gener- 
 alities or those mere instinctive presuppositions which can 
 always be disputed. . . ." 
 
 1 Schleiermacher was the first to open the way, but his efforts were 
 necessarily tentative. 
 
METHOD 7 
 
 And he adds that this work will be accomplished, not in 
 a day or by one man, but by hundreds working together.^ 
 
 § 2. PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 At the moment when Frommel uttered these words a 
 movement was already taking shape that was to meet the 
 desire which he expressed and supply the want which he 
 was pointing out. This movement was born almost at the 
 same time in several different countries and set out to ap- 
 proach religious phenomena in a different fashion from that 
 which had been employed hitherto. In Germany, Wundt 
 and his school were beginning to study the religious modes 
 and customs of primitive peoples as a branch of ethnology. 
 
 In America, James, Leuba, Stanley Hall, and others who 
 followed them, adopting a more individualistic method, 
 were gathering observations of all sorts, grouping them, 
 analysing them and, while taking great pains to avoid any 
 preconceived theory in regard to them, claiming their right 
 to describe them in the same way and as of the same 
 general character as other psychic phenomena. Little by 
 little the Psychology of Religion was taking form; it was 
 creating its own method of investigation and demanding its 
 rights. It has now come forward with a sufficient list of 
 works to its credit, and works whose value is sufficiently 
 substantial for us to give this new science serious consider^ 
 ation. 
 
 Now the whole character of these books and their gen- 
 eral tendency have contributed to give the cultivated public 
 a new idea of religion. In the light of these works religion 
 to-day appears to us as a branch of the mental activity of 
 humanity. We can no longer separate it from the general 
 
 2 G. Frommel. La verite humaine. St.-Blaise, Foyer solidariste, 
 IQIO, II, p. 252. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 field of psychic experiences. When this word religion is 
 pronounced in our presence we no longer see a group of 
 dogmatic ideas, doctrines, or truths which are isolated from 
 others and the verity of which must be demonstrated by 
 means of reason; rather it suggests to us individual or col- 
 lective psychic phenomena, such as conversion, regenera- 
 tion, religious awakenings, mass movements, etc., which are 
 to be observed and described dispassionately and with as 
 much exactitude as possible. Religious psychology seems 
 to have given the death-blow to the syllogistic and scholas- 
 tic conception of religion. It will become increasingly diffi- 
 cult for a mind with any cultivation to hold these antiquated 
 views; less and less shall we be able to consider religion 
 apart from the rest of human life, relegating it to a separate 
 compartment. Henceforward we shall be obliged to ex- 
 amine it in its constant relations with all the rest of the 
 mental and physiological life of man. 
 
 Religious psychology has revealed to us a fact of the 
 highest importance which we have long divined, namely, 
 that religion, far from being a truth external to man, which 
 he must swallow like a pill, is attached, on the contrary, 
 to the most intimate fibres of his being, that it is closely 
 bound up with all that is deepest in his nature and comes 
 to him from within. Man is a religious being in the same 
 way that he is a being who thinks, wills, and feels. Man 
 becomes religious not because, at a certain moment of his 
 development, he has encountered a certain group of dog- 
 matic ideas, doctrines, or formulas which he has been 
 pleased to adopt, but first and foremost because his desires, 
 needs, and feelings — one whole side of his psychic life — 
 impel him in the direction of the religion which he adopts. 
 The religion does not exist in the dogmas, the doctrines, and 
 the ceremonies before it exists in the man himself. It is 
 because it exists first in the psychic life of the individual 
 
METHOD 9 
 
 that he later finds it again, so to speak, and accepts it in 
 the intellectual systems that are presented to him or in 
 the ceremonies and the rites which respond to his conscious 
 or unconscious aspirations. 
 
 Psychology differs from theology, then, in that it rests 
 on a scientific basis: the observation and the classification 
 of facts. Theology, on the contrary, has as a rule quite 
 another foundation: it is based on the admitted truth of 
 certain beliefs, certain doctrines, a theory that is precon- 
 ceived or accepted by virtue of an act of faith, and it seeks 
 to demonstrate the truth and the soundness of this theory. 
 
 A Christian theologian, for example, will approach the 
 person of Jesus with the design of demonstrating that he 
 is indeed the Saviour to whom the faith of the Church clings, 
 and that she is right in considering him as such, that he 
 fulfils the prophecies concerning the Messiah, and other 
 related questions. 
 
 A psychologist, on the other hand, will not concern him- 
 self with these questions at all. He will approach the 
 religious manifestations of such and such a hero or founder 
 of a religion as he would approach those of any other man; 
 he will seek to analyse them as facts, to relate them to other 
 similar facts, to compare the one series of facts with the 
 other; then, if any conclusion results from these analyses 
 and comparisons, he will accept it and range it in its proper 
 place among the data which he has acquired, whether it 
 contradicts or whether it confirms the faith of this or that 
 religious group. 
 
 The psychology of religion, then, studies facts, not ideas, 
 states of consciousness, not doctrines. It aims to remain 
 scientific; it concerns itself not with religion but with re- 
 ligious phenomena, and it seeks to discover the laws by 
 which they arise and develop, disregarding the entire meta- 
 physical question and taking cognisance, not of the first 
 
lo INTRODUCTION 
 
 cause, but of the secondary causes alone. In this sense we 
 may say that the psychology of religion is much more dis- 
 interested than theology; it is not in the service of any 
 creed; it is not in the service of anybody. But we must 
 not look to it for edification; it has nothing of that sort to 
 give. It limits itself to arranging, classifying, observing, and 
 drawing conclusions. It is for the individual to utilize its 
 results as best he may according to his own needs and to 
 discover how they may serve him in clarifying or modifying 
 his personal conceptions. 
 
 In his latest book, The Psychology of Religion,^ one of 
 the best known of the American psychologists, George Coe, 
 touches on a point that interests us particularly inasmuch 
 as it answers the preliminary question implied in the study 
 we are undertaking to-day: "Has psychology the right to 
 concern itself with persons?" The tendency of some 
 psychologists might lead us to suppose that it has not. 
 Considering the insistence with which a number of them 
 lay stress on the fact that we are concerned in psychology 
 only with states of consciousness, one might suppose that 
 the "I," individuality, is for them something that is non- 
 existent or unattainable. Theoretically this point of view 
 may be upheld. It is evident that strict psychological ob- 
 servation always has to do with this or that state of mind 
 of which it happens to be examining the conditions, the 
 structure, and the consequences independently of the person 
 who experiences that state of mind. From this one might 
 conclude that the person is non-existent, or at least a neg- 
 ligible quantity. Here again it is an American who comes 
 to save us from academic pedantry with his strong common 
 sense and his clear, candid vision of realities. Mr. George 
 Coe distinguishes, in the psychology of religion, two differ- 
 ent forms, two types of research: 
 
 8 The Psychology of Religion. University of Chicago Press, 1916. 
 
METHOD n 
 
 I. Sometimes the problem is one of separating the ele- 
 ments of a religious experience which comprises a great num- 
 ber of varied psychic data; we then place ourselves at what 
 Coe calls the structural point of view. This, for example, 
 is what Starbuck * has done in examining the various states 
 of consciousness which, taken together, constitute conver- 
 sion; it is also what Leuba^ and Delacroix^ have done in 
 connection with mysticism, and King,^ Pratt,* and Durck- 
 heim ® in connection with the genesis and the growth of 
 religion in the individual and in the race. 
 
 II. But this is not the whole story. Religion is not 
 merely an assemblage of states of consciousness of a special 
 kind; it is also a struggle with destiny; it is directed towards 
 an end, towards an aim; the devotee is in search of some- 
 thing, he follows a plan. Religion has a certain connection 
 with the evaluating phase of experience, with the side of 
 life which is concerned with the meaning of things. This 
 also we must take into account; and in doing so we find 
 ourselves adopting a new point of view which Coe calls 
 
 * Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion. 2nd edition, Lon- 
 don, Scott, 1901. 
 
 5 Leuba, J., L'Cs tendances religieuses chez les mystiques chretiens. 
 Rev. philos., LIV, 1902, pp. 1-36 and 441-487. 
 
 Id., The Psychology of the Christian Mystics. Mind, N. S., XIV, pp. 
 15-27. 
 
 ^ Delacroix, Essai sur le mysticisme speculatif en Allemagne an 
 XIV^ Steele. Paris, Alcan, 1900. 
 
 Id., Etudes d'histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme. Les grands 
 mystiques chretiens. Paris, Alcan, 1908. 
 
 ■^ tCiNG, J., The Development of Religion: a Study in Anthropology 
 and Social Psychology. New York, Macmillan, 1910. 
 
 Id., a Psychological Theory of the Origin of Religion. New York, 
 Acad, of Sc, 26 Feb., 1906. 
 
 8 Pratt, J. B., Concerning the Origin of Religion. Amer. Jour, of 
 Relig. Psych., II, p. 257. 
 
 Id., The Psychology of Religious Belief . New York, Macmillan, 1907. 
 
 s Durckheim, E., De la definition des phenomenes religieux. An. 
 sociol., II, pp. 1-28. 
 
 Id., Examen critique des systemes classiques sur les origines de la 
 pensee religiause. Rev. philos., LXVII, 1909, pp. 10-15. 
 
 Id., Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. Le systime 
 totemique en Australie. Paris, Alcan, 1912. 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the junctional point of view. Psychology should adopt this 
 as well, and as a matter of fact it does so. "For," says 
 Coe, "the concrete experience out of which we abstract the 
 ^states of consciousness' (we desire to study) is the experi- 
 ence of being a personal self. Each sensation, feeling, or 
 other 'element' of structural psychology is simply a par- 
 ticular discriminable aspect of a self -realising life." ^° 
 From the psychology of states of consciousness it is in- 
 evitable, therefore, that one should proceed to the psychol- 
 ogy of persons, of the personal I. 
 
 These considerations lead Coe to a manner of looking 
 at things which is interesting in connection with our present 
 plan. In this way he corrects the somewhat narrow out- 
 look of a purely scientific psychology^' that is concerned and 
 desires to be concerned only with the structure of states 
 of consciousness. He regards it as legitimate also to con- 
 sider states of mind from the point of view of the value 
 they possess in relation to society, society as a whole. 
 This point of view enables us to establish distinctions not 
 only between this and that state of mind but also between 
 person and person. We are placed in a position to compare 
 and evaluate persons; and this is important in our present 
 inquiry. 
 
 It is evident that this point of view adopted by Coe 
 lays itself open to the reproach of not being strictly scien- 
 tific, inasmuch as science is concerned with measures and 
 not with values. But to this objection one might reply that 
 the very axioms upon which science rests are dictated by 
 considerations of value. The most disinterested science is 
 built up, in the last analysis, upon an interest; for in order 
 to be able to know we must first pose hypotheses that will 
 render the scientific structure possible: atoms, electrons, etc. 
 
 In approaching the great figure who is to form the sub- 
 
 1° Coe, The Psychology of Religion, p. 19. 
 
METHOD 13 
 
 ject of this book we shall first meet with states of mind 
 that have been produced in a very special environment, 
 in the midst of a people with very strongly marked char- 
 acteristics and during an epoch far removed from our own. 
 We must study their structure and compare them with other 
 states of mind that are nearer to our own and better known. 
 But we shall not consider ourselves committed to an ob- 
 jectivity so strict as to prevent us from taking into account 
 the fact that we are dealing here first and foremost with 
 a person, a person who pursued certain aims and moved 
 in a certain direction, and that, because of and through 
 the intermediation of this person, new currents, new psychic 
 functions have come into being in the world. "Jesus," says 
 Renan, "had neither dogmas nor a system; he had a fixed 
 personal resolution which, as it surpassed in intensity every 
 other created will, directs to this day the destinies of hu- 
 manity." " These are the words of a judge who, in criti- 
 cism, did not allow himself to be easily checked. Yet they 
 affirm the existence in Jesus of something, a personal char- 
 acter, a jixed personal resolution, which bore and still bears 
 its consequences for humanity. 
 
 On the other hand, let us also note that to relate it with 
 other human personalities does not in any way diminish 
 the specific character of this personality. To bring com- 
 parative psychology to bear upon Jesus, to relate his states 
 of consciousness, his feelings, his volitions, his impulsions, 
 or his inhibitions with those which take place in all men, 
 is not to solve the whole problem of his origin and his 
 essence. The latter remains exactly as it was before, and 
 for the following reason. 
 
 In the natural order, as we know, the same physical ele- 
 ments, differently grouped, may produce absolutely different 
 results. Rain, snow, hail, ice are after all nothing but 
 
 11 Renan, Vie de Jesus. Paris, Calmann-Levy, p. 48. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 water. And yet, in concrete reality, how these things differ 
 one from another in their effects, in their utility, in the 
 use to which we can put them! When we decompose them 
 we always find water; but, meanwhile, the rain has fer- 
 tilised my soil, the ice has stopped the decomposition of 
 my food, the snow has killed my friend, the hail has devas- 
 tated my crops. "It's nothing but water, just the same!" 
 a physicist may tell me. But to me, an ordinary man, this 
 makes no difference; it does not interest me; it does not 
 diminish in the slightest way the seriousness of the effects 
 that have been produced. 
 
 Let us mount a step and enter psychology. There is no 
 reason why we should be disturbed if, in a soul which we 
 revere, in a person for whom we entertain the greatest 
 respect, the psychological analysis happens to reveal to us 
 a structure of psychic elements analogous to that of the 
 simplest of mortals. As a matter of fact, there appears, 
 under the new form assumed by this group of elements 
 which constitute the originality of this personality, an im- 
 ponderable something which is also a force, an energy, 
 though of the spiritual order. From the psychological point 
 of view this person is a human person of the same structure 
 as other human persons; yet that which precisely distin- 
 guishes him from others, that something which I can com- 
 pare to nothing else because it is peculiar to him, which it 
 is impossible to analyse, which is perceptible only to the 
 moral sense, is enough to confer upon him in my eyes a 
 value, a significance, a place quite apart from that of other 
 human beings. The secret of personality is always a divine 
 secret; one never succeeds in isolating it by merely scientific 
 labour. It will resist the most subtle analyses because it 
 belongs to quite another order of things. We therefore do 
 it no injury when we reduce to its known elements the 
 composition of a human psyche. 
 
METHOD 15 
 
 To sum up what we have just said and render quite clear 
 the methodological line that Coe has traced, let us formulate 
 as follows the investigation that we are about to undertake : 
 
 1. The structural point of view will lead us to approach 
 the life of Jesus, his psychic life, his states of consciousness, 
 from the angle of their resemblance to our own. In this 
 way we shall see in what respects he approximates to our- 
 selves; we shall examine the functioning of his mind, his 
 feelings, the hidden logic of his inner development, accord- 
 ing to the laws which we have learned by our previous 
 observations. In this way Jesus will appear to us chiefly 
 under the aspect which he shares with men, with all men. 
 We shall feel him living with the fulness of humanity, 
 thanks to the numerous points of resemblance with our own 
 which his psychology presents. 
 
 2. The junctional point of view, on the other hand, by 
 directing our attention to the particular aims which the 
 person is pursuing, will cause us to observe whatever is 
 original in this person, whatever is peculiar to him, in con- 
 trast to others. In the place of a static or comparative 
 psychology, we shall be concerned here first and foremost 
 with a dynamic psychology. We shall become aware of 
 the ends towards which a personality such as that of Jesus 
 moves, and in consequence we shall feel more sharply what 
 separates him from others and less sharply what he has 
 in common with them. 
 
 § 3. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 
 
 The principles and the methods of the psychology of 
 religion ^^ have rendered us an immense service by enlarging 
 
 12 Cf. Flournoy, Th., Les principes de la psychologic religieuse. 
 Arch, de Psychol., II, 1902, pp. 33-57- 
 
 Faber, Hermann, Das Wesen der Religionpsychologie und litre 
 Bedetitung fur die Dogmatik, cine prinzipieUe Untersuchung sur 
 systematischen Theologei. Tubingen, Mohr, 1913, p. 164. 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the conceptions that we have held of religious phenomena, 
 their character, and the laws under which they evolve in 
 the spiritual life of man. But several years ago the great 
 flood of observations flung by an early enthusiasm into 
 the field of religious studies began to diminish. It was 
 clearly seen that they would have to go deeper and the 
 investigators were already attacking the subconscious layers 
 of the personality without being able to penetrate to its 
 secret. They were asking upon what, in the last analysis, 
 the observed phenomena rested, from whence they sprang 
 up in the bosom of the race. I am not speaking here of 
 the metaphysical origins of religion which, by definition, 
 lie outside the province of scientific investigation, but of 
 its psychic and physiological origins, its points of attach- 
 ment to the known being. The psychology of religion was 
 on the verge of being swallowed up in the moving sands of 
 statistics or special cases, when there suddenly appeared a 
 new movement of ideas, a new method, rich in unforeseen 
 consequences, which, with the abundance and multiplicity 
 of the works to which it gave rise, wrested that study 
 from the lethargy that threatened it. I am speaking of 
 psycho-analysis. 
 
 Psycho-analysis or psychanalysis (the analysis of the 
 mind or rather of the states of mind) is at once and by 
 turns a method of therapeutics and a method of psycho- 
 logical investigation. Originated and given its first impetus 
 by the Viennese doctor, Sigmund Freud, it has developed 
 in a few years to an extraordinary extent and has led to 
 the production of substantial works and several reviews 
 which are entirely devoted to it.^^ Unfortunately, most of 
 
 13 The following are the titles of these reviews: 
 Jahrbuch filr psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen. 
 Zentralblatt fiir Psychoanalyse. 
 Imago. 
 
 Zeitschrift fur Anzvendung dcr Psychoanalyse auf die Geisteswissefi' 
 schaften. 
 
METHOD 17 
 
 these contributions to the study of psycho-analysis are in 
 German." 
 
 The founder of psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud, is a 
 neurologist, a pupil of Charcot of La Salpetriere, as was 
 M. Pierre Janet. Concerning this double descent from the 
 illustrious French doctor, M. F. Morel has written, "It 
 does not seem to us extreme to say that the birthplace of 
 psycho-analysis was La Salpetriere, where Freud was 
 staying in 1885. Afterwards it took up its abode in 
 Vienna." '' 
 
 * It was, then, while he was studying his specialty, hys- 
 teria, and subsequently other nervous disorders, that Freud 
 gradually elaborated the new method to which he has given 
 the name of psycho-analysis. The cases which he was led 
 to treat and study at first hand struck him as having certain 
 characteristics in common. He soon found himself con- 
 vinced that the physiological and psychic disorders which 
 he was examining in his patients had almost always a purely 
 
 Internationale Zettschriff fiir arsfliche Psychoanalyse. 
 
 Schriften ziir angewandten Seelenkunde. 
 
 The Psychoanalytic Review. 
 
 The International Journal of Psycho-analysis. 
 
 14 Let me mention in French the volume by Drs. Regis and Hesnard, 
 La Psychoanalyse des ncvroses. et dcs psychoses, ses applications medi- 
 cales et extra-mcdicales. Paris, Alcan, 1914 (furnished with a very 
 full bibliography) : — an article by M. Emile Lombard m the Revue de 
 theologie -ct de philosophie, new series, II, pp. 14-47, entitles Freud, la 
 psychanalyse et la theorie psychogenetique des ncvroses; — an Essai sur 
 I'introversion mystique by M. Ferd. Morel, thesis for the doctorate in 
 philosophy presented at the University of Geneva (Kiindig, Geneva, 
 1918) ; — the lecture by Dr. Maeder ; Guerison et evolution dans la vie 
 de I'ame. La psychanalyse, son importance dans la vie contemporaine, 
 Rascher, Zurich, igi8; the study by the same author of Le pientre 
 Hodler, translated into French by M. Lenoir; — Jung, Contribution a 
 V etude des types psychologiqv.es, Arch, de Psychol., XIII, 1913, p. 290; 
 — Th. Flournoy, Une mystique moderne. Ibid. XV, 191 5, pp. 1-224. — 
 Henri Flournoy, Syinbolismes en psychopathologie and Quelqties 
 rcmarques sur le symbolisme dans I'hysterie, Ibid. XVII, no. 67, 
 
 15 Morel, Ferd., Essai sur I'introversion mystique; etude psycho- 
 logiqne de Pseudo-Denys I'Areopagite et de quelques autres cas de 
 mysticisme. Geneva, Kiindig, 1918, p. 7. 
 
i8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 psychic origin. Thanks to his handling and his skill in 
 analysis he was not slow in discovering that often, if not 
 always, these nervous disorders were due to what he calls 
 a repression (Verdrdngung). Certain desires, certain in- 
 stinctive impulsions had been, at some moment in his life, 
 repressed by the patient. He had been ashamed of them, 
 he had not wished to acknowledge them to himself or to 
 confess them to others; he had shamefacedly suppressed 
 the expression of them. Or rather (for this phenomenon 
 usually takes place in early childhood), his parents, his 
 teachers, the world, public opinion had opposed to the ex- 
 ternal manifestation of these natural instincts a barrier, a 
 censor. We all know how frequent such cases are, how 
 many instincts, impulses, natural inclinations are repressed 
 in us from childhood by this censorship of public opinion, 
 of education, which constantly checks the outbursts of hu- 
 man nature. 
 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the natural in- 
 stinct thus arrested by external barriers ceases for that 
 reason to operate. On the contrary! Repressed as it may 
 be, even banished from the open consciousness of the indi- 
 vidual, it still does not cease to manifest itself, to make 
 its influence felt. But since the force of its outward sally 
 has been broken, as if by an iron wall, it falls back in 
 the other direction; it rebounds from the consciousness into 
 the obscure recesses of the subconscious, where it then pro- 
 duces a sort of tension. The pressure of the instinct does 
 not cease; but not being able to express itself in the day- 
 light because of the different censors which lie in wait for 
 it, it pushes constantly against the door that is shut against 
 it, strives to slip out through the cracks, and sometimes 
 succeeds by means of a disguise. It then presents itself 
 under the form of a frequently repeated gesture, a ridiculous 
 
METHOD 19 
 
 or meaningless habit, under the form of a periodic crisis; 
 finally, it becomes a fomenter of disorders, a disease/' 
 
 If one psycho-analyses the patient, if one is able, that is, 
 by means of certain methods such as confession, to redis- 
 cover the subconscious impulses of which he is himself often 
 ignorant and which are at the bottom of his nervous dis- 
 order, he can be cured, gradually or quickly, as the case 
 may be. In the beginning Freud made use of hynotism 
 to discover the secret concealed in his patients. In the 
 end he gave up this method, and it is now usually by con- 
 versation with them or by the method of reactions that he 
 discovers the knot of ideas, impulses, instincts (or what he 
 calls the complex) which is at the bottom of their illness." 
 
 After the neuroses Freud took up the study of dreams, 
 and here again he discovered the strange process of instinct 
 which he had discovered in the neuroses. From his authori- 
 
 1^ Cf. Freud, Ueber die Berichtigung von der Neurasthenie einen 
 bestimmten Syynptomenkomplex als Angsineurose abzutrcnnen. Neurol. 
 Zentralblatt, 1895, No. 2. 
 
 Id., Obsessions et phobies, leur mecanisme psychique et leur ctiologie. 
 Revue, neurol. III. 1895. 
 
 Id., Formnlierungen iiber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Ge- 
 schehens. Jahrbuch f. psychoanal. u. psychopathol. Forschungen III, 
 I, 191 1. 
 
 Id., Drei Abhandlungen sur Sexualthcorie. Leipzig and Vienna, 1905. 
 
 Id., Sammlung kleiner Schriftcn sur Neurosenlehr-e aus den Jahren 
 1893-1896. Leipzig and Vienna, Deuticke, 1906. 
 
 Id., Zwangshandliingen und Religionsiibung. Zeitschrift fur Re- 
 ligionspsychol. I, pp. 4-12. 
 
 1^ This method consists in pronouncing before the patient a certain 
 number of words, chosen from all fields, to which he must reply im- 
 mediately with the word which comes spontaneously to his mind, how- 
 ever incongruous or unsuitable this word may appear to him to be. 
 Meanwhile the psycho-analyst has his chronometer in his hand and 
 notes exactly the time that elapses between the word which he utters 
 and that which he receives in reply. With a little practice and skill the 
 psycho-analyst is very soon able to see which associations of ideas 
 arouse in the patient painful or diflficult reactions, and gradually, by 
 means of more and more pointed questions, he reconstructs the circum- 
 stances in the life of the patient which have given rise to his neurosis. 
 In this way the patient reveals to the psycho-analyst a part of his sub- 
 conscious life of the value and meaning of which he has himself been 
 ignorant. 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tative study on this subject, Die Traumdeutimg,^^ it becomes 
 evident that the dream, every sort of dream, is nothing 
 but a disguise of the desires and thoughts which have been 
 driven back by the censor into the subconscious, and which, 
 not being able to express themselves as long as the will 
 of the individual is in the awakened state, come forth as 
 soon as this will is asleep, and thus relieve the individual 
 from the state of abnormal tension in which he finds him- 
 self. 
 
 The theory which Freud has drawn from his medical and 
 psychological observations may then, in its large outlines, 
 be summed up somewhat as follows: 
 
 1. At the base of human life there is a powerful force 
 of energy, an elan vital, which he calls the libido. It must 
 be confessed that Freud attributes to this libido a character 
 that is strictly passional and even sexual, as its name indi- 
 cates. He lays great emphasis on this side of things, while 
 other psycho-analysts, particularly those of the school of 
 Zurich,^^ tend to mitigate its earthiness and grossness. 
 Taking both tendencies into consideration, we may say that 
 at the base, at the source of our life there is a formidable 
 instinctive urge, a copious stream of natural instincts and 
 desires that are peculiarly related to the flesh. 
 
 2. This urge of the libido flings itself against what Freud 
 calls the censor, that is, against the whole group of the 
 moral and social rules which progress has heaped up about 
 the modern human being. We are not able, and perhaps 
 
 18 Leipzig and Vienna, Deuticke, 1911. 
 
 13 Cf., Bleuler, E., Die Psychanalyse Freuds: Verteidigung und 
 Kritische Bemerkungcn. Leipzig, Deuticke, 191 1. 
 
 Jung, C. G., Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, Beitrdge fiir Ent- 
 •wicklungsgeschicht-c des Denkens. Ibid., 1912. 
 
 Id., Versuch einer Darstcllung der psychoanalytischen Thcorie, neim 
 Vorlesungen gehaUen in Nezv York im Sept., 1912. Jahrb. f. psychoanal. 
 und psychopath. Forsch., V, 1913. 
 
 Keller, Ad., art. Psclwanalyse in the encyclopaedia Religion in 
 Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd. IV, Tiibingen, 1913. 
 
METHOD 21 
 
 humanity itself, since it became humanity, has ne\fer been 
 able to satisfy fully and without restraint the rush of our 
 primitive natural instincts. Hence we have here a natural 
 force at full strength which finds itself stopped by an im- 
 passable barrier. The moral conscience, society, education 
 all intervene together to oppose it. 
 
 3. The instincts are therefore repressed. As they are 
 forbidden to express themselves in the broad daylight of a 
 consciousness that is fully aware of itself, they fling them- 
 selves against the walls, striving to get through. Here the 
 danger begins. If the censorship is inexorably maintained 
 — and it always is — the instincts resort to dissimulation 
 and seek to make their way out by means of a disguise. 
 They bring about a derangement of the personality, a mal- 
 ady which has all the characteristics of a mental disease; 
 they ravage the human being, wasting him and injuring him. 
 At least, unless the cure intervenes. 
 
 4. At this point appears a new aspect of Freud's theory, 
 of which we have not yet spoken: the sublimation of the 
 instincts.'^ When one has discovered the force that has 
 caused these ravages in the individual, the repressed instinct 
 that has been clamouring to express itself, the problem is 
 to find an outlet for it. But, as there is no question of 
 giving it outlet in its existing form, it has to be transformed; 
 in place of the disorderly disguises which it has adopted it 
 must be furnished with the possibility of an education, that 
 is to say a transformation which elevates it. This is what 
 Freud calls sublimation. The instinctive vital urge must, 
 without ceasing to be a force of life, raise itself to a higher 
 level, so that the purely natural instincts may become, as 
 it were, supernatural. Here lies the true logical issue. 
 
 20 On sublimation see : Pfister, Die psychanalytische Methode (under 
 Stihlimierung. in the index) ; Silberkr, Prohleme dcr Mystik. Vienna 
 and Leipzig, Heller, 1914, pp. 104, 163-171, 192, etc. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Instead of being repressed, our deep natural instincts must 
 be ennobled, lifted to the sublime, in order that the egoisti- 
 cal, brutal passion may be changed gradually into a love 
 for others, and the bestial, repellent love transmuted into 
 love for one's neighbour, into religious love. 
 
 Occasionally this sublimation takes place, in one way or 
 another, of itself, without any violent shocks and in the 
 mere play of life. It sometimes happens that in very pure 
 natures the instincts, without losing their energy, naturally 
 elevate themselves and are metamorphosed into moral 
 powers. But as a rule it is only under the influence of 
 powerful convictions and with the aid of unexpected forces 
 that the sublimation occurs. Cases of sudden conversion 
 are examples of crises, tumultuous by nature, in the midst 
 of which this phenomenon takes place. 
 
 It hardly needs to be said that the brief sketch which 
 we have just given of psycho-analysis does not exhaust the 
 subject. In its roughness of outline it even distorts it in 
 certain respects; it overlooks the finer distinctions; more- 
 over, it leaves in the shadow a number of important points 
 which we shall have occasion to mention in the course of 
 this work.^^ Immediately following Freud, a host of 
 psychologists have taken up his work and his principles 
 and extended or modified on certain sides their application 
 and consequences. From this have resulted a series of 
 books, bearing on the most varied subjects, on myths, magic, 
 religion, art, literature, dreams, lapsus linguce, or calami, 
 neuroses, forgetfulness, tics, etc., etc. These works consti- 
 tute to-day a very important library which one ought to 
 run through, pen in hand, and which bears witness to the 
 treasures of observation which this new point of view has 
 
 21 For example, the whole question of the family-complex and its 
 role in the formation of myths (see pp. 109 et seqq.) and that of intro- 
 version (pp. 165 et seqq.). 
 
METHOD 23 
 
 brought to light in all branches of human knowledge. " 
 Perhaps we have said enough to indicate the movement, 
 the scale of the psycho-analytic method, its manner of look- 
 ing at life. It reveals to us in the deeply buried primitive 
 instincts of the human animal a force which may devastate 
 life unless, thanks to a magnificent sublimation, it serves 
 to lead man to a path that is above nature. Now, could 
 we not express in almost the same terms the essential con- 
 ception that religion, and especially Christianity, holds in 
 regard to human life? Instinct, the libido, the primitive, 
 vital urge seems to exist solely to raise man up to the love 
 of his neighbour in the largest and noblest sense, and if 
 this sublimation fails to take place, disease, neuroses, mad- 
 
 22 "We shall mention here at least a few of these works which are 
 among the most important or those of which we have made most use : 
 
 Freud, Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebcns (iiber Vergessen, 
 Versprechen, Vergreifen, Aberglaube und Irrtum). Berlin, Karger, 4 
 ed., 1912. 
 
 Id., Totem und Tabu. Einige Uebereinstiinmungen ini Seelenleben 
 der IVilden und der Neurotiker. Leipzig and Vienna, Heller, 1913. 
 
 Id., Der Witc und seine Beziehung sum Unbewussten. Leipzig and 
 Vienna, Deuticke, 1912. 
 
 Rank, O., Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. Versuch etner 
 psychologischen Mythenbedcutung. Schriften zur angewandten Seelen- 
 kunde, Heft 5, Vienna, 1912. 
 
 Id., Das Inccst-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage. Leipzig, Deuticke, 1912. 
 
 Id., Psychoanalytische Beitrdge zur M ythenf orschung . Leipzig. In- 
 ternat. psychoan. Verlag, 1918. 
 
 Jung, C. G., IVandlungcn und Symbole der Libido. Beitrdge sur 
 EntwicklungsgeschicJite des Denkens. Leipzig, Deuticke, 1912. 
 
 Id., Versuch einer Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie. Ibid., 
 1913. 
 
 Id., Die Bedeutung des Voters filr das Schicksal des Einzelnen. 
 Jahrbuch f. psychoan. u. psychopathol. Forschungen, I, 1909. 
 
 Id., Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick iiber 
 die moderne Theorie und Methode der analytischen Psychologie. 
 Zurich, Rascher, 1917. 
 
 Pfister, O., Die psychanalytische Meihod-e. Leipzig, Klinkhardt, 
 1913. 
 
 Id., Ein neuer Zugang sum alten Evangelium. Mitteilungen iiber 
 analytische Seelsorge an Nervosen, Gemi'itsleidend-en und anderen 
 seelisch Gebundenen. Giitersloh, Bertelsmann, 1918. 
 
 Id., Die Frommigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinsendorf. Leipzig 
 and Vienna, Deuticke, 1910. 
 
 Id., Was beitet die Psychanalyse dem Erzieher? Leipzig, Klinkhardt, 
 1917. 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ness, in a word perdition, are at the door. It is a curious 
 thing that we are led back by the study of psycho-analysis 
 to the very terms of which Christianity avails itself in order 
 to express the fundamental opposition in which human life 
 struggles: salvation and perdition. 
 
 Since the individual human life presents itself as an urge 
 of animal instincts, it flings itself, whether it desires to 
 do so or not, against the censorship that has resulted from 
 the progress of this same human life in its social form, and 
 which sets up against it a solid wall. This is the old antith- 
 esis, the contradiction which has been recognised always 
 and everywhere, which in antiquity was described as fatum, 
 destiny, and which Christians call sin. It is the same 
 psychic movement always, regarded merely from different 
 angles. On one side, the elan vital, liberty without restraint, 
 
 Id., Wahrheit und Schonheit in der Psychanalyse. Zurich, Rascher, 
 1918. 
 
 SiLBERER, H., Probleme der Mystik und Hirer Symbolik. Vienna and 
 Leipzig, Heller, 1914. 
 
 Id., Durch Tod zuni Leben. Eine kurse Untersuchung Uber die 
 entwicklungsgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Syrnbols der Wiedergeburt in 
 seinen Urformen, mit besonderer Bcrilcksichtigung der modernen 
 Theosophie. Leipzig, Heims, 191 5. 
 
 Bleuler, E., Die Psychanalyse Freiids. Verteidigung und kritische 
 Bevierkungen. Leipzig, Deuticke, 1911. 
 
 Id., Das autistische Denken. Jahrbuch f. psychoan. u. psychopath. 
 Forschungen, IV. 
 
 RicKLiN, Fr., WunscherfUllung und Symbolik im Mdrchen, eine 
 Studie. Schriften z. angewandten Seelenkunde, Heft II. 
 
 Jones, Ernest, Das Problem des Hamlet und der Oedipus-Komplex. 
 Ibid., Heft X. 
 
 Abraham, Traum und Mythus. Eine Studie sur V biker psychologie. 
 Ibid., Heft IV. 
 
 Adler, Alf., Ueber den nervosen Charakter, Grundzilge einer ver- 
 gkichenden Individualpsychologie und Psychotherapie. Weisbaden, 
 Bergmann, 1912. 
 
 Reik, Th., Probleme der Religionspsychologie. Leipzig, Int. 
 psychoan. Verlag, 1918. 
 
 Flugel, J. C, The Psycho-analytic Study of the Family. The In- 
 ternat. Psycho-anal. Press. London, Vienna, New York, 1921, pp. 259. 
 
 Baudouin, Etudes de Psychanalyse. Neuchatel and Paris : Dela- 
 chaux et Niestle, 1922, pp. 288. 
 
 For further details, consult G. Berguer, Psychologie religieuse, revue 
 et bibliographie generates, Geneva, Kundig, 1914, in which works is- 
 sued prior to 1914 are listed. 
 
METHOD 25 
 
 the right to liberty and to a complete development; on the 
 other, arrest, inhibition, incomprehensible darkness, a misery 
 that has no right to exist but which does exist nevertheless, 
 and powerfully. 
 
 If the individual tries to cross the wall, to give free rein 
 to his nature as it is, he falls back into animality and cuts 
 himself off from the communion of his fellows. If he is 
 content to submit passively to the arrest, his suppressed 
 instincts torment him and throw him into confusion. Only 
 one issue remains: that of the sublimation of the instincts. 
 And this issue is singularly analogous to that proposed by 
 Christianity. For is it anything else than a new birth? 
 Does it aspire to be anything else than a regeneration, that 
 is to say a new fecundation of the being carried out on the 
 plane of a higher life? 
 
 It is true that the psycho-analysts do not, as a general 
 thing, insist upon the analogies which we are raising here. 
 Their interest is different and their thoughts are oriented 
 in another direction. But this encounter between the mod- 
 ern analysis of the deepest life of the soul and the affirma- 
 tions of Christian piety touching the only possible method 
 of salvation is calculated, we must confess, to stir any one 
 who has found in Christ the secret of life. 
 ' For the rest, the psycho-analytic method does not inter- 
 est us merely because it conceives of the progress of life 
 in a manner analogous to that of Christianity. It has also 
 opened to us unlimited perspectives into the role played by 
 the unconscious in the life of the feelings, into the pri- 
 mordial importance of the affective subconscious life and 
 its action upon all the rest of existence. It teaches us to 
 relate the humblest beginnings to the loftiest results and 
 to find a continuity where formerly one could only see 
 oppositions. The associations of primitive ideas and the 
 play of the feelings in the subconscious life of the child, 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the complexes which it has discovered and established as 
 existing at the outset of every mental life will aid us par- 
 ticularly in solving problems of religious psychology which, 
 without it, would have remained enveloped in the deepest 
 obscurity. By the light of psycho-analysis the psychic roots 
 of the religious life are revealed, and the numerous points 
 of comparison help us, without destroying its secret, to a 
 better comprehension of this mystery of the supernature 
 of the spirit which has engrafted itself upon the nature of 
 the flesh. The problem of Christ thus comes into close re- 
 lationship with the problem of human life, and the mag- 
 nificent unity of the two stands out in dazzling relief. We 
 shall seek to render this perceptible at every possible oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE 
 MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 
 
 The introduction to the life of Jesus brings up a number 
 of problems. Chief among these are the problems raised 
 by an examination of the documents in which that life has 
 been recorded and the condition in which they have come 
 down to us. In order to write a life of Jesus we must then, 
 first of all, take some note of biblical criticism and the 
 criticism of the text of the gospels and the epistles. 
 
 We have not done everything when we have established 
 the validity of the documents that have come down to us 
 from the first Christian generations. As we take up this 
 work itself we perceive at once that many other questions 
 are bound up with it and related to it in different degrees. 
 We observe, for example, that the men who laboured to 
 assemble the evidence on the life of Jesus, as well as those 
 tor whom the redaction was done, lived in a certain en- 
 vironment and at a certain period which present very special 
 and very clearly marked characteristics. The Greco-Roman 
 environment of the first years of our era was the expression 
 and the result of a highly developed culture. Now minds 
 living at such a moment and in the midst of such a culture 
 were not a tabula rasa. They could not, without precon- 
 ceived ideas, accept the new religion, the Christianity that 
 presented itself to them; nor could they, in receiving it, 
 make a clean sweep of everything which the floating ideas, 
 the education, the manner of thinking of their century 
 had already deposited in them. 
 
 27 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 For this reason, no matter how authentic and sincere 
 may be the documents that purport to describe for us the 
 Hfe of Jesus, they nevertheless reflect this great figure from 
 a certain angle and consider it under a light which is that 
 of their own age. The forms of speech, for example, of 
 which Saint Paul makes use, are not always new forms. 
 They had often been used in other religions than Chris- 
 tianity, and they had acquired from them a certain mean- 
 ing, had become charged with a signification of which we 
 cannot easily perceive the bearing without studying these 
 religions themselves. 
 
 Every one, in order to express his own most original 
 convictions, makes use of concepts in which the state of 
 mind of his epoch and his environment is reflected. This 
 is true at all times, but the Greco-Roman environment of 
 this epoch presented a character that has perhaps never 
 been reproduced, particularly in the domain of religion. 
 The extent of the empire, its successive conquests, had 
 brought it into contact with very diverse civilisations. 
 Owing to the constant changes of position of the armies, 
 to the trade in slaves, who were carried from one country 
 to another, a prodigiously rapid circulation of ideas had been 
 established between the different parts of this multiple and 
 diverse world. The Roman tolerance had favoured this 
 mixture, this vast syncretism of religious ideas. All the 
 races rubbed elbows; all the cults were brought into com- 
 munication and borrowed from one another, sometimes 
 melting into one another, sometimes fusing their rites and" 
 their practices. Amid so many divergences in details peo- 
 ple became aware, little by little, of the points they had 
 in common. Certain lines appeared to be better marked 
 than others in the general design of religious thought. The 
 human soul began to feel, if not always to understand or 
 to grasp, its identity. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 29 
 
 This seething mass of thought, in which so many different 
 currents came to mingle in a certain unity, has received a 
 name. It is Hellenistic thought, and this is the Hellenistic 
 period. In it there are so many things, so many elements, 
 so many questions, such a throbbing life and such an ex- 
 traordinary admixture of good and evil, power and weak- 
 ness, imposture and sincerity, that the authors who have 
 dealt with it have rarely succeeded in determining the pre- 
 cise limits of what is meant by the Hellenistic world and 
 Hellenistic thought. The boundaries of this world and this 
 thought remain cloudy and uncertain as regards both time 
 and space.^ But we can at least affirm that it was in this 
 world and at the end of this epoch that Christianity made 
 its appearance in the empire and commenced its victorious 
 march before which all the other religions were soon to 
 grow pale and fade away. 
 
 It will therefore be eminently useful to any one who 
 wishes to grasp Christianity through the utterances and 
 the mentality of disciples who lived in this period to study 
 the religious thought of the day and to see by means of 
 what concepts and under what symbols religious-minded 
 people of that time grasped religious matters, involuntarily, 
 almost without knowing it, unconsciously. 
 
 Let me make myself clear. I do not mean to imply that 
 a Saint Paul or a Saint John altered the figure of Christ 
 under the influence of ideas which came from without. 
 What I mean is merely that they saw with their own eyes, 
 or rather with their souls, and that their souls lived in the 
 Greco-Roman world of the first centuries and under the 
 influence of its culture. There are, for example, terms 
 employed by Saint Paul which we should be mistaken in 
 
 1 By the "Hellenistic period" we generally understand that which ex- 
 tends from 300 to 100 B.C., from Alexander the Great to the time of 
 the expansion of the empire towards the West. But its consequences 
 were prolonged- far beyond this. 
 
30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 regarding as invented by him or selected by chance from 
 the miscellaneous baggage of the vulgar tongue. These 
 expressions only assume their real value and their true 
 sense when we know what they signify in the contemporary 
 religions. And this must be affirmed not of expressions 
 only but also of certain notions and certain groups of no- 
 tions, certain associations of ideas which at that time were 
 current in the religious world and were familiar to him, 
 such as death and regeneration or re-birth, the idea of 
 salvation or Goorrjpia, etc. It remains entirely possible 
 that these notions and these expressions may have been 
 transformed in passing out of paganism into Christianity, 
 that the Christians themselves may have given to them in 
 using them a more profound and more spiritual meaning. 
 But it is no less true that they were current and that thtir 
 use gave rise to rapprochements that we should do wrong 
 not to take into account. 
 
 The study of the ideas, the feelings, the impulsions which 
 were current in the pagan world at the moment when the 
 good news, the gospel of Christ appeared, is thus one of 
 the necessary elements of an introduction to the life of 
 Jesus. We must know what were the preponderant religious 
 needs, how people satisfied them, or how they attempted 
 to satisfy them; consequently, we must study the principal 
 characteristics of this vast syncretism of ideas, rites, cults, 
 and initiations which constitute the Hellenistic world. 
 From the religious point of view, the broad general lines 
 of this subject may be indicated as follows: 
 
 I. First, a sort of awakening of religious thought under 
 the influence of Stoicism, but a Stoicism of a quite special 
 kind of which Posidonius remains the typical representative, 
 a Stoicism mixed with Chaldeo-Babylonian mysticism and 
 from which Philo perhaps derived most of his mystical 
 ideas. We find echoes of this religious and mystical philos- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 31 
 
 ophy in the writings of Cicero and Seneca, and they are 
 expressed in their popular form in the pseudo-Aristotelian 
 treatise rcepi Koffjxov, which dates from the second cen- 
 tury A.D. 
 
 2. Side by side with this movement of philosophic 
 thought we must mention Orphism, the obscure origins of 
 which go back perhaps to the seventh or the sixth cen- 
 tury B.C., and which strongly influenced Pythagoras. This 
 also may have contained Oriental elements (probably Baby- 
 Ionian); it had a certain influence on the cult of Dionysus 
 and it is the foundation of the vast Gnostic movement. It 
 also influenced the religious ideas and especially the escha- 
 tology of Plato, Empedocles, and Pindar. The Stoics re- 
 garded the Orphic books as a revelation; and for the Neo- 
 Platonists they were, or they became, the essential books 
 from which the latter derived their principal doctrines. 
 
 3. Gnosticism, that strange and powerful current of mys- 
 tical thought which later became a danger to the orthodox 
 faith, or was at least regarded by the faith as dangerous; 
 against which we see Saint Paul already taking his stand, 
 while other doctors of the later Church are to borrow 
 silently but profitably from it. 
 
 4. Finally, alongside of these great waves of religious 
 thought which we can mention here only too briefly, we 
 must include as of the first importance the Mystery-Re- 
 ligions which arrived from the Orient or from Greece at 
 about the same epoch as Christianity, though some arrived 
 before it, and which mysteriously stirred many a soul that 
 was in quest of salvation or afflicted by life. 
 
 It would be pertinent to linger particularly over the 
 description of these religions, inasmuch as they sum up 
 and condense in their ceremonies, their rites, their symbols, 
 and their myths the essential tendencies of the soul of that 
 period. They reveal to us its more or less conscious needs, 
 
32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 its secret aspirations, its latent desires; they mark an ex- 
 tremely interesting stage of the human conscience. 
 
 Unfortunately, such a study would occupy a dispropor- 
 tionate place in a simple introduction. Since, on the other 
 hand, their elements can be found in special works, we 
 shall concern ourselves here simply with the psychological 
 questions which the Mystery-Religions present. 
 
 We shall ask first, what is the essential characteristic 
 of the psychological movement, the psychic process that 
 is displayed in this rich efflorescence of rites and ceremonies, 
 this creation or transfigured resurrection of gods and god- 
 desses which bears the name of the Mystery-Cults. From 
 the psychological point of view, how can we explain such 
 a birth or such a rebirth of old religions under an entirely 
 new form, together with the enthusiasm of the peoples of 
 the Roman Empire for these new rites: lustrations, bap- 
 tisms of blood, hierogamies, and mysterious initiations? 
 Whence has it all come and whither is it all going? Are 
 we to see in this exuberant symbolism nothing but the in- 
 toxication of consciences in delirium? Does some profound 
 revelation perhaps lurk behind the often sensual frenzy 
 of the mystical ecstasy that excites the initiates? Towards 
 what does it carry us, what heights, what abysses? Are 
 the Fathers of the Church right in severely condemning 
 these orgiastic cults? Have they really nothing to say to 
 us? And would it be too daring to suggest that there is 
 something in common between the souls who flung them- 
 selves into these cults and those who, at about the same 
 period, and driven, as it appears, by similar needs, hail in 
 Christ the Saviour of the world and the Master to whom 
 they have aspired unawares? 
 
 How many questions! It would be impossible for us to 
 answer them all in succession. But perhaps we shall an- 
 swer them all at once if we simply define the psychic nature 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 33 
 
 of the mental process that created and developed these 
 Mystery-Religions. 
 
 g I. PARALLELISM OF THE PSYCHIC PRODROMES OF CHRIS- 
 TIANITY AND THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 
 
 One of the best means of investigation open to the 
 psychologist who finds himself faced with the task of de- 
 scribing a spiritual movement is comparison. He runs 
 through the pages of history in order to discover in other 
 epochs and in other circumstances those psychic adventures 
 of which at least some of the conditions suggest those of 
 the movement he is particularly engaged in studying. And 
 here it is not so much the similarity in external conditions 
 or visible characteristics that matters, but rather the anal- 
 ogy of the inner processes and the mental currents that 
 sweep minds along. Beneath the variety and the frequently 
 glaring contrast in respect of characteristics, ends con- 
 sciously followed and consequences, he must seek to dis- 
 cern the sub-conscious design, the underlying curve of the 
 tendencies and impulsions, the slow germination of deep 
 instincts that follow similar paths and point towards an 
 identical goal which only reveals itself later. 
 
 Now there is a movement better known than the Mystery- 
 Religions that approaches, in its psychological finality, the 
 great effervescence of emotion, sentiments, and desires that 
 courses through these religions; and this is the Israelitish 
 prophecy of the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. 
 
 My readers will no doubt protest; but patience! Beneath 
 the apparent contrasts which, at first, make us smile at 
 the idea of any such resemblance, let us try to penetrate 
 to the depths of souls who, everywhere and at all times 
 in history, have been tormented by the same desires and 
 driven by identical instincts. There is certainly a resem- 
 
34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 blance between these two movements and I shall endeavour 
 to make it apparent. 
 
 First, there is an analogy between the periods in which 
 they both came to birth; then there is an analogy between 
 the aspirations and the religious desires to which, in the one 
 case as in the other, historical and national circumstances 
 gave rise. Both were periods of national decadence. At 
 the time when the great prophets were living among the 
 Hebrews, the apogee of the national life had been long since 
 attained. The Asiatic menace was becoming more pressing 
 year by year; the patriotic spirit was diminishing; luxury 
 and display but thinly veiled the decay of morals and the 
 general laxness of the people. We can understand how 
 great patriots like the prophets, rising up here and there, 
 should have been almost forced to return into themselves 
 to rediscover, in the retreats of the inner life and personal 
 piety, those energies which they sought in vain about them. 
 The national decadence thus gave rise, among the best men, 
 to a violent movement of introversion.^ But the energies 
 of the libido, discovered anew in their own consciousness 
 by the prophets and liberated, prepared the way for a new 
 ideal of life. And it was then that the figure of the Messiah 
 
 2 Consult, in connection with introversion and the sense of this word 
 in psycho-analytical language, the works of the psycho-analysts. They 
 have attributed great importance to this return of the soul upon itself, 
 this backward plunge which may lead to a fatal blight of the being, 
 or which may, on the contrary, serve as a sort of bath of youth in 
 which the inner man renews his strength by returning to its source. 
 We shall take up this point again in connection with the Temptation. 
 Meanwhile, see : 
 
 Morel, Feed., Essai sur V Introversion mystique. Geneva, Kiindig, 
 1918. 
 
 BLEtTLER, E., Das autistische Denken, Jb. f. psychoan. Forsch., IV. 
 
 Jung., C. G., Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido. II. Teil, ch. 
 V-VI. 
 
 SiLBERER, H., Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik. III. Teil, 
 ch. I. 
 
 Id., Durch Tod sum Leben. Leipzig, Heims, 1915. 
 
 Ferenczi, S., Introjektion und Uebertragung. Leipzig, Deuticke, 
 19 10. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 35 
 
 gradually began to take form on the horizon, the divine 
 manifestation which they sought, hoped for, and desired 
 and which would respond to the ardent aspirations of the 
 race. 
 
 The period in which the Mystery-Religions flourished 
 was, I have said, somewhat analogous to that which we 
 have just described. Rome too had already reached the 
 height of her power; she was beginning to decline. The 
 reigns under which the Mystery-Cults flourished with the 
 greatest intensity were those of the decadence. The society 
 of which people had dreamed had not fulfilled its promise; 
 a great disgust, a disillusioned scepticism laid hold of men's 
 souls. Not from the empire would salvation come, how- 
 ever people might still worship the emperor. Thus at this 
 time too a powerful movement of introversion took place. 
 The lesser folk particularly, the humble, the slaves sought 
 within themselves and in religion for what they could not 
 find without, in society. They made their appeal to every- 
 thing, to all the gods, to all the religions; but their souls 
 were constrained to turn back upon themselves; and there 
 alone they came gradually to find the ideal for which they 
 had sought in vain in the established cults. In the name 
 of the imperative inner needs which they understood but 
 vaguely, but which imposed their forms upon the popular 
 devotion, the cults of the foreign gods were transformed 
 and the gods themselves altered their faces. Little by little 
 there came into existence a type of the God of Mysteries, 
 a sort of Saviour-God, whose features still retained some of 
 the inferior characteristics while presenting others that de- 
 noted the nobility of its psychic origins. 
 
 Thus, between the Israelitish prophecy and the spiritual 
 movement that gave rise to the Mystery-Cults there exists 
 an analogy not only in respect of the historical epoch but 
 also in respect of the creation of the ideal. We might say 
 
36 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that, in a certain sense, the Messiah, as his figure appears 
 in the Jewish writings, is the god of the Israelitish Mystery 
 and that the gods of the Hellenico-Rdman mysteries are the 
 messianic figures created by the Greco-Roman soul. 
 
 In this sense the two movements are psychically analo- 
 gous. It remains to determine their character, or rather 
 to determine precisely in what the analogy between them 
 consists. It is not a historical analogy. Historically, noth- 
 ing could be more different than Hebrew prophecy and the 
 Greco-Roman mysteries. But the psychic processes of 
 these two religious movements present a common character 
 which, as a matter of fact, may be found elsewhere and 
 may be discerned in other periods of the general evolution 
 of religion. They move in the same direction, guided by 
 the same forces; they both seek a fulfilment and seek it 
 along the same lines, following the same tendencies. The 
 same anxiety torments them, driving them to place in the 
 future the reply to the unsatisfied needs from which their 
 votaries suffer. Both possess what might be called the 
 prophetic gift or faculty, which is nothing else than the 
 propensity of the soul to evoke in advance the religious 
 object to which it has a right because it cannot do without 
 it, to outline its features and construct the symbolic figure 
 from them while awaiting its actual realisation. 
 
 We might say, in fact, that as the human soul gains a 
 better knowledge of itself, it is impelled by a secret and 
 imperious instinct to sketch with more and more vivid 
 strokes the ideal lines of the divine figure which it burns 
 to know and possess. In this immense task all the forces 
 of the being and all its faculties are evidently united, imagi- 
 nation as well as memory, feeling as well as reason. But 
 above all, it is the subconscious energies which are engaged 
 in this effort. The Messiah who is born beneath the pen 
 of the prophets, the gods that spring from the imagination 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 37 
 
 of the initiates and the priests are the work not of one 
 man but of whole generations who, by their sufferings and 
 their tormenting aspirations, effectually contribute to bring 
 them forth. Of the characteristics that compose them, 
 many will be dropped along the way; others will declare 
 themselves with greater force and will remain. In the 
 completed figure there will be both contributions from the 
 past and fresh elements. But, on the one side as on the 
 other, it is a new divine figure that emerges gradually from 
 the old ones, and one would say that this figure had been 
 kneaded from the flesh, the blood, and the tears of labour- 
 ing humanity; it is, from the point of view of piety, as if 
 the Father had created the Son out of Man, out of the 
 human consciousness. 
 
 But I do not wish to insist unreasonably upon this parallel 
 between the movement that produced the Mystery-Religions 
 and Hebrew prophecy. It would be rather pedantic to 
 pursue it too far, the more so as my intention in referring 
 to it has been merely to point out a characteristic of psychic 
 creation which is especially perceptible here but which is 
 to be found elsewhere, the tendency, constantly manifested 
 by the religious soul, to fashion divine figures and create a 
 type of salvation that is better adapted than the old gods 
 and the beliefs of the past to the deepest needs of the per- 
 sonality and the race. This may be the very basis of the 
 whole evolution of religion, and I am not far from thinking 
 that it may be the secret of it. 
 
 Now, if we take the Mysteries, on the one hand, and 
 Jesus Christ on the other as the two terminating points in 
 analogous mental processes, the one crowning the religious 
 development of Hellenistic syncretism, the other crowning 
 the long evolution of the Jewish religion, we are in a posi- 
 tion, by looking backward, to survey the psychic steps that 
 have led to this double efflorescence. We can then, while 
 
38 INTRODUCTION 
 
 reserving our appreciation of their respective meanings and 
 values, point out their striking similarity. 
 
 In both cases we discover a search in which are united 
 all the life-forces of humanity, or rather of a portion of 
 humanity, a human group. In both cases we see man in 
 search of the divinity and the divine life. Here we have 
 the distinctly religious search, the religious problem taking 
 shape and demanding a solution. We might investigate 
 this religious search in other periods and among other 
 peoples, and we should no doubt find that it was identical 
 everywhere. But although we have no wish to isolate them 
 from the great universal current of the evolution of re- 
 ligion, it is to the Mystery-Religions that we must limit 
 our study here. We shall ask ourselves how in them the 
 prophetic faculty has developed psychically, what are the 
 means it has employed and the processes which it has called 
 into action to evoke, before the consciousness, the religious 
 object which it desired. 
 
 § 2. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERIES: ITS RELATIONS 
 WITH THAT OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Those who are concerned with religious convictions as 
 well as with religious phenomena, find that religion appears 
 everywhere to include two movements, that of man striving 
 to raise himself towards God, that of the divinity reaching 
 down to man. These two movements, meeting and uniting 
 with one another, constitute the religious life, living and 
 lived. 
 
 In psychology, however, we are not concerned with the 
 second of these movements (God reaching down towards 
 man) since psychology expressly excludes the transcen- 
 dental. We shall therefore examine only the former, which 
 is the effort of the religious quest of man. But how does 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 39 
 
 this effort manifest itself? It manifests itself through a 
 series of modifications in the representations that man 
 makes of his gods or his god, and by an almost parallel 
 series of modifications in the idea which he has formed of 
 salvation, of the life with God, of the communion with the 
 divinity, of the manner of becoming divine or participating 
 in the divine life. 
 
 The conception of the divinity, the conception of salva- 
 tion or of the divine life, these things take shape in a 
 symbolism which is the only means of representing the 
 ineffable. As a matter of fact, nothing that relates to God, 
 nothing that tries to express God can translate itself to 
 the human understanding and manifest itself externally 
 save under symbolic forms. Man has no other means of 
 expressing the inexpressible, of rendering in material terms 
 that which is spiritual in essence. As soon as he seeks to 
 explain his god to himself and to define him in some fashion 
 or other, he is obliged, by the very nature of his intelligence 
 to have recourse to symbols. Thus we have a double sym- 
 bolism, one dealing with the persons of the gods themselves, 
 manifesting itself through the attributes which man, the 
 sculptor, accords to them, the figure he gives them, the form 
 symbolising here the nature which the human mind attrib- 
 utes to its divinities and the intentions it ascribes to them. 
 The other is the symbolism the important role of which 
 is found in the rites, the ceremonies, the festivals, the sac- 
 raments, the liturgies, and, in general, in all the spectacles 
 of the sacred ceremony: this is the symbolism of the means 
 of appropriating the divine life or of participating in it, 
 the symbolism of the cult and the Mysteries. 
 
 Now, whence do the elements of this double symbolism 
 come? Its psychological elements, I mean. What is it 
 that has impelled the human soul to represent its gods in 
 one manner rather than in another? In choosing for them 
 
40 INTRODUCTION 
 
 attributes from nature, what has led it to give these at- 
 tributes a precise meaning in relation to human life? To 
 all these questions there is only one possible answer. Man 
 can no more pass outside his own consciousness than he 
 can escape from his own shadow. It is in him that we 
 must seek for the origin of the double symbolism which the 
 evolution of the religions manifests. In struggling to rep- 
 resent the god which he felt labouring within him, he could 
 start only from the depths of the experience which he had 
 within him. Now, the psycho-analysts tell us that what 
 constitutes the primitive psychic constellation in man, the 
 oldest basis, the most elementary associations of the soul, 
 is what they call the family-complex, that is to say, those 
 associations of ideas, heavily charged with affectivity, which, 
 with the young child, during the first years of its life, are 
 grouped or, so to speak, coagulated about the images of 
 the father and the mother and all that concerns them.^ 
 When he turns back into himself, in the phenomenon of 
 introversion, it is to this that the man returns. He re- 
 discovers the family-complex, subconsciously present in the 
 depths of himself, lays hold upon it, and translates it ex- 
 ternally in his works of art, his philosophy, his literature, 
 and his religion. It is therefore most probable that from 
 this family-complex there also sprang the symbolism 
 through which man has sought to represent his gods. 
 
 ^ The question of the family-complex will be taken up in more de- 
 tail in connection with the myths, pp. 109 et seqq. Cf., in regard to this 
 question : 
 
 Rank, Das-Insest-Motiv. (The consequences of the family-complex 
 in literature.) 
 
 Jones, The Problem of Hamlet. Amer. Journal of Psychology, 1910, 
 XXI, 72 (id.). 
 
 Freud, Eine Kindheitserinncrung des Leonardo da Vinci. Schriften 
 z. angew. Seelenkunde. Heft VII. (Consequences of the family- 
 complex in art.) 
 
 Id., Totem und Tabu. (Consequences in religion and civilization.) 
 
 Pfister, Die Frommigkeit des Graf en L. von Zinzendorf. (Conse- 
 quences in religion.) 
 
 Id., Bin neuer Zugang cum alien Evangelium. (id.) 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 41 
 
 It follows that even if the primitive religions which gave 
 birth to the Mysteries may have been agricultural cults, 
 born from magical ideas related to the productivity of the 
 soil and to economic preoccupations (though this is not 
 absolutely proved) the agrarian symbolism of these cults 
 rapidly became charged with a meaning that is more directly 
 human. The concepts of production, of fecundity, were 
 closely bound up, in the human mind, with the family- 
 complex; and the violent urge of the libido in the direction 
 of religion promptly seized upon this primitive symbolism, 
 transforming it in its own image. The gods and the god- 
 desses became fathers and mothers, bound up with the fam- 
 ily-complex and evolving with it. 
 
 There is much to be said on this subject, and no doubt 
 the observations of psychology, further excavations, and 
 the study of antiquity will teach us a great deal more about 
 the evolution of this symbolism. Here let us merely point 
 out one of its most marked features. The symbols which 
 manifest themselves in the Mystery-Religions are, at the 
 same time and by turns, material and mystical^ What do 
 we mean by this? Conceived at first materially, interpreted 
 literally, as if they expressed the earthy idea that man 
 held in the beginning about his gods, their nature, and their 
 relations, the symbols take on, little by little, according to 
 the nature of the souls and the quality of the souls that 
 contemplate them, an import that is in a way prophetic. 
 The seeking soul sees in them a profounder meaning, more 
 moral, more elevated, more worthy of the spirit. This life 
 of the symbols must have been infinitely complex and 
 varied, reflecting the oscillations of the inner life of the 
 faithful. And that is why it is perfectly ridiculous and 
 
 * For exact information on this subject, see Silberer, Ueber die 
 Symbolhildung, Jahrbuch f. psychoanal. Forsch., Ill, pp. 661-723, and 
 below, pp. 28 et seqq., 70, etc. 
 
42 INTRODUCTION 
 
 vain to try to assign to each a meaning that is exact and 
 ne varietur. It was by a very slow progress, interrupted 
 by retreats and detours, that the gods of the Mysteries be- 
 came the Saviour-gods. The representations that men made 
 of them and the idea which they had of a communion with 
 them, expressed under the form of symbols, probably never 
 had an identical significance for all their votaries. Born, 
 perhaps, under the influence of agricultural labours, these 
 symbols very quickly took on a sexual significance, reflect- 
 ing the formidable urge of the instinctive libido which ani- 
 mates all men. But the life of the spirit, rising from this 
 natural basis, slowly transformed their meaning, gradually 
 purifying them until it finally contemplated in them the 
 image of filial and paternal relations of a spiritual nature, 
 unions of the spirit which led no longer to a carnal birth but 
 to a new birth. 
 
 Let us now attempt to render this psychic evolution per- 
 ceptible by taking up two features of which we have already 
 spoken: the different conceptions which men formed of the 
 nature of the gods and those which they held of a union 
 with them, showing how the souls of the faithful were able 
 to rise above these symbols, to rise from a primitive and 
 grossly materialistic sexuality to the purest spirituality. In 
 doing so we shall be tracing at the same, time the prophetic 
 line which develops in the creation and evolution of the 
 cult of the Mysteries. 
 
 Let us try not to forget, in tracing this line, that a con- 
 trary tendency constantly restrains the human soul in its 
 ascent and seems to take pleasure in arresting it in its rise 
 towards sublimation. This is so true that, even in Chris- 
 tianity, after the appearance and the life of the Saviour, the 
 materialism of the conceptions once more takes the upper 
 hand and, seizing upon the most purely spiritual symbols, 
 charges them with a meaning that is grossly and unquali- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 43 
 
 fiedly earthy. It seems truly as if the soul, rising in its 
 course of sublimation, had continually to overcome a re- 
 sistance that tends to keep it in the sexual dream. 
 
 In the Mystery-Cults, the divine figure, which responds 
 to the deepest desires of the soul, is thus outlined on the 
 primitive basis of the family-complex. At times this evo- 
 lution has probably begun with more or less traditional 
 elements which it has transformed in the image of the 
 human psychology, using the themes of the ancient religions 
 as a pedestal upon which to erect the incomparable statue 
 which the great sculptor, Human Desire, has been rough- 
 hewing with little strokes, now slowly, now with a magnifi- 
 cent impatience. In the following survey I shall pay no 
 attention to chronology; it would take too long to establish 
 this, and it might make little difference in any case, since 
 the inner labour of which I speak varies in different cities, 
 countries, races, and peoples and does not follow every- 
 where the same order. On the other hand, I shall seek 
 to trace here and there a few parallels with Christianitj/-, 
 showing how, in the development of the Christian Church, 
 we find at wqrk the same forces that have united in the 
 formation of other cults, producing analogous effects there 
 also and leading to conceptions of the divinity in which 
 we rediscover at times gross and primitive needs and desires 
 — like the erratic blocks of geology — that have not yet at- 
 tained to sublimation. ° 
 
 I. First we see, in- the Mystery-Cults, the union with the 
 god conceived in an entirely material fashion, as a physical, 
 a sort of corporeal union. The god is supposed to enter 
 into the believer, to penetrate him, in an altogether material, 
 a quite unspiritual, manner. Undoubtedly it is in this 
 fashion that we must conceive of the sacred feasts which 
 
 5 Most of the features of this outline are borrowed from Dieterich, 
 Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1903. 
 
44 INTRODUCTION 
 
 took place in the cult of Mithra and in that of Attis.® 
 These may be compared with the totcmic repasts of the 
 primitive peoples, in which, by eating the sacred animal, 
 the faithful appropriate its strength. Unfortunately, we do 
 not know exactly what relation existed between the sacrifice 
 of the bull, in the cult of Mithra, and the sacred feast, nor 
 even whether there was any such relation. But it seems 
 fairly probable that, in the beginning at least, the mystics 
 of these two cults were supposed to acquire the god's 
 strength in some magical way by the manducation of the 
 
 ^ Cf. CuMONT, Les religions orientales dans I'empire roniain, pp. 103 
 et seqq., and Hepding, Attis, p. 186. 
 
 Besides the banquet of the thiasus or sodalicium of the votaries of 
 the cult of the Great Mother, there was probably another sacred meal 
 which took place in the sanctuary itself at the moment of the initia- 
 tion. After having been purified by several successive baptisms, the 
 initiate sat down to the divine meal. Cybele and Attis admitted him to 
 their holy table ; he became a member of the divine family. The 
 wafer that was offered him had the form of the tympanum which the 
 goddess held in her hand ; the chalice was the cymbal, the attribute of 
 Attis, from which he drank the beverage of immortality. A cake of 
 pure wheat together with wine seems to have been the composition of 
 this meal. Judging from the funerary inscription of a priest named 
 Aberkios, Hepding offers the hypothesis that at this ceremony they ate 
 fish, bread, and a mixture of wine and water. It is possible that in 
 the beginning, in Phrygia, they may have consumed a divine animal in 
 order to identify themselves with the god and participate in his sub- 
 stance, as the totemists do. But at Rome this gross significance of the 
 communion gradually vanishes. The viands become at length a spirit- 
 ual aliment which shall sustain the initiate amidst the trials of life. 
 This sacred feast has left us one of the few liturgical formulas of 
 antiquity that have been preserved : "I have eaten from the tabor, I 
 have drunk from the cymbal, I have become a mystic of Attis." (Cf. 
 Firmicus and Clement of Alexandria.) 
 
 A similar repast is also celebrated in the cult of Mithra. We can 
 distinguish the outline of this from the representations on the bas- 
 reliefs m which the loaves of bread and the chalice are clearly visible. 
 With the love-feast of Mithra was mingled a reminiscence of a last 
 feast of which the god was supposed to have partaken, in company 
 with the sun, at the end of his career. 
 
 It is difficult to say what was the original source either of the Chris- 
 tian Communion or of the pagan communion. It is possible and even 
 more than probable that Jesus, when he instituted the Lord's Supper, 
 had no intention of making a sacrament of it. If that is the case, 
 there is some foundation for the hypothesis that the Christians ma- 
 terialised this personal memorial later on and raised it to the rank of 
 a sacred ceremony as a result of contact with the pagan sacraments. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 45 
 
 sacred food. In the same fashion the absorption of the 
 sacred drink of Eleusis, the ju^ecov (cyceon) was regarded 
 as certain to communicate the divine life in a more or less 
 material way. 
 
 This tendency to consider the union with the divinity 
 as something physical and therefore mechanical is found 
 ever3rwhere. It makes its appearance also in primitive 
 Christianity, where the Lord's Supper was speedily turned 
 into a feast similar to those of the pagan cults in which the 
 god was, so to speak, ingurgitated by the believer. This 
 manner of regarding it is still triumphant in the conception 
 of the Eucharist that exists at the heart of Catholicism.^ 
 
 What is the reason of this tendency, and how can we 
 explain it psychologically? At bottom it is nothing but 
 the line of least resistance; it gratifies the natural laziness 
 of man; it substitutes dreams for action. Instead of striv- 
 ing to possess one's god, one receives him by a purely 
 material process. How much simpler and easier it is! We 
 are dealing here with the same tendency which the psycho- 
 analysts have already pointed out in introversion: the pro- 
 pensity to adopt the way of dreams rather than to seize 
 upon reality and struggle with it.^ 
 
 7 Cf. Anrich, Das antike Mysteriemuesen, pp. 155-164, 200-205, 218. 
 
 BoNWETSCH, Wescn, Entstehung und Fortgang der Arcandissiplin. 
 Zeitschrift f. hist. Theologie, XLIII, 1873, pp. 295 et seqq. 
 
 LooFS, Art. Abcndmahl in Herzog Realencycl. fiir prot. Theol. I, 1896. 
 
 Drews, Art. Eucharistie, ibid., 1898. 
 
 Goblet D'Alviella, Eleusinia, p. 146. 
 
 SoLTAU, Das Fortleben des Heid^entums in der altchristlichen Kirche. 
 Berlin, Reimer, 1906. 
 
 Barbier, H., Essai historiqiie sur la signification primitive de la 
 Sainte Ccne. St. Blaise, Foyer solid., 191 1, pp. 171. 
 
 GoGUEL, H. M., L' Eucharistie, des Origines a Justin Martyr, igio. 
 
 ® See (p. 168 et seqq.) the three possible issues of introversion. It 
 may constitute a loss of what M. P. Janet calls the function of the 
 real for the benefit of the dream. It may, on the contrary, be only a 
 moment in the process through which the individual escapes from the 
 constraints of reality to rediscover in himself those latent forces which 
 will enable him to confront again, and this time victoriously, the diffi- 
 culties of life. Cf. also Flournoy, Th., Une mystique moderne. Arch, 
 de Psychol. XV, 191 5, pp. 206-207. 
 
46 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Scarcely had Christ quitted this earth when, in the very 
 field of the Christian religion itself, we see this propensity 
 to materialise the relation to God, to consider it as in some 
 way a physical union, reappearing. I am thinking not only 
 of the distortion of the Lord's Supper but also of the man- 
 ner of representing the gift of the Holy Spirit as we see it 
 as early as in the Acts of the Apostles and even in one 
 or two expressions in the gospels. To believe in the pres- 
 ence of the Holy Ghost in themselves, the apostles were 
 obliged to see tongues of flame descending upon their heads 
 and to hear the sound of a mightj^ wind. We are told in 
 the gospels (John xx, 22) that Jesus breathed on his dis- 
 ciples, saying to them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," as if 
 it was his breath which, penetrating them in a material 
 way, brought them into a spiritual communion with God. 
 What we have here is obviously a very ingenuous idea of 
 the penetration of man by the Holy Ghost; it is as if a 
 divine substance entered into his body and took possession 
 of it. The gift of tongues, the glossolaly, was also regarded 
 by the first generation of believers as the result, the material 
 sign of this presence of the Spirit in man. Saint Paul him- 
 self seems to have shared this opinion, even while he cen- 
 sured the abuse of a mode of expression that was certainly 
 extravagant and anything but edifying.^ 
 
 2. A second manner of representing the union with the 
 divinity which we frequently encounter in the Mystery- 
 Cults consists in making it a sexual union. Here again 
 appears the idea of a physical, material penetration of the 
 believer on the part of the god. In this notion we also see 
 very clearly the influence of the family-complex. The sym- 
 bol of the sexual union with the deity has, so to speak, two 
 aspects: a material aspect which springs from the infantile 
 
 » Cf. I Cor. xiv and particularly v. 19. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 47 
 
 roots and the family-complex, but also a teleological or ana- 
 gogical aspect that looks toward a mystical or mystico- 
 spiritualistic union along the paths of sublimation. By em- 
 ploying this symbol the faithful will pass from the carnal 
 love to the spiritual or divine love, and in the measure in 
 which they succeed in sublimating their desires, the current 
 of life which bears them along in their quest for the divinity 
 will take on an entirely different tonality in which the pas- 
 sional will become the religious, in the proper sense of the 
 word. 
 
 Before entering upon these considerations, however, let 
 us recall a few facts which illustrate this conception of the 
 union with the god. First of all, there is the part played 
 by the serpent in the initiation ceremonies, of which 
 Dieterich reminds us.^'' The latter cites Clement of Alex- 
 andria who, in connection with the Mysteries of Sabazios, 
 speaks of the serpent that was drawn from the bosom of 
 the mystic at a certain moment of the initiation and which 
 was called o 6ia koXttov Beo?, the god who passes through 
 the bosom. This rite, according to Dieterich, has nothing 
 to do with the ancient rites of adoption in which the adopted 
 child was drawn from the bosom of the adoptive mother, 
 as if to symbolise birth. Here it is the god who is drawn 
 from the breast of the believer: and this can signify noth- 
 ing but a sexual union between the god and the initiate, for, 
 as with the Gnostics, the god always represents the male 
 element in relation to the believer, to the soul of the be- 
 liever, which is the feminine element. 
 
 To pass to another order of ideas, we may also mention 
 the frequent entrance of the initiate into the naGxo?. The 
 TtaffTo? seems to designate, in the ecclesiastical language 
 of the Greeks, the nuptial chamber. Accordingly, when the 
 
 10 Cf. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie. 
 
48 INTRODUCTION 
 
 initate of Cybele enters into the naaro'^ of the goddess, it 
 signifies a sexual union with the divinity." 
 
 Shall we speak of the baskets which were carried in al- 
 most all the sacred processions of the Mysteries and the 
 contents of which remained concealed? These baskets 
 were, in all probability, supposed to contain the phallus 
 of the god, and here again the idea of a sexual union was 
 dissembled. 
 
 We must also mention at this point the enormous role 
 played by the impeded sexual union in the cult of Attis 
 and Cybele. The whole myth turns on this; and is not the 
 castration of Attis, as well as that of the Galli, his priests, 
 a symbolic allusion to the repressions that prevent this 
 union? 
 
 Let us cite also the hierogamies, or sacred marriages, that 
 of the initiate with Cybele, the Great Mother, that of 
 Dionysus, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, with the wife of the 
 archon-king, after the reconstitution of his torn body. 
 Finally, the whole myth of Isis and Osiris gathers around 
 the marriage of the brother and the sister. These Mystery- 
 Cults and their ceremonies are steeped in the idea of the 
 sexual union. 
 
 We find this idea elsewhere as well, for example among 
 the Gnostics. Dieterich mentions, on the testimony of 
 Irenaeus, a Gnostic group, the Markosians, among whom the 
 union with the deity is conceived as a spiritual marriage; 
 their rites of initiation represent this nvsvjxanxo'i yd/^o?. 
 
 The frequency of the sexual symbols (the phallus or the 
 female organs) in the different religions " and, in those 
 
 11 Cf. CuMONT, Les religions orientales, p. 86. Hepding, Attis, p. 193. 
 Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, 1906, p. 1541. 
 
 12 Tertullian, in his pamphlet against the Valentinians, seems to admit 
 that at the moment of the epoptia, the last act of the Eleusinian Mys- 
 teries, a male member was exhibited. Clement of Alexandria, in his 
 expose of the myth of the Cabiri, speaks of the basket in which the 
 phallus of Dionysus was hidden. The phallic symbol played a part in 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 49 
 
 of the Mysteries, the constant return to sexual symbolism 
 may shock or scandalise or, at any rate, bore some persons. 
 But we must learn to look truth in the face and, instead of 
 being shocked by appearances, seek to solve the problem 
 which they raise. It is not our fault if things are so. The 
 frequency of sexual symbols in the religions of humanity 
 is a fact. We must accept this fact and see what lies be- 
 neath it. 
 
 We have endeavoured to show how the ideas of fecundity, 
 of seed-sowing, born through contact with the labours of 
 agriculture, must have immediately awakened in man those 
 associations of ideas, those psychic complexes, which con- 
 stitute the family-complex. It is quite natural that the 
 gods, originally agrarian, should have become, owing to 
 these psychic reverberations, gods who also called up sexual 
 ideas. The springing up of life on the earth, which is cov- 
 ered with fruits and grains, immediately suggests the spring- 
 ing up of the vital energies of man. Now, for the purely 
 carnal man this exuberance of the life-forces attains its 
 culminating point in the awakening of sexuality. This 
 urge of love is in a way the keenest note of life wishing to 
 live. 
 
 Man, however, does not stop here. He realises that sex- 
 ual love is not the whole of love, that the true love travels 
 higher and farther, that the forces which bear it and drive 
 it on do not stop with sexuality, that it is a delusion to 
 see in this a fulfilment. The symbol of love is a marvellous 
 thing when one does not stop short with its materiality, 
 when one sees in the union of two beings not merely a 
 spasm of the flesh, but the fusion of two lives through every- 
 thing that is most noble in them. Adolescents, who are 
 
 the Alexandrian Mysteries (Cf. Reitzenstein, Poimandrcs, p. 86, and 
 Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, I, p. 155). Osiris was honoured with 
 a phallic cult (Cf. De Jong, Das Antike Mysterienwesen, p. 80). 
 
50 INTRODUCTION 
 
 still ignorant of the baseness of the world and feel life 
 welling up in them, sometimes have in their existence an 
 instant in which the carnal and the divine, not yet differen- 
 tiated, mingle in a charming and touching innocence and 
 naivete. We cannot bear them any ill will for this. Well, 
 humanity, too, has passed through this phase. It only 
 becomes culpable when, aware of immorality, it connives 
 at it. 
 
 In the cults we have examined there were, no doubt, be- 
 lievers of both these sorts. But we may be sure that at 
 the moment when, in the inexperienced souls of human be- 
 ings, the sexual symbols were born which so shock us to-day 
 and many of which were probably wilfully exaggerated later, 
 what was at work was no sensual and repulsive dilettantism 
 but rather a natural urge of the life-forces. The substance 
 of these symbols partakes of our own substance, our own 
 clay; but the spirit that we may read into it, and that some 
 souls did undoubtedly read into it, led people to a higher 
 level. From the sexual love they were impelled to rise 
 to the divine love, which kindles in human souls the fires 
 of sacrifice and brings to fulfilment the gift of the self in 
 its superhuman plenitude. 
 
 This sublimation, attained by the aid of sexual symbols, 
 we shall observe in Christianity also. And here again the 
 parallel can be easily traced. It may be remarked that 
 among the Jews themselves, and in the Old Testament, the 
 relation between man and God, or rather between the chosen 
 people and their God, is sometimes represented as a mar- 
 riage and contrasted with the relations of the same people 
 with the false gods who are then, on the contrary, regarded 
 as adulterers. We find this image in the prophets, for 
 example in Hosea, Chaps. I and III, and in Ezekiel, Chaps. 
 XVI and XXIII. In the New Testament also, the idea of 
 the marriage of Christ with the Church is advanced; here 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 51 
 
 the symbol is entirely anagogical, but it exists nevertheless. 
 It is in this sense and by the aid of this symbol that people 
 have begun to expound the Song of Songs, and it is thanks 
 to the exegesis in question that this love-poem has remained 
 in our Sacred Canon; it so remains as an irrefutable evi- 
 dence of the importance of sexual symbols in a religion that 
 is yet freer than any other from sexuality. 
 
 Finally, it is hardly necessary to recall the mystic union 
 of the saints of the Middle Ages with the divine bridegroom, 
 the union of which Saint Catherine remains the prototype, 
 but which we find also in the case of Saint Theresa, in 
 Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, Margarete Ebner (b. 1240), 
 and Adelaide Langmann (d. 1375). At times these unions 
 present a form which is entirely sensual, as in the scene 
 of the transverberation of Saint Theresa; at times, on the 
 contrary, the sensual aspect is almost completely effaced be- 
 fore the mounting spirituality. But the sexual roots of the 
 symbol can be found everywhere. 
 
 Jesus himself is called the bridegroom when, replying to 
 those who reproached his disciples for not fasting, he said 
 to them: *'Can the children of the bridechamber fast while 
 the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the 
 bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will 
 come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, 
 and then shall they fast in those days." (Mark ii, 19.) 
 
 3. A third manner of representing the union of man 
 with the divinity, which may be found in the Mysteries, 
 but which is also to be discovered abundantly elsewhere, 
 is to consider it under the symbols of paternity and sonskip. 
 Dieterich, well before the birth of psycho-analysis, alluded 
 to the very frequent relations of paternity and filiality in 
 the various religions. He pointed out that in this one could 
 see the transference into the religious domain of the most 
 intimate earthly bond that exists between men. He also 
 
52 INTRODUCTION 
 
 laid stress on the fact that the relations between the child 
 and its father or mother are among the purest and the most 
 concretely representable that can be imagined, but that 
 nevertheless religious thought had first conceived of beget- 
 ting or creation by the divinity after the pattern of purely 
 human processes. 
 
 Psycho-analysis, by showing us how deeply tinged with 
 sexual colours these relations of the child with the father 
 and mother are from the beginning, how deeply the family- 
 complex sinks its roots into the child's sexuality, casts a 
 shadow over the purity of which Dieterich spoke. On the 
 other hand, it confirms his observations. 
 
 Father-gods abound on all sides; but the conception of 
 this paternity undergoes a curious evolution. Thus we may 
 say that Zeus pater, the Jupiter of the ancients, is hardly 
 anything else than the chief of the cultural community and 
 the family community; his is a vague and quite general 
 paternity. The concept of the Earth Mother, which one 
 observes in so many religions, also has at the beginning 
 this general and indeterminate character. But little by little, 
 and particularly in the Mysteries, the meaning of these 
 words father and mother, applied to the gods, becomes more 
 precise and takes on a more strictly passional, a more emo- 
 tional colour. Examples of this abound in these cults. 
 
 There is Mithra, for example, who appears as the father 
 of the initiate. Porphyry calls him "Mithra, creator of all 
 things and father." In the liturgy of Mithra, to which we 
 have already alluded, Helios, who speaks in the name of 
 the mystic, presents himself to Mithra as his son begotten 
 to-day. The highest grade of the clergy, those who are 
 charged with receiving the initiates, are called the fathers 
 (TraTeps?). They represent, in some fashion, the paternity, 
 of the god himself. 
 
 Then there is Cybele. The Mother of the gods, the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 53 
 
 Great Mother, more and more attests her maternal char- 
 acter until, at the moment of the appearance of Christianity, 
 she can be assimilated as the Virgin Mother. The same 
 is true of Isis.^^ The initiate who has performed the sac- 
 ramental rites of these religions is convinced that, after 
 having passed through death, he will be united with the 
 divinity as a child is united with its father or its mother. 
 The question is no longer one of a general, universal mater- 
 nity. The thought has evolved under the influence of new 
 sentiments that have surged up in the hearts of the initiates. 
 They want to be assured that the general mother, the Earth, 
 the mother of all, is for themselves an entirely personal 
 mother. At this point affectivity enters into play, in the 
 individual emotional life; and henceforth the family-com- 
 plex, the psychic summary of this life in infancy, will give 
 its special stamp to the new conceptions that appear. 
 
 It often happens, for example, that the initiates of these 
 communities are known among themselves as brothers; this 
 is the case in the cult of Mithra, it is the case with the 
 Serapeum of Memphis. In the Phrygian and Lydian in- 
 scriptions one often finds the communities designated under 
 the name of ^jparpori (brotherhoods). 
 
 It is hardly worth while to point out how marked a 
 parallel this paternal and filial symbolism has in Chris- 
 tianity. We may cite the name of Father applied almost 
 exclusively by Jesus to God; the name brothers adopted 
 by the first Christian churches in order to designate their 
 members before they assume the style of "Christians" which 
 
 13 Cf. Drexler, Isis, in Roscher's Lexikon. 
 
 Erman, Die agyptische Religion, igog. 
 
 RoEDER, Isis, in Pauly, Real Encyclop. IX, igi6. 
 
 Benratts, Zur Geschicht-e der Marienverchrung, Theol. Studien und 
 Kritiken, 1886, pp. 1-42. 
 
 Reithmayr, Art. Maria in Wet und Welt Kirchenlexikon, VIII, 
 1893, p. 723- 
 
 ZoECKLER, Art. Maria in Herzog Realencyclop. XII, 1903, pp. 3i3-3iS- 
 
54 INTRODUCTION 
 
 they are later to make a title of glory and honour; the 
 expression Son,^ designating Jesus Christ; the relation be- 
 tween father and son representing the ideal of the perfect 
 communion. We have only to read the reply of Jesus to 
 Philip in Chap. XIV, v. 8, of the Gospel according to Saint 
 John, Chap. VIII of the Epistle to the Romans, Chaps. Ill 
 and IV of that to the Galatians, to have an idea of the 
 place which the symbols of father and son occupy in the 
 primitive Christian religion. 
 
 Finally, we must also mention a Christian custom which 
 is interesting from this point of view, that of the godparent. 
 The child is presented for baptism by a godfather and a 
 godmother and not by its own parents. There is some- 
 thing strange in this which may well have come from the 
 Mystery-Cults, in which a father, that is an old initiate, 
 presented the neophyte and performed the initiation in 
 turn. What is interesting here is that this paternal re- 
 lation was taken so seriously in the Church that the Code 
 of Justinian forbade the marriage of the godmother or the 
 godfather with the godchild, and that even to-day the 
 Roman catechism regards such a marriage as incestuous. 
 We have here a striking example of the popular tendency 
 always to return to a material conception of the spiritual 
 relations which unite human beings. From the notion of 
 a Father in the spirit the people have a constant propensity 
 to return to carnal relations; and what we observe so 
 markedly here in the idea of the godparent, we encounter 
 again in the idea which the people always tend to form 
 of the paternity of God. It is this tendency, in perpetual 
 struggle against the spiritualisation of the symbols, which 
 leads the faithful back to the gross and earthy conceptions 
 of the family-complex. 
 
 Let us now try to form an idea of the point in religious 
 evolution attained in the Mystery-Cults. It is very difficult, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 55 
 
 not to say impossible, to mark the exact limit of this. We 
 may, however, attempt to do so approximately. We have 
 passed the stage of the naturalistic or purely agricultural 
 conceptions. The father and the mother, Attis, Cybele, 
 Dionysus or Mithra, Isis and Serapis are no longer fathers 
 like Zeus or mothers like the primitive Cybele. On the 
 other hand, these cults are strongly tinged with sexuality. 
 These fathers and mothers are at the same time conceived 
 of as lovers and mistresses. The beautiful female votaries 
 of Isis see her at times as the eternal mistress; the female 
 adorers of Cybele weep for the death of Attis, no doubt 
 joining with their pious tears many profane memories. It 
 was not for nothing that the Fathers of the Church regarded 
 these cults as unworthy of Christian purity. They repre- 
 sent a stage of psychism in which the sexual and the re- 
 ligious are still undifferentiated. 
 
 On the other hand, there are also traces of spirituality 
 in these cults which on certain sides render them greatly 
 superior to those which preceded them. There is no doubt 
 that certain souls who participated in them rose to a fairly 
 high level on the paths of sublimation. They were them- 
 selves on the boundary -line where the choice can be made. 
 The conception we find in them of the gods and the divine 
 life springs at once from the infantile family-complex and 
 from this complex after it has been sublimated. Their 
 symbolic figures have, as we have seen, a double meaning, 
 and can thus lead their votaries much higher or let them 
 down to a lower plane. 
 
 4. To conceive of the divinity as paternal or maternal 
 and of the faithful as occupying a filial position implies 
 very special reciprocal relations which influence the idea 
 one forms of the union with God. The religious com- 
 munion, the divine life will gradually come to be considered 
 as the result of a new birth in which the god procreates 
 
56 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the believer. The paternal notion of the god soon brings 
 in its train the idea of the new birth as the centre of the 
 life of piety. This, therefore, is the central conception 
 which one finds in the Mystery-Religions, though it is not, 
 to be sure, an exclusive property of theirs. We already 
 find the idea of the new birth in the primitive religions: 
 the initiation ceremonies of the savages reveal its elementary 
 features. To become an effective member of the tribe or 
 the clan, one has to die and be reborn to a new life. The 
 young man is put to death symbolically; then there are 
 disclosed to him those secrets that awaken one to the new 
 life." These symbols of a new birth appear, for the rest, 
 as we follow them through the different religions, to cor- 
 respond to the three stages of the idea which we have already 
 indicated. In the beginning they seem to be nothing more 
 than naturalistic symbols; they signify the births and deaths 
 that we witness in nature (winter, summer, etc.). Then 
 they become sexual; the natural births observed in the 
 things about him are transferred by man to the sphere of 
 the interests that most closely touch him. The divine life 
 is conceived as a human life, and sexuality plays the great 
 role in it (phallic cults, ideas of a return to the mother, 
 hierogamies, etc.). But the life of the spirit grows and 
 raises itself upon this deep foundation. The birth becomes 
 something purely spiritual, a pneumatic act; all the ten- 
 dencies are sublimated; we reach the idea of conversion, 
 which crowns the development. 
 
 These three stages are perceptible in the Mystery-Re- 
 ligions; we find traces of them here. But the third tends 
 to establish itself more solidly here than in all the religions 
 that have come before. In the Mystery-Religions the 
 
 1* See the numerous examples which Silberer has collected in his 
 little book Durch Tod sum Leben, and the bibliography below, p. 263 
 (note 9). 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 57 
 
 human soul finally arrives at the spiritual conception of 
 the new birth as the secret of the union with the god. Attis, 
 Mithra, Dionysus are gods who die and rise again, and the 
 believer dies with them to be born to a new life. The 
 Epoptie, the supreme initiation of the Eleusinian Mysteries, 
 is a symbol of new birth: what can the ear of wheat, 
 plucked in silence and presented to the initiate, represent 
 but this great natural fact of the new birth which the 
 silence and the plucking transform into a profound phe- 
 nomenon that is experienced by the soul? 
 
 Baptisms of water and blood, sacred feasts, are only the 
 means of arriving at this new life, of rendering it possible 
 by purification from old stains and the assimilation of 
 spiritual food. 
 
 To find a god, contact with whom leads one to this death 
 of the evil instincts and this resurrection of all that is 
 spiritual in us, is the unceasing aspiration which shines out 
 through the evolution of religion and culminates in these 
 Mystery-Cults, in which at last it creates its object sym- 
 bolically. The gods of the Mysteries are the most adequate 
 symbols that paganism could find to respond to its intense 
 need of a new and different life. 
 
 5. But this is not all. In the Mystery-Cults we find 
 a fifth idea forcibly expressed, and this is precisely that 
 of a progressive spiritualisation, the necessity of rising, 
 mounting in order to unite oneself with the god, of not 
 remaining at the lower stages and in the earthly phase of 
 the symbols. This subconscious tendency, which stirred 
 in the souls of the believers and tormented them, unaware 
 as they were of it, took shape in a conception which we 
 constantly meet with in the depths of the Greco-Roman 
 paganism of the Hellenistic period: this is the idea of the 
 ascension of the soul to heaven. i 
 
 This idea, to be sure, appears in much more ancient 
 
58 INTRODUCTION 
 
 times, but never with such clearness and such insistence. 
 The ancient Greeks and the peoples of remote antiquity 
 already knew of journeys of the soul, but these were often 
 journeys to the infernal regions, descents into hell, catabases, 
 with obstacles, such as encounters with various monsters, 
 menaces of all sorts, the crossing of the bridge of the dead 
 or the passage of mysterious rivers on foot or on horseback. 
 The Babylonian ^^ descent of Ishtar into hell and the Egyp- 
 tian Book of the Dead are evidences of these ideas. They 
 have, as a matter of fact, persisted even in Christianity. 
 Think of Dante's Hell, for example, followed as it is, of 
 course, by Purgatory and the ascension into heaven. Dr. 
 Maeder has expounded its significance in a lecture delivered 
 at the Athenaeum in Geneva, and later published under the 
 title Guirison et Evolution dans la vie de I'dme. (Rascher, 
 Zurich, 1918.) 
 
 That a journey of the soul is necessary is, then, the primi- 
 tive idea. But observe its development: this journey is a 
 progress upwards, an elevation, an ascension. We can see 
 this development even among the primitive peoples. For 
 example, the Winnipegs of America imagine that the soul 
 mounts to paradise by the Milky Way. Among the Greeks, 
 the Germans, the Hindus, the Iranians there exist similar 
 conceptions and symbols. Very often there appear those 
 of the ladder, the stairway, or the mountain, by which one 
 reaches heaven (Jacob's ladder, the Olympus of the Greeks, 
 the stairway with seven doors in the liturgy of Mithra). 
 At times a charger or a chariot bears the hero to heaven 
 in a whirlwind: Bellerophon, Pegasus, Elijah and the fiery 
 horses; sometimes a ship, the Egyptian ship of the sun; 
 sometimes it is a bird which bears the soul away on its 
 wings: we find, for example, that in the initiation into the 
 
 15 Cf. Dhorme, Paul, Choix de textes religieux assyro-babyloniens, 
 transcriptions, traductions, commentaire. Paris, Lecoffre, 1907, pp. 326 
 et seqq. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 59 
 
 cult of Mithra one of the orders of initiates bears the name 
 of eagles. 
 
 This idea of a necessary ascension, which is very strongly 
 marked also in the Gnostic doctrines (so much so that it 
 was made the centre of these doctrines)/® and in such 
 liturgies as that of Mithra, is the expression of the tendency 
 towards sublimation. To the forces that mount, that rise, 
 that ennoble must be given the victory. The symbol is 
 at first uncertain; it is simply the necessity of a movement. 
 Then it becomes definite; it is not to be a movement down- 
 ward, towards the infernal regions, but upward, towards 
 heaven, a movement hindered, it is true, by obstacles, such 
 as monsters or guarded gates, which express the difficulties 
 to be overcome and for which one must have the password. 
 Then at last it becomes spiritual elevation through inner 
 purity and the sanctification of life. In Christianity, this 
 last form of the elevation triumphs, but the other, the more 
 material conceptions, are not vanquished; traces of them 
 remain, for example, in the Ascension of Jesus Christ and 
 the Assumption of the Virgin. There still exists the ten- 
 dency to replace the spiritual by the material, a sublimation 
 by a mounting of the body into heaven. But none the less, 
 the symbol helps souls that are open to the Spirit to grasp 
 the meaning of the mystic elevation. 
 
 § 3. DIFFERENCE IN THE OUTCOME OF THE TWO 
 PROPHETIC LINES 
 
 Briefly to sum up what we have just stated, we observe 
 that there exists what I have called the prophetic line, 
 which can be discerned in paganism and which ends in the 
 prodigious and at the same time disconcerting efflorescence 
 
 18 Cf. Anz, Wilhelm, Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizis- 
 mus ein religionsgeschichtlicher Versuch. Leipzig, Heinrichssche 
 Buchh., 1897, 
 
6o INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the Mystery-Cults. The study of their symbolism and 
 their liturgy, their rites and ceremonies reveal to us in these 
 cults the culmination of a psychological development in 
 which the deepest impulses and subconscious desires of 
 humanity, cultivated from the earliest times, have played 
 their part. Now this development, in which are united all 
 the most contradictory psychic tendencies that stir in the 
 depths of the human soul, succeeds nevertheless in deter- 
 mining certain of the broad lines of the ideal towards which, 
 with all its forces, the religious psyche aspires. These broad 
 lines, so far as we have been able to grasp them, may be 
 grouped under the form of the following desires: 
 
 1. That there shall be several gods or one god with whom 
 man may unite himself in a fashion that is at once intimate 
 and, as it were, substantial, a union like that of nourishment 
 with him who is nourished by it; that the god shall enter 
 the man in some sort of physical way. 
 
 2. That this union shall also resemble that of love, in 
 which the personalities melt one into the other (sexual 
 union). 
 
 3. That these relations between the man and the god 
 shall assume the character of a filial and paternal kinship. 
 
 4. That this religious relation shall end in a new life 
 that is like a new birth. 
 
 5. Finally, that this whole process may partake of the 
 nature of sublimation, that it may constitute a rise, an ele- 
 vation towards the heights, an ascension from earth to 
 heaven. 
 
 Such is the deep desire, the aspiration, multiple in its 
 symbols but one at its source, which reaches its consumma- 
 tion in the Mystery-Cults. It satisfies itself, or rather seeks 
 to express itself, in the creation of divine figures, divine 
 personalities borrowed from the ancient cults, but trans- 
 formed into the image of those subconscious desires which 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 6i 
 
 man preserves alive within him. He creates, or rather he 
 imagines, the gods of which he has need after ancient models 
 that serve him as a foundation, but he endows them with 
 features that respond to the inner urge that animates him. 
 Many of these features are still soiled with the mud and the 
 clay that cling to what is most alive within us, as the vein- 
 stone clings to the diamond; but in them also, here and 
 there, are the adamantine lights that shine over these divine 
 faces and animate them. 
 
 We are still, however, in the region of dreams; they are 
 artificial creations, these gods; we have never encountered 
 them along the roads of humanity; they are factitious; they 
 are like the messianic figures of prophecy in which nothing 
 yet corresponds with historic reality. The symbols that 
 express the strongest subconscious aspirations of the soul 
 have been attached, as it were, to the ancient, mythical 
 beings in an endeavour to galvanise them, to stamp them 
 with the effigy of human desire; but that is alll Lacking 
 in themselves the force of faith, the power of hope necessary 
 to enable them to await stout-heartedly the future appear- 
 ance of the god in whom they believe, the pagans projected 
 into the past the figure of the god they desired. They pre- 
 ferred to imagine that he had already lived; and thus they 
 escaped the poignant torments of faith, which relies upon 
 the future for certitude, and took hold of it at once. 
 
 In this lies the great, the noteworthy, difference between 
 Hebrew prophecy and what we might call the prophetic 
 development of Greco-Roman paganism. In both the 
 human soul laboured according to the same laws; in both 
 the deep vital urge that calls upon a god manifested itself 
 along the same lines, modelling messianic figures. But in 
 the Jewish line there appeared, at a certain moment in the 
 history of the race, a historic personality who gathered up 
 in himself the lines that had been sketched prophetically 
 
62 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and found in himself the secret of living and the strength 
 to live the highest and the most divine conceptions of his 
 race, to desire to realise them and to offer himself towards 
 their realisation. There appeared among the Jews a man 
 who, thanks to circumstances which we do not have to ana- 
 lyse and a strength of which, for the moment, we do not 
 have to ask the secret, lived the life of the foretold Messiah. 
 This heroic achievement, for the rest, broke him and killed 
 him; for in the midst of a world attached to evil, he cast 
 off all the lower traits of the figure that had been dreamed 
 of, so as to realise only its sublimity." 
 
 In the line of Hellenistic paganism no personality is to be 
 found who takes it upon itself to be the expected Saviour. 
 Why? We do not have to inquire into this. We may never 
 know perhaps; the fact remains simply to be stated. Along 
 this line the dream remained a dream, which was never out- 
 wardly translated save through the expressive symbolism 
 of the Mystery-Cults. No one projected into an actual life 
 what the human soul chanted prophetically in the depths 
 of itself. No one appeared who could pass through the 
 sieve of reality the vital elements of this dream and its 
 morbid elements. Its elements, undifferentiated, affirmed 
 themselves in symbols which, in their turn, were undiffer- 
 entiated. In the final reckoning, if Christianity triumphed 
 it was because Jesus Christ lived.^* 
 
 One word more! Christianity triumphed, we have said, 
 because Jesus Christ lived; it is in the secret of the per- 
 sonal life that the triumph of the Christian salvation, of 
 the Christian religion, consists. But because Jesus lived 
 and triumphed it does not mean that henceforth, in some 
 
 17 Here we arrive, in the last analysis, at the mystery of personality. 
 And it is in this that the whole Christian revelation consists. The 
 latter is entirely summed up in the mystery of a personality. 
 
 1^ This fact and this contrast, in themselves alone, seem to me more 
 striking than all the dogmatic definitions with which Christian piety 
 has sought to glorify the figure of Christ. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 63 
 
 magic way, all men are going to live, that all are to be 
 necessarily participants, and exclusively participants, of the 
 Spirit which triumphed in him. In reality, as we observe, 
 the baser tendencies which manifested themselves before 
 him, in the constitution of the Mystery-Cults, for example, 
 were not sublimated at once in all men by the fact that a 
 life had carried them in itself to sublimation. If the summit 
 was reached in the life of Christ, if the deification of life 
 took place in full view of humanity, this fact is far too 
 spiritual to imply any sort of prestidigitation, any new 
 magic, by which, artificially and at a single stroke, men 
 are to become divine. The struggle remains ; man continues 
 to be what he has been; he has not been stripped of his 
 flesh because Jesus gave his own. Human psychology has 
 not changed, and consequently the psychic energies retain 
 their ambivalence, their opposite polarisations. 
 
 We see in Christ a victory and triumph, but not in the 
 Christianity that followed. Little by little there reappeared 
 at the heart of the new religion all the tendencies which 
 had played their part in the others. In the rites, in the 
 very sacraments of Christianity, in its dogmas as well as 
 its doctrines, and very quickly indeed, in the very first 
 centuries, these deforming elements began to operate. The 
 person of Christ himself became a symbol, instead of re- 
 maining the reality that had been lived; in the heart of 
 the Christian communities people again began to dream and 
 talk of the redemption instead of living it. They made a 
 mythical figure of Jesus, a Mystery-god like the others; 
 they debased him to the level of the others, almost un- 
 awares, and supposing that they were honouring him the 
 more. Hence the type of Christianity which the Roman 
 Empire bequeathed to us and in the meshes of which we 
 have not yet ceased to struggle. All the historical criticism 
 we have, and all the exegesis, and the efforts of a discern- 
 
64 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing psychology in addition, are scarcely enough to enable 
 us to rediscover, beneath these deteriorations, the living 
 Christ as he was in life. We cannot open this chapter 
 here or examine primitive Christianity from the point of 
 view of the psychic tendencies which appear in it. This 
 would be an immense task and one of the highest interest, 
 but I can only call attention to it here. But let us boldly 
 affirm that what bears the name of Christian to-day is 
 nevertheless not all of Christ. The fact, which has often 
 been stated (several contemporary men of letters have al- 
 ready remarked upon it)^^ that paganism has had its re- 
 venges in the very heart of Christianity, may not be exactly 
 true, but it is almost true.^" It would be more accurate to 
 say that the carnal tendencies which prevailed in so many 
 of the pagan religions have not ceased to influence men 
 because Christ has lived. They have been sublimated in a 
 few individuals and some of them have been sublimated in 
 all of us, but the others continue their work; and the Chris- 
 tian struggle consists in a constant effort towards an always 
 more complete sublimation. We are engaged in this process, 
 which ever continues. But the lived reality still exists; and 
 it is to this, to the life of Jesus,^^ that we shall now turn. 
 
 19 Cf. Barres, La grande pitie des Eglises d-e France. Paris, Emile- 
 Paul, 1914. 
 
 RoMAiN-RoLLAND, Colas BreugnoH. Paris, Ollendorff (pp. 56, 69). 
 
 20 Cf. Lucius, Die Anfdnge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen 
 Kirche, 1904. 
 
 Saintyves, p., Les Saints, successeurs des dieux, 1907. 
 
 21 This life constitutes, we are convinced, the point of departure 
 and the most powerful force that has ever been given to human in- 
 dividuals to assist them m effectuating the sublimation towards which 
 they aspire. What was lived here does not die. The life of Jesus is 
 an afinirmation and a demonstration of the sublimation of the human in- 
 stincts towards the divine, and in consequence an inalienable guaranty, 
 inscribed in history, which allows us never to despair of the struggle 
 and furnishes us with a sure foundation for it. The life of Christ 
 thus introduces into the world new values which nothing can ever 
 again wrest from humanity. In this sense, it modifies even the psy- 
 chology of man, or rather adds to it a new dynamic which, without 
 changing the internal mechanism, permits him to transcend limits that 
 he could not transcend otherwise. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 Before we plunge into our subject, there is one more 
 question which demands our attention, that of the sources 
 we possess on the life of Jesus. Are they sufficient? Do 
 they bring before our eyes an image of Christ which cor- 
 responds to the lived reality? For more than a century 
 this point has been an endless bone of contention among 
 the theologians and a whole literature has sprung from the 
 divergences of opinion to which it has given rise. The 
 question is now far enough advanced for us to be able to 
 sum up the debate. I shall do this very rapidly, so as to 
 be able to determine later the attitude that we shall take 
 towards the evangelical documents. 
 
 In the way of sources of the life of Jesus, we have vir- 
 tually nothing aside from the New Testament. The Roman 
 historians yield us one very obscure allusion of Suetonius 
 in the biography of Claudius and the celebrated passage 
 in the Annals of Tacitus (xv, 44) in which this historian 
 speaks of the sect of the Christians whom Nero, in the 
 year 64, in order to divert from himself the suspicion of 
 the masses, accused of having burned Rome. "The origi- 
 nator of this sect," he says, "was Christ, who was executed 
 under the emperor Tiberius Caesar by the procurator Pon- 
 tius Pilate." That is all. 
 
 Among the Jewish writers, we may cite Flavius Josephus 
 as referring (Ant. XVIII, iii, 3) to Jesus; it is generally 
 held to-day, however, that the passages in which he is men- 
 tioned are later interpolations by a Christian hand.^ As 
 
 1 This, however, was not the opinion of Renan (Vie de Jesus, introd. 
 p. xl) who regards the passage as authentic. 
 
 65 
 
66 INTRODUCTION 
 
 for the rabbis of the period that followed, they afford us 
 nothing but a malignant caricature of a few passages of 
 the gospel tradition. Thus there is little or no information 
 concerning Jesus to be derived from profane history. His 
 existence is affirmed by Tacitus, but we are furnished with 
 no details in regard to his life. 
 
 1. Passing to the New Testament, we are confronted 
 first with Saint Paul and his epistles. Here we find a 
 certain amount of precise though not very full information 
 about the earthly life of Jesus Christ, not enough, however, 
 to give us a general impression of what he was. What con- 
 cerned Saint Paul first and foremost was a mystical ex- 
 perience of the presence of the spiritual Christ in himself, 
 and he does not feel that it is necessary to speak to people 
 who were, after all, quite familiar with them, of the details 
 of the terrestrial life of his Saviour." Nevertheless, he says 
 enough for us to be certain that we are dealing with some 
 one who has really lived. The attempt of Drews to show 
 that in the Christ of Paul we have a creation of the apostle's 
 imagination after the model of the pagan Saviour-god who 
 dies and is born again — all this translated into the terms 
 of Jewish thought — does not hold water. 
 
 2. Finally, we come to the four gospels, which constitute 
 the essential and principal documents of the life of Jesus. 
 A first remark bearing on the quality of these documents. 
 They are not historical in the proper sense of the word; 
 that is, it was not the intention of their authors to produce 
 disinterested history, with a primary concern for historic 
 exactitude. They may be described much more truly as 
 works of edification. They endeavour to give an image 
 of Christ that will satisfy the faith of the already existing 
 Christian communities. They claim the honour of present- 
 ing to the churches the Saviour in whom they already be- 
 
 2Cf. II Cor. V, i6. 
 
THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 67 
 
 lieve. This purpose was quite sufficient for the believers; 
 they found in the gospels an image of Christ that was en- 
 tirely adequate to their faith. Does it, however, suffice 
 also for people who desire to know what Jesus was like 
 historically? This is the question that has to be met, and 
 it is this that has opened the flood-gates of historical criti- 
 cism and given rise to the problem of the gospels. 
 
 We must bear in mind the fact that at the period when 
 the gospels appeared, profane history itself was not written 
 as it is in our day. People did not aspire to exactitude 
 as their first object; they wrote the history of the past 
 with an eye to the lessons which their contemporaries might 
 draw from it. The evangelists were not exceptions to the 
 general rule, and we cannot blame them for not having told 
 us what we should like to know to-day in order to establish 
 on a surer basis our own religious certitudes. 
 
 In order to extract from these designedly edifying writ- 
 ings the historical kernel which they appear to contain, 
 people have endeavoured, therefore, to analyse their struc- 
 ture and fix the date of their appearance and the reciprocal 
 influence which they had one upon another. This effort 
 has given birth to two problems: the synoptic problem, and 
 the problem of the Gospel of John. It was very quickly 
 perceived that the three first gospels, those of Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke, presented so many points in common that 
 they had to be envisaged together, considered together. 
 Hence the name that has been given them of the synoptic 
 gospels. 
 
 The resemblance of these three gospels is immediately 
 apparent even to the most inattentive reader. We find 
 almost the entire gospel of Mark, with the exception of 
 only thirty-five verses, in that of Matthew; with the ex- 
 ception of ninety verses only, we find it again in the gospel 
 of Luke. The stories which these three gospels narrate 
 
68 INTRODUCTION 
 
 are therefore virtually the same. Moreover, the order of 
 these narratives is often parallel; the very words are the 
 same; entire phrases read identically in the three gos- 
 pels, or in two of them. In other respects, they present 
 appreciable differences which give to each its own char- 
 acter. 
 
 How are we to explain these resemblances and these dif- 
 ferences? Several hypotheses have been advanced, which 
 I cannot think of discussing thoroughly here. 
 
 It has been thought that this identity and these variations 
 could be explained by the oral tradition. The stories that 
 were current about Jesus were evidently repeated orally, 
 for a time, before they were written down. But how is it 
 possible that such a constant choice should have operated 
 among the immense number of anecdotes that must have 
 been told about him? How could people have agreed always 
 to write down the same things to the exclusion of others? 
 If the three evangelists had had as a source nothing but the 
 oral tradition, why should they have chosen exactly the 
 same tales? It is impossible to suppose that this accord 
 could have been the result of chance. Consequently, we 
 had to look for another explanation. 
 
 It was thus that the theory of sources was arrived at. 
 The gospels were evidently interdependent. But which of 
 them was the earliest, from which the others chiefly drew? 
 It was supposed at first that Matthew and Luke had existed 
 before Mark.^ But this hypothesis has now been com- 
 pletely abandoned. It is generally held to-day that Mark, 
 on the contrary, is the source of the two others, or at least 
 one of the sources. 
 
 Now Mark presents only one or two passages that are 
 not contained in Matthew and Luke; these are Mark iv, 
 
 3 Cf. Baur, Kritische Untersuchungen iiber den kanonischen Evan- 
 gelien, 1847. 
 
THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 69 
 
 26-29, the parable of the seed; Mark vii, 32-37, the healing 
 of a deaf man; Mark viii, 22-28, the blind man of Beth- 
 saida. If Mark had written his gospel with Matthew and 
 Luke before his eyes, we cannot well see what he would 
 have wished to do, since he had nothing to add. On the 
 other hand, the priority of Mark is inferred from the 
 Aramaic character of his style, from the fact that he is 
 the simplest narrator of the three and the most popular 
 narrator, innocent of all art, while in Matthew and Luke 
 we are often aware of a rehandling, an arrangement of the 
 text of Mark. The latter suppress the Arameanisms and 
 the conjunction "and," which bestrews the text of Mark, 
 and they abridge. 
 
 I have not the time to dwell upon this discussion, all the 
 details of which may be found in the special writings of the 
 theologians. I hasten to arrive at a second point, which 
 is this: whence did Matthew and Luke derive what they 
 did not find in Mark? It is generally agreed to-day that 
 there was another source than Mark, known to both Mat- 
 thew and Luke. In fact, Matthew and Luke have several 
 passages in common which do not come from Mark and 
 which especially relate the sayings of Jesus. Now, as these 
 two gospels were written independently of one another, they 
 must have derived these passages from a common source. 
 The researches of the theologians seem to show that Luke 
 inserted these sayings, which were drawn from the common 
 source, successively from Chap. IX, v. 51 to Chap. XVIII, 
 v. 14 of his gospel. Matthew, on the other hand, inserted 
 them in various places. Such are the Sermon on the Mount, 
 the relations of Jesus with the Baptist, the missionary dis- 
 courses, the polemical discourses, those that treat of the 
 duties of the disciples and the eschatological discourses at 
 the end. It is probable that this collection of sayings was 
 put into writing by Matthew himself. Hence the name of 
 
70 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the Logia of Matthew which is sometimes given it; the 
 theologians designate this source by the letter Q. It forms, 
 then, together with the gospel of Mark, one of the original 
 bases of our synoptics, and it certainly issued from the 
 first Christian community which, from the beginning, had 
 preserved orally these discourses of Jesus. 
 
 In the following words, M. Rene Guisan summed up in 
 1905 these results of the comparative study of the texts 
 of the first three gospels, which are called synoptic because 
 of their numerous points of contact: 
 
 "Mark is the most ancient of the three gospels; it served 
 as a common source for Luke and Matthew. These latter, 
 in addition, and independently of one another, drew from 
 another source, likewise written in Greek and principally 
 composed of fragments of the discourses of Jesus (the Logia 
 or source Q). Finally, there must be mentioned a source 
 peculiar to Luke and Matthew, or rather certain floating 
 traditions which they gathered and incorporated as well as 
 they could in the body of the gospels proper." 
 
 "As for the fourth gospel," he adds, "whatever opinion 
 we may hold as to its origins and its documentary value, 
 it is agreed that we find here a type of tradition which is 
 later than the synoptic type." * 
 
 These remarks, which state very clearly the present posi- 
 tion of the investigations on the subject, bring us face to 
 face with two or three important facts: 
 
 1. Mark is the oldest of the three gospels. 
 
 2 . Luke and Matthew made use of sources that were still 
 older. 
 
 3. To these must be added the fact that all three date 
 from a period about forty years distant from the death 
 of Jesus and make use of data preserved by oral or written 
 
 * Guisan, R., Jesus et la tradition evangelique, Sainte-Croix, 1905. 
 Bulletin of the Association chretienne Suisse d'etudiants. 
 
THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 71 
 
 tradition with the purpose of conlirming the first communi- 
 ties in the faith which they already had in Jesus. 
 
 The synoptics themselves are not therefore a source con- 
 temporaneous with Jesus; they utilise oral and written 
 sources which are older than themselves and of which all 
 trace has been lost. To arrive at the true story of Jesus, 
 we should have to possess this primitive oral tradition, and 
 to possess it free from all the legendary alloy that com- 
 plicates and amplifies popular traditions while they are in 
 process of formation. And this is not the case. We have 
 in the synoptic gospels the echo of a tradition of Jesus 
 that was already charged with these more or less legendary 
 elements of which, owing to the eagerness that people 
 always felt to know more about the Lord whom they loved, 
 the origin was not on all occasions verified. Even in Mark, 
 in which people have long thought they discerned the most 
 faithful account of the life of Jesus, there is no chronology, 
 or hardly any. Each of the evangelists grouped the facts 
 of the life of Jesus, not according to their real sequence, 
 but according to the particular impression which he wished 
 to give of his activity. 
 
 In general, then, we may affirm that the synoptic gospels 
 give us, not the exact and literal story of Christ as he was 
 in life, but the idea and the image which the Christian com- 
 munities formed of Christ in the years 50 to 70 of our era.° 
 
 As for the gospel of John, the date of the appearance of 
 which is generally fixed between the years 100 and 150, it 
 is difficult to attribute its composition to the disciple of 
 
 s Cf. in H. Weinel, Die Gleichmsse Jesu, Leipzig, Teubner, 1905, 
 the following lines : "We may say as follows apropos of the gospels and 
 the reading of them : 
 
 "i. Similar passages should be read together and compared. 
 
 "2. If a passage is found in only one of the gospels, there is no 
 reason for considering it less authentic or less ancient than if it were 
 in all three. If a passage is repeated in all three, this merely means 
 that it came from Mark; if it is in two gospels only it came from the 
 
72 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Jesus, John the apostle, but it is not impossible to see in 
 it an echo of his teaching. Its character is even more 
 polemical and edifying than that of the others. It gives 
 us the image of Christ as seen through a soul of flame which 
 had undergone the experience of communing with him and 
 had witnessed his sufferings. But no more than the others 
 does it permit us to grasp, in exact everyday detail, all 
 that made up the historic life of Jesus. More than the 
 others, however, it allows us to pass into a certain intimacy 
 with the Saviour's person, at least as this was understood 
 and felt by one of his disciples whose mystical nature and 
 gentle, pious temperament were of a special and highly 
 characteristic sort. Here once more, then, we are dealing 
 not with a primitive but with a derived source. Only, while 
 with the synoptics the derivation came through the general 
 and collective experience of the primitive Christian com- 
 munity as a whole, with John it came through the very 
 individual experience of a soul that was particularly fitted 
 to grasp certain features of the beloved personality, I shall 
 not say to the exclusion of others, but in preference to 
 others, which thus fall into the shadow and are forgotten. 
 
 On the other hand, as Stapfer has pointed out, the author 
 of the fourth gospel knows, in their smallest details, a 
 great many facts about the life of Jesus which are quite 
 indisputable, quite authentic, and which the authors of the 
 first three have entirely ignored. 
 
 "He gives us," Stapfer adds,^ "a picture of the life of 
 
 Logia as a source; if it is in only one of the gospels, this may mean 
 that it has been added by the evangelist (or a later editor) ; but it is 
 also possible that it comes from an old and reliable tradition. It 
 may be considered an addition on the part of the evangelist if he merely 
 amplifies by a brief phrase or so a passage which the others share 
 with him. In such cases it is difficult to believe in a special tradition. 
 
 "3. If we wish to know what Jesus really said we must go behind 
 our gospels to their sources." (p. 44.) 
 
 6 Staffer, Ed., Jesus-Christ pendant son ministhe. Paris, Fisch- 
 bacher, 1897, vol. II ; introd. pp. xxiii-xxv. 
 
THE DOCUMENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 73 
 
 Jesus that is much better than theirs. They mention only 
 one journey of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, a thing that is 
 more than improbable, that is impossible. On this point, 
 the author of the fourth gospel diverges from them, men- 
 tioning several of these journeys, because he is more faith- 
 ful and knows the facts better. 
 
 "The fourth gospel is thus full of personal memories 
 which it is impossible to disregard.^ Its account of the Pas- 
 sion, to choose but a single example, is the most living of 
 the four, and, among other details that are marvellous in 
 their veracity, the character of Pilate is admirably depicted 
 here. . . . Thus this book, which is not a history of Jesus 
 Christ (it is too dogmatic, on the one hand, and too frag- 
 mentary on the other for this), is nevertheless a very accu- 
 rate document to consult for knowledge of the life of Jesus." 
 
 To conclude, the synoptics are more nearly of the nature 
 of history; John, whoever may have been actually the final 
 redactor of this gospel,^ is closer to the person of Christ. 
 Through the synoptics we are able to reconstitute more 
 exactly the life of Jesus as it was seen from the outside; 
 
 ^ Stapfer attributes the fourth gospel to John the Apostle. We are 
 free to disagree with him without rejecting all of his arguments. 
 
 s The question of the composition of the gospel of John is difficult 
 to solve. Exegetical researches lead to the admission of a relatively- 
 late date which excludes the possibility that the manuscript, as it has 
 come down to us, might have been composed by the Apostle John. 
 On the other hand, as Stapfer points out, certain chronological details 
 seem to militate in favour of an eye-witness. Finally, the emotional 
 vibration that makes itself felt through these pages, the joy of a moral 
 and religious discovery, the note of an immediate personal contact with 
 Christ are undeniable. We cheerfully yield to the hypothesis of an 
 author who must have lived in complete intimacy with the apostle 
 John and who, enjoying a very different philosophical culture, neverthe- 
 less respected so profoundly the living experience which he saw in his 
 friend that he endeavoured to convey all his spontaneity in his writing, 
 without, however, being able at times to avoid translating this ex- 
 perience according to the categories of his own spirit. The author of 
 the gospel of John appears to us to be an intellectual who makes a 
 deep obeisance before the religious experience of a humble man of 
 which he desires to communicate to others the power that has saved 
 himself. 
 
74 INTRODUCTION 
 
 through John vv^e are able to form a much better idea of 
 certain features of his essential personality. 
 
 But the question that arises is this: are these sources 
 sufficient to establish the historical existence of Christ? 
 Have they, beneath the edifying form in which circum- 
 stances have clothed them, a historical content? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DENIERS OF THE HISTORICITY OF 
 CHRIST^ 
 
 A NUMBER of authors and theologians have endeavoured 
 to prove that Christ never existed. Among these we may 
 distinguish two broad tendencies: the symbolistic tendency 
 and the mythical tendency, the one finding in the gospels 
 a story created out of whole cloth by the primitive Christian 
 community, the other discovering in them a primitive 
 nucleus composed of pagan myths which were reconstructed 
 on Jewish soil and in accordance with Jewish ideas. 
 
 As long ago as the end of the eighteenth century, in 
 France, two pioneers were breaking the ground for these 
 new ideas. I cite them merely lest they be overlooked. 
 Charles Frangois Dupuis (i 742-1 809), in a work entitled 
 Origine de tous les cultes ou religion universelle, in three 
 volumes, attempted to explain the pagan myths and the 
 Mystery-Religions, and, presently turning to Christianity, 
 identified Christ with Hercules, Osiris, and Bacchus. Vol- 
 ney, the second of these precursors, in his Ruines ou midi- 
 tation sur les revolution des empires, presents his ideas in 
 the form of a vision which he had had among the ruins of 
 Palmyra. The adherents of the various religions are as- 
 sembled there, in one spot, and are told that they have 
 all been deceived by their priests. All dogmas, we are 
 informed, are mythical by nature; the true religion is purely 
 spiritual. As for the Christian drama, it represents the 
 course of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. Napoleon 
 enjoyed this book of Volney's. In a conversation which 
 he had one day with the poet Wieland, he told the latter 
 
 1 The information given here is drawn from the work of Schweitzer, 
 Geschichte dcr Leben-J esu-Forschung , 2 ed., ch. XXII. 
 
 75 
 
76 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that it was a great question v/hether Jesus had ever lived, 
 substantiating his remark by citing Volney's book. Wieland 
 replied to Napoleon: "I know very well, Your Majesty, 
 that there are a few madmen who doubt it, but it seems 
 to me as foolish as if one were to doubt that Julius Csesar 
 had lived, or that Your Majesty is living now." 
 
 Later the question was taken up in a more aggressive 
 manner, probably under the influence of a more thorough 
 study of the Greek and pagan Mystery-Religions. It was 
 observed that humanity had always sought for a revela- 
 tion, that it had often found satisfaction for this religious 
 need by taking up again the old ideas and ancient rites 
 and giving them a new signification, a profounder and more 
 moral meaning. It was observed that, under these primitive 
 rites, when the peculiarities of the different cycles of tradi- 
 tion were suppressed, they returned again to the same cen- 
 tral idea: that of redemption through a saviour-god. From 
 this it was only a step to the belief that in order to found 
 the religion of Christ, all that was necessary was the appear- 
 ance of some unimportant historical figure who could be 
 clothed later with the splendour of the Gnostic and syn- 
 cretistic ideas, and whom people would end by making into 
 a redeemer who dies and is raised again. 
 
 This step was quickly taken. Bruno Bauer,^ for ex- 
 ample, attempted to show that the gospels were fabricated 
 by the proto-evangelists, and he supported his ideas with 
 a very learned critique which was decidedly negative in its 
 attitude towards the texts. 
 
 Still closer to our own time, we might mention the work 
 of John M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology (1900). 
 Robertson lays down a sort of law of evolution for all the 
 religions; the differences between them spring only from 
 
 ^ Kritik d-er Evangelien. Berlin, 1850. Chrisfus und die Cdsaren, 
 Der Urspi'nng des Christ eninms ans dem romischen Griechentum. Ber- 
 lin, 1877, pp. 387. 
 
THE DENIERS OF HISTORICITY OF CHRIST 77 
 
 the environment and the special circumstances of the 
 milieu. In every religion, new gods have gradually taken 
 the place of old ones; hence the idea of the father-gods 
 and the son-gods (Krishna-Indra, Serapis-Osiris, etc.). We 
 find the same movement among the Jews. Little by little 
 the Oint, the Christ of the Apocalypse of Enoch, rises to 
 the rank of a divinity and takes the place of the Father 
 God. To this are added the influences that have come 
 from Greece and the Orient. Robertson also lays great 
 stress on the cult of Joshtia (which is the same name as 
 Jesus) which must have been already in existence in the 
 time of Abraham. According to him, this Joshua was an 
 Ephraitic god of the sun. Like Jesus, he was represented 
 under the form of the lamb. This cult entered into rela- 
 tions with the Phoenician cult of Adonis and Tammuz. 
 Now, in the generations that preceded Christianity, there 
 was a cult of Osiris-Tammuz in Palestine, in which they 
 honoured a Mary and her infant child Jesus. The city of 
 David was dedicated to this Tammuz, for David is the same 
 as Daouid, which is itself the same as Dodo, a familiar 
 name of Tammuz. From these parallels, Robertson de- 
 duces the whole story of Jesus. The accounts of the birth 
 of Jesus came from the dramatic ceremonial with which, 
 on Christmas day, they celebrated the birth of Osiris- 
 Tammuz. The story of the resurrection and the death 
 also came from the rites celebrated on the occasion of the 
 anniversary of this god's death, at Easter. At this time 
 too there was a festival meal, which was introduced into 
 the story of the Passion and became the Lord's Supper, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 We see the direction he is taking. We shall not enter 
 into all the details. According to Robertson, it was through 
 Saint Paul that the movement acquired its universaHstic 
 direction. It was thus the representation of the Mysteries 
 
78 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that created the gospel story and all its scenes. The 
 miracles also came from the other religions. Thus the 
 miracle of the water changed into wine at Cana is nothing 
 else than the story of the spring of Dionysus on the island 
 of Andros which, on the fifth day of January, yielded wine 
 instead of water. The temptation to change the stones into 
 bread comes from a mythical cycle from which the legend 
 of Buddha borrowed some elements. It may also be com- 
 pared with an "ordeal by hunger and thirst" which was 
 practised in the cult of Mithra. Mithra, in fact, was 
 tempted by Ahriman, the god of evil, and he also fasted. 
 
 For all the facts of the gospel story Robertson finds 
 parallels in the pagan myths; they are often interesting, 
 but we do not always quite see how these facts can be 
 regarded as consequences of one another. Dionysus, for 
 example, on a day when he is in flight, encounters two 
 asses, uses one of them as a mount and later elevates them 
 both to the rank of stars. We cannot quite see, however, 
 what this has to do with the entrance of Jesus into Jerusa- 
 lem on an ass. Poseidon, god of the sea, "walked with 
 light steps and fully clad upon the sea"; but we are still 
 at a loss for the connection between this fact and the walk- 
 ing of Jesus upon the waves. 
 
 In the same line of ideas, we may also mention Kalthoff,^ 
 who sees in Christianity the result of different currents of 
 thought coming from Judaism and the Greco-Roman world 
 of the first century. The Jewish m.essianism and the pop- 
 ular Greco-Roman philosophy are supposed here to have 
 united in it; and finally the social movements of the Roman 
 Empire played the principal role in this syncretistic work. 
 
 The suggestion of Peter Jensen^ should also be men- 
 
 ^Das Christusprohlevi. Leipzig, 1902. Die Entstehung dcs Christen- 
 tunis. neiie Beitrdge sum Chrishisprohlcm. Leipzig, 1904, pp. 155. 
 
 '^ Das Gilgamesch-Epos in dcr WeWitteratur. Erster Band: Die 
 Urspriinge der alttestamentlichen Patriarchen-, Propheten- und Be- 
 
THE DENIERS OF HISTORICITY OF CHRIST 79 
 
 tioned. To Jensen, Jesus and Paul, like the heroes of the 
 Old Testament, are mythical personages. Jensen's origi- 
 nality, however, consists in causing their story to be de- 
 rived from an old mythical epic-cycle in the library of 
 Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh and dating from 668 to 626 
 B.C.' 
 
 I shall give a summary of this in order to show how imagi- 
 nation and cleverness can supplement the critical sense when 
 one wishes at all costs to find relations between things where 
 little of the kind exists: 
 
 The Epic of Gilgamesch. Gilgamesch, two-thirds god and one- 
 third man, is lord of the city of Uruk (Warka) on the Euphrates. 
 He oppresses his subjects. The latter pray to the goddess Aruru 
 to create a hero who will free them from this insupportable yoke. 
 Their prayer is granted. Aruru creates the man-animal Engidu 
 (Eabani), who is led by a woman from the desert to Uruk. After 
 a duel in which Engidu is vanquished, the two heroes form an 
 alliance. They challenge Humbada, the lord of the mountain 
 of cedars, defeat him, and cast his corpse into the meadows. 
 On their return the goddess Ishtar offers herself to Gilgamesch 
 as his wife. But he will have none of her, for he knows that 
 she has always reserved a horrible end for all her husbands, ever 
 since the time of Tammuz. Furious at this refusal, Ishtar re- 
 turns to heaven and asks her heavenly parents to create a mon- 
 
 freier-Sage und der neiitcstamcntlichen Jesus-Sage. Strasbourg, 1906, 
 pp. 1030. 
 
 Moses, Jesus, Paulus, Drci Sagenvarianten des babyloniscJien Goft- 
 menschen Gilgamesch. Eine Anklage wider Thcologen und Sophisten 
 und ein Appel an die Lxiien. Frankfort a. M., 1909, pp. 63. 
 
 Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich g-elebt? Eine Antwort an 
 Professor JUlicher. Frankfort a. M., 1910, pp. 32. 
 
 Against Jensen, cf. Arthur Ungnad and Hugo Gressman: Das 
 Gilgamesch-Epos. Gottingen, 191 1, pp. 232. 
 
 s This has been published by Paul Haupt in the Bibliothhque assyr- 
 ienne of Delitzsch and Haupt under the title : L'epopee babylonienne 
 de Nimrod (1884-1891) and by Pere Paul Dhorme, with a French 
 translation, in his Choix de textes religieux assyro-babyloniens. Paris, 
 Lecoffre, 1907. See also the translation and commentary on the legend 
 in Alf. Jeremias, Isdubar-Nimrod, pp. 14 et seqq., in Sauveplane, Une 
 epopee babylonienne, Rev. des Religions, July-August, 1892, pp. ;i7 et 
 seqq., and in the Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, VI, i, pp. 116 et 
 seqq. and pp. 421 et seqq. 
 
8o INTRODUCTION 
 
 ster which shall kill Gilgamesch. Her prayer is granted, but 
 the monster also falls beneath the blows of the two friends. At 
 this the whole city of Uruk rejoices. 
 
 Then Engidu falls ill and dies, after having suffered for twelve 
 days with fever. Gilgamesch, frightened, begins to wonder if he 
 may not suffer a similar fate. Although he is tvt^o-thirds god 
 he yet remains mortal. He therefore sets off to find his ancestor, 
 Utnapischtim, who sits in the assembly of the gods, to ask him 
 how he may obtain immortality. He comes to the end of the 
 world, to the sky where the sun returns every evening and 
 whence it emerges every morning. A man-scorpion and his wife 
 defend the road to the garden of the gods. When they learn 
 the reason for his journey, however, they let him pass, but with- 
 out concealing from him the dangers that await him. Nothing 
 stops him and he reaches the sea which, until then, only the 
 sun-god has crossed. Utnapischtim's boatman consents to carry 
 him over to the other side. 
 
 Gilgamesch then arrives where his ancestor dwells. But in 
 answer to his question he receives this discouraging reply: that 
 eternal life is not destined for men. Everything is transitory. 
 Life endures but a while, death alone is eternal. 
 
 In spite of this, Utnapischtim is quite willing to make the 
 attempt to give eternal life to Gilgamesch. But the hero must 
 first conquer sleep, and remain awake for six nights and six days. 
 The wife of Utnapischtim, touched with pity, bakes seven loaves 
 of bread which will sustain Gilgamesch during the ordeal. But 
 before she has prepared them, the eyes of Gilgamesch have closed 
 with fatigue. 
 
 Since this attempt has not succeeded, the ancestor of Gilga- 
 mesch consents to reveal to him the secret of the herb of life 
 which grows in the depths of the sea. Gilgamesch dives in and 
 brings it back. He wishes to carry it to his own country and 
 give it to others. But on the way, while he is bathing, it is 
 stolen from him by a serpent. 
 
 Heart-broken, he returns to Uruk. Here, by evoking the dead, 
 he succeeds in speaking with the spirit of Engidu. At first, 
 through pity, the latter wishes to conceal from him the things 
 that lie beyond the grave, but at last he reveals to him the 
 miserable life which the soul leads in the beyond if its body 
 is mutilated, and especially the horrible fate that is reserved for 
 
THE DENIERS OF HISTORICITY OF CHRIST 8i 
 
 those who have not been buried and who are therefore not re- 
 ceived in the lower world. 
 
 Here the poem stops. 
 
 Once more we cannot v^^ell see the connection between 
 this epic of a Babylonian hero and the life of Jesus. But 
 Jensen maintains that he finds in these two stories the same 
 scheme and the same succession of sayings and actions. 
 Oh, the candour of preconceived ideas! I shall not dwell 
 upon this any further. 
 
 It remains for us to mention two names: that of William 
 Benjamin Smith,** the American mathematician, who sees 
 in Jesus the incarnation of the faith of a sect that was very 
 widely spread among the Jews and the Hellenists about the 
 year loo B.C., the divinity of which was a Saviour-Protec- 
 tor, and that of Arthur Drews, who made a great stir in 
 1910 with the publication of his ChristusmytheJ Drev/s, a 
 continuator of the work of Benjamin Smith, derives the 
 gospel story from the old mythical conceptions which Frazer 
 has studied so closely in The Golden Bough. In all ages 
 men have adored the gods of vegetation and celebrated their 
 death and their resurrection. At times these gods have 
 been represented by, and have been as it were incarnated 
 in, the king, and it often happened that in certain nations 
 they killed the king at the end of the year; he was then 
 believed to reappear and to be born again, the following 
 year, under the guise of his successor. Later, they sub- 
 stituted for the person of the king his son or a murderer 
 who died in his stead, after having enjoyed for some time 
 all the prerogatives of royalty and lived surrounded by a 
 quasi-pomp corresponding with his assumed position. Even 
 
 6 Der vorchristliche Jesus nebst weiteren Vorstudien sur Entstehungs- 
 geschichte des Urchristentums. Jena, 1906, pp. 243. 
 
 Ecc-e Deus. Die urchristliche Lehre des rehigottlichen Jesus. Jena, 
 1911, pp. 315. 
 
 '^ Die Christusmythe. Jena, 1909, pp. 190; 3rd ed. 1910, pp. 238. 
 
82 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in the fourth century A.D. it is related that the soldiers 
 of a Roman legion, encamped on the banks of the Danube, 
 chose one of their number as king before the Saturnalia. 
 He received royal honours and indulged himself to his 
 heart's content during the feasts; then his throat was cut 
 on the altar of the god whom he represented.* 
 
 Now, according to Frazer, the Jewish feast of the Purim 
 was closely patterned upon a Babylonian festival in which 
 was represented a murder of the king of the same type. 
 Here Haman was represented each year by a criminal; 
 some one else took the role of Mordecai, who was nothing 
 less than the resuscitated god. What more simple than to 
 put forward the following hypothesis: one year it was Jesus 
 who was named king of the Purim, while Barabbas took 
 the role of Mordecai! Hence the crucifixion of the one 
 and the liberation of the other. Drews adopts this hypoth- 
 esis of Frazer and elevates it to the rank of a certitude. 
 
 By the aid of his recollections of this feast of the Purim, 
 of certain elements of the cult of Adonis and Attis, as well 
 as a few points from Chapter LIII of Isaiah and the pre- 
 Christian story of Jesus of which Robertson speaks,® Saint 
 Paul is said to have created the myth of Christ. After 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, the entirely mythical Christ 
 was transformed into a historical Christ, and his birth was 
 placed in the reign of Augustus. By this means Jewish 
 monotheism was enabled to conquer the world. 
 
 * Cf. Franz Cumont, Actes du martyre de St-Dasius, d'aprcs un 
 manuscrit grec dela Bibliotheque nationale, 1897. 
 
 Id., Le Rot des Saturnales, Rev. de Philologie, 1897, pp. I43-I53. 
 
 Wendland, p., Jesus als Saturnalienkonig , Hermes XXXIII, 1898, 
 pp. 175-179. 
 
 Reich, H., Der Kdnig mit der Dornenkrone. Leipzig, 1905. 
 
 VoLLMER, H., Jesus und das Sakdenopfer. Giessen, 1905. 
 
 ^ Robertson, John M., Christianity and Mythology. London, 1900, 
 2 ed. 1910, pp. 472. 
 
 Id., a Short History of Christianity. London, 1902, pp. 429. 
 
 Id., Pagan Christs. Studies in Comparative Hierology. London, 
 1902, 2 ed., 191 1, pp. 456. 
 
THE DENIERS OF HISTORICITY OF CHRIST 83 
 
 After this too rapid and far from thorough enumeration 
 of the authors who have denied the historicity of Jesus, let 
 us stop a moment and ask what service they have rendered 
 us. They have plainly accented certain problems that have 
 not yet been sufficiently considered or sufficiently illumi- 
 nated; they reveal to us a whole group of forces and in- 
 fluences which concurred perhaps, side by side with the 
 testimony and the preaching of Jesus, in establishing the 
 Christianity that exists. It is obviously necessary to dis- 
 cover just how far legends and myths foreign to Christianity 
 contributed to its formation. But if these works are not 
 entirely without value in that they have drawn our attention 
 to certain points and certain resemblances, what they at- 
 tempt to prove has no value at all. After them, as before 
 them, it remains true that a manifestation of character 
 as personal as Christianity cannot be explained save as 
 having at its base a creative personality which gave birth 
 to it. The testimony of Saint Paul would alone suffice to 
 establish clearly the existence of the historic Christ.^" 
 
 On this point there is more to be said. Certain features 
 of the gospel texts themselves militate against the opinion 
 of the authors whose ideas we have just sketched. They 
 demonstrate the baselessness of their general assertions; 
 they enable us to correct whatever in the affirmations of 
 these authors tends to disprove absolutely the historicity 
 of Jesus. A rapid enumeration of these features " will lead 
 us to decide with all care what use we can make, for our 
 own purposes, of the gospel texts. 
 
 I. The contention upon which rests the whole argument 
 of those who deny the historicity of Jesus is that the gos- 
 pels in their entirety are the product of the faith of the 
 first Christian communities. Being works of edification, 
 
 1*^ Cf. Heitmuller, Art. Jesus-Christus, I, i and 3 in Die Religion in 
 Geschichte und Gegenwart. 
 11 Based upon the article by Heitmuller cited above. 
 
84 INTRODUCTION 
 
 they are based upon preconceived ideas, and in consequence 
 all the facts they relate are to be accepted with caution. 
 
 Now it seems to me that we can grant the premises of 
 this argument without accepting its conclusion. That the 
 gospels are works of edification, written with a parenetic 
 object, is incontestable. But this does not imply that all 
 the facts they relate are disputable and have been distorted. 
 The best proof that this is not the case is precisely that 
 the gospels contain certain affirmations which are in flagrant 
 disaccord with the faith of the primitive Church, and con- 
 tradictory to it, and consequently could not have been in- 
 vented by it or for its benefit. Let us note a few examples 
 in point: 
 
 The primitive Church held that its Saviour was a being 
 without sin. But in Mark x, 17, we see Jesus rejecting the 
 title of "Good Master" which was given him and replying: 
 "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, 
 that is God." It is evident that this pericope does not come 
 from the community. This is why, in Matthew xix, 16, 
 we find it modified into the sense of the general belief: 
 "Good Master, what good thing shall I do?" And the 
 answer: "Why askest thou me concerning that which is 
 good? One there is who is good." 
 
 The scene of Gethsemane, which shows us Jesus in such 
 great agony, could never have been invented by people who 
 were persuaded that Jesus had accepted death deliberately 
 and, as it were, by choice. (See Mark, xiv, 32-42.) 
 
 The account in Mark iii, 21, in which his friends say 
 that Jesus is beside himself, could never have been invented 
 by orthodox believers, any more than could the denial of 
 Peter, who was the great apostle for these primitive con- 
 gregations. 
 
 The flight of the apostles, at the moment of the arrest 
 of Jesus, could not have been imagined by men who re- 
 
THE DENIERS OF HISTORICITY OF CHRIST 85 
 
 spected and reverenced in them the true witnesses of Christ. 
 (cf. Mark xiv, 50.) We find Luke and John already some- 
 what disguising this. 
 
 There are, then, features in the gospels which have the 
 appearance of being perfectly historical and which cannot 
 be the product of distortions on the part of the Christian 
 community since they are not in accord with its own faith. 
 If the Christians preserved them in spite of this, it shows 
 their respect for the tradition and their care to suppress 
 nothing in it, even when it may have shocked them. And 
 this care is a guaranty of historical exactitude. 
 
 2. It may be observed that Mark and the source of 
 the Logia or Q have a decidedly Aramaic colour; one is 
 led to feel by all sorts of signs that these accounts were 
 bom in Palestine. How are we to explain the presence 
 of narratives of a rustic and countrified character in the 
 body of a work which, according to the opinion of the de- 
 niers of the historicity, was fabricated by Christians of 
 such great Hellenistic cities as Corinth, Rome, Antioch, or 
 Ephesus? We know the type of Christian communities 
 which appear, for example, in the epistles of Paul: it is 
 from these urban conditions that they would have the whole 
 substance of our gospels spring. But we do not well see 
 how these people, especially the humbler folk of such an 
 environment, could have fabricated stories whose accent is 
 so purely Palestinian and even Galilean. Let us add that 
 those allusions of Mark and the Logia to regional peculiari- 
 ties, for example the names of places, small villages, per- 
 sons, defy any symbolic explanation and cannot be con- 
 sidered otherwise than as the remains and traces of actual 
 history. 
 
 3. Another objection is this: how can we believe that 
 the words of Jesus could have escaped transformation when 
 they were preserved orally for thirty of forty years before 
 
86 INTRODUCTION 
 
 they were put into writing? Well, we are obliged to allow 
 for the far greater strength of memory at a period when 
 people had much more need of it than we have to-day/" 
 The same phenomenon occurred in Jewish theology, for 
 example. For a long time the utterances and the opinions 
 of the rabbis on great questions were preserved orally; 
 they were not put into writing until the middle of the sec- 
 ond century A.D. Yet no one doubts to-day that in these 
 words we have the real conceptions of the rabbis of the first 
 century.^^ 
 
 12 It may be observed that, in general, the memory is much stronger 
 among primitive and uncultivated people than among intellectuals, or 
 at least a certain sort of memory, that which retains facts as in a 
 note-book and without reasoning about them. Thus the negroes, who 
 can neither read nor write, retain all the facts about their interminable 
 palavers and know exactly how many guns, pieces of cotton or pots the 
 father of their grandfather gave to his father-in-law as the price of his 
 wife. The more writing comes to the aid of our laziness of mind, the 
 more that a developed reasoning faculty allows us to discover in the 
 past the useful facts of which we have need, the more our memory 
 gives way or turns its attention to other objects. The ancient scribes 
 undoubtedly knew far more texts by heart than our modern scribes, 
 because they had neither printing nor writing appliances at their 
 service. 
 
 13 Consult on the historicity of the gospels the following v/orks : 
 BoussET, W., Was zvissen wir von Jesus? 1904. 
 
 ScHMiEDEL, p. W., Die Person Jesii im Strcite der Meinungen der 
 Geg^enwart. 1906. 
 
 VON SoDEN, H., Hat Jesus gelebtf 1910. 
 
 Weinel, H., 1st das liberale Jesusbild widerlegt? 1910. 
 
 Weiss, Joh., Jes^ls von Nazareth, Mythus oder Geschichte? 1910. 
 
 Wellhausen, J., Einleitung in die drei erstcn Evangelien. 1905, pp. 
 89-115. 
 
 Pfleiderer, O., Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in re- 
 ligionsgeschichtlicher Belcuchtung. 1903. 
 
 VAN den Bergh, G., JUdische EinflUsse auf evangelische Erzdhlungen, 
 1909. 
 
 Guignebert, Ch., Le probleme de Jesus. 1914. 
 
 Pillion, L. C., L'existence historique de Jesus et le rationalisnte 
 contemporain. Paris, 1909, pp. 412. 
 
 S. Jackson Case, The American Journal of Theology. 191 1, pp. 20- 
 42, 205-227. 
 
 Reinach, S., Orpheus. Paris, 1909, pp. 315-345. 
 
 Dole, Ch., What We Know About Jesus. Chicago, 1908, pp. 89. 
 
 Schweitzer, at the beginning of chapter XXIII of his work, Ge- 
 schichte der Lebcn-J esu-Forschung , gives a complete bibliography of 
 the discussion which the problem of the historicity of Jesus has raised 
 among theologians in the German tongue. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DOCUMENTARY VALUE OF THE 
 GOSPELS 
 
 After what we have just said about those who deny the 
 historicity of Jesus, the arguments upon which they lean 
 and those that may be opposed to them, we are in a better 
 position to judge of the value and especially of the kind of 
 value which the gospels may have for establishing a life of 
 Jesus. They certainly contain history, as our last observa- 
 tions testify, undeniable historical details about a person 
 who hved in this world and has left here incontestable 
 traces of himself. This is the first point. 
 
 The second is this: these golden nuggets are strewn 
 through a soil that is permeated everywhere with foreign 
 matter. In other words, what is strictly historical in the 
 gospels is scattered about here, there and everywhere, and 
 is surrounded by a matrix that is half legendary, half dog- 
 matic. The person of Jesus is continually appearing in it, 
 sometimes with the stamp of an originality that belongs to 
 him alone and distinguishes him markedly from the tradi- 
 tional Christian atmosphere, sometimes, on the contrary, 
 veiled and as it were distorted by ideas from a Jewish or 
 foreign source that obliterates its original features. To 
 sort these out is a difficult, almost an impracticable task, 
 and one before which those very theologians who have sin- 
 cerely tried to give an historical life of Jesus have most 
 frequently recoiled. Indeed, one of the most eminent serv- 
 ices which criticism has rendered us has been to show us 
 the virtual impossibility of restoring to the world a figure 
 
 87 
 
88 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Christ that is historical in the strict sense of the word.^ 
 For the critics have thus obliged us to pose the following 
 question of principle: what is the true manner in which we 
 should approach the life of Jesus? Should we continue to 
 plod along in the old ways which the pure historical method, 
 in its dryness and aridity, has pursued for more than a 
 century? Is it not the sense of the situation, faced as we 
 are with the impasse in which the historical method has 
 ended, that we should attempt another method? ^ 
 
 Now to this question it seems to me that we should reply 
 as follows: since the gospels and the epistles are essentially 
 works of edification and not historical works, it is not for 
 history and the historical method to monopolise the prob- 
 lems which they bring before the human consciousness. 
 The question, in short, is not merely one of reconstructing 
 the exact historical frame in which the personality of 
 Christ evolved, not merely of being able to say with cer- 
 titude that such and such an utterance is his and that he 
 pronounced it in the very terms in which it has come down 
 to us. These questions, which have gradually assumed the 
 
 1 Echt historisch, as the Germans say. See in this connection the 
 conclusion of the fine study by Schweitzer, Geschicht-e der Lehen- 
 Jesu-Forschung. Tiibingen, 191 3. 
 
 2 Kierkegaard, that strange, paradoxical man who, if he was not a 
 theologian in the classical sense of the word, nevertheless perceived 
 better than many theologians the profound meaning of the Christian 
 life, attempts, in a page which forms a happy balance to the statements 
 of those who deny the historicity of Jesus, to go further than history 
 and into the beyond ; and while his scorn for the prevailing theology 
 is exaggerated, there is in his paradox a basis of truth which we can 
 appreciate : 
 
 "Christendom," he says, "has completely destroyed Christianity. 
 There is no longer any question of going back, as Luther did, to the 
 tradition of the apostles. Tradition, history, exegesis : away with all 
 such words ! The proofs of the divinity of Christ which the Scriptures 
 offer us have no existence except through faith. Therefore they are 
 not proofs. History which spreads before our eyes the progress and 
 victories of Christianity, does not prove that Christ was God. It 
 proves that he was a great man, the greatest of men : that is all. The 
 consequences of a man's life signify more than the life itself. When, 
 therefore, in order to understand Christ, we consider the consequences 
 
DOCUMENTARY VALUE OF THE GOSPELS 89 
 
 first place in modern theology, are not in reality the most 
 important; they have become so owing to the influence of 
 a professional deformation which has little by little obscured 
 the view of the whole for the sake of the details. 
 
 The difficulty of establishing the authenticity of the very 
 words used by Jesus, a difficulty which modern theology 
 and its methods vividly reveals to us, should not conceal 
 from us the value of the impression which the person of 
 Christ made upon the witnesses of his life. The matter 
 of prime importance in the case is this personality, and 
 not merely the verbal exactitude of his sayings; it is this 
 which we should recover and of which we should determine 
 the nature and the character. It seems to have been quite 
 forgotten that this was the original concern of the historical 
 studies. 
 
 Now in order to grasp this personality through the evi- 
 dences that have come down to us, it is not enough merely 
 to criticise the historical form of these evidences; we must 
 understand the psychology of those who have spoken in 
 them and discern, through this psychology, the value, the 
 character and the nature of that person. With the crum- 
 
 of his life, we make him a man like other men, and like them subject 
 to the examination of history. Christianity has no historical founda- 
 tion. The Socratic teaching at the heart of Christianity is decidedly 
 open to question. To teach is to awaken the memory. One never 
 teaches ; one is simply the occasion of another's recalling what he has 
 always known. From the moment when we become aware of the 
 truth we become aware of what we have always possessed. In what 
 really concerns him a man never owes anything to another man ; and 
 the historic moment thus offers no interest whatever. If we live in 
 falsehood no man can enlighten us, for he would have at the same 
 time to reveal the truth to us and place us in a state to receive it. This 
 only a God can do, and a God has done it ! Jesus Christ was the 
 Teacher and the Saviour. But Jesus Christ, the Man-God, is the abso- 
 lute paradox, the eternal absurdity. His contemporaries were no nearer 
 to him than the generations which have succeeded him. His life is 
 never a thing of the past, belonging to history. A true believer be- 
 comes, through this very fact, his contemporary ; and this state of 
 contemporaneity is the essential condition of Faith." (Kierkegaard, 
 L'entraincment au christianisnie , adaptation by M. Bellessort, Rev. 
 des Deux Mondes, March i, 1914.) 
 
go INTRODUCTION 
 
 bling of the texts and the historical vagueness in which 
 exegesis and modern criticism are ending, it is time that we 
 should start anew and face the fact that we are not dealing 
 in the gospels with words alone but with witnesses, that is 
 with human beings who are seeking to communicate 
 through these words an impression which they have them- 
 selves experienced. The age and the integrity of the 
 various texts are certainly important; but not less so is the 
 psychic state which, in their totality, they reveal in this or 
 tliat one of their authors and the nature of the impression 
 which Christ made upon them. If we are to arrive at any 
 knowledge of what Jesus was, we must know first of all 
 what, psychically speaking, these men were. Knowing this, 
 we can interpret the impression which they say they re- 
 ceived from their master. 
 
 Hence there are at least three psychologies which must 
 be taken into consideration in the elaboration of a life of 
 Jesus : 
 
 1. That of the first Christian community in the bosom 
 of which the gospels were born and whose faith constitutes, 
 so to speak, a prism through which Jesus was contemplated. 
 Here we must bear in mind the ideas, conceptions and be- 
 liefs, Jewish, foreign and sometimes pagan in origin, which 
 were current in this environment. 
 
 2. The psychology of the author of the gospel of John, 
 a mystical psychology of a very peculiar kind and one that 
 has tinted with special colours the portrait which the author 
 has left us of Christ. Here again we must bear in mind 
 the Greco-Hellenistic influences to which the author of the 
 fourth gospel was subjected in the environment in which 
 he lived. 
 
 3. Finally, the psychology of Christ himself, appre- 
 hended as far as possible through these two prisms from 
 which we must escape as often as we can by comparing the 
 
DOCUMENTARY VALUE OF THE GOSPELS 91 
 
 texts and correcting any flagrant distortions that appear. 
 This work obviously requires a very subtle and delicate 
 discernment, and it can be accomplished only gradually and 
 through successive corrections of one author by another. 
 
 We cannot hope to reach our goal at the first attempt. 
 But the four gospels, as we possess them, seem to us suf- 
 ficient sources for such a project as long as we accept them 
 for what they are, that is to say, not documents of an 
 entirely historical content, but works of edification in 
 which the authors have sought, if not to prove, at least to 
 support the foundation of an already existing collective 
 faith in him whose story they are telling. 
 
 A slavish adherence to the letter is thus more unfor- 
 tunate here than anywhere else. We should free ourselves 
 from it, not merely by checking the parallel narratives, one 
 by another, but also by distinguishing the non-historical 
 matter deposited in them by a dogmatism already in process 
 of formation and the unconscious additions that undoubt- 
 edly accrued to these works in the course of their compo- 
 sition from a legendary lore that was too easily accepted, 
 from traditional opinions, from superstition and the belief 
 in constant miracles. 
 
 Thus, without refusing the aid of the general results of 
 the criticism of the New Testament, taking them indeed 
 largely into account, we shall yet seek to avoid the dry 
 pedantry which characterises some of its most conspicuous 
 representatives who, hypnotised by the age of the docu- 
 ments and the purely historical value of every word, lose 
 sight of the whole and render themselves forever incapable 
 of perceiving the echo of one soul in another soul. Bending 
 over the hearts of those who have written, we shall attempt 
 to distinguish, in the midst of their emotion, what comes 
 from them from that which comes, in them, from him to 
 whom they owe this emotion. Let us not forget that they 
 
92 INTRODUCTION 
 
 offer themselves as witnesses and that, in order to under- 
 stand a witness and grasp the facts that his testimony 
 embellishes or distorts, the best way is not to trouble him 
 with precise or difficult questions, but to listen to him, to 
 familiarise oneself little by little with his own psychology 
 and to reconstitute later, out of what he affirms that he has 
 seen or heard, that of which he has really b^en the witness. 
 One word more before we strike into the heart of our 
 subject. I have not dreamed of embracing here the whole 
 life of Jesus. I have been content to choose a few of the 
 major subjects which offer the greatest number of points 
 of contact with the investigations of modern psychology 
 and upon which these studies, and particularly those of 
 psycho-analysis, may throw some light. I have grouped 
 them roughly in the order of development which the present 
 state of the criticism of the gospels authorises us to regard 
 as most likely in the life of Jesus. 
 
ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE BIRTH OF JESUS 
 
 There are three matters to consider in connection with 
 the birth of Jesus: 
 
 1. The date of this birth. 
 
 2. The place. 
 
 3. The circumstances which accompanied it. 
 
 Let us begin with the less important of these questions, 
 the first two, in order to dwell more at our leisure upon 
 the last. 
 
 § I. THE DATE 
 
 It is easy to say that Jesus was born at the beginning of 
 the year i, since we reckon the years from the date of 
 this birth. Unfortunately, however, it happens that the in- 
 formation given us in the gospel of Luke does not corrobo- 
 rate this assumption. In fact, the passage Luke ii, 1-2, 
 indicates as a milestone from which to fix the date of the 
 birth of Christ a census which was taken while Quirinus 
 was governor of Syria. Matthew, on his side (ii, i), in- 
 forms us that Jesus was born at Bethlehem in the days of 
 Herod the king. 
 
 Now, on the one hand, we know that Herod the Great 
 died in the year 750 of Rome, that is to say, in the year 4 
 before our era, and on the other that it would have been 
 impossible, during the life of Herod or that of his son, 
 Archelaus, for a Roman census, a census "by decree of 
 CcEsar Augustus," to be undertaken in Judaea. This would 
 have been an infringement on the part of the emperor of 
 
 95 
 
96 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 the rights of the king, with whom he was on extremely good 
 terms. Here is a first difficulty that casts doubt on the 
 exactitude of the gospel text. 
 
 There is a second difficulty. The census undertaken by 
 Quirinus was indeed carried out, but it was only after the 
 deposition of Archelaus, the son of Herod, by the Romans, 
 that is to say, ten years after the death of Herod, and there- 
 fore in the year 6 of our era.^ Although Quirinus was twice 
 legate to Syria, he did not take two censuses as was 
 thought to have been proved by an inscription that has 
 since been recognised as false. His census undoubtedly 
 took place at the time of his second legation.^ And even 
 if it had taken place during the first, it could have operated 
 only in the districts that had been reduced to Roman prov- 
 inces, and not in the kingdom of Herod. 
 
 It thus appears, from what Matthew relates, that the 
 birth of Jesus must be set back four years before our era 
 at least for the events recounted to have taken place in the 
 time of Herod. But then, since the census of Quirinus is 
 found to have taken place ten years later, the events related 
 no longer agree. 
 
 A third datum is that of Luke iii, i, in which the evan- 
 gelist fixes the date of the appearance of the Baptist in the 
 fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, that is in the year 
 28 or 29 of our era. On the other hand, Luke (iii, 23) says 
 that Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his 
 ministry. Finally, Jesus began his ministry, according to 
 Mark i, 14, after the imprisonment of the Baptist, which 
 no doubt took place in the same year as his public appear- 
 ance, that is in 28 or 29. If Jesus was about thirty years 
 
 1 Cf. JosEPHUS, Antiquities XVII, xiii, 5 ; XVIII, i. I and ii, I. 
 
 2 Cf. Orelli, Inscrip. lat. no. 623. 
 
 MoMMSEN, Res gestae divi Angus ti. Berlin, 1865, pp. iii et seqq. 
 Renan, Vie de Jesus, page 20, note i. 
 
 Heitmuller, Art. Jesus-Christus, II, 3., in Die Religion in Geschichte 
 und Gegenwart. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 97 
 
 old at this time, he vvould have to have been born a little 
 before the year i, which would seem to indicate that we 
 must place the birth of Jesus somewhat before the Christian 
 era. But again this does not accord with the statement 
 about the census of Quirinus, which did not take place until 
 the year 6. 
 
 Conclusion: it certainly appears that there has been some 
 error in the determination of the Christian era.^ But what- 
 ever this error may have been, it is impossible to reconcile 
 the various data of the gospels. Here we have a first reason 
 for suspecting the historical value of these accounts of the 
 birth. 
 
 § 2. THE PLACE 
 
 The question of the birthplace of Jesus is no less difficult 
 to establish from the gospel texts than that of the date. It is 
 generally supposed, on the faith of Matthew and Luke, that 
 Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Matthew ii, i: 
 "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the 
 days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from 
 the East to Jerusalem," etc.; and Luke ii, 3-5: "And all 
 went to enrol themselves, every one to his own city. And 
 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of 
 Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called 
 Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of 
 David; to enrol himself with Mary, who was betrothed 
 with him, being great with child." 
 
 At first sight, these texts appear to be decisive enough. 
 When we examine them a little more closely, however, we 
 perceive that, far from confirming one another, they are 
 contradictory. While Matthew presents to us the parents 
 
 2 According to Renan, the calculation was first made in the sixth cen- 
 tury (by Denis the Less, upon hypothetical data). (Vie de Jesus, 
 p. 22, note 2.) 
 
98 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 of Jesus as living in Bethlehem, Luke treats them as in- 
 habitants of Nazareth who have only come to Bethlehem 
 on a special occasion, at the time of a census, and as if 
 expressly for the child to be born there. In Matthew, on 
 the contrary, Bethlehem is indeed the original dwelling- 
 place of Mary and Joseph, and the flight into Egypt, caused 
 by the massacre of the innocents, and the return under 
 Archelaus are necessary to make the family settle in 
 Nazareth and establish its final home there. 
 
 Which of the two evangelists is right? Which is wrong? 
 The question is very difficult to determine. It must be 
 noted, however, that throughout the rest of the gospels 
 Nazareth is always regarded as the native town of Jesus. 
 He is called Jesus of Nazareth. The demoniac of the syna- 
 gogue of Capernaum exclaims: "What have we to do with 
 thee, Jesus of Nazareth?" (Mark i, 24). At the time of 
 Peter's denial the servant of the High Priest says to the 
 apostle: "And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth" 
 (Mark xiv, 67). The young man at the tomb, addressing 
 the women, says to them: "Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus 
 of Nazareth, which was crucified; he is risen" (Mark 
 xvi, 6). According to John, Jesus was so widely held to 
 have come from Nazareth that it was made an argument 
 against his being the Messiah. To those who said: "This 
 is the Christ," others replied: "Shall Christ come out of 
 Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh 
 of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, 
 where David was?" (John vii, 41-42). 
 
 Perhaps this last verse will provide us with the key to 
 the mystery. According to the Scriptures, or more exactly 
 the prophecy of Micah (v, i), the Messiah had to be born 
 in Bethlehem. Did not Micah say: "But thou, Bethlehem 
 Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of 
 Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 99 
 
 to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of 
 old, from everlasting?" * 
 
 Now it was necessary for the prophecies to be fulfilled; 
 this dogmatic necessity appealed to the faithful of the first 
 Church with the same force with which it appeals to-day 
 to so many thousands of more or less ignorant and sec- 
 tarian spirits. Did not the story of the journey to Beth- 
 lehem spring from this need of a literal accord between the 
 facts and the prophecy? There are many theologians who 
 hold this opinion, especially as it seems most unlikely that 
 a woman in the condition in which Mary was, in her ninth 
 month of pregnancy, should have been forced to make such 
 a painful journey for a simple matter of registration, even 
 assuming that such excellent organisers as the Romans could 
 have resorted in their census to proceedings that would have 
 set whole populations in motion and necessitated such in- 
 convenient comings and goings from town to town. 
 
 However this may be, and even if we do not admit the 
 unlikelihood of the journey to Bethlehem, the fact remains 
 that, regarding the birthplace of Christ, there is a discrep- 
 ancy between the different gospel texts, and particularly 
 between the accounts of the nativity in Matthew and in 
 Luke. Thus we have a second reason for holding these 
 accounts in suspicion from the historical point of view. 
 
 § 3. THE CIRCUMSTANCES 
 
 Finally, we come to the third point, which will detain us 
 a good deal longer than the other two because here the 
 recent investigations of psycho-analysis have something to 
 
 ^ Cf. Baldensperger, G., Comment I'apologetique de la primitive 
 Eglise infliia sur la tradition des origines et du ministers galileen de 
 Jesus, Rev. de theologie et de philosophic, New Series VIII, 34, p. 21, 
 which places the birth at Bethlehem on a system adopted in response 
 to Jewish polemists who accused the Christian movement of Galileeism 
 and made a grievance of the Galilean origin of Jesus. 
 
loo ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 tell us and are capable of rendering us some assistance. 
 This is the question of the circumstances that accompanied 
 or conditioned the birth of Christ. By these I mean: the 
 Annunciation to Mary, the flight into Egypt, the episode 
 of the wise men, that of the shepherds, and finally the 
 miraculous birth, a virgin bringing forth a son, that whole 
 poem of Christmas which beguiled our childhood with its 
 solemn, touching sweetness and still speaks to us whenever 
 December brings back the anniversary with all its 
 memories. 
 
 Legends is a word which we have perhaps already heard 
 in connection with all these stories. And in the fear lest 
 anything should snatch away from us a patrimony that has 
 given pleasure to our hearts, we have averted our eyes 
 from any too close examination of it, preferring not to know 
 what the theologians ^ are saying and to preserve the faith 
 of a child who does not question anything or trouble to 
 understand anything. Legends: this word strikes fear into 
 many a breast, because people suppose that it is more or 
 less synonymous with untruth or deceit. We shall see later 
 how we must regard it; we shall then find that above the 
 historical truth, the truth of facts, there is a moral and 
 psychological truth, a truth of states of mind, which can 
 only be expressed under the cover of more or less adequate 
 symbols and which must be respected quite as much as the 
 other. 
 
 5 Cf. Petersen, E., Die wunderbare Gehurt des Heilandes. Tubingen, 
 1909, pp. 47. 
 
 Maurenbrecher, M., Weihnachtsgeschichfen. Berlin, 1910, pp. 57. 
 
 Saintyves, p., Les vierges meres et les naissances miraculeuses. 
 Essai de mytliologie comparce. Paris, 1908, pp. 288. 
 
 Steinmetzer, F., Die Geschichte dcr Gehurt und Kindheit Christi 
 und ihr Verhdltnis zur babylonischen Mythologie. Miinster, 1910, pp. 
 218. 
 
 Lobstein, p., Etudes christologigues. Le dogm^ de la natssance 
 miraculeuse du Christ. 1890. 
 
 Steinmann, a.. Die jungfrduUche Gehurt des Herrn. Biblische 
 Zeitfragen, 2nd ed., 1917. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS loi 
 
 For the moment, however, let us speak of facts and his- 
 torical verity. From this point of view it must indeed be 
 confessed that the circumstances narrated by our gospels 
 in connection with the birth of Jesus do not accord very 
 well with the rest of these same gospels. When one con- 
 siders the problem a little more closely in detail, one readily 
 understands my point. 
 
 Let us suppose, for the moment, that the Annunciation, 
 for example, took place in the manner in which it has been 
 described to us. We can easily imagine the amazement that 
 Mary must have felt under the shock of what was announced 
 to her. What an event would be the authentic apparition 
 of an angel, and an angel predicting to you such things as 
 these! How does it happen, then, that Mary never makes 
 a single allusion to it later; and not only this, but that she 
 seems to have forgotten it? We might plead here as 
 logically admissible a sort of modesty, the sense that hung 
 over her of the solemn character of her life and that of 
 her son. This reason has, in fact, been effectively pleaded 
 to explain why Jesus knew nothing of his miraculous birth, 
 why he never spoke of it, and why he never so much as 
 once referred to it, even in the intimacy of the circle of the 
 disciples, why he never suggested its possibility. This 
 again is conceivable. It might be admitted that Mary 
 never allowed the secret to pass her lips, that she guarded 
 in the depths of her soul the mystery that was at once to 
 cover her with honour and pierce her to the heart. But 
 it is inadmissible that she could have forgotten what made 
 this birth the supreme event of her life; and this is what 
 the reading of the gospels proves to us beyond peradven- 
 ture. On a certain day, at a critical hour in the ministry 
 of Jesus, his mother and his brothers set out in search of 
 him, with the intention of restraining him because, in their 
 eyes, he was "beside himself" (Mark iii, 21 and 31): ''And 
 
I02 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 when his friends heard of it" (and what they had heard of 
 was the prodigious success of Jesus) "they went out to lay 
 hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself." And 
 a little further on: "There came then his brethren and 
 his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling 
 him." 
 
 This, it seems to me, is a decisive argument from the 
 psychological point of view. A mother who had undergone 
 what Mary is supposed to have undergone, who had expe- 
 rienced the Annunciation, then the mysterious conception 
 of the Spirit, would not have set out to seek her son, thirty 
 years later, believing him mad. Such occurrences would 
 have marked this son in her eyes with an inalienably divine 
 dignity. There are experiences which may be doubted, but 
 this experience, at once physical and moral, through which 
 Mary is said by the gospels to have passed, is not of that 
 number. The sovereign impression which it would have 
 produced could not, for a single instant, have left room for 
 doubt.® To establish this m.ust we add other proofs? The 
 very accounts which we are discussing furnish them. Every 
 one has read the two genealogies of Jesus which Matthew 
 and Luke give us; but has it been observed that they both 
 end, not in Mary, as we ought to expect, but in Joseph, who 
 is thus clearly regarded here as the real father of Jesus? 
 If, in the last analysis, he had not been the father, if he 
 had been only the adoptive father, what would have been 
 the use of these genealogical researches, the object of which 
 is to show us how Jesus was descended from David? 
 
 The gospel genealogies are therefore in direct contradic- 
 tion to the miraculous birth of Jesus through Mary and the 
 Holy Ghost. What can we conclude save that the miracu- 
 
 " Similarly, how is it possible that, when Jesus was twelve years old, 
 Mary should not have understood what he meant when he said to 
 her, "I must be about my Father's business," if she had known beyond 
 doubt that this father was God? (Cf. Luke ii, 50.) 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 103 
 
 lous birth did not form part of the primitive account which 
 Luke and Matthew consulted in order to write the begin- 
 ning of their gospels, that some addition had been made to 
 it, and that the evangelists, in their simple good faith, never 
 realised that one portion of their narrative contradicted 
 another, the one tending to connect the authority of Christ 
 with his Davidic descent, the other with his divine and 
 superhuman birth? In the remainder of the gospels it ap- 
 pears, we may add, as if this birth through the Holy Ghost 
 had been forgotten. They speak to us (Luke ii, 27 and 41) 
 of the "parents" of Jesus, of his "father" and his "mother," 
 without any restriction/ Let us add that there is no doubt 
 that Saint Paul was completely ignorant of the tradition 
 that Jesus was born of a virgin; he does not speak of it. 
 Nor do the two oldest sources of the gospel, that is, Mark 
 and the Logia, breathe a word of it. 
 
 Passing now from the Annunciation and the miraculous 
 birth to the other stories, we turn to the incident of the wise 
 men and that of the shepherds, only to stumble upon similar 
 difficulties if we make the least attempt to find anything 
 strictly historical in them. Is it to be imagined that Pales- 
 tinian shepherds who had experienced an emotion and a 
 revelation like those related to us, who, in the midst of a 
 night's vigil, had seen angels descending from heaven to 
 tell them where the Messiah was being born, would never 
 have spoken of it afterwards? Is it not much easier to 
 imagine them continuing to keep track of this child, going 
 to see what was becoming of him, above all, at the time of 
 his public appearance, mingling enthusiastically in the 
 crowd of his admirers, repeating their testimony to the latter 
 and relating what had happened to them? But not a word 
 more is said about this: all the gospels preserve a profound 
 silence on the subject. There is no suggestion of the shep- 
 
 '^ Cf. also Luke ii, 3^ and 48. 
 
I04 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 herds joining the first Christian group. This silence is sur- 
 prising, to say the least, and it is curious that it has not been 
 more often remarked upon. 
 
 As much may be said of those mysterious personages as 
 to whom we are not sure whether they were astrologers, 
 magicians or kings, and whom later legends have clothed 
 with all sorts of attributes, even representing one of them 
 as a negro and baptising all three with high-sounding names. 
 Whence did they come, these personages, and whither did 
 they go? We must confess that it is difficult to understand 
 why, if they had been so miraculously informed of the birth 
 of a little child who was to perform so unique a work in the 
 world, they should have taken such pains to visit his cradle 
 and so little later to come and see his work. But, as in the 
 case of the shepherds, we hear nothing more of the wise 
 men. If, later, they had been too old to come back from 
 the depths of the Orient, at least they might have sent 
 emissaries to inquire about Jesus; and such an embassy 
 would have made an impression ; it would have been spoken 
 of. But not a word do the gospels say of all this, evidently 
 because nothing of the kind, nothing approaching it, oc- 
 curred. The wise men vanish and all memory of them is 
 lost. Their caskets of frankincense and myrrh and their 
 offerings of gold are not spread out a second time at the feet 
 of Christ. Does all this ring with the clear sound of his- 
 tory? It does not seem to do so. 
 
 Must we then renounce the poetry of Christmas? Must 
 we surrender these tales of the birth whose tender and sub- 
 lime language spoke in so marvellous a fashion to our child- 
 hood? Because we have to recognise their legendary char- 
 acter, are we obliged to deny that they have any value and 
 set them aside? 
 
 By no means! It is just here that psychology intervenes 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 105 
 
 to show us the value and the sort of value that can be 
 attributed to legendary tales, to show us what they signify 
 and how, while they do not belong to exact history, they 
 yet form a part of the eternal history of the human soul. 
 Born of the deep, instinctive needs of the heart of the race, 
 legends, myths and fairy-tales are not merely amusing 
 stories, invented at haphazard. Under their fanciful aspect 
 they convey in outline truths that are sometimes more pro- 
 found than historical verity. To support these statements 
 let us now attempt to sum up rapidly the discoveries which 
 psycho-analysis is beginning to make in this domain, relat- 
 ing the results, as far as possible, to these stories which we 
 have just been considering. 
 
 § 4. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE STUDY OF MYTHS 
 AND LEGENDS 
 
 In order that he may thoroughly understand what is to 
 follow I must first refer the reader to the preceding pages 
 in which we have tried to indicate the general meaning of 
 psycho-analysis.* It is important also to remember that 
 the following lines are merely a resume, too concise to be 
 entirely clear, of a series of large and closely packed works 
 that is being supplemented every day. In fact, the inde- 
 fatigable pioneers who are carrying on this method of 
 analysis are unweariedly applying it to every possible sub- 
 ject. Following the neuroses and dreams, the study of 
 myths, fairy-tales, legends and folklore has solicited their 
 attention. The field was a vast one, for this form of lit- 
 erature is found scattered in profusion among all the peo- 
 ples of the earth. Let us try to see what new light psycho- 
 analysis has shed over this particular domain. 
 
 8 Cf. Introduction, pp. xviii-xxix. 
 
io6 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 Up to the time of its appearance three great theories had 
 been held regarding the formation of myths.^ 
 
 1. The first is associated with the name of Adolf Bas- 
 tian/° This is called the theory of elementary ideas. Ac- 
 cording to this theory, men of all the regions of the earth 
 and all the human races have virtually the same elementary 
 ideas. In the beginning, the stock of thoughts, representa- 
 tions, images of any one people is not very considerable; 
 and this stock, this psychic store, is about the same with 
 them all. It is identical in its composition in the different 
 races, however widely separated they may be. It is not 
 astonishing, then, that the stories of the gods, the legends 
 of the heroes, and the fairy-tales should have been found to 
 be the same everywhere, with superficial variations only. 
 
 2. Another theory is that of the community of origin of 
 the myths." According to this theory, all the myths have 
 come from the same country and from a single family of 
 peoples: India and the Indo-Germanic races. Thence they 
 have passed on, completely formed, to the other peoples, 
 with modifications suited to the genius of each. 
 
 3. Finally, the most modern theory is that of the 
 migration or the adoption of myths.^" The myths travelled 
 
 9 See Rank, O., Dcr Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. Versuch 
 einer psychologischen Mythcndcutting. Schriften zur angewandten 
 Seelenkunde. Heft V, 1909, pp. 93. 
 
 WuNDT, Vblkerpsychologie, Bd. II, Mythus und Religion, Teil I. 
 Leipzig, 1901, pp. 527 et seqq. 
 
 Van Gennep, Was ist Mythus? Internat. Wochenschrift fiir Wis- 
 senschaft, Kunst und Technik. 4. 1910, pp. 1167-1174. 
 
 Ehrenreich, Die allgenieine Mythologie und ihre •ethnologischen 
 Grundlagen. 1910. 
 
 10 Das Bestdndige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer 
 V-erdnderlichkeit. Berlin, 1868.— Cf. also Bauer, Ad., Die Kyros-Sage 
 und Verwandtcs. Sitzungsgeber der Wiener Akad. der Wissenschaft. 
 Bd. 100, 1882, pp. 495 et seqq. 
 
 11 Cf. Benfey, Th., Pantschatantra, 2 vol. 1859.— Schubert, R., 
 Herodots Darstellung dcr Cyrussage. Breslau, 1890. 
 
 12 Stucken, Ed., Astrahnythen. Leipzig, 1896, 1907.— Lessmann, H., 
 Z>iV Kyrossage in Europa. Beilage zum Jahresbericht der stadtischen 
 Realschule zu Charlottenburg, Easter, 1906.— Bi{.\un, Naturgeschichte 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 107 
 
 from one people to another. They came, for the most part, 
 from the Babylonians, and were propagated by oral tradi- 
 tion and especially as the result of industrial relations and 
 literary influences. This theory is only a modification of 
 the preceding one in the light of recent discoveries. 
 
 But we must go further. Even supposing that these 
 theories are partially true, one question still remains to be 
 answered: that of the first origin of these myths. Assum- 
 ing that they came from a single group of peoples, where 
 did this group find them? How did they happen to be born 
 in this group? One mythologist, Schubert, would have 
 them all go back to a single model; but he does not know 
 where this model came from. If, on the contrary, we re- 
 gard them as multiple, which seems more prudent, it appears 
 reasonable to suppose that they sprang from the observa- 
 tion of nature and the observation of the stars in particular. 
 This last tendency is the most widely spread to-day. The 
 myths are all supposed to be astral myths (astral theory). 
 Some authors have even reached the conclusion that all the 
 myths are solar or lunar myths. 
 
 This astral theory, however, while it satisfies us from 
 certain points of view and provides us with interesting 
 parallels, tells us nothing about the motives that impelled 
 man to construct the myths. Why should he have attri- 
 buted such importance to the movements of the stars? 
 Why should he have built up such singular stories in con- 
 nection with them? Here psycho-analysis intervenes and 
 gives us a most interesting answer. 
 
 Psycho-analysis maintains that it was by no means the 
 observation of the stars which impelled man to compose 
 
 der Sage, 2 vol., Munich, 1864-65. — Winckler, Die babylonische Geis- 
 teskultur in ihren Bczichimgcn zur Kulturentivickhing der Menschheit. 
 Wissenschaft iind Bildung, Vol. 15, Leipzig, 1907.— Lang, Myth, Litera- 
 ture _ and Religion, London, 1887. — Reinach, S., Cultes, mythes et 
 religions. Paris, Leroux, igoS, 4 vol. — Van Gennep, La formation de 
 la legende. 
 
io8 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 the myths. The myth came from a very much deeper 
 source; it was the direct product of the infantile Hfe of 
 man. Men, or rather peoples, have given scope in their 
 myths to the representations, the ideas, the images and 
 especially the desires which have constituted the psychic 
 life of their childhood. The myth is related to the dream; 
 it is, in a sense, the dream of peoples. It is only later that 
 this dream is projected into the stars; and why? For a 
 reason that is very simple, although it has escaped all the 
 mythologists. It is because what comes out of the instinc- 
 tive life of man is not always very edifying. Man is apt 
 to be ashamed of the tendencies which are at work in the 
 depths of his unconscious and which only emerge under 
 favour of sleep. These things scandalise him. He drives 
 them away from him as far as possible; he projects them 
 into the stars, into the very firmament. The astral theory 
 of the myth is therefore not entirely false, provided that we 
 complete it. The myth only becomes astral for the purpose 
 of veiling or concealing the intimate relation it bears to the 
 very essence of the human soul. The astrality of the myth 
 is one more result of the censor. 
 
 It must be confessed that this new theory of the myth is 
 extremely attractive. The myth here becomes the dream 
 of peoples. This means that it plays, in relation to nations, 
 the same role which the dream plays with individuals, and 
 that it is the result of an analogous process. 
 
 Now in the dream, as we recall, psycho-analysis has dis- 
 covered a product of the repression of man's primordial 
 instincts by the censor. These instincts emerge under a 
 disguise during sleep, and thus relieve the dreamer of the 
 dead weight that has lain upon his soul. Myths, legends 
 and fairy-tales owe their existence to a similar process. 
 They also are the product of the deep, instinctive life which 
 stirs in the subconsciousness of the race. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 109 
 
 There is, in fact, in humanity as a whole a subconscious 
 life containing, in the potential state, the immense gamut 
 of all the possibilities of good and evil which tend to realise 
 themselves. Constantly flung back into the depths as a 
 result of the exigencies of life in society, this instinctive 
 urge seeks to force its way out. It succeeds in moments of 
 conscious dreaming such as hours of poetic creation. At 
 these times the imagination, embroidering the most diverse 
 themes, does not work, as is commonly supposed, aimlessly 
 and by chance. Under various trappings it always brings 
 upon the scene the same actors. It always expresses in the 
 different stories the same desires. It paints in images which 
 are sometimes veritable conundrums, highly complicated 
 and multiform, the human drama par excellence, that of the 
 soul at grips with life. This drama, however, is usually 
 enacted under the colours in which it was lived for the first 
 time, the colours of childhood. 
 
 The myth is the reproduction of what Freud has called 
 the family-complex, which might also be called the drama 
 of childhood, a drama which may be and may remain the 
 schema of everything that is most abject in crime and most 
 bestial in desire, but which may also become, through sub- 
 limation, the purest and most magnificent moral tragedy. 
 To express it in other and better terms, we may think of 
 man, the human personality, as a cluster of energies apply- 
 ing themselves to some matter, some substance; we may 
 then say that the family-complex constitutes the initial 
 design formed by this group of energies when it is applied 
 for the first time to the different relations which appear to 
 the child in his relational life with others. Quite instinc- 
 tively at first these energies burst forth between the poles, 
 hate-love; or at least it is by these names that we may des- 
 ignate their first expression in order to represent their vio- 
 lence and the contradictoriness of their movements. But 
 
no ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 we must remember that we ourselves colour these same 
 words hate and love with a tonality into which there enter 
 as elements the results of our long experience as adults. 
 We must, in thought, exclude all these things that are con- 
 tributed by our later experience and then consider these 
 forces in the family-complex not as brutal in the pejorative 
 sense of the word, but as primitive, that is to say, envelop- 
 ing in themselves all the possibilities of a brutal develop- 
 ment as well as all those of a marvellous spiritual ascension. 
 But exactly what are we to understand by this term 
 family-complex? Briefly, Freud claims to have discovered 
 the following: in every child, in the first primitive stage of 
 its existence, we discover, as the foundation of life, two 
 great elements, hatred of the father, love of the mother. 
 These are the two great psychological directions of desire, 
 admirably symbolised and given concrete form in the myth 
 and the drama of (Edipus who, by an inexorable destiny, is 
 led to kill his father and marry his mother. Because of 
 this, Freud suggests the name of (Edipus-complex for this 
 primitive constellation of the feelings. It is evident, as I 
 have already said, that we must not take these words, hatred 
 of the father, love of the mother, in the literal sense which 
 we give them in our adult language. The child cannot hate 
 as a criminal hates or love as a lover loves. His hatred is 
 expressed by the simple desire to get rid of the father whose 
 mere presence is a perpetual obstacle to the caresses of the 
 mother. The father takes the mother's attention, he 
 monopolises her; he thus becomes an obstruction, a dis- 
 agreeable and annoying obstacle, an object which the child 
 dislikes, which makes him weep and cry, which must be got 
 out of his life. The mother, on the contrary, is the object 
 in which everything that is sweet is concentrated; it is she 
 whom the child desires and towards whom he leans with all 
 the force of his instinct. This, roughly, is what is meant 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS in 
 
 by the (Edipus-complex; this is the meaning of the family- 
 complex/^ 
 
 In the course of the child's development, these feelings, 
 desires and tendencies conflict and are transformed into 
 violent impulsions, which are presently repressed in a 
 measure by education and the censor, but which persist in 
 the subconscious life, always ready to make their way out. 
 Dreams and poetry, which is a sort of waking dream, act 
 as safety-valves, and serve to give them free play. For 
 this reason we find in almost all myths and in a large 
 
 13 It is well to note here the modifications of Freud's ideas sug- 
 gested by Professor Flournoy : 
 
 "I would suggest," he says, "that the great law discovered by Freud 
 — that all individuals, even those who are normal, possess or have pos- 
 sessed unawares in their subconscious, from their earliest infancy, the 
 (Edipus-complex (incestuous love for their mother, mortal hatred for 
 their father) — that this law, which seems so incredible at first sight, 
 is certainly true in its generality, on condition, however, that in many 
 cases it is interpreted in a fashion that is doubly or triply metaphorical, 
 which often enlarges or attenuates its literal meaning: i. It is necessary 
 to take the expression Qldipus-complex as a general denomination 
 which also embraces its opposite, the Electra-complex (incestuous love 
 for the father, mortal hatred for the mother) which is probably the 
 more habitual case with women, given the opposite attraction of the 
 sexes. 2. Save for individual exceptions (neuropaths, etc.) we must 
 not take at their face value such expressions as incest and death, by 
 which we are led retrospectively to attribute to infancy feelings and 
 ideas which, properly speaking, could have their full meaning only in 
 the adult. For the little child this signifies merely its double desire 
 to enjoy as much as possible and to suppress whatever stands in its 
 way. 3. The two parents themselves must often be regarded figura- 
 tively, as symbolic personifications, signifying, on the one hand, the 
 intense and inveterate attachment of the individual to everything which, 
 in his infancy, represents for him tenderness, protection, help, the 
 physical or moral joys and comforts of the home ; on the other hand, 
 his repulsion for the persons or things about him that thwarted his de- 
 sires and revealed to him thus early the hard necessities of life. — 
 Understood in this way, the CEdipus-complex (or family-complex) 
 often comes to signify nothing more than the conflict in every human 
 being between the principles of enjoyment and reality, or the opposi- 
 tion between pleasure and duty, liberty and obligation, the I and the 
 not-I, etc. All these pairs of opposites, resulting in a fundamental emo- 
 tional dualism in human nature, or the ambivalence of all objects of 
 experience, may, in fact, be condensed into the primitive antithesis of 
 the mother, incarnating goodness, and the father, representing the 
 severe necessities of the real world." {Une mystique moderne, Arch, 
 de Psychol. XV, 191 5, pp. 200-201.) 
 
112 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 number of legends and fairy-tales the outstanding features 
 of the infantile family-complex together with many sec- 
 ondary features that appear to be consequences of them. 
 There is in every child the stuff of a born criminal or an 
 epic hero. Everything depends on the direction and the 
 outlet that are to be given to the hidden tendencies of his 
 inner nature. If they remain in the crude stage of instincts, 
 they will be repressed by the moral law of society and will 
 reappear sooner or later under the form of neuroses which 
 lacerate and weaken the personality. If, on the contrary, 
 they are led to a higher plane, subjected to lofty and noble 
 ends, directed towards aims that are useful to humanity, if, 
 in a word, they are sublimated, then life takes on a new 
 meaning and the man fulfils the human task which has been 
 assigned to him in this world with a joy hitherto unknown 
 to him. 
 
 Psycho-analysis, which is simply a method for discover- 
 ing and revealing to man what is within him and how he 
 may make use of his hidden energies, has thus utilized the 
 myth and the legend, as it has utilized the dream, in the 
 interest of this quest and this revelation. Among the savage 
 peoples, in Greek antiquity, in the legends of the peoples 
 of the north, it has discovered a type of myth which is con- 
 stant and always the same. Rank " summarises its chief 
 features as follows: 
 
 1. The hero is born of illustrious parents (divine, royal 
 or celebrated). 
 
 2. His birth is rendered difficult by the prediction of 
 some misfortune, an evil omen, an obstacle of some kind. 
 
 3. His birth having taken place, the child is generally 
 exposed; they want to get rid of him. 
 
 4. But he is saved or adopted and brought up by people 
 
 1* Rank, Der Mythus von der Gcburt des Helden. Schriften zur 
 angew. Seelenkunde. Heft 5, Leipzig, 1909. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 113 
 
 inferior to his parents, very often shepherds or gardeners, 
 people of the lower classes, or somethnes by animals (the 
 wolf of Romulus and Remus). 
 
 5. After a number of episodes, which vary in the dif- 
 ferent myths, the hero ends by finding again his true 
 parents; he is restored to his original rights and his destiny 
 is fulfilled. 
 
 Now all these features are simply those of the family- 
 complex, more or less embellished. What happens is that, 
 at the very beginning of life, the little child, surrounded 
 with caresses and tenderness, expands with happiness. 
 Friction, however, soon appears; he undergoes, more or less 
 unconsciously, disappointments that are engraved with in- 
 effacable lines in the soft wax of his memory. There are 
 moments when his parents are occupied with other tasks 
 that claim their attention, and he has the impression of 
 being abandoned, set aside; the result is suffering and 
 humihation. The baby cries in its cradle and falls into a 
 rage. Revolt and hatred are born in its heart, and this, 
 naturally enough, against the persons who separate him 
 from his mother, the source of every comfort and every 
 caress, against the father, that is, and the brothers and 
 sisters of whom he becomes jealous. 
 
 A little later, the child compares what happens in his 
 own family with what happens in the families of neigh- 
 bours or relatives. His sufferings, which have been very 
 serious (we adults are inclined to laugh at them, but to the 
 child they are the most serious realities in the world; we 
 have only to observe with what sincerity, what an absolute 
 assent of his whole nature, he weeps or grows angry), his 
 sufferings do not incline him to be impartial in his com- 
 parisons between his own family and other families. He 
 sees that the rich people, the powerful people, the princes 
 whose stories are told him, are happier than he, or he be- 
 
114 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 lieves them to be so. Envy springs up in him; and the 
 more it grows, the more he desires to have other parents. 
 He wonders whether he is not in reality the son of other 
 persons, a foster-child who has been abandoned by his real 
 father and mother and adopted by those who now occupy 
 their place. This psychological process is very common. 
 Innumerable are the persons who can remember that at a 
 certain moment in their life this idea occurred to them. In 
 contact with the first hardships of existence, the child 
 quickly comes to feel that he has been duped, deceived by 
 life, that he was destined for a royal or otherwise extraor- 
 dinary career which has been snatched from him. "Kings," 
 said Pascal, speaking of men, "but fallen kings!" Later we 
 translate this same feeling into our lamentations on the in- 
 justices of fate. 
 
 The myth and the legend thus give scope, under the form 
 of symbols, to the family-complex which, in a more or less 
 unconscious fashion, plays its part at the outset of every 
 child's life. A few examples will help us to understand 
 the connection better. 
 
 The Legend of Sargon. — A cuneiform inscription, discovered 
 not long since, tells us the legend of Sargon. In certain aspects 
 it resembles that of Moses. Sargon was the son of a vestal 
 virgin and had never known his father. His mother placed him 
 in a basket of rushes, smeared with pitch, and exposed him on 
 the Euphrates. The basket was picked up by a gardener who 
 adopted the child. The goddess Ishtar cast her eyes upon him; 
 he became king and reigned forty-five years. 
 
 The Legend of Perseus. — Acrisios, king of Argos, was already 
 old and had no male descendants. As he desired a son, he con- 
 sulted the Delphic oracle which promised him that his daughter 
 Danae would give birth to a son, adding, however, that Acrisios 
 would die by his hand. In order to avert this fate he shut his 
 daughter up. But this did not prevent Zeus from rendering 
 her a mother by means of a ray of sunlight that passed through 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 115 
 
 the roof of the building in which she was. Danae had a son. 
 The father thereupon avenged himself by putting tlie nurse to 
 death. Then, refusing to believe Danae, who told him that 
 Zeus was the father of her son Perseus, Acrisios caused her to be 
 placed with her son in a chest and flung into the sea. The chest 
 was picked up by the fisherman Dictys, who was said to be the 
 brother of the king Polydectes. Polydectes fell in love with 
 Danae and tried to get rid of the child Perseus by sending him 
 to cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa. But Perseus succeeded 
 in doing this. Later, when he was playing at disks one day 
 he chanced to kill his grandfather; he became king of Argos 
 and Tyrinth and finally built Mycenae. 
 
 The Legend of Cyrus. — Astyages, king of the Medes, had a 
 daughter Mandane. Once in a dream he saw so much water 
 issuing from her that his whole capital was filled and all Asia 
 was submerged. The wise men gave him the explanation of his 
 dream. In order to avoid its realisation, Astyages gave Mandane 
 in marriage to a Persian, Cambyses. Then he had a new dream 
 which frightened him still more. Mandane was pregnant and 
 Astyages dreamed that he saw issuing from his daughter a vine 
 shoot which overshadowed all Asia. The wise men explained 
 the dream; it signified that the son of Mandane would become 
 king in the place of Astyages. To avert this misfortune Astyages, 
 when Cyrus was born, sent for his relative Harpagos and gave 
 Cyrus to him, with the command that he was to make away with 
 him. Harpagos, afraid to kill the child, turned him over to a 
 shepherd, Mithridates, with orders to expose him on the moun- 
 tain. But Mithridates, on returning home, found that his wife 
 had given birth to a dead child. They placed the dead child 
 in a basket, with the garments of Cyrus, and exposed this. Then 
 they brought Cyrus up as their own child. 
 
 When he was twelve years old, Cyrus, playing with the village 
 children, was chosen king by them. One of his comrades, the 
 son of Artembarus, an honourable Mede, refused to obey him; 
 Cyrus covered him with blows. Complaint was made to the king. 
 Cyrus was obliged to appear before Astyages, who recognised 
 him through the resemblance which he bore to himself. The 
 shepherd finally confessed the substitution. Astyages avenged 
 himself on Harpagos by inviting him to a great feast at which 
 
ii6 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 he caused him to eat the remains of his own son, whom he had 
 had murdered. The wise men thereupon reassured Astyages as 
 to his fate; for the prophecy had been fulfilled in a roundabout 
 way, the village children having named Cyrus king; the game 
 sufficed to fulfil it, 
 
 Astyages then returned Cyrus to his true parents, Mandane 
 and Cambyses, saying to him: "In them you will find a very 
 different father and a very different mother from the shepherd 
 Mithridates and his wife." Later Cyrus often spoke to his par- 
 ents of the shepherd and his wife, who was called Cyno (in 
 Greek, the bitch). From this sprang the legend according to 
 which the child Cyrus had been suclded by a bitch. 
 
 The Legend of Lohengrin. The legend of Lohengrin is the 
 legend of the knight of the swan, a heroic poem of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 The Duke of Brabant and Limbourg died without leaving any 
 heir but a young girl, Els or Elsa. On his death-bed he gave 
 her into the care of one of his servitors, Frederick of Telramund. 
 Frederick, a valiant hero, was very brave and he conquered lands 
 and armies for the young countess, convincing every one that she 
 had promised to marry him. 
 
 As she energetically refused this union, Frederick complained 
 to the Emperor Henri I'Oiseleur, and it was decided that the 
 countess should choose a worthy knight who would fight in a 
 tournament against Frederick and defend her. As no one could 
 be found who desired this honour, the countess prayed to God 
 secretly to succour her. Then, far away, at Montsalvat, near 
 the Grael, the bell sounded; it was the sign that some one was 
 in need of prompt assistance. At once the Grael resolved to 
 send out Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal. Just as the latter was 
 about to climb into his coach, a swan came swimming over the 
 water, drawing a boat behind him. As soon as he saw it, Lohen- 
 grin exclaimed: "Take the horse back to the stable; I will go 
 with this bird wherever it leads me." Trusting in God he took 
 no food into the boat. After journeying five days over the sea, 
 the swan dipped its beak into the water and drew out a little 
 fish, of which it ate half and gave the other half to the prince. , 
 Thus the knight was fed by the swan.. 
 
 Meanwhile, Elsa had convoked the princes and vassals at an 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 117 
 
 assembly in Antwerp. On the day of the meeting a swan was 
 seen to ascend the Scheldt; it drew behind it a little boat in 
 which Lohengrin was sleeping, stretched out on his shield. The 
 swan presently approached the shore and the prince was joy- 
 ously received. Hardly had he taken out of the boat the casque, 
 the sword, and the shield, when the swan at mice departed. 
 Lohengrin was told of the wrong that had been done the countess 
 and readily consented to be her knight. Elsa invited all her 
 relatives and her subjects; the tribunal was established at Mainz, 
 where Lohengrin and Frederick were to fight in the presence of 
 the emperor. The knight of the Grael vanquished Frederick; 
 the latter confessed his misdeeds against the countess and was 
 condemned to the mallet and the axe. Elsa became the bride 
 of Lohengrin; they had long loved one another. Nevertheless, 
 he once warned her at home to avoid carefully any question about 
 his origin; if she asked any such question, he would be obliged 
 to abandon her immediately and she would never see him again. 
 For a while, the married pair lived in unmixed happiness, and 
 Lohengrin reigned wisely and mightily over the land. He also 
 rendered the emperor great services against the Huns and the 
 heathen. But it chanced that one day, in a tournament, his 
 lance overthrew the Duke of Cleves, who broke an arm. Then 
 the Duchess of Cleves spoke thus to the women: "Lohengrin 
 may be a valiant hero, and he seems to be of the Christian 
 faith, but it is a pity that his nobility is not half as great as 
 his renown; at least nobody knows from what country he came." 
 These words went to the heart of the Countess of Brabant and 
 she blushed. That night, in bed, as her husband held her in 
 his arms, she wept and said to him: 'The Duchess of Cleves has 
 made me very unhappy." Lohengrin was silent and asked no 
 questions. The second night the same thing happened. But on 
 the third night, Elsa, no longer able to contain herself, said: 
 "My lord, do not be angry! / should so much like to know, for 
 our children's sake, where you were born, for my heart tells me 
 that you are of high lineage." When day came, Lohengrin ex- 
 plained frankly whence he had come, that Parsifal was his 
 father, and that God had sent him from the Grael. Then he had 
 them bring in the two children whom the countess had given 
 him, and he embraced them, bidding them take good care of 
 the horn and the sword which he was leaving with them, and 
 
ii8 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 said: "Now, farewell!" With the countess he left the ring 
 {Fingerlein) which his mother had once given him. Then his 
 friend the swan came swiftly, with the little boat behind him, 
 and the prince leaped in and departed across the waters to 
 rejoin the service of the Grael. Elsa fainted. The empress sent 
 for the younger son of Lohengrin on his father's account and 
 brought him up as her son. But the widow wept and lamented 
 all the rest of her life for the beloved husband who never re- 
 turned/^ 
 
 It will be instantly observed that we find in these legends, 
 which are so different in their origins, the broad features 
 that we have mentioned above: 
 
 1. The illustrious parents: Sargon, son of an unknown 
 father and a vestal virgin; Perseus, grandson of a king and 
 son of a god; Cyrus, grandson of a king; Lohengrin, of 
 unknown birth, but concealing a divine mystery. 
 
 2. The evil prophecy: see the story of Perseus and that 
 of Cyrus. 
 
 3. The exposed child: Sargon is exposed on the Eu- 
 phrates. For Cyrus a dead child is substituted and exposed 
 on the mountain. 
 
 4. The poor parents or the animals who rescue and 
 foster the heroes: Cyrus is adopted by the shepherds and, 
 through a play on words, suckled by a bitch; Lohengrin 
 is fed by a swan. 
 
 There are other details on which we might dwell, details 
 which, according to the psycho-analysts, have a symbolical 
 value. Thus, the chest or the basket, smeared with pitch 
 and exposed on the waters, represents the mother's breast. 
 The father (or the grandfather) who pursues the child 
 and tries to prevent its birth is the father who hates the 
 child. We have here what is called in psycho-analysis the 
 
 15 These legends are taken from Rank's Der Mythus der Gehurt des 
 Helden. The author also cites those of Kama, CEdipus, Judas, St. 
 Gregory, Paris, Telephos, Gilgamos, Romulus, Hercules, Zoroaster, and 
 Siegfried, all of which present the same or analogous features. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 119 
 
 phenomenon of Transference (Uebertragung) and Projec- 
 tion. The hatred of the child for the father is transferred 
 by the child to the father, so that, in his thought, it is 
 the father who hates him. These transferences are very- 
 common in ordinary life. How often do we not attribute 
 to others the evil feelings which we have for them, so as 
 to excuse ourselves in a measure for feeling them or cher- 
 ishing them! 
 
 Thus the psycho-analytic theory which sees in the myths 
 and the legends the symbolical expression of the family- 
 complex is not without foundation. Is it sufficient? This 
 we certainly have a right to ask. The leaders of the psycho- 
 analytic school of Zurich, while they accept whatever ap- 
 pears to be true in the determination of the psychic causes 
 which have given rise to myths, dreams, fairy-tales, to the 
 symbols of art, religion, poetry, etc., while they recognise 
 that there is evidently in these manifestations a product 
 of the infantile urge of the primary instincts in the human 
 soul, have carried the question higher, and we must be 
 grateful to them for having done so. This is what they 
 have found: 
 
 In dreams — and the same thing is true of myths, fairy- 
 tales, and legends — we can look for something else besides 
 the causes. In studying them we may also turn our eyes 
 towards the future. The dreams of a sick person, for 
 instance, do not merely reveal to us the causes that have 
 given rise to his neurosis; there also exists, in the images 
 which they call up, in the symbols which they bring to 
 light, a revelation of new possible paths of rescue that open 
 before the invalid. Hence the necessity of examining them 
 also from a teleological point of view, the point of view, 
 that is, of the goals which they offer to the individual, the 
 means which they suggest of resolving the inner conflict 
 from which his soul is suffering. 
 
120 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 An example will enable us to understand better than any 
 other explanation this extension of the psycho-analytic 
 method which we owe to the school of Zurich. I borrow 
 it from the Rev. Pastor Keller, who cited it in the course 
 of a work presented to the Societe Vaudoise de Theologie 
 at Lausanne, 8 October, 191 7, under the title, La psychana- 
 lyse, ses rapports avec la psychologic religieuse et la cure 
 d'dme}^ M. Keller referred to the dream of a patient under 
 treatment, a young man, and pointed out the two inter- 
 pretations, the two meanings, that could be given to the 
 symbolic images of this dream. Here is the dream: it con- 
 sists of two moments, two acts, or two scenes. First mo- 
 ment: The young man dreams that he is in a coach with 
 several persons. On the opposite seat, facing him, there 
 is a lame man. He is filled with a desire to throw himself 
 upon this lame man and fling him out of the coach. Second 
 moment: The coach forms part of a funeral procession. 
 The father of the young man is being buried. 
 
 On questioning this young man regarding the ideas that 
 associate themselves with the images of his dream and 
 come to his mind when these images are called up, we 
 obtain roughly the following: 
 
 "How many persons were with you in the carriage?" — 
 "Five." — "What does the number five make you think of?" 
 — "There are five in our family." 
 
 The coach in which the young man was riding is thus the 
 image of the family life. 
 
 "Now what do the words 'lame man' suggest to you?" 
 — Hesitation. — "Nothing! . . . Oh, yes, that's so! My 
 brother once hurt his foot; he used to limp." — "What sort 
 of relations have you with your brother?" — "Not bad." — 
 
 ^^This example, summarized from memory, is incomplete in its de- 
 tails. I trust I have not been false to the essential facts. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 121 
 
 "Never any friction?" — ''Oh, yes, very often; the family like 
 him better than me." 
 
 Conclusion: the desire to fling the lame man out of the 
 coach is really the desire to free himself from the trouble- 
 some presence of a brother in the family, a desire repressed 
 by the censor and necessitating the disguising of his brother's 
 person before it can manifest itself externally; the brother 
 thus becomes an unknown lame man. 
 
 The funeral: on questioning the subject on this third part 
 of the dream we discover that in his everyday life the young 
 man fears his father; he is in terror of him; the father 
 represents an obstacle to him. The dream therefore grat- 
 ifies the hatred of the father by causing him to die, but 
 honours him at the same time by giving him a fine funeral.^^ 
 
 Such is the explanation of the dream, according to the 
 causal method. The dream springs from the family-com- 
 plex which haunts the troubled soul of the young man. The 
 images he calls up are the result of the psychic conflict that 
 is in progress in this patient. 
 
 But there is another method of approaching these same 
 symbols, approaching them from a different angle. If we 
 were to consider the inner conflict of the patient as a 
 moral conflict which must be solved by sacrifice, we should 
 say to him: "From what we have discovered in your dream, 
 your brother must be excluded from your life and your 
 father must die. What does this mean? It does not mean 
 that they must die actually. It means that the image you 
 have made of your father, of your brother must die in you. 
 Thus it is a part of yourself that must die: these disparaging 
 representations which you have formed of your relatives. 
 You must consent to this sacrifice, whatever it may cost 
 you; you will then be freed from the weight that prevents 
 you from developing normally, freed from this obstacle that 
 
 1'' Ambivalence of the feelings with respect to the father. 
 
122 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 obstructs your life." Such is the interpretation of the 
 school of Zurich. Instead of stopping with the past, with 
 the search for causes, it turns its eyes towards the future; 
 it interprets the symbols of the dream in terms of the goal 
 to be attained and the tasks to be accomplished, in terms 
 of the duty that lies ahead of us. 
 
 This is of great importance, and it may be summed up 
 in the following way: the symbols which the dream em- 
 ploys and to which it gives rise should not be considered 
 merely as residua of the infantile family -complex; they also 
 furnish indications for the inner transformations that life 
 demands of the individual if he wishes to triumph over the 
 obstacles that have accumulated in his path. They guide 
 the dreamer and point out to him the road for him to 
 follow and the modifications that must be made in his 
 personal life. 
 
 There are thus two methods of interpreting the sym- 
 bols, the images which dreams offer us: the one, realistic 
 and causal, which seeks in the past alone for the source 
 of the dream; the other, teleological and anagogical, which, 
 without ignoring what concerns the past, discovers in the 
 symbols of the dream a moral bearing as well, and interprets 
 these symbols as indications of the way in which the inner 
 conflict may find its solution.^^ 
 
 The myth, we have said, is regarded by the psycho- 
 analysts as the dream of peoples. If this is the case, why 
 should we not try to apply the second of these interpreta- 
 tions to it as well as the first? According to the first, the 
 figures and the personages of the great myths and legends 
 symbolise the figures and the personages of the family-com- 
 plex that exists in the soul of every child. Humanity in- 
 carnates in its favourite heroes the dreams and the hopes 
 
 1^ Cf. SiLBERER, Ueber die Symholhildung. Jahrbuch f. psych. 
 Forsch., III. pp. 661-723. — Maeder, Ueber das Traumproblem. Ibid. V, 
 pp. 647-686; — and pp. 157 et seqq. of the present volume. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 123 
 
 that it begins to live anew with every child that is born. 
 In these beautiful stories, which cluster about the memory 
 of some illustrious personality, we should then have only 
 the reflection of a past that is altogether dead in every one 
 of us. Such is the rather sad and depressing idea that is 
 often held regarding the legends and the myths; it leaves 
 them nothing but a romantic value, without any psycho- 
 logical bearing, fit at best to distract for a few moments 
 minds that are imaginative and inclined to poetry. 
 
 If, however, we apply to them the second method of 
 interpretation, of which we have spoken, the myths and 
 legends begin to live. They assume an entirely different, 
 a psychological, import. They become not merely the em- 
 bellished and poeticised memories of a childhood that has 
 wholly passed. In and through their symbols, the future 
 task of humanity is discernible. At the moment when they 
 appeared in humanity they were, so to speak, witnesses 
 and heralds of the moral exigencies which imposed them- 
 selves upon this or that human group. They reveal to 
 humanity, under a symbolic form, what life expects of it. 
 Like the dream in the case of the individual, they contain 
 indications of the end to be pursued and the paths to be 
 followed, the end and the paths of which humanity is not 
 yet fully conscious, but which its subconscious already out- 
 lines under forms that are veiled from and often misleading 
 to those who do not know how to analyse them. 
 
 § 5. APPLICATION OF THE TWO METHODS OF PSYCHO-ANA- 
 LYTIC INTERPRETATION TO THE ACCOUNTS OF THE BIRTH 
 OF CHRIST. 
 
 Let us now attempt to apply these two methods of psycho- 
 analytic interpretation to the accounts, legendary in form, 
 which the evangelists have left us of the birth of Christ. 
 
124 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 The first will give us the results which have already 
 been noted in several Lives of Jesus and which have 
 scandalised more than one soul by their dryness and aridity. 
 By the aid of this method, we shall find in the gospel ac- 
 counts many of the features of the family-complex which 
 Rank discovers in myths in general. 
 
 1. The opposition between the illustrious parents and the 
 poor parents. On one side, the humble state of the car- 
 penter's household in which Jesus was brought up, the stable 
 where he was born, surrounded by simple folk, and the ani- 
 mals, the ox and the ass, which a later legend grouped about 
 the manger. On the other, the miraculous and divine birth 
 in which the Holy Ghost plays the role of father and be- 
 comes the secret and mysterious generator. 
 
 2. The prediction of a misfortune which renders the 
 birth difficult. We recall the prophecy made to Mary by 
 Simeon: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul 
 also," ^" and "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising 
 again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be 
 spoken against." ^" 
 
 3. The motif of the exposure of the child is replaced 
 here by the massacre of the innocents, ordered by Herod, 
 and by the flight into Egypt. The life of the child is men- 
 aced. He escapes by the aid of the supposed parents who 
 save him from the king's wrath."^ 
 
 Finally, the wise men, on the one hand, and the shepherds, 
 on the other, serve to double this contrast between the illus- 
 trious parents and the poor parents which we find in myths 
 in general. On one side, the child is hailed at his birth 
 by great personages whom Herod receives, and who later, 
 in the subsequent legend, even become kings; thus he is 
 the son of a king, the son of God. On the other side, he 
 
 19 Luke ii, 35. 
 
 20/&irf., 34. 
 
 21 Compare with the legend of Cyrus. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 125 
 
 receives the homage of the shepherds; it is the common 
 people who surround the manger. 
 
 Following this method of interpretation, the legend of 
 the birth of Christ thus becomes, like the others, a product 
 of the family-complex. It is born spontaneously, naturally, 
 from the popular soul in the presence of a heroic and ad- 
 mirable life such as that of Jesus was; and most of the 
 details, if not all of them, are provided by the great sub- 
 conscious conflict which is found in the psychism of all 
 children. There is a good deal of truth perhaps in this ex- 
 planation, but it does not exhaust the subject. 
 
 We must nov/ turn to the second method of interpreta- 
 tion, that which seeks in the features of the legend for 
 teleological indications, the prefigurement of a future and 
 what we may call the inward prophecy of coming tasks. If 
 the legend of the birth of Christ is born of the national 
 and popular consciousness of primitive Christianity as a 
 dream is born in the soul of a sleeper, we are right in seek- 
 ing beneath the symbolical figures which it brings to light 
 not only an indication of the conflict which agitates the 
 Christian soul but also a direction for the solution of this 
 conflict. 
 
 Now let us imagine the problem that such a life as that 
 of Christ would present to a sincere soul: the life of a man 
 with all the limitations and the physical weaknesses that 
 a human life implies, ending in the most tragic and igno- 
 minious of possible deaths, which is at the same time a 
 spiritually triumphant life without any of the blemishes 
 that generally go with human nature, a life that makes the 
 sovereign glory of God shine out before all eyes, a life 
 that was from one end to the other a testimony, a fervour 
 of the moral and religious consciousness, a certitude of God 
 the Father translated into action. How reconcile these 
 contraries? How bring into accord these oppositions, this 
 
126 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 life and this death, this triumph and this humiliation, this 
 spiritual royalty and this condemnation by the so-called 
 spiritual authorities? Truly, it is easy to imagine the con- 
 flict that must have agitated simple souls faced with these 
 facts in which they were participating without being able 
 to explain them. 
 
 We must also bear in mind the fact that the souls of 
 the common people do not live by historical truth any 
 more, for that matter, than do the souls of the cultivated, 
 whatever may be said to the contrary. People always live 
 by psychological truth, by the inner truth, first and fore- 
 most. Legends are not born as stories are born, invented 
 with the full consciousness of the inventor. They are born 
 as dreams are born, of an inner urge through which rise 
 up pell-mell all the subconscious elements that stir in the 
 depths of our being. Thus they are not falsehoods, or the 
 work of falsehood, but truths deeper than historical truth 
 and simply of another order; they have the multiform sin- 
 cerity that our dreams have; they contain the symbols of 
 the desires, the conflicts that agitate the soul of the period 
 as well as indications, for him who can interpret them, of 
 the way in which this soul may surmount the conflict. 
 
 "This man is not like any one else," the dream says to 
 the soul. "His parents are not his real parents. He was 
 not born of man but of God; and yet he is the son of a 
 woman. He was laid in a manger, surrounded by shep- 
 herds; he is a son of the people, a brother to each one of 
 us. But wise men from afar came to adore him; he is 
 more than a king." 
 
 In the course of the dream there appear, little by little, 
 the exigencies of the faith, the attitude that men must take 
 in relation to Christ in order to be able to respond to the 
 vocation which his life inspires. He must be regarded as 
 a man, purely as a man, a neighbour, a brother; and yet 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 127 
 
 he is more than this, he contains in himself a mystery. 
 To approach him is to feel that there is something more 
 in him. This is the psychological truth which the legend 
 reveals under these symbols in historical form. 
 
 And it is thus that we must interpret it, as the symbolic 
 indication of the spiritual attitude which believers would 
 have assumed before the great figure that approaches. 
 Here we have the teleological meaning of this prologue, as 
 it might be called, to the gospels. As long as we seek to 
 interpret it from the purely historical point of view, we 
 stumble upon contradictions or reach negative conclusions 
 that are painful to many souls. The psycho-analytic 
 method, applied to these accounts which it frankly regards 
 as legendary, gives us, it appears, the only logical and sat- 
 isfying issue. The question here is not one of historical 
 truth, the verification of which would always be impossible, 
 but of psychological truth.^" 
 
 Like the dream, the legend is not made up for amuse- 
 ment. It is born of a psychological conflict in the depths 
 of a people's soul; it forms its symbols out of the subcon- 
 scious tendencies at work in the human psyche; lastly, it 
 tends to indicate the possible issue out of this conflict by 
 dictating to man the moral attitude which he ought to as- 
 sume. When we consider the personality of Jesus, v/e see 
 
 22 In his preface to the translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus, Littre 
 wrote as long ago as .853 : "It is not permissible to alter the theological 
 accounts, or to introduce allegories into them, or to transform them 
 into natural facts. It is not permissible to deny them by regarding 
 them as impostures ; nor is it any more permissible to accept them as 
 realities. The reality lies elsewhere : it is of a mental or psychological 
 order, and in this sense they bear witness not to facts which actually 
 took place but to intellectual and moral movements which have modi- 
 fied society more deeply than the gravest material happenings could 
 ever do. This is the heart of the question" (p. XI). 
 
 Littre makes a mistake when he puts all the "theological accounts" 
 in the same category, and especially when he neglects to say what he 
 means by this phrase. He speaks of "moral and intellectual move- 
 ments" where he should have spoken of the subconscious life of the 
 soul. But his central intuition is correct; he realises that the deep 
 
128 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 that the legend of his origin possesses this character. It 
 offers to the Christian people the solution of the psycho- 
 logical conflict that was born in it through the contempla- 
 tion of the person of Christ. It says to this people: "Here 
 is a man who is more than a man; it is by seeking in the 
 man for the son of God that you will feel within yourself 
 the unloosening of the bonds and the melting of the ob- 
 stacles that hinder your own life." 
 
 It might, perhaps, be possible to push still further than 
 the psycho-analysts have done this analysis of the legend. 
 It might be shown that in the persons of the great heroes 
 humanity has found a symbol of its own highest life. 
 
 Just as, during his childhood, the hero struggles between 
 the two pairs of parents, the poor and humble parents, and 
 the royal or divine parents, so humanity, in every child, 
 recognises not only its earthly, animal descent, its natural 
 human descent, as it were, but also another origin that is 
 mysterious and quasi-divine; it is always struggling be- 
 tween these two descents which torment it and dominate 
 its whole development. 
 
 Again, just as the hero ends by overcoming the obstacles 
 of fate, and by finding his real father again, sometimes 
 
 reality of some of these accounts was of the "mental and psychological" 
 and not of the historical order. 
 
 A little further on, apropos of legends, he adds this : "Since they are 
 the products of the same faculty, legends in the field of political his- 
 tory can be compared with those that grow in the field of theology. 
 The former are always inferior to the reality which they mask, and 
 we only pardon them when they give rise to some such magnificent 
 epic as the songs of Homer. The second have a higher value than 
 reality, or rather they are reality, par excellence, since these legends 
 carry on their face the stamp of powerful forces and the causes of 
 transformation. Always and everywhere the imagination has a neces- 
 sary part to play, and we should mistake the very constitution of the 
 human spirit, of which it is an essential element, if we supposed that 
 it was ever absent" (p. XIX). 
 
 It is interesting to observe that in France, well before there was any 
 thought of psycho-analysis, ideas similar to those we have described 
 were already at work in people's minds and leading them to conclusions 
 that were analogous, although vaguer and less well founded. 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS 129 
 
 through suffering, sometimes while in the act of killing him 
 involuntarily, of sinning against him, so humanity can only 
 attain to the true life by finding again its true father, the 
 divine Father; and humanity too, in finding him, some- 
 times discovers that it has committed against him the most 
 heinous of crimes. 
 
 The legend of the hero is thus the symbol of a sublima- 
 tion that is necessary to humanity in order the better to 
 find life and accomplish its destiny, the symbol of a return 
 to the true Father, of a preservation of its true origins in 
 the face of everything that seems to deny them. Con- 
 fronted as we are with the accounts that precede the story 
 of Jesus, it is almost unnecessary to point out how eloquent 
 these symbols become. It is requisite that this child should 
 find again the true Father, of the race from which we all 
 spring. The elder brother, he precedes all his kindred along 
 the path of return to the true Father, beyond all the sec- 
 ondary paternities that human relations represent. With 
 him and through him humanity may take the same road, on 
 condition that it holds fast, in the hero, to that mystery 
 which, in him, is more than human. Hence the legend; 
 it expresses a reality which transcends that of history, it 
 seizes upon a psychic process and offers it, under a symbolic 
 form, to the good will of those who admire the hero. Those 
 Christians who, like Saint Paul, attain to a communion with 
 Christ which can be expressed in the words, "For me, to 
 live is Christ," realise that the highest life is achieved 
 through an identification of men with the hero, an identi- 
 fication which also causes them to pass from the relations 
 of human kinship to the supreme paternal relation. With 
 Christ they find again the true Father and recognise him 
 as such, in spite of the relationships of the flesh which, 
 superposing themselves upon it, often obliterate its image 
 by veiling its purity. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
 § I. INFLUENCES 
 
 We have, unfortunately, no details regarding the child- 
 hood of Jesus save the episode of the Temple, Luke ii, 41- 
 52. What were the circumstances that attended the un- 
 folding of his soul? What were the influences exercised 
 by his environment, the family, the local atmosphere? 
 These are among the many questions to which no gospel 
 text gives us any answer and which can be solved only 
 by conjecture, with some plausibility, however, if we take 
 into account what happened later together with the knowl- 
 edge we possess regarding Jewish education. 
 
 The childhood of Jesus was undoubtedly passed at Naz- 
 areth, "that little town," as Renan so well describes it, 
 "situated in a depression of open rolling country at the 
 summit of the group of mountains that inclose, on the north, 
 the plain of Esdraelon. To-day it has a population of three 
 or four thousand souls, and it cannot have varied greatly. 
 The cold is sharp in winter, and the climate is very health- 
 ful. Nazareth, like all Jewish towns of this period, con- 
 sisted of a dense mass of houses, built without regard to 
 style, and must have presented the same poor and barren 
 appearance as the Semitic villages of to-day. In all proba- 
 bility, the houses did not differ very much from those cubes 
 of stone, without external or internal elegance, which to-day 
 cover the most fertile parts of Lebanon, and which, scat- 
 tered among the vineyards and fig-trees, are nevertheless 
 very attractive indeed. The surroundings, moreover, are 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 131 
 
 charming. . . . Even to-day, Nazareth is a delightful place 
 to visit, the only place in Palestine perhaps where the soul 
 feels a little relief from the burden that oppresses it amid 
 this unequalled desolation. The population is good-hu- 
 moured and smiling; the gardens are fresh and green. An- 
 toninus Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, drew an 
 enchanting picture of the fertility of the surrounding coun- 
 try, which he compared to paradise.^ 
 
 "We can see the streets in which the child played in these 
 stony paths and these little cross-roads that separate the 
 houses. No doubt the dwelling of Joseph closely resembled 
 these poor huts, lighted by the door, serving at once as 
 stable, kitchen, and bedroom, and having as their furniture 
 a box, a few cushions on the ground, one or two clay jars, 
 and a painted chest." ^ 
 
 It seems as if we could imagine fairly well what must 
 have been the life of a child growing up in this village 
 environment, in the midst of a numerous family; for the 
 gospels tell us that Jesus had brothers and sisters. The 
 more or less fabulous accounts in the apochryphal gospels 
 of the games which he played with his companions rest upon 
 no solid basis. It is quite useless, in any case, to imagine 
 him as different from the others. He "increased in wisdom 
 and stature, and in favour with God and man"; ^ this 
 laconic summary of his development seems to correspond 
 best with the reality. 
 
 What instruction did he receive? "Among the ancient 
 Hebrews," Stapfer tells us, "the education of the child 
 took place in the family. We can find no trace of public 
 schools anywhere before the return from the exile. After 
 the Restoration, the scribes founded schools, but they were 
 
 * Renan, Vie de Jesus, pp. 27 et seqq. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 24. 
 
 8 Luke iii, 52. 
 
132 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 not intended for children, ... It was not until the year 
 64 A.D. that public schools were established generally.* 
 Nevertheless, it seems probable that in the time of Jesus 
 there was a school at Nazareth, directed no doubt not by 
 a master ad hoc, but simply by the Hazzan or factotum 
 of the synagogue. 
 
 Jesus learned to read and write, probably after the simple 
 methods of the Orient. The mother taught her child a verse 
 of the law as soon as he was able to speak. When he 
 knew this by heart, she taught him another. A little later 
 they placed in his hands the written text of the verses 
 he had learned; and by dint of repeating it in cadence with 
 his little comrades, he ended by knowing how to read. 
 
 The school added a little, very little, to this rudimentary 
 equipment. On the Sabbath day, the mothers also took 
 their children to the Hazzan for a sort of Sunday school, 
 which completed this elementary instruction. There is no 
 reason to suppose that Jesus ever attended the schools of 
 the scribes which gave one the right to the title of rabbi; 
 perhaps nothing of the kind existed at Nazareth. But he 
 knew enough to be able to read the books of the Law. 
 He knew the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, and perhaps the book 
 of Enoch. 
 
 But the great book which Jesus read and reread was 
 that of humanity and nature. In that admirable little work 
 Hilligenlei, Gustav Frenssen pictures him for us watching 
 everything that went on about him, seeing the parable of 
 the prodigal son enacted in his own village, observing the 
 children at their games. His sayings are full of reminis- 
 cences. The woman who shows her neighbours the piece 
 of silver she has found again, the shepherd carrying his 
 lamb on his shoulders, the father giving bread and not 
 
 4 Staffer, Edm., La Palestine au temps de Jesus-Christ. Paris, 
 Fischbacher, 1892, p. 141. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 133 
 
 stones to his children, all these things are scenes that have 
 taken place, that are drawn from life, observed undoubtedly 
 with the eyes that do not forget, the eyes of childhood, 
 observed with that clear vision which stamps things in 
 bright colours on the soul. 
 
 He watched men; he lingered to watch them. And he 
 saw nature also, with what a quick and fresh eye! And 
 nature in Galilee was charming. Here again we must quote 
 Renan: "The region round about Jerusalem," he says, "is 
 perhaps the most melancholy country in the world. Galilee, 
 on the contrary, was a very green, shady, smiling country, 
 the true land of the Song of Songs and the songs of the 
 well-beloved. During the two months of March and April, 
 the fields are a carpet of flowers, incomparably fresh in 
 their colour. The animals here are small but extremely 
 gentle. Slim, quick turtle-doves, bluebirds so light that 
 they perch on a grass-stem without bending it, crested larks 
 that all but alight beneath the feet of the traveller, little 
 brook turtles, with bright, soft eyes, storks with grave and 
 modest air, free from any timidity, allow themselves to be 
 closely approached by man and seem to call him. In no 
 country in the world do the mountains unroll more har- 
 moniously or inspire loftier feelings. Jesus seems to have 
 particularly loved them." ^ 
 
 The poetry of nature sang in his heart with a ravishing 
 simplicity and spontaneity. There are no or almost no 
 descriptions among his sayings; but the right expression 
 always comes to mark the emotion he has felt. And besides, 
 who can ever explain the effect of a natural setting on the 
 later development of a great soul? To experience as a 
 child a communion with nature that is spontaneous, free 
 from literary associations or coercion of any kind, is per- 
 haps one of the conditions of the normal evolution of the 
 
 5 Renan, op. cit., p. 67. 
 
134 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 religious process. The Father came to Jesus in this way, 
 as he came to him through his conscience. He heard him 
 speaking on the mountains of his country, through the lilies 
 of the field and the birds of the sky. 
 
 Side by side with this source of religious education, there 
 were others. One of the most important was the Holy 
 Scripture. We can distinguish without much difficulty the 
 books of the Old Testament that seem to have impressed 
 him most. The Law, the Torah, with its ten command- 
 ments, was well known to him; but it does not appear that 
 his sympathies flowed particularly in this direction. The 
 book of Psalms and that of the prophet Isaiah no doubt 
 spoke more forcibly to his heart. Later, we can imagine 
 the powerful consolation and the source of strength which 
 he found in reading Jeremiah, that just man, constantly 
 suffering and persecuted, faithful to the end, in whom Jesus 
 must have found so many points of resemblance with him- 
 self and his own fate. The apocryphal writings of the 
 Old Testament were current also, along with the books that 
 were definitely entered in the canon. No doubt, Jesus 
 read the book of Enoch and the Wisdom of Jesus the son 
 of Sirach. Finally, we should mention the book of Daniel; 
 this reflects, according to Renan, the ideas which were dear 
 to Persia and which made their way even to Rome, where 
 Virgil echoed them. Renan points out, not without reason, 
 that Greece had excellent historians and admirable philoso- 
 phers, but that it never possessed a system of the philosophy 
 of history, embracing all humanity. The Semite, on the 
 contrary, is quick to seize the great lines of the future; 
 he has the prophetic gift. "Perhaps he may owe a little 
 of this spirit to Persia," Renan remarks. "Persia," he con- 
 tinues, "had from very early times conceived of the history 
 of the world as a series of cycles, over each of which a 
 prophet presided. Each prophet had his hazar, or reign 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 135 
 
 of a thousand years (chiliasm), and of these successive 
 ages, analogous to the millions of centuries that fell to 
 each Buddha in India, there was made up the course of 
 events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end 
 of time, when the circle of chiliasms was completed, would 
 come the final paradise. Then men would live happily; the 
 earth would be like a plain; there would be only one tongue, 
 one law, and one government for all men. But this out- 
 come was to be preceded by terrible calamities. Dahak 
 (the Satan of Persia) was to break the irons that enchained 
 him and hurl himself upon the world. Two prophets were 
 to come to console men and prepare them for the great 
 event." ^ 
 
 Such are the apocalyptic ideas with which the book of 
 Daniel and that of Enoch are inspired throughout. They 
 had gradually permeated the Jewish mind, harmonising as 
 they did with the messianic idea of the prophets. Every- 
 where people were expecting the great renewal and the 
 work of the Messiah. On the other hand, national events 
 had broken the people's faith in the Old Testament con- 
 ception that the righteous man is rewarded here below for 
 his righteousness and driven the spirit to seek for another 
 solution. The book of Job is a v/itness of this restless and 
 ardent search. The idea of the resurrection, of a new reign 
 of the righteous, who would return to earth and participate 
 in the triumph of the Messiah, became more and more 
 general. While the Sadducees would have nothing to do 
 with it, the Pharisees, who had the ear of the people, had 
 adopted it. Jesus, from the moment when he began to 
 reflect, found himself in a spiritual atmosphere that was 
 drenched with these ideas and these hopes. They were 
 not taught in any school, but they were in the air. The 
 pious lived in them. A few zealots carried their faith in 
 
 «Renan, op. cit, p. 49. 
 
136 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 them to the point of exaltation; and as a result of the 
 pressure which the Roman yoke exerted on the people, they 
 emerged under the form of sedition and revolt. Death was 
 accounted nothing. The zealots killed those who disre- 
 garded the law. Messiahs who were more or less poli- 
 ticians, men like Judas the Gaulonite, led the multitude 
 into a holy war against those who imposed the census upon 
 them and demanded for Caesar the money which they owed 
 to God alone, since he was the sole Master. 
 
 Of all these things the child Jesus heard people talking.'^ 
 While he was growing in wisdom and in grace, he was 
 separating, in his heart, the good grain from the tares, and 
 gradually becoming aware not only of what was extravagant 
 and carnal in the popular demands, but also of the mag- 
 nificent enthusiasm which was manifesting itself under these 
 often barbarous outbursts of the popular spirit. Attentive 
 thus early to the paternal voice which spoke in him, he re- 
 discovered it — perverted, altered, often all but unrecognisa- 
 ble — in these violent underground currents in the conscious- 
 ness of his people. With his first enthusiasms his first 
 sufferings were to begin: as he listened to what they were 
 saying in the workshop in Nazareth, how many times his 
 heart must have leaped with mingled joy and indignation! 
 A powerful education, the talk of the common people, when 
 it is absorbed by a consciousness worthy of the name! 
 
 Did Jesus undergo any other education than this? Must 
 we look in him for the influence of a caste, a more or less 
 
 ''The influence of the apocalyptic eschatology on Jesus has formed 
 the subject of an immense number of discussions started among the 
 theologians under the influence of Wrede. A summary of these is to 
 be found in chaps. XIX-XXI of Alb. Schweitzer, Geschichte der 
 Lehen-Jesu Forscliung. Tiibingen. Mohr, 1918. 
 
 Cf. also Wrede, Messiasgeheimiiis in den Evangelien. Gottingen, 
 1901, pp. 206. 
 
 Schweitzer, A., Das Messianifdts- und Leidensgeheimnis. Eine 
 Skisse des Lebens Jesu. Tiibingen-Leipzig, 1901, pp. 109. 
 
 See also below, chap. IV, §3 and chap. VII. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 137 
 
 sectarian moral or religious group? Did he receive some 
 sort of esoteric teaching, of which the traces are to be 
 found later in his own teachings? There are some who 
 believe that this was the case, and they name as among 
 the masters of Jesus the Essenes, that little known and 
 more or less monastic order which was distinguished by its 
 severely ascetic practices, derived probably from the Orient. 
 M. Schure has built up the portrait he gives us of Jesus 
 in Les grands inities on this uncertain foundation. The 
 theosophists ® have followed him. "The Essenes had their 
 dwellings," says Renan,^ "on the borders of the Dead Sea. 
 Abstinence from flesh, from wine, from sexual pleasures was 
 the accepted novitiate of the revealers of the truth. It is 
 supposed that the leaders of the sect were hermits having 
 their own rules and institutions like the founders of re- 
 ligious orders. The masters of the young men were also 
 at times anchorites of a kind, somewhat like the gourous ^" 
 of Brahmanism." 
 
 Two lives of Jesus, dating from the end of the eight- 
 eenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, that of 
 Karl-Friedrich Bahrdt, Ausjiihrung des Plans und Zwecks 
 Jesu ( 1 784-1 792) and that of Venturini, Natiirliche Ge- 
 schichte des grossen Propheten von Nazareth (1800- 1802) 
 are probably responsible for this association of Jesus with 
 the Essenes. We have only to analyse their contents to 
 show the inanity of the hypothesis. I shall do this in a 
 few words: 
 
 Bahrdt, who, for the rest, had a far from edifying life, finds 
 the key to the history of Jesus in two personages, Nicodemus 
 and Joseph of Arimathea, who, as it appears to him, can have 
 been nothing else than Essenes. Now this order possessed its 
 
 s Cf. Besant, a., Esoteric Christianity. 
 ^ Renan, op. cit. p. loi. 
 ^° Spiritual preceptors. 
 
138 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 secret members in all circles of societ}'', even in the Sanhedrin. 
 Their object was to deliver the people from their earthy and 
 material messianic conceptions and lead them to a more ele- 
 vated knowledge. For this reason it was necessary to find a 
 Messiah who would come to destroy the false messianic hope. 
 Jesus was the natural son of Mary. The Alexandrian Jews, 
 Essenes themselves, succeed in approaching him, show him how 
 the priests are triumphing over the people, and make known 
 to him the teachings of Socrates and Plato. When they tell 
 him the story of the death of Socrates the child falls into con- 
 vulsions, and henceforth desires but one thing, the crown of a 
 martyr. 
 
 A clever Persian later gives him two secrets in the market- 
 place at Nazareth: one against the evil eye, the other the secret 
 of curing people who are afflicted with nervous disorders. Then 
 an Essenian priest, disguised as a shepherd, instructs him grad- 
 ually in the wisdom of the Essenes. At twelve Jesus is already 
 so well prepared that he disputes with the scribes in the Temple 
 and proves to them that miracles are impossible. 
 
 Luke, the doctor, is then introduced to him and places his 
 science at his service. They decide to delude the people, having 
 recourse to miracles and deceptions, and Jesus assumes the role 
 of the Messiah in order to deliver them from their superstitions. 
 He has serious scruples about doing this. But he is obliged to 
 obey the order; and they point out to him the high aim to be 
 attained and tell him that Moses did the same thing. 
 
 When the time comes for him to be received as one of the 
 brothers of the first degree, it is revealed to him that the latter 
 are bound to die for the order, but that the order, by a secret 
 procedure, can rescue them from death. 
 
 Here we are told that the Essenes were divided into three 
 categories, the baptised, the disciples, and the chosen. The first 
 receive only the common, popular doctrine; the disciples go fur- 
 ther, without being initiated into the ultimate secrets ; the chosen, 
 also called "angels" in the gospels, are completely initiated. Now 
 the apostles possessed only the second degree; they were dis- 
 ciples; therefore they did not know the secret plot and they be- 
 lieved in the miiracles which the initiates had arranged. 
 
 Jesus had two methods of teaching: one for the initiates, the 
 other for the non-initiates. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 139 
 
 The members of the order assembled on fixed days in the 
 caves of the mountain. When Jesus, as the gospels tell us, went 
 alone to the mountain to pray, it means that he was going to 
 one of these meetings of the order. 
 
 At one of these meetings, the Essenian authorities arrived 
 at the conclusion that only material actions could succeed in 
 conquering matter. It was necessary that the Jewish Messiah 
 should visibly die and be raised again in order at once to fulfil 
 the popular expectation and to destroy it, while at the same time 
 spiritualising it. Luke guaranteed that, with the help he would 
 give him, Jesus could endure the sufferings of the crucifixion. 
 Nicodemus would do his best to arrange everything in the San- 
 hedrin so that the judgment and the removal from the cross would 
 follow one another closely; the crucified would remain only for 
 a short time fastened to the cross. The discussion had reached 
 this point when Jesus suddenly dashed into the cave, pursued 
 by hired assassins who were trying to kill him. It was important 
 for him to escape death at their hands before the great scene. 
 
 In the end they are successful. Matters move quickly. The 
 condemnation is pronounced. Jesus, crucified, has just died, 
 uttering a great cry. Joseph of Arimathea carries the body into 
 the tomb. There Luke has prepared heroic remedies; Jesus is 
 restored to his feet; the stone is thrown down; the guard flees. 
 Then follow the successive appearances before the disciples and 
 finally the separation on the Mount of Olives. Jesus retires to his 
 mother's house and henceforth ceases to mingle in public life; 
 but until his death he presides, invisibly and from afar, over the 
 life of the community. 
 
 In the case of Venturini we are dealing with a far more inter- 
 esting, devout, and honest mind. Venturini died in poverty after 
 a hard life. His Life of Jesus has been re-issued almost every 
 year since his death, which shows how much it is still read. We 
 shall only consider it in connection with one special point: the 
 relation between Jesus and the Essenes. Venturini has no doubt 
 of the influence of this order on Jesus; he dates it from the 
 stay of the holy family in Eg3^t. From this time on, the 
 Essenes, with the help of his cousin John, watched over the 
 education of Christ to prepare him for his task as the Redeemer. 
 Venturini, however, has nothing to do with the bizarre and un- 
 
I40 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 pleasant conception of Bahrdt, who makes it all a sordid comedy. 
 He sees in the attempt of the Essenes something far more serious. 
 According to him, Jesus shares the intention of the heads of 
 the order to educate the popular conscience ; he even goes beyond 
 them and undertakes personally to turn people's minds from 
 their earthly and vulgar faith in a Messiah, by becoming some- 
 thing else and giving himself for something else. For a moment 
 he seems to succeed, at the time of his triumphant entry into 
 Jerusalem ; but the people turn against him and the condemnation 
 follows quickly. Jesus goes to his death, believing himself that 
 he is really dying. It is only later, after the descent from the 
 cross, that Joseph of Arimathea, observing the blood on the 
 wounds, conceives the hope that Christ is still living. He then 
 goes in haste for the members of the order; one of them arrives 
 In white raiment: this is the angel who frightened the guards. 
 All together they decide to watch over the body. For twenty- 
 four hours nothing happens. Towards morning, however, the 
 brother on guard hears a noise; it is Jesus rising. Then the 
 whole order bestirs itself and they carry him to the house of 
 the society. Two brothers remain at the tomb; these are the 
 two angels whom the women saw. Then Jesus shows himself 
 to his followers for forty days, after which his strength is ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 Here we have a summary of the two lives of Jesus upon 
 which are founded the affirmations of those who maintain 
 that Jesus was an Essene, or was influenced from his child- 
 hood by the Essenian ideas. One can see how flimsy the 
 basis is. Bahrdt and Venturini themselves proceed in this 
 matter by assertions. They give no legitimate foundation 
 for their claims. They limit themselves to making state- 
 ments. At this rate we can imagine anything we wish; 
 nothing is easier. 
 
 A few very superficial resemblances between the teaching 
 of Jesus and that of the Essenes, such, for example, as 
 the refusal to take oaths, are not sufficient to establish this 
 connection on any firm basis. Jesus cannot be called an 
 Essene merely because, like the Essenes, he gathered about 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 141 
 
 him a circle of disciples, or because he counselled his fol- 
 lowers not to take money, or to have two tunics." It must 
 be remembered that Essenism was a sort of monachism that 
 fled the world and avoided all contact with it; there was 
 something sectarian about it, something that denied reality. 
 This, indeed, was its essential character. But Jesus desires 
 to act upon the world; he does not wish his disciples to 
 withdraw from it but to change it. One of the precepts 
 of the Essenes is the following: "Whoever meets his own 
 brother, if the latter is not a member of the order or even 
 a novice, must take a bath of purification; for, by this 
 contact alone, he has become impure." What has this in 
 common with the spirit of Jesus and the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan? Jesus breathes the joy of action; the 
 Essenes retired into the solitudes, sheltering themselves 
 from the world. Finally, the order of the Essenes was a 
 sacramentarian community; the essential thing for its mem- 
 bers was the sacred acts celebrated in common, the vows, 
 the purifications, the sacred feasts. Jesus, on the contrary, 
 directs his activity towards that which is spiritual and per- 
 sonal. Even when he celebrated the Last Supper it is doubt- 
 ful if he had any intention of inaugurating a sacrament; 
 this seems improbable. In any case, he had no desire to 
 found a community of monks. 
 
 There is then, we may conclude, only a superficial re- 
 semblance between Essenism and Jesus, and nothing that 
 might lead us to suppose that there was any deep connec- 
 tion between this movement and the person of Christ. It 
 is entirely possible that, as a child, Jesus may have heard 
 the Essenes spoken of and that his mind may have lingered 
 over some of their customs and a few of their practices. 
 But to imagine that his education was controlled by the 
 
 1^ Cf. Staffer, Jesus-Christ, sa pcrsonn-e, son auforitr, son cucre, 
 III, p. 185. Id., La Palestine au temps de Jesus-Christ, ch. XIV. 
 
142 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 Essenes or even that any individual Essene exercised any 
 influence over his early years is a purely gratuitous suppo- 
 sition the improbability of which becomes striking on a 
 careful reading of the gospels. 
 
 § 2. JESUS IN THE TEMPLE AT THE AGE OF TWELVE 
 
 One single detail of the childhood of Jesus is known to 
 us. It is that related in the gospel of Luke ii, 41-52: the 
 scene of the Temple. It has been preserved by only one 
 of the evangelists. On the other hand, this scene is so 
 much in accord with the modern findings of psychology, 
 it is so readily explicable at just this period in the life of 
 Christ, it so perfectly places his personality at this moment 
 of his psychological development, and it harmonises so 
 exactly with the subsequent events of this development that 
 it would be unwise to suspect its authenticity. 
 
 Jesus was twelve years old. In the Oriental countries 
 this age corresponds to a more advanced period of physical 
 development than with us. It is about the age of puberty, 
 when the child becomes or is about to become an adult. 
 It is the period of physical and psychic disturbances, the 
 springtime of the soul, what the English call the storm and 
 stress period. With us, this age is marked, from the re- 
 ligious point of view, by the catechism; it is the time when 
 children are given their religious instruction. The Church 
 was led by a very sure psychological instinct in choosing 
 this moment when life is at the crossroads for the essential 
 decisions concerning herself. She obeyed the same instinct 
 which, among the savage peoples, summons to the initiation 
 the young who are about to become men and administers 
 to them the vows in the initiatory rites. Among the Jews, 
 the recitation of the Schema, the prayer which every man 
 must repeat morning and evening, became obligatory at 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 143 
 
 the age of twelve. The young man was thus in a sense 
 admitted to the religious community of the men; he took 
 his place in the number of those who counted. "He had 
 to observe the Torah; he was given the name of Bar 
 Mitsvah. He was taken to the Temple for the festivals, 
 and he began to fast regularly, in particular on the great 
 day of the feast of Atonement." ^^ 
 
 Now we know to-day, through the investigations of 
 psychology, that this age, which varies with race and cli- 
 mate, in which the most important and the most trying 
 physiological changes take place, is also the moment of 
 parallel and capital psychic transformations. The child 
 is on the point of becoming a man; and this does not take 
 place without crises. The studies in religious psychology 
 of Starbuck, Wm. James, J. Leuba, G. Coe have shown 
 us that these psychic crises manifest themselves very 
 clearly in the religious life and that the age of puberty is 
 also, roughly speaking, in the great majority of cases, the 
 age of conversion. We shall take up this point later, in 
 connection with Jesus. For the moment, let us merely re- 
 member the fact. 
 
 It is quite natural, from what we have already said, that 
 Jesus, having reached the age of twelve, should have made 
 the journey to Jerusalem with Joseph and Mary. We can 
 easily imagine what this project and its approaching reali- 
 sation, glimpsed through the mists of the future, must have 
 meant to him. To see the Temple was to know at last the 
 mystery which remains veiled from the eyes of children; 
 it was to approach a revelation similar to that to which 
 devout young Protestants look in their religious instruction. 
 Up to this moment Jesus can have caught but vague 
 glimpses of the problems that arise slowly before the human 
 soul. He had probably lived by intuition rather than by 
 
 12 Staffer, La Palestine au temps d€ Jesus-Christ, pp. 142-144. 
 
144 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 solutions, as happens at this age. It does not appear that 
 he had experienced any of those violent conflicts which 
 often indelibly stamp the souls of children and cause dis- 
 astrous repressions. In these simple surroundings, life, de- 
 veloping without shocks, presented fewer contradictions 
 than in our great cities of to-day. Family duty and social 
 duty were, so to speak, more natural than they are in the 
 bosom of our complicated civilisations in which the instincts 
 are brutally struck down by the exigencies of a hurried 
 and conventional life. Besides, there was undoubtedly in 
 the soul of this child a harmony which we rarely know. We 
 shall say later what makes us think this. 
 
 "The pilgrimage," writes Renan, "was for the Jews of 
 the provinces a ceremony full of sweetness. Entire series 
 of psalms were consecrated to the singing of the happiness 
 of families journeying thus for several days in the spring- 
 time, over the hills and the valleys, having always before 
 them the splendours of Jerusalem, the terrors of the sacred 
 parvis, the joy of brothers dwelling together.^^ The road 
 that Jesus usually followed on these journeys was that 
 which one follows to-day through Jenin and Shechem. 
 From Shechem to Jerusalem it is very difficult. But the 
 approach to the old sanctuaries of Shiloh and Bethel, close 
 to which we pass, keeps our souls on the watch, Ain-el- 
 Haramie, the last stop, is a melancholy and charming spot, 
 and few impressions equal that which we experience when 
 we make camp there in the evening. The valley is narrow 
 and sombre; a black stream flows from the rocks, pierced 
 with tombs, which form its sides. It is, I believe, the 
 'Valley of Tears,' whose trickling waters, sung as one of 
 the stations of the road in the delicious Psalm LXXXIV, 
 became for the sweet, sad mysticism of the Middle Ages 
 
 13 See especially Psalms Ixxxiv, cxxii, cxxxiii (Vulgate, Ixxxiii, 
 cxxi, cxxxii). 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 145 
 
 the emblem of life. Early the next morning one will be 
 at Jerusalem; even to-day this expectation cheers the cara- 
 van, rendering the night short and sleep light." ^* 
 
 We can easily imagine this more or less nomadic life 
 which the people adopted as they set off in their caravans. 
 We see that many-coloured Oriental crowd, invading the 
 streets and the squares of the capital: a swarm of asses, 
 men, women, and children that filled every spot. They 
 went into the Temple; they came out again; they crossed 
 one another's paths in all directions. Our regular and 
 comfortable life knows nothing of such carelessness and 
 such disorder. The meal hours, which bring the family 
 back to a fixed spot, did not exist for these Oriental chil- 
 dren; they were entirely given over to their passion for 
 seeing and hearing. It was thus undoubtedly that Jesus 
 stepped through the doors of the Temple and approached 
 the doctors and the scribes. He listened, he observed; his 
 heart was filled with that indefinable charm of dreams that 
 are at last realised. He heard them speaking of those things 
 of which, without his knowing it, his soul had always been 
 full. He went away and came back; and the hours passed 
 and even the days without his being aware of them. Life 
 like this was good. His parents were not disturbed, so 
 natural it was, so much almost a matter of course, that a 
 child should live as he liked during the festival. It was 
 only when they had set out for home and after they had 
 inquired among their relatives and friends, that Joseph and 
 Mary began to be anxious and retraced their steps. They 
 found him in the Temple, seated in the midst of the doc- 
 tors, listening to them and questioning them. Then to their 
 reproaches Jesus answers: "How is it that ye sought me? 
 Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" ^° 
 
 1* Renan, op. cit., pp. 71-72. 
 15 Luke ii, 49. 
 
146 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 A reply at once full of assurance and surprise! For 
 the first time, Jesus is aware of a difference between his 
 own experience and that of his parents. He is astonished 
 that they do not know, when he is completely occupied with 
 the one thing necessary. What is more, he affirms, as the 
 simplest fact in the world, the urgency of his duty, to be 
 about his Father's business. Whence does this entirely 
 natural appellation "My Father" come to him? Where 
 has he found it? How is it possible for him to use it with 
 such perfect simplicity in replying to his own parents? We 
 have here evidently the spontaneous, direct testimony of 
 a new experience, one which, for him, surpasses all others, 
 an experience which he believes is common to all . . . and 
 behold, his parents do not know of it! He perceives that 
 they are ignorant, or that they appear to be ignorant, of 
 what is now for him the centre of life: his Father's business, 
 that which relates to his Father, to the God who speaks 
 in him. 
 
 Every candid child has had similar surprises, every child, 
 at least, who, about to become a man, has looked at the 
 world with a frank soul, a soul directed by God. But with 
 us they are quickly effaced by our participation in the 
 common insincerity which places the cares of the outer 
 world before the inner truth. People persuade us — and we 
 are easily persuaded — that we are foolish to have believed 
 in the primacy of the conscience and the sovereignty of 
 absolute truth; and it is then that we begin to waver be- 
 tween serious morality and distraction. 
 
 With Jesus, nothing of this kind occurs. His testimony 
 to the truth which he has seized inwardly is complete and 
 absolute. He suffers from no division of mind. Hence his 
 astonishment that others, especially his parents, do not 
 know what he knows. 
 
 But what does he know? That he must be about his 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 147 
 
 Father's business, that this is the first, the urgent duty 
 which takes precedence over all the rest. — And for how 
 long has he known this? Just for a moment, no doubt. 
 He has always felt it, but he has felt it only obscurely. 
 Now he knows it, and it is this which is new. 
 
 We spoke a moment ago of the age of Jesus and the 
 age of conversions. Is there not a connection between what 
 has just taken place in his soul and the facts of conversion 
 as they have been studied by the psychologists? Certainly, 
 and to make it clear let us recall briefly what, from the 
 psychological point of view, conversion is. 
 
 If we consider the consciousness as a sort of constant 
 current of concepts, ideas, images, volitions, etc., accompa- 
 nied by their affective coefficients, conversion, every con- 
 version, whether to religion or to atheism, is constituted 
 psychically by the fixation of the person's focus of energy 
 upon a certain group of associated ideas, images, etc., which 
 become decisively preponderant and marked. If it is re- 
 ligious ideas which become the centre, the conversion will 
 be a religious conversion. That is the schema of the 
 process of conversion. For conversion to take place, then, 
 one field of consciousness must be substituted for another, 
 through the sudden variation of the person's focus of en- 
 ergy, or, if you will, of his interest. In reality, however, 
 the process is less schematic than this and is complicated 
 by all sorts of secondary circumstances. 
 
 If now, altering a little the position of our glass, we 
 change our angle of vision and look at conversion from 
 the point of viev/ of psycho-analysis and the observations 
 it has given us on the human personality, we find approxi- 
 mately the following: at the base of human life there is 
 a sort of cluster of instinctive energies (the libido) which 
 rise in the being with a variable force. These instinctive 
 impulses are most frequently repressed during childhood 
 
148 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 by social, pedagogical, and moral restrictions. But they 
 tend to re-emerge, producing destructive effects if they are 
 prevented from doing so; if they are not prevented, they 
 come forth, the occasion and the conditions being given 
 them, and are transformed, sublimated into noble and lofty 
 aspirations; they cease to be merely instinctive and be- 
 come morally and socially utilisable. From this point of 
 view, conversion is a sublimation of the inferior forces of 
 the being into superior forces, a sudden or slow passage 
 of the vital force from an instinctive level to a reflective 
 level. The being then realises the possibilities of its life 
 along religious lines and rises from the sphere of instinctive 
 desires to that of the effective realisation of the personality 
 in divine love. 
 
 I shall not dwell upon this schema, although it might be 
 carried much further. But may we not suppose that some- 
 thing of the kind took place in Jesus at this time? Yes, 
 but mutatis mutandis. We might say that there took place 
 in his life something equivalent to what would be a conver- 
 sion in our own, but that it was not a conversion in the 
 generally accepted meaning of the term. 
 
 Let us attempt, then, to understand the relation estab- 
 lished between what took place in Jesus in the Temple and 
 what, in the religious world, we call a conversion. Let us 
 see at the same time how and why the two things differ; 
 in what respects Jesus, being a man, underwent, in his 
 spiritual development, an evolution analogous to that which 
 every man worthy of the name must undergo; and how 
 the circumstances, the details, the psychic processes of this 
 transformation differed from those which we observe in 
 ourselves. 
 
 If we combine the contributions of religious psychology 
 and those of psycho-analysis in regard to conversion, we 
 find ourselves in a position to form a fairly exact idea 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 149 
 
 of the great psychic transformation which takes place in 
 the adolescent at the moment when he enters manhood. 
 We know that at this eminently critical hour of his develop- 
 ment, a complete readaptation of the forces of life to the 
 environment must take place. The child is no longer a 
 child, that is to say, the infantile life, characterised by a 
 scattering of interests, comes to an end. Up to this time, 
 the child has allowed his interest to wander over all objects 
 and attach itself to any and every idea in a confused flut- 
 tering. James has compared the variations of the emotive 
 tension in such a divided and hesitating personality to the 
 sparks which run hither and thither over a scrap of burning 
 paper. The comparison may be applied to the soul of the 
 child. With him the libido, the elan vital, projects itself 
 successively and without discernment upon all the objects 
 that attract his attention. 
 
 Now, to become a man, to form one's personality, to 
 pass into the adult state, is, from the psychical point of 
 view, to become a unit. At the age of which we are speak- 
 ing, the life-impulse becomes very strong; the instinctive 
 forces spring up with great power; and, at the same time, 
 they are obliged to adapt themselves to the surrounding 
 reality. The young man finds himself faced with this task 
 of harmonising his personality with the life which he must 
 live. 
 
 At the moment when this violent movement takes place 
 the subconscious forces that spring up in us are of a very 
 diverse nature. We are confronted with instincts that may 
 be avowed and others that have already been repressed 
 by the censor. The cluster of our libido is composite and 
 multiple. It does not adapt itself as it is to the life which 
 we must live. We sometimes feel with anguish that there 
 are impulses within us which cannot come out as they are, 
 which must be sublimated in order to become utilisable. 
 
150 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 And the more a young man feels at this moment the neces- 
 sity of this sublimation, the more he is attracted to the 
 religious life and to conversion. The crisis becomes immi- 
 nent which will make all his energies converge to elevate 
 his vital level. 
 
 But this psychic process always presents itself under the 
 form of a crisis because in us it early meets with numberless 
 repressions with which it must reckon. In the course of 
 our childhood we have not candidly submitted ourselves 
 to the inner urge of our instincts. Nor have we accepted 
 candidly the obstacles that society or the family has op- 
 posed to them. There has been a disruption within us 
 between a will to good and a will to evil ; we have at times, 
 in one way or another, confirmed in our hearts the censor 
 that is opposed to us, even while persevering in the instinct 
 that pleased us. We have already felt ourselves to be 
 double; there has been an opposition within us between 
 the man of the fiesh and the man of the spirit. And when 
 the moment comes to make a unity in us, there is a terrible 
 duality to surmount. The inner life-urge cannot be accepted 
 just as it is. In order that we may become children of the 
 Father and worthy of the human task, in order that sub- 
 limation may take place in us, a crisis becomes necessary 
 in which the whole being turns back upon itself. This is 
 what we call a conversion. 
 
 But we can imagine this accession to the plenitude of 
 the human task taking place in another fashion. We can 
 imagine a man in whom, from childhood, life has been 
 so spontaneous, and the accord between the inner vital urge 
 and the external exigencies so complete, the adhesion so 
 unanimous to all the demands, all the postulates of life, 
 that there is no duplicity in him, that instead of a duality 
 he contains a harmony. Imagine this child reaching the 
 age of manhood; the new adaptation that such a trans- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 151 
 
 formation demands, the accession to personal responsibil- 
 ities, the necessity of choosing for oneself the direction of 
 one's life and the handling of one's human tasks, these 
 things would require no crisis, but simply an unfolding. 
 And this indeed is what seems to have taken place in Jesus. 
 To speak our modern language, the scene in the Temple 
 signifies that his whole life-urge had been placed at the 
 service of the highest task, and this as a perfectly natural 
 thing, as a matter of course, Jesus has no need to be 
 converted in order to adapt himself to the highest life, 
 that is to set about his Father's business. He does this 
 naturally and is astonished that his parents are not aware 
 of it. This seems to be the unique case in which, when the 
 moment has come, that is to say at the time of adolescence, 
 a libido has sublimated itself entirely into religious forces 
 and placed itself at the service of the Father. The love 
 of God, in its holiest and most lofty form, absorbs the 
 whole force of life which exists in Christ. With him at this 
 moment there is no crisis at all. The crisis will occur later 
 when the time comes for him to realise in a human and 
 sinful environment the attitude towards life which he has 
 assumed here. It is the scene of the Temptation which 
 shows us a crisis in the life of Jesus, not that of the Temple; 
 while with us, there is a crisis not only when we seek to 
 realise our duty in a practical way and translate it into 
 deeds, but before this time as well, at the moment when 
 we seek to make the attitude of duty the true attitude of 
 our life, the moment when we perceive, often with terror, 
 always with a partial revolt, that we must be about our 
 Father's business. 
 
 While the scene in the Temple occupies, then, in the 
 life of Jesus, the same place that conversion occupies in 
 our own life, the correspondence is not complete; and by 
 this very fact it reveals to us a difference between our 
 
152 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 lives and his, not in their essential psychic nature, but in 
 respect of the spiritual mystery which lies at the base of 
 every personality. Conscious of this mysterious superiority 
 of Christ, men in all ages have attempted to explain it 
 metaphysically. In this we shall follow neither the theo- 
 logians nor the councils. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 
 
 § I. THE BAPTISM 
 
 After the scene in the Temple, nothing is known about 
 Jesus for a considerable period, fifteen or sixteen years. 
 The gospels are mute regarding this whole epoch in the life 
 of Christ, and we are reduced to conjectures about it. Ah! 
 if only the discovery of some new manuscript might throw 
 light for us one of these days upon this silent and secluded 
 development. This is improbable, but it is always possible. 
 There remains to us only the resource of picturing to our- 
 selves the sweetness and the harmony of these years, of 
 this lingering youth, passed partly in the labours of the 
 paternal workshop, partly in solitary meditation. What 
 labour, illumined by the simple joy of a simple life! And 
 what meditations! 
 
 It was during this time undoubtedly that the subcon- 
 sciousness of Jesus amassed that ample provision of scenes 
 from life which were to emerge later in the form of the 
 wonderful parables that have come down to us like oases 
 of freshness and grace in the desert of the days. He con- 
 tinued to watch, to observe, without any mental reserva- 
 tions, to contemplate life. He thought of the future, cer- 
 tainly, but not with the anguish and the eager anxiety that 
 the great men of coming times were to know only too well. 
 In the peace of his clear soul, the immense possibilities of 
 life awaited the occasion which, in due time, the Father 
 would certainly present to him. Jesus had not yet made 
 any plans. He simply felt growing within him that effluvium 
 
 153 
 
154 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 of divine life which makes the heart tremble with joy. He 
 felt himself borne forward by the force within him of the 
 good news come from Heaven to man. He desired what 
 the Father desired, and he was happy in it. Heretofore 
 this will had not defined itself clearly outside the sphere of 
 simple everyday duties. Jesus, however, was listening. A 
 sort of solemn expectation must have hovered over his life 
 and greeted all his mornings. 
 
 It was then that there resounded even as far as Nazareth 
 the fame of the strange prophet who was baptising on the 
 banks of the Jordan, in the neighbourhood of Bethsaida 
 and ^non. Hardly older than Jesus himself, almost his 
 contemporary and therefore in the full flower of his youth, 
 he astonished the people of Jerusalem and Judsea by his 
 preaching. It was like the blast of a trumpet suddenly 
 awakening the sleeping consciences of the people of God. 
 He spoke as the ancient prophets had spoken, but more 
 forcibly and directly than they. He announced a new era, 
 for which tlie time had come to prepare. He said, "The 
 axe is laid unto the root of the trees" and he maintained 
 that of the very stones of the road God could make children 
 of Abraham. Here at last was a true spiritual message, 
 different from that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and 
 which directly echoed the experiences of life which Jesus 
 had for so long felt welling up within him. It was like a 
 herald's note announcing that Christ was awaiting the occa- 
 sion to come forth from the Nazarene shadows and go 
 wherever God should send him. 
 
 With the others, like the others, Jesus felt himself drawn. 
 He must go down there, and watch, and listen. They were 
 too beautiful, those tidings of the crowds who came to be 
 baptised, confessing their sins. It was the beginning of the 
 light, the complete radiance of which Jesus felt in himself, 
 the beginning of the irradiation of the enlightened for the 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 155 
 
 sake of the rest. Jesus betook himself to the Jordan; he 
 walked to the desert solitudes that border on the Dead Sea. 
 he made his way to where John the Baptist was. He ap- 
 proached. . . .Ah! how we should like to have seen him 
 at the moment when he arrived there, perhaps during one 
 of the apostrophes of the Baptist. With what eyes did he 
 look upon the inspired hermit! What feelings of joy and 
 solemn sanctity passed at that moment through his soul ! 
 
 At this point the gospels break their silence to describe 
 for us in a few lines the Baptism of Jesus. Nothing about 
 the thoughts that must have passed through his mind. 
 Only the fact; but how eloquent in its simplicity! It is the 
 act of social and moral solidarity, with everything which 
 this implies in the way of renunciation and humiliation. 
 Mingling with the crowd of sinners v/ho have need of re- 
 pentance and pardon (and how great a need!) he who feels 
 that his soul is pure and his conscience spotless advances. 
 He is but one with the others; he wishes to be but one with 
 them. Little matter the consequences that are to result 
 from this and the obstacles that are to be spread in his 
 way! Jesus feels that this is to "fulfil all righteousness."^ 
 Righteousness y in the eyes of such backsliders as our- 
 selves, consists in assigning to each his proper value, not 
 confounding our own innocence with the sin of our neigh- 
 bour. For Jesus, who has developed all of a piece, who 
 has allowed Life to work its will in him, who finds in the 
 very urge of his deepest instincts the Father and the will 
 of the Father, there is a higher righteousness than that of 
 distinctions, the righteousness of a deliberately chosen 
 solidarity with all his brothers." He wants to be baptised 
 with the sinners; he asks to be included with all the others. 
 His purity does not separate him from the circle of the sin- 
 
 1 Matthew iii, 15. 
 
 2 Cf. in connection with this the conception of justice in Isaiah xxv. 
 
156 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 ners, but rather leads him into it; and the more he feels 
 himself to be the son of God, the more he desires to be the 
 son of man. 
 
 In response to this voluntary humiliation, this accepted 
 solidarity, there comes, as always happens, a higher revela- 
 tion that is like an inward thrill in which throb all the divine 
 forces of life. The gospel describes this inner palpitation 
 by means of two symbols: a dove and a voice. 
 
 There is undoubtedly something here for psycho-analysis 
 to investigate. It appears, in the first place, that these 
 phenomena were entirely personal. According to the two 
 gospels of Mark and Matthew ^ it is Jesus who sees the 
 dove descending upon him. Luke is a little less explicit.^ 
 John, later, tells us that it was the Baptist who had this 
 vision, and that it was addressed to him.^ As for the voice, 
 Matthew does not tell us who heard it; but Mark and Luke 
 made it an interpellation directly addressed to Jesus: 
 "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 Finally, Mark, Matthew and Luke, all three, speak of the 
 heavens opened or rent asunder before the eyes of Jesus. 
 
 What interests us here is the psychic event that took 
 place; and this is clear. It is a feeling of perfect com- 
 munion with the Spirit of God, a sudden illumination, the 
 profound and henceforth inalienable certitude of being in 
 a filial relation to the Father which confers a special mis- 
 sion upon him. 
 
 The scene of the Baptism, according to all the theologians, 
 marks the commencement of the public life of Jesus. It is 
 a consecration to the new tasks, the beginning of a voca- 
 tion. Jesus takes his life in his hands and consecrates it 
 to a practical mission. Psychically speaking, we are wit- 
 nessing here the movement of introversion, of a return upon 
 
 3 Matt, iii, i6 and Mark i, lo. 
 ■* Luke iii, 22. 
 5 John i, 2>2. 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 157 
 
 the self which, in every great consecrated life, precedes the 
 productive extraversion, the practical activity in the outer 
 world. 
 
 Now the psycho-analysts have made a close study of this 
 introversion, this psychic movement of a return into the self 
 and the inevitable symbolism with which it is surrounded 
 and which is found virtually everjrwhere, in mysticism, in 
 the myths, fairy-tales and legends, in alchemy, in free- 
 masonry and Rosicrucianism, in all the movements in 
 which the mystic life plays a part. They have remarked 
 with Silberer," and more recently with Jung,^ the double 
 bearing of these symbols which, from being material, gradu- 
 ally become junctional. Understood first in a material 
 sense, they attach themselves to the past life, to some event 
 in the past life of the person or the people that uses them. 
 They call up an image of the past. Then gradually they 
 take on a prospective meaning, if one may so call it, an 
 annunciative meaning, an enlarged significance; they call 
 up something higher, more noble and more elevated. 
 
 In this way the symbol of the murder of the father, for 
 example, which is primitively connected with the feelings 
 of hatred which the child bears to its father, comes to sig- 
 nify, in the individual, renunciation, the sacrifice of these 
 hateful tendencies in the name of a general love for one's 
 neighbour. The desire for the mother — the sexual desire 
 for the mother, the return to her, the tendency towards her 
 and finally incest — may, in dreams, for instance, come to 
 symbolise the spiritual new birth. 
 
 Let us apply these remarks to the three symbols which 
 we find in the account of the Baptism: the dove, the open 
 or cloven skies, the voice affirming Christ's filial relationship 
 with the Father. 
 
 6 SiLBERER, Probleme der Mystik und Ihrer Symbolik. 
 "^ Jung, Die Psychologic der unbewussten Prozesse. — See also above, 
 Introd. p. 45. 
 
158 ASPECTS OF TPIE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 It is not surprising, in the first place, that Jesus, in the 
 profound emotion of baptism, should have seen a dove 
 appear before his eyes, that he should have pictured to him- 
 self what was happening to him inwardly under the image 
 of a dove. We are told that among the Jews the dove sym- 
 bolised purity, innocence, and sometimes the Holy Ghost. 
 I do not know whether this symbol was already popularly 
 accepted at that time, as it has since become, thanks to the 
 many Christian monuments in which the dove represents 
 the Holy Ghost.^ More constant, on the other hand, is the 
 fact that doves or pigeons have always represented love, the 
 union of love.^ Of this we have all sorts of evidences. 
 Who does not know La Fontaine's fable of the two doves 
 who loved one another tenderly? Now, the mystic union, 
 the unio mystica, has always been thought of as a marital 
 union, as a spiritual wedding (to quote the phrase of 
 Ruysbroek). One has only to recall those nuns who, in the 
 ages of fervour, became brides of Christ and received from 
 him the wedding-ring: Saint Catherine, Marguerite-Marie 
 
 8 We find doves in the paintings of the catacombs. They often figure 
 in the decorations or the windows of churches, in the centre of the 
 triangle that represents the Trinity. Finally, in our own day, they still 
 ornament the Huguenot crosses that Protestants wear about their 
 throats in place of the Sacred Heart worn by Catholics. 
 
 9 We read in Robertson Smith, Lectur-es on the Religion of the 
 Semites, Edinburgh, Black, 1889, p. 275 : "The dove, which the Semites 
 would neither eat nor touch, was sacrificed by the Romans to Venus 
 (Propertius, iv, 5, 62) ; and as the Roman Venus-worship of later 
 times was largely derived from the Phoenician sanctuary of Eryx, 
 where the dove had peculiar honour as the companion of Astarte 
 (^lian, A^at. An., iv, 2), it is very possible that this was a Semitic 
 rite, though I have not found any conclusive evidence that it was so. 
 It must certainly have been a very rare sacrifice ; for the dove among 
 the Semites had a quite peculiar sanctity, and Al-Nadim says expressly 
 that it was not sacrificed by the Harranians (Fihrist, p. 319, i, 21). 
 It was. however, offered by the Hebrews, in sacrifices which we shall 
 by and by see reason to regard as closely analogous to mystical rites ; 
 and in Juvenal vi, 459 et scqq., the superstitious matrons of Rome are 
 represented as calling in an Armenian or Syrian (Commagenian) 
 haruspex to perform the sacrifice of a dove, a chicken, a dog, or even 
 a child. In this association an exceptional and mystic sacrifice is 
 necessarily implied." 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 159 
 
 Alacoque, Saint Theresa, and how many others! The asso- 
 ciations of ideas called up in the soul by the concept of a 
 spiritual union are, quite naturally, those that relate to the 
 carnal union. If the dove evokes symbolically the union 
 of love there is nothing surprising in the fact that it should 
 have risen from the depths of Christ's subconscious at this 
 hour in which he was experiencing the spiritual union with 
 God. 
 
 But there is no need to dwell here upon the causal roots 
 of this symbol. It is much more important to consider it 
 in its teleological sense. If we look towards the future, 
 towards what it signifies for the future of Christ, if we con- 
 template it with reference, as it were, to the prophetic line 
 which it announces, it assumes a much wider significance. 
 It symbolises what the life of Jesus is going to be: an ever 
 closer and deeper union, no longer with that which belongs 
 to the earth, but with that which is highest in life, with 
 that Father who draws him to himself, who desires him, 
 who calls him to an unknown destiny. It is, as I have said, 
 the consecration to a mission, the form of which is still un- 
 known to him but which he already desires in his spirit. 
 He will allow himself to be seized and drawn along by those 
 personal energies which are in him and which are to lead 
 him where they will. He will obey the inner impulse which 
 he felt at the age of twelve in the Temple but the jealous 
 exclusiveness of which he has never realised fully until now. 
 He will belong utterly to Him who speaks within him, even 
 if he must be in opposition to those about him who profess 
 to speak in the name of God. This means, at bottom, a 
 complete self-abandonment, an exclusive union with a per- 
 sonal God, the God of the conscience, whatever the conse- 
 quences may be. 
 
 The open or rent skies {(JX''-S:0).iiyoi)<^): this expression 
 makes us think of Hodler's picture of William Tell. The 
 
i6o ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 hero is outlined in his rough simplicity against a sky back- 
 ground of half-open clouds. The psycho-analysts have seen 
 in the forms of these clouds opening into the sky that of the 
 female organs. The open sky is nothing else than the ma- 
 ternal womb from which the hero has sprung. Here we 
 have the material side of the symbol; it carries us back to 
 the mystery of origins. But if we turn towards the future 
 the open sky means something else as v/ell: the assured 
 communion with the Beyond, grace manifesting itself by 
 an open passage from heaven to earth, the suppression of 
 the obstacle, the glass wall, that continually separates us 
 from the divinity." Henceforth, there is no cause for fear; 
 the life of the Christ is assured of constant inspiration. 
 Now that the Holy Ghost is within him, has come upon 
 him, it will be the same with him always. 
 
 Finally the voice. It says: "Thou art my beloved son, 
 in whom I am well pleased." What does it matter whether 
 there was really a voice or not! It is the certitude only 
 that counts, the certitude of the fact which this voice ex- 
 presses. The voice is, in this sense, the symbol of a new 
 state of the soul, that of a unique and special sonship. At 
 twelve, in the Temple, Jesus already felt this sonship; but 
 now it is something more; he feels that he is the object of 
 the Father's whole affection. The experience is, in a way, 
 the same, but it is more palpable; it has increased tenfold 
 in intensity and brought with it a corresponding certitude. 
 If we wished to translate this religious experience into psy- 
 chological terms we might say that Jesus, at the moment of 
 his voluntary abasement in the baptismal solidarity, realises 
 the perfect harmony of all the psychic energies that are at 
 work within him. The elan vital which he feels animating 
 him encounters no obstacle. The act which he has just 
 
 10 The dream of the ladder at the beginning of the__career of Jacob 
 presents similar psychological features (Cf. Gen. xxviii, 10-22). 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION i6i 
 
 performed liberates the creative energies within him. There 
 is no repression whatever. Everything flows in the direction 
 in which it ought to flow. There is no opposition between 
 father and son, as is usually the case with us (and this is 
 why our conscience seems to us a yoke and a hindrance). 
 The Father loves the Son; all his affection is in him. Jesus 
 feels, at the same time, fully himself and animated by a 
 force, an energy, a personal dynamic which are greater than 
 himself and yet a part of him, as a loving father is part of 
 a beloved son. How translate this impression otherwise 
 than by a voice, a word of affirmation? This is the only 
 adequate symbol. It is connected with the impressions of 
 the past; from childhood it is by voices and words that the 
 affections are affirmed which come to us. The symbol is 
 borrowed from the past, but it projects its light into the 
 future; it assumes also a prophetic aspect. It signifies the 
 guaranty of the success of his life, the conservation of those 
 values of which Christ is aware. It is the seal affixed to the 
 work, whatever it may be, which he is to undertake. 
 Then Jesus moves away, silent and alone, into the desert. 
 
 § 2. THE TEMPTATION 
 
 After the Baptism, the Temptation. This will arrest us 
 a little longer. The three synoptic gospels refer to it, Mark 
 very briefly, the two others in more detail. John does not 
 speak of it at all. 
 
 In all times the theologians have found something prob- 
 lematical in the story of the Temptation. It does indeed 
 present a problem. First of all, its nature is such that it 
 would have to have been related after the event by Jesus 
 himself. No one was present at the Temptation, since 
 Jesus, led by the Spirit, as the text says, went into the desert 
 alone. It is therefore an instance of an entirely private 
 
i62 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 experience and thus not a historical fact but a psychic fact, 
 to be approached by the methods of psychology and not by 
 those of history. This has always embarrassed the theo- 
 logians who, caught in the net of historical methods, feel 
 for them a sort of veneration that borders on superstition 
 and rise with difficulty to a psychological conception of 
 events. 
 
 Many examples might be given of the stupidities that 
 have been uttered on this subject. Strauss, for example, 
 faithful to his mythical theory, tried to see in the Tempta- 
 tion a legend of primitive Christianity, woven out of 
 motives supplied by the Old Testament. 
 
 Venturini, with his somewhat romantic imagination, has 
 the role of the devil played by a Pharisee who has come 
 to tempt Jesus. This is amusing enough, but not very 
 charitable. 
 
 Bruno Bauer sees in the Temptation an account, not of 
 the experiences of Jesus, but of those of the primitive 
 Christian community. It was the latter that felt the temp- 
 tations presented to us as those of Jesus, and it projected 
 them backward into the person of the Lord himself. This, 
 we must admit, is an interesting idea. Although nothing 
 authorises us to believe that the matter came about in any 
 such fashion, Bauer must at least have the credit of perceiv- 
 ing that we are concerned here with a human experience 
 which is repeated, mutatis mutandis, in every Christian soul. 
 He has thus set up a bridge between Jesus and ourselves, in- 
 stead of enlarging, as so many others have done, the abyss 
 that separates the Messiah from simple mortals. 
 
 As for Renan, who is more hasty and refuses to be greatly 
 embarrassed by anything that stands in his way, he passes 
 lightly over the Temptation. Observe how he treats it. 
 "Until the arrest of John," he says, "which took place ap- 
 proximately in the summer of the year 29, Jesus did not 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 163 
 
 leave the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. 
 A sojourn in the desert of Judea was generally considered " 
 as a preparation for great things, as a sort of 'retreat' 
 before a public career, Jesus followed the example of his 
 forerunners in this and passed forty days with no other 
 company than the wild beasts, practising a rigorous fast. 
 The imagination of his disciples was greatly exercised over 
 this sojourn. In popular belief the desert was the abode 
 of devils. There exist in the world few regions more deso- 
 late, more abandoned by God, more shut off from life than 
 the stony slope which forms the western border of the Dead 
 Sea. It was believed that he had passed through terrible 
 ordeals during the time he had spent in that fearful country, 
 that Satan had frightened him with his chimeras or flat- 
 tered him with seductive promises, and that afterwards, to 
 reward him for his victory, the angels had ministered to 
 him." ^' 
 
 Presto! . . . Renan attaches no more importance than 
 this to the Temptation. He does not even see that people 
 do not invent a psychic process of this extent, or that, if it 
 had been invented, it would constitute none the less a 
 prodigy and a model of psychological truth. I have myself 
 searched in vain for any reason to attribute this adventure 
 to the disciples rather than to Jesus; nor do the theologians 
 offer us any good reasons for doing so. On the contrary, 
 examined closely, the gospel narrative of this episode of 
 the inner life of Christ seems to me to accord admirably 
 with the moral and psychological situation that was his at 
 this moment and to harmonise with our idea of the ordeal 
 which the utilisation of his gifts among men constitutes for 
 every genius. 
 
 Jesus, we remember, had just passed through the su- 
 
 11 This "generally considered" is a pearl. 
 
 12 Renan, op. cit., p. 117, 
 
i64 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 premely beautiful and exalting experience related in the 
 episode of the Baptism. The time had come for him to 
 translate into living works the magnificent hfe-urge with 
 which he felt himself flooded. Now in such an environment 
 as his, the natural expression of the religious genius lay- 
 along the extended lines of messianism. His education, as 
 we have seen, had familiarised him, through his reading and 
 understanding of the Scriptures and particularly of the 
 Jewish Apocalypses and the prophets, with the traditional 
 figure of the Messiah, On the other hand, the very char- 
 acter of his inner life, the central experience of his soul, 
 must have led him to accept certain features of this figure 
 while rendering others repugnant to him. Finally, the 
 originality and the sovereignty of the inner experiences 
 through which he had passed must have urged him invin- 
 cibly to manifest outwardly the life that was expanding so 
 abundantly within him. He had to act: this fact he had 
 already solemnly accepted in the Temple when he was 
 twelve years old. Now the hour for practical action had 
 struck; the appearance of the Baptist had made him con- 
 scious of this call. The time had come for him to begin. 
 
 But how? That was the agonising, momentous, alarm- 
 ing, disquieting question upon which depended the salvation 
 of a whole people. He is to be the Messiah, or something 
 approximating to that; he is to come in the name of Him 
 who sends him. But how is he to do it? Under what ban- 
 ner and bearing what colours? How is he to reach men 
 in such a way as to act upon them, to communicate to them 
 this Father whom he knows, to save them, without com- 
 promising what gives value to his life and all the experiences 
 of his life? 
 
 The crisis awaits him here. Nothing of this sort had 
 presented itself to him when the question had been simply 
 of the direction he was to give to his own life. It arises 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 165 
 
 at the precise moment when this life encounters sinful 
 humanity with the purpose of manifesting itself to it. In 
 this lies the meaning of the Temptation. It is, at bottom, 
 the temptation which ail of us, or almost all of us, have to 
 miss our own life, to lose it in paths where it will not give 
 us what it should and can give us. We do not have this 
 temptation as messiahs, we have it as men, in the sense and 
 according to the line of our various vocations; but this does 
 not alter the psychological process. Psychologically, we 
 might call Christ's Temptation the temptation of introver- 
 sion. Perhaps it does not present itself to extraverted tem- 
 peraments, to those in whom every feeling flows outwards, 
 to objects, things and persons; but when a man begins to 
 meditate, reflect, pore over the mystery of his destiny, to 
 think it before living it, he is on the brink of this tempta- 
 tion; and it is only by surmounting it that he can become 
 a living soul. 
 
 Now it so happens that the psycho-analysts, as we have 
 already remarked, have been much occupied of late with 
 the study of introversion. In the light of what they have 
 told us about it we can take up the account of the Temp- 
 tation with some profit and grasp, as I believe, its immense 
 import, at once in the life of Jesus and v/ith respect to our 
 own lives. 
 
 It is not very easy, all things considered, to define exactly 
 what introversion is. Many people, hearing this word and 
 constantly encountering it on the pens of the psycho- 
 analysts, seize their heads in their hands and conjure us to 
 explain to them what it means. Let us attempt to do so 
 now, better at least than we have done it thus far. 
 
 Jung gives us the best account of it in his two most recent 
 books, Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse and 
 Psychologische Typen. He does so indirectly, however, for 
 it must be admitted that these concepts employed by 
 
i66 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 psycho-analysis are too charged with life to be easily de- 
 fined; we must be able to feel them rather than to under- 
 stand them, to grasp their essentially biological meaning 
 intuitively rather than intellectually. But Jung points out 
 that men in general, in their reaction to life, present two 
 psychological types, in one of which the essential and prin- 
 cipal function resides in feeling, while the fundamental 
 tonality of the other is constituted by thought. The one 
 unites himself with the object through feeling, the other 
 thinks first and foremost. Among men, the former are apt 
 to be led by their psychic nature to feel very strongly 
 everything that surrounds them; this is their first, spon- 
 taneous tendency; it is only later, after they have acted, 
 that they reflect upon what they have felt, and even then 
 they reflect very little and feebly. Thought, in them, plays 
 only a secondary part. Jung calls these the extraverts, that 
 is to say, those who turn towards the outward world, whose 
 feeling expresses itself entirely in external action. The 
 others, on the contrary, draw back before the object, before 
 the external world; they are led rather to think about what 
 surrounds them, to reflect upon the external and internal 
 events of their lives. They do not lay hold precipitately 
 upon the external world through an impulse of feeling; 
 rather it is thought which is developed in them. These are 
 the introverts. 
 
 In reality, these psychological types are not divided in 
 any such absolute fashion as our description might lead one 
 to imagine. The introvert, for example, is not devoid of 
 all feeling; he is not all thought; he may be affectionate 
 and S5mipathetic and may display emotion. But if we ob- 
 serve his feelings we see that in general they lack personal 
 originality; they have no individual stamp; they are the 
 conventional feelings which one is supposed to have. The 
 introvert will have for every one the same friendliness, the 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 167 
 
 same sympathy, while the extravert will have a gamut of 
 feelings that are finely shaded and that vary with their 
 objects. Similarly, the extravert will not be all feeling; in 
 him too we shall find thought; he may even succeed in 
 thinking very clearly, even very scientifically. If we 
 examine them closely, however, we find that his thoughts 
 exist in him, so to speak, as a foreign element, as so many 
 conventional formulas which he has learned and retained 
 by rote. They lack the original, individual touch; they are 
 colourless and pale, just as are the feelings of the other 
 t3T)e, the introverted type. 
 
 When these two types are blended, they complement one 
 another admirably. The union of two beings of these dif- 
 ferent t3^es makes a good marriage. But actually every 
 single individual inclines more or less to the side of intro- 
 version or to the side of extraversion ; and the inner con- 
 flict which upsets the equilibrium of our lives always springs 
 from this opposition between the principal and strongly 
 developed function that dominates in us and the secondary 
 function which is scarcely or not at all differentiated and 
 which remains, most of the time, shut up in the subcon- 
 scious. The conflict of the introvert, for example, always 
 springs from a want of equilibrium between his strongly 
 developed thought, acting consciously, and the feelings, still 
 in a larval and undifferentiated state, that stir in his sub- 
 conscious. Here is the danger which menaces men of this 
 type. 
 
 Now, as Jung does not fail to point out also, there is only 
 one means by which either of these two types can overcome 
 the conflict that menaces their inner selves, the psychic 
 conflict which leads people into neuroses or more or less 
 serious aberrations. They must become conscious of this 
 opposition within them, and transcend it, so to speak, by 
 becoming aware, on the one hand, of what constitutes them 
 
i68 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 as conscious beings, and, on the other, of that which is stir- 
 ring in their unconscious as an element foreign to their ego; 
 thus, by abolishing the opposition between these two move- 
 ments, they can build a bridge, making a harmony between 
 them. As a matter of fact, this harmonisation is the great 
 task of life; and it tends to take place, by the very process 
 of life, in each of the types. 
 
 This division of men into introverts and extraverts is, to 
 be sure, like all psychological divisions and classifications, 
 a little summary; it does not allow for the extremely deli- 
 cate nuances of the psychic life or correspond with its finer 
 outlines. Every one probably has his moments of intro- 
 version and his moments of extraversion; in any case, a 
 type of humanity that was perfectly harmonious would 
 unite in itself both these movements of life and set them 
 to work in turn. We may say in passing that it would be 
 very difficult to classify Jesus as of either of these types; 
 he has the characteristics of both, and he combines them 
 at times in a fashion that is disconcerting to our simpler 
 natures. 
 
 In the scene which we are considering, however, what we 
 have to deal with is undoubtedly a moment in which intro- 
 version dominates. At this moment life is in the grip of 
 thought, and the conflict which takes place is between the 
 question of living the messianic life, of which Jesus is think- 
 ing at the time and which he is embracing in his thought, 
 and a whole world of vague feelings, still subconscious or 
 barely emergent from the subconscious, that are stirring 
 indistinctly in the depths of his personality. 
 
 To refer once more to introversion, since the temptation 
 constitutes a moment of introversion in Christ's life, let us 
 see what are the issues it may have. Silberer has shown 
 us how the crisis of introversion may be solved; he has 
 assigned to it three possible issues, magic, dementia 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 169 
 
 praecox, and mysticism. What he means by this may be 
 summed up as follows: 
 
 1. One who is on the road of introversion, of a return 
 upon himself, may fail in action by seeking the satisfac- 
 tion of his passions in an artificial manner. It is this which, 
 among all the primitive peoples, has given rise to magic. 
 
 2. Or he may stop short with the dream, lazily enjoying 
 himself in that forgetfulness of external reality which is 
 favourable to the return upon oneself; this indolence of 
 the spirit ends in his creating about him an imaginary world 
 which takes the place of the real world, and the introvert 
 finally founders in the dream. This is the neurosis known 
 as dementia praecox in which the patient is no longer aware 
 of what surrounds him and lives in an imaginary world. 
 It is the suicide of the personality. 
 
 3. Lastly, there is the third solution, in which the intro- 
 vert ends in the mystic life, creating in himself, that is, a 
 unity between his outer tasks and his inner experiences. 
 But here again there are two possible directions. The 
 mystic life, as a matter of fact, does not always represent 
 a state of equilibrium, far from it! That is why the 
 Catholic Church has made the distinction between divine 
 mysticism and diabolic mysticism. There is a healthy 
 mysticism, and there is an unhealthy mysticism. Conse- 
 quently, a final danger of introversion consists in leading 
 one into morbid aberrations of the mystical life, through 
 a neglect of the moral control exercised over the impulses 
 that spring up from the subconscious and are liable to pour 
 into the consciousness pell-mell and pervert it. 
 
 Turning now to the text of the three temptations which 
 sum up the great decisive crisis at the beginning of the 
 ministry of Jesus, we observe the curious fact, curious yet 
 as clear as day, that they offer Christ precisely the three 
 disastrous issues of introversion. 
 
lyo ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 First a sort of prologue sums up the situation. It tells us: 
 
 1. That the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, or 
 that it led or conducted him there; ^^ 
 
 2. To be tempted of the devil (Matt, iv, i), or that he 
 was tempted of Satan (Mark i, 13); 
 
 3. That he was in the midst of wild beasts, and the 
 angels ministered unto him; it is thus, at least, that Mark 
 sums up the situation. 
 
 We have here what suggests a perfect psychological 
 abridgement of the process of introversion. 
 
 1. It is the Spirit, the divine subconscious forces, the 
 inner impulsion, the elan which comes from above and 
 reaches man by seizing him inwardly, it is, as Freud would 
 say, the libido, the cluster of unknown vital energies which 
 drives Jesus into the wilderness. He feels that he is 
 obliged to go into the wilderness, not merely the wilderness 
 of sand and rocks which the earth offers him, but also that 
 wilderness of the soul, that deep solitude in which one 
 descends into oneself, far from human beings, in meditation 
 and silence. 
 
 2. In this wilderness he does not find God only, he finds 
 Satan as well, the devil, the genius of evil who tempts us 
 and tries to make us fall. Is not this an affirmation of the 
 fact that in descending into ourselves, in communing with 
 ourselves, in seeking to encounter the inner impulse that 
 springs up naturally in our being, we recognise in it a 
 double nature? There is in every man a demoniacal sub- 
 conscious, forces that abase as well as others that elevate 
 the being. The attraction which draws us towards intro- 
 version may be at once a divine attraction and a tempta- 
 tion. According to the issue which the introversion is going 
 
 13 T6Te 6 'l7)(7ovi dv-^x^V «''* ''"'?'' ^PVM'OV virb rod -rrveifMaros. (Matt, iv, I.) 
 Kal eCiOii t6 Trvev/j-a avrbv ^/c^dXXet els ttjv eprj/MV. (Mark i, 12.) 
 Koi ^yero iv t^ Trve^nari iv rr) ip-^fx<f. (Luke iv, I.) 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 171 
 
 to have it may be a flight towards life or a recoil towards 
 the shadowy regions of death and destruction. 
 
 3. With this affirmation come to be united the two sym- 
 bols which, in the fairy-tales, myths and legends of all 
 peoples, represent danger and the victory over danger. 
 Jesus is surrounded by wild beasts; these are the dragons, 
 the serpents which, in the myth, surround the hero, ready 
 to devour him, and bar him from the path that leads to 
 the treasure of life. He must conquer this wild beast, this 
 guardian of the treasure. In other words, he must kill in 
 himself that which stands in the way of the new birth, the 
 unfolding of the new life. And the divine forces conspire 
 with the hero to help him in his gigantic task; they are the 
 envoys of God, the angels, energies of a superhuman origin, 
 but personal and human in their form, fraternal allies who 
 are there to co-operate in the work of life. 
 
 So much for the broad outline of the situation. It is that 
 of the hero who is preparing to live the true life, the eternal 
 romance which humanity has always dreamed of and pro- 
 jected into its favourite ancestors. But there is no ques- 
 tion here of romance and dreams; the part is going to be 
 played in full reality by the Son of Man. 
 
 I. Let us now take up the temptations in detail. The 
 first consists of changing the stones into bread. Jesus has 
 been fasting for a long time. The exterior occasion that 
 sharpens the temptation, that turns Christ's thoughts to- 
 wards the temptation, is the hunger he feels. But this is 
 merely the reason that leads him to consider the problem 
 of life from a certain angle. It must always be remembered 
 that at the bottom of the thoughts of Jesus at this moment 
 is the question, "How can I realise the life of revelation 
 which I must lead before men? In what way can I be the 
 Messiah?" Thereupon a first solution suggests itself, thanks 
 to this sudden hunger which torments him and which he 
 
172 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 would like to lessen or get rid of. Has he the right to 
 employ the divine energies which he feels welling up within 
 him to satisfy first his own life, his own needs? Why not? 
 After all, however lofty the work may be which he wishes 
 to undertake, he must first live in order to undertake it; 
 he must eat his bread, have something upon which to sub- 
 sist, and a little more perhaps. This is the temptation that 
 comes to almost all intelligent young people who desire to 
 serve God in their life. "Yes, I want to serve God, I want 
 to devote myself to this or that noble cause," they say to 
 themselves. "But first people must give me the means or 
 I must procure them!" Make a fortune, for example, so 
 that, later, one may use one's money to relieve suffering 
 humanity. Acquire all the education one needs to become 
 distinguished so that, by this very distinction, one may win 
 the mastery over the wills of men and conduct them as a 
 leader along the paths of virtue and happiness. Gratify, 
 in a word, one's own instincts first, which are nothing if 
 not legitimate, so that later, freed from the fetters which 
 necessity always lays upon the impulses of the heart, one 
 may give oneself up entirely to working for others. In the 
 case of Jesus, this perhaps signifies that in order to become 
 the Messiah recognised by the people he must first acquire 
 a material, outward situation that will attract the attention 
 of others. 
 
 Christ discerns a temptation under the apparent legiti- 
 macy of the effort which is demanded. "Man does not live 
 by bread alone." In seeking first one's own personal satis- 
 faction in the will to power that animates one, in placing 
 the inner ilan vital, the gift of the forces of God, first of 
 all at the service of oneself, one simply runs the risk of 
 spiritual death. This, at bottom, is the temptation to 
 magic; it is this which has dominated all the magicians of 
 the past and of the present. They have never done any- 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 173 
 
 thing but monopolise, for their own profit first, the powers 
 of life that are at work in their souls; and what happens is 
 that by this practice their souls are slowly destroyed, de- 
 prived of the food which alone nourishes them. They 
 understand the inner word no longer as the word of God, 
 but as an instrument of which they make use for their own 
 success. It is an error to suppose that one can first satisfy 
 oneself at the fountain that springs up within one and then 
 think afterwards of others. When one has made bread for 
 oneself out of the stones of the road one no longer thinks 
 of anything but that bread. The soul dies, submerged by 
 action, by external labour for the sake of personal gain. 
 The inner energies, turned towards outward action for the 
 benefit of the individual alone, are lost for society and the 
 Kingdom of God. This is the case with many a life which 
 might have been beautiful, but which, in all sincerity, can 
 no longer do anything that is not egotistical and useless to 
 others. 
 
 By becoming a magician Messiah, sl worker of miracles, 
 a thaumaturgist, Jesus would no doubt have assured his 
 success among the people. But the forces which he would 
 have employed to this end would have been, by that very 
 fact, withdrawn from God, turned aside from the moral life, 
 by means of which God is able to reach men and touch them. 
 To repulse this temptation thus constituted a renunciation, 
 since it lessened his chances for success in the Messiahship; 
 but it was, at the same time, a divine victory, the gift to the 
 Father of his whole self, the conservation of the integrity 
 of the inner energies for the work of establishing the King- 
 dom of God. In refusing a magical Messiahship and seeing 
 a temptation in it, Jesus set bounds to his success in the 
 world, but he recognised the true rights of life; he refused 
 to displace life's axis, to violate its authentic meaning. If 
 we place ourselves at the psycho-analytic point of view, we 
 
174 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 may say that the danger was that, in concentrating all his 
 strength on thought — in his case fixed upon the Messiah- 
 ship — he would have allowed the subconscious feelings to 
 follow their own will, attaching themselves now here, now 
 there, now upon one object, now upon another, at the mere 
 chance of his successive impulses. By an effort of his whole 
 being, Jesus became aware of the respective values of the 
 different feelings that stirred confusedly in him. He differ- 
 entiated them from his own personality, from the conscious 
 I, set each one in its place, and discerned the temptation 
 constituted by some of them and the obligation imposed by 
 the others. 
 
 II. One might protract these considerations indefinitely. 
 Let us pass on to the second temptation. Jesus is trans- 
 ported to a pinnacle of the Temple and the devil says to 
 him: "Cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his 
 angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they 
 shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot 
 against a stone." " We might call this the temptation to 
 fanaticism. Jesus is tempted to commit an act of folly, to 
 throw himself madly into the apocalyptic dream, to become 
 a half-demented Messiah who no longer lives in reality or 
 reckons with reality but commits himself to the forces that 
 exalt him, without even asking how they accord with the 
 surrounding reality. In religious language, it is to "tempt 
 God" to ask him to intervene otherwise than by the laws 
 which he has himself established, to violate these laws. 
 This is to transgress deliberately the rules that preside over 
 the normal human development, and consequently to choose, 
 to desire, to seek the abnormal. It is, in a word, to take 
 refuge in the dream in order to escape from reality. And 
 this is exactly what the victims of dementia praecox do. 
 The neurosis of this name consists in this dream-life, this 
 
 1* Quotation, placed in the mouth of Satan, from Psalm xci, 11-12. 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 175 
 
 life which — let us say it boldly — is lost, is destroyed in the 
 dream. 
 
 This is the road, then, of which Jesus catches a glimpse, 
 a neurotic Messiahs hip, the career of those fanatics who 
 sometimes carry away whole populations with the gener- 
 osity and the beauty of their dream, but who are lost with 
 them in the unreal. Jesus knows quite well that to allow 
 the divine forces at work in him to evaporate thus into 
 nothingness is to be unfaithful to and even rebellious 
 against the Father; it is to falsify the normal means which 
 he requires in order that he may work in him and through 
 him in men. 
 
 Here we have another renunciation, an unmistakable one, 
 the renunciation of the charm of exaltation and the sugges- 
 tive and alluring impression that exaltation makes on the 
 masses. This again means a cutting off of the paths to 
 success; but it means also the inexorable maintenance of 
 moral and physical health and the sanctity of life as well. 
 Jesus flies from the seduction of the dream and rejects 
 that species of Messiahship which would make of him a 
 fanatic, leading humanity into a brilliant but delusive ad- 
 venture. He who deliberately puts himself outside the laws 
 that regulate reality has no right to the help of the living 
 God; he abjures life; he confuses the paths of the soul; he 
 does something that is sinister and even criminal. This is 
 the danger we all run when, refusing to take the world as 
 it is, because it is too saddening, we prefer to see it through 
 the rose-coloured glasses of an enchanting dream; when 
 we let go of the reins of the will, persuading ourselves that 
 we may commit the worst follies, and that God, because he 
 loves us, will always intervene at the desired moment. Who 
 has not known this temptation, and who has not at times 
 succumbed to it? It is the danger of imaginative people 
 who are wearied and bored by the labour of reasoning. It 
 
176 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 is here that the neurosis lies in wait for its man, and often 
 strikes him down, never to let him go again. Jesus recov- 
 ered control of himself and put out of his thoughts this form 
 of Messiahship. 
 
 III. Thus we come to the last of the three temptations. 
 At first sight it seems to be the clumsiest of snares; yet it is 
 in fact the most subtle because, in the concise form in which 
 it is brought to us, it does not appear to be a snare at all. 
 This is the temptation to false mysticism, diabolic mysti- 
 cism. It is possible to be the Messiah again by preserving 
 the appearance of sanctity, and almost sanctity itself, while 
 consenting to compromise with the spirit of the age. One 
 may simply be the Messiah whom the people expect, a cau- 
 tious, prudent leader who will act in harmony with the 
 priestly authorities and gradually bring about a national 
 uprising in which politics will ally itself with the religious 
 sentiment. Why not? Christ, while listening to the 
 Pharisees, has seen clearly that this would be quite prac- 
 ticable; but he has also seen under what conditions alone 
 it would be possible to keep up the alliance and achieve 
 success. He would have to make concessions, to reckon 
 with the opinions of leaders and people of importance, to 
 submit to easy compromises of conscience. In short, he 
 would have to bend the knee before the evil spirits whom 
 the times adored, before the power of money and the au- 
 thority of the world. In return for a few concessions, which 
 would hardly matter, thanks to the power which he knows 
 exists in him, he would then be the Messiah, recognised by 
 all; and when he possessed the ear of the masses, what 
 things could he not undertake on behalf of the good! 
 
 This is the temptation of all strong men who see a bril- 
 liant career opening before them, who feel within them- 
 selves all the possibilities of becoming great, exercising a 
 powerful influence and opening up paths for the welfare 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 177 
 
 and happiness of humanity. And how many sink in the 
 mire of this treacherous swamp! To have a pure and lofty 
 mind and altruistic and charitable plans, to live only for 
 the sake of others; yet, in order that one may be able to 
 act, to consent to one or two of those secret compromises 
 of which, as a matter of fact, nobody will ever know. How 
 many careers, respectable and honoured by men, have had 
 no spiritual effect because, though no one has known it, they 
 have been founded on that momentary prostration before 
 him who "gives to whomsoever he wills all the kingdoms 
 of the earth." 
 
 Such a manner as this of becoming the Messiah was im- 
 mediately rejected by Jesus with horror: "Get thee hence, 
 Satan: for it is written. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
 God, and him only shalt thou serve." ^^ And why does he 
 reject it? Can we say that in doing so he is repressing 
 certain instinctive tendencies of the inmost being? It is 
 just the other way. To admit deceit and hypocrisy is not 
 to augment the possibilities of life; it is, on the contrary, 
 to diminish them. It is because the world in general coun- 
 tenances this fashion of living a double life that men are 
 not all they might be and do not realise themselves in a 
 complete way. To adore Satan is to deflect into paths that 
 lead nowhere a part of the elan vital which ought to help 
 one to embrace life's tasks and accomplish them; to divert 
 it from its sole legitimate end, to prevent its sublimation. 
 Now Jesus intends to be fully that which he ought to be, 
 to lead to their complete realisation all the energies that 
 seethe in the depths of his being, to become fully, in the 
 language of religion, what the Father wishes him to become, 
 or, in the language of psycho-analysis, to sublimate all the 
 instinctive forces that labour in his subconsciousness. Thus 
 the obstacles must be removed, and they are all summed 
 
 16 Matt, iv, 10. 
 
178 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 up and incarnated for him in this genius of evil who bears 
 the name of Satan: ^'Get thee hence, Satan!" 
 
 After the three temptations which we have just recapitu- 
 lated, there remains only one possible issue for the life of 
 Christ. It is expressed symbolically in the text by these 
 words: "Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels 
 came and ministered unto him." ^^ The devil who departs 
 is the inner resistance which yields to the pressure of the 
 Man vital; the angels are the deep energies which come to 
 the rescue, the forces of sublimation on the wings of which 
 life rises to meet the tasks it must undertake. Henceforth, 
 there is for him only one way of living his public life; this 
 is to realise through it everything that God has placed within 
 him, in his inner and secret life, the whole of his mystical 
 life, the whole of the experience upon which his soul has 
 been nourished. He will give men everything he has within 
 him, and nothing else. That is the only loyal thing to do. 
 Perhaps this is what it is to be the Messiah? In any case, 
 Jesus can and will be nothing else. And it is in this frame 
 of mind that he leaves the wilderness to begin his ministry 
 in Galilee. 
 
 Henceforth, the task is clear. God does not manifest 
 himself through acts that are in contradiction to the deep 
 life of the soul. The only way to reveal him to the world 
 is, having him fully in oneself, to be simply oneself, what- 
 ever may be one's walk of life. Jesus is going to say what 
 he knows and what he is inwardly; he is going to render 
 an exact testimony to what he realises in the depths of his 
 being. His life will probably be obscure, without any 
 external glory; but the inner harmony which has now been 
 realised among all the forces that animate him will con- 
 stitute the only possible appeal to human morality, to the 
 conscience of men. This is the sort of Messiah that he will 
 
 i«Cf. Matt, iv, II ; Mark i, 13; Luke iv, 13. 
 
BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION 179 
 
 be. It matters little whether people give him this name or 
 not, or whether he is the Messiah in the historical and tra- 
 ditional sense; he is to be a Messiah in the sense of moral 
 truth and the Spirit, that is in the divine-human sense. 
 
 Let us stop a moment on the threshold of this ministry 
 which opens in humility and silence. There has never been, 
 perhaps, in the whole history of humanity, a more solemn, 
 sacred moment. It is the complete gift of a life to Truth. 
 Without pomp of any sort, it is at once the perfect conse- 
 cration and the most sublime flight towards life that has 
 ever taken place in this world. For once, all the forces of 
 a human consciousness are dedicated to life; nothing is 
 withheld; the whole divine current is released and flows 
 forward in its entirety, spreading this human life as an im- 
 perishable witness through the bosom of humanity. When 
 Jesus said later that he was "the bread of life" he found the 
 exact image. He offered the whole of himself as nourish- 
 ment for the human soul that is starved for truth. For in a 
 world such as ours to desire the whole life of God in oneself, 
 to accept all the exigencies of the divine life in oneself and 
 to accomplish its task is to accept the fate of being misun- 
 derstood, rejected, sacrificed by those who do not desire this 
 life. But it is also to give them the only efficacious help, 
 the only raft of safety to which they can cling. 
 
 We shall take up this point again when we treat of the 
 personality of Jesus and its characteristics from the psy- 
 chological point of view. But first we must examine a little 
 more closely into the nature of his ministry, and particu- 
 larly his teaching. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
 
 § I. ITS FORM 
 
 After the Temptation, Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, 
 as Luke ^ tells us, set off on the road to Galilee. After hav- 
 ing summoned about him a few disciples he took up his 
 abode in the little town of Capernaum, not far from the 
 Sea of Galilee, around which so many memories cling; and 
 he began to teach. 
 
 In this teaching, which has already been so much — ^per- 
 haps too much — discussed, for it often seems to us to have 
 been deflowered by all that has been said about it, there 
 are two things to be considered: the basis, that is the ideas, 
 and the form, or the manner in which the ideas are pre- 
 sented. A great deal might be said about these two aspects 
 of Christ's teaching. I shall take up a few points only, 
 with special attention to their psychological bearing; and 
 first let us consider the form. 
 
 Again, of this form I shall not speak in detail. Let us 
 ignore what might be called the very original charm which 
 is so unique in the style of Jesus, the poetrj'' that emanates 
 from his least words and that has made of some of them 
 jewels which humanity has clasped forever in the depths of 
 its memory and its heart.^ 
 
 I should rather call attention to a certain feature of the 
 teaching of Jesus which, although it is very marked, has yet 
 been less often discussed. This is the affirmative character 
 
 ^ "iv TTJ Swdfiei ToO irveiixaros" (Luke iv, 14.) 
 
 2 See, at the end of the volume, the appendix on the poetry of Jesus. 
 
 i8o 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS i8i 
 
 of his manner of teaching. Instead of proceeding by pro- 
 hibitions and negative commands, he proceeds by affirma- 
 tions. It seems as if his whole nature were turned to the 
 positive side of life, the side of the ''yea." In this respect 
 it must be admitted that his disciples in the course of his- 
 tory have been very unfaithful to him. When we think of 
 the number of restrictions and prohibitions, the "thou shalt 
 nots" — thou shalt not do, thou shalt not touch — when we 
 think of the amount of neuropathic scrupulosity that per- 
 sists even to-day, in some Christian circles, we feel a sort 
 of liberation in returning to the teaching of Christ himself 
 and finding it so affirmative and so positive. It is just the 
 opposite of the "taboos" which we encounter in such num- 
 bers in the primitive religions, even in the superior religions, 
 and of which the Old Testament offers us more than one 
 example. In opposition to the moral code of the Pharisees, 
 which was encumbered with prohibitions and rendered impo- 
 tent by inhibitions, the moral code of Jesus is large, affirm- 
 ative in the face of life, free from shackles. He dwells, 
 we observe, not on what one must not do, but on what one 
 must do. He lays stress not upon negative duties, but upon 
 positive duties, knowing quite well that when one accom- 
 plishes these the others accomplish themselves. "All things 
 whatsoever ye would that men should do to you," he says, 
 "do ye even so to them." He has not come "to destroy" 
 (to quote his own words) "but to fulfil." And it is at this 
 that his teaching aims. He desires to bring forth in hu- 
 manity a life that shall not be a perpetual repression, but 
 rather an ever larger fulfilment of everything which exists 
 in man and asks only to be developed. 
 
 Hence that luminousness, that broad daylight which 
 shines over the words of Jesus and gives them their fresh, 
 springlike tonality, that character of newness and spon- 
 taneity which astonishes all who hear them for the first 
 
i82 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 time. We have the impression that we are not dealing with 
 old rules, with the everlasting worn-out expedients with 
 which the ancient religions have wearied the human con- 
 science. There is something here tliat is new and young, 
 something which takes its rhythm from life, which is one 
 with the rushing current and the glow of the affirmations 
 of childhood. This is why Jesus pleases the young, that is, 
 if they encounter his teaching directly and do not, as is too 
 often the case, find it deformed to the point of being un- 
 recognisable by the preconceived ideas of those who have 
 made themselves its champions and licensed custodians. 
 
 Listen to his first words. From the beginning, in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, they are clear and joyous. What do 
 they announce? Happiness. They are an affirmation of 
 happiness cried into the ears of those who no longer believe 
 in happiness because they no longer feel it in themselves: 
 
 "Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the Kingdom of God. 
 
 "Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. 
 
 "Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. 
 
 "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they 
 shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach 
 you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's 
 sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy: for, behold, 
 your reward is great in heaven." ^ 
 
 Upon these happy people who need only to become aware 
 of their inner fortune he imposes no duty made up of re- 
 strictions; he does not point out to them what they are not, 
 or the obstacles that lie before them. He rather tells them 
 what they are, what they already are potentially and may 
 become, what they are sure to become with an always 
 greater fulness: "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the 
 salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? . . . 
 Ye are the light of the world. . . . Neither do men light a 
 
 8 Luke vi, 20-23. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 183 
 
 lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it 
 shineth unto all that are in the house." * This is a launch- 
 ing into life. Jesus urges them into the open water; he tells 
 them to go forward, to set out, to have no fear, to yield to 
 the divine impulse which is within them. 
 
 How different from the dull, prudent words of the givers 
 of good counsel, the moralising sages. The point here is 
 risk, which is always preferable to moral indolence. It is 
 a sort of echo of the ordeal through which he has passed in 
 the temptation. Jesus does not want this humanity which 
 he loves to lose itself in the dream of life; he incites it to 
 the assault of reality with full confidence in the forces which 
 animate it and which are the very forces of God. 
 
 And we have only to continue the reading of the gospels 
 to see that, from first to last, the same note rings through 
 them. In the discussions with the Pharisees, particularly 
 concerning the Sabbath, he does not oppose their rules with 
 other rules. He affirms (it is an affirmation, not a nega- 
 tion) the supremacy of life over everything else. "The 
 Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." ^ Away with the 
 restrictions that fetter life! Listen to the voice of the God 
 who speaks within you and everything will come right. 
 
 Sin bends the brows of the sick; they feel themselves 
 under a condemnation; their souls are bound as it were by 
 that old doctrine that sickness is a punishment for sin. 
 Jesus approaches them and they are freed by an affirma- 
 tion: "Thy sins are forgiven thee." And finding once more 
 within them the spring of superhuman energies, the sick 
 depart with their hearts full of gratitude, bearing their 
 crutches on their shoulders. 
 
 Everywhere, always, the method is the same. Moved 
 with compassion before the multitude, because they are in 
 
 4 Matt. V, 13-16. 
 
 5 Mark ii, 28. 
 
i84 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 a state of weariness and prostration, like sheep that have 
 no shepherd, he cries: "The harvest truly is plenteous, but 
 the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
 harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest." 
 Then, having summoned the twelve, he gives them "power 
 against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all 
 manner of sickness and all manner of disease." ® 
 
 It seems here, truly, as if Jesus were a psycho-analyst 
 before the event. His is the same method, the same con- 
 fidence in the work of life. He knew that what destroyed 
 life was the obstacles and the negations with which the false 
 doctors of the spirit surround it. And he entered upon his 
 ministry as a liberator, a Saviour. In order to save, he 
 began by giving people confidence in Him who makes life 
 and breathes the soul into it; he teaches men to trust the 
 vital urge that rises in them all. He teaches them also, or 
 tries to teach them, what God is, that He is the paternal 
 presence 'which all may feel within them but which people 
 do not recognise because they misunderstand it or because 
 it is caught fast in the subconscious layers of their being 
 and not permitted to come forth into the light. 
 
 There was in all this an infinite world to reveal. Jesus 
 had mastered it and he was full of the joy of this revela- 
 tion. But how was he to make others feel it? How was 
 he to communicate this ineffable grace? He found the 
 secret in a form of teaching that came naturally to his lips, 
 the parables. 
 
 § 2 . THE PARABLES '' 
 
 It is in this form of expression, at once old and new, that 
 Jesus reveals himself as an altogether unparalleled master 
 
 «Matt. ix, 36; X, I. 
 
 7 Cf. Weinel, H., Die Gleichnisse Jem. Leipzig, Teubner, 1905. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 185 
 
 of psychology. And what is interesting and remarkable 
 about this is that he was so without suspecting it, without 
 desiring it, by instinct as it were.. He had no intention of 
 creating a form; hence the total absence of any air of delib- 
 eration in these admirable Httle compositions which bear 
 the stamp of his genius and which are found nowhere else 
 with the same characteristics as in the gospels. Our child- 
 hood has been so nourished and our religious thought so 
 shaped by them that we are not perhaps as aware as we 
 might be of their originality. "It is in the parable espe- 
 cially," says Renan, "that the master excels. Nothing in 
 Judaism had given him the model for this delightful form. 
 He was the creator of it. It is true that we find in the 
 Buddhist books parables that are exactly the same in tone 
 and composition as the parables in the gospels. But it is 
 difficult to suppose that any Buddhist influence could have 
 been exercised upon the latter. The gentle spirit and the 
 deep feeling that animate nascent Christianity and Bud- 
 dhism equally suffice perhaps to explain these similarities." ^ 
 
 Renan does not seem to us to go deep enough here. It 
 is obviously difficult to explain these analogies between 
 Buddhism and Christianity if we cling to historical connec- 
 tions. An equal "gentleness" and a certain "depth of feel- 
 ing" common to both religions do not suffice to account for 
 them either. From history and superficial psychology we 
 must pass to a somewhat more profound analysis of the 
 psychic states common to humanity in general. We shall 
 then see that the same causes produce the same effects, how- 
 ever far apart in space and time the two human groups may 
 be and however complete the absence of relations between 
 them. 
 
 One of the most appreciable results of the investigations 
 of psychology has been precisely to make us feel this psychic 
 
 8 Renan, op. cit., p. 174. 
 
i86 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 unity of the human race. It is not an accident that the 
 parable should have been born in two religions as different 
 as Buddhism and Christianity. We have in this an illus- 
 tration of the life of symbols in the human soul. Every- 
 where, at all times, men have sought to express by means 
 of symbols and allegories what could not otherwise be 
 described except by an effort of abstract thought, which 
 would obscure the truth instead of rendering it luminous. 
 
 Before thought was strong enough in humanity to create 
 a philosophy, later, too, after this philosophy had been 
 established, indeed in the very bosom of the different phi- 
 losophies, the creation of symbols was and has remained 
 constantly in process. As early as among the primitive 
 peoples we find the traces and sometimes the actual features 
 of a symbolism. What is totemism but a vast system of 
 symbols, representing profound psychic realities? Their 
 meaning is sometimes obliterated in the memory of the 
 savages; sometimes it is even completely forgotten and lost. 
 But a secret correspondence continues to exist between the 
 symbolical ceremonies and the baffled soul that has insti- 
 tuted them, just as it exists between our rites of to-day, 
 the Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, for example, and 
 many simple consciences which, without grasping their 
 meaning, find something in them nevertheless and tremble 
 in the breath of the mystery that is hidden in them. 
 
 To the question why this life of symbols propagates itself 
 and endures, an answer has become possible since the 
 psycho-analysts have supplied us with its essential elements. 
 The manifestations of the deep life of the soul, that im- 
 mense network of conscious and especially unconscious pro- 
 ceedings of which the human psyche is the theatre, cannot 
 express themselves outwardly otherwise than under the form 
 of images. The most important psychic processes can be 
 represented in their living totality only by means of sym- 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 187 
 
 bols; but these images, these symbols borrowed from the 
 surrounding life, are limited in number. It is inevitable 
 that, in order to express its life, the human spirit should 
 constantly fall back upon the same comparisons and re- 
 discover the same associations of ideas. 
 
 Hence the fact that in all races and at all epochs we 
 encounter the same symbols used to express the same inner 
 facts. The psycho-analysts have already delimited certain 
 symbol-types which they find virtually everywhere. Among 
 the principal of these we may mention the symbols of the 
 father and the mother, the dragon, the serpent, the lion and 
 the wild or dangerous animals in general; that of the box, 
 or of the basket or the coffer; that of the seed, of the bev- 
 erage that gives life, of wheat. 
 
 The life of these symbols in the depths of the human soul 
 is very complicated.^ They become charged with different 
 meanings as the inner life evolves; they do not always sig- 
 nify the same things. Adopted from the earliest relations 
 of the child with his family and with nature, they attend 
 the man through the ever more crowded and more widely 
 ramifying course of his later relations. Expressions of the 
 earthy, primitive life, they gradually ascend in dignity; the 
 same symbols that have at first expressed the natural and 
 often coarse and gross relations of the instinctive being with 
 his physical surroundings, come to be charged with a deli- 
 cate moral significance, often w^ith an import that is very 
 noble and all but the opposite of the sense which they origi- 
 nally possessed. 
 
 Thus, to take an example, the mother, who symbolises in 
 certain primitive myths the object of desire, the object to 
 whom one looks for caresses, whom the child desires quite 
 to himself, who is sometimes the object of the first sexual 
 desires, the mother comes to symbolise also the desire for 
 
 8 Cf . above : Introduc. Chap. II, §2, p. 42. 
 
i88 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 a new birth; towards her the child, grown to manhood, 
 turns his eyes, as if in the hope that she will preside for 
 him at a new birth which will be entirely pure and of a 
 nature that is altogether spiritual. The mother becomes 
 the virght mother who protects the life of the spirit and 
 presides over its development. This is the case not only 
 in the Catholic cult, but in others as well. 
 
 This life of the symbols, with their variations in meaning 
 for those who desire to rise in the moral scale, has an un- 
 equalled importance for education. In learning to find, to 
 discover the ever more lofty signification of the symbols 
 which it carries in itself and which emerge in its dreams, its 
 myths, its legends, humanity becomes capable of progress- 
 ing along the paths which life itself places in its way; it 
 finds its path, and each of its members finds the path which 
 is properly his own. Where every sort of counsel remains 
 fruitless because it is out of gear with life, because it re- 
 mains external to the person, the evocation of the eternal 
 and universal symbols penetrates most deeply; it has the 
 effect of leaving the field free for personal interpretation, 
 and thus, unlike precise commands and direct counsels, 
 runs no risk of violating the consciousness. And then it 
 opens up for later developments a horizon still more vast. 
 We can easily understand, then, why Jesus chose this 
 mode of instruction. He reveals here his exceptional moral 
 tact, that eminently divine gift of bringing souls to birth, 
 of calling out the life that throbs in them, and revealing 
 them to themselves with a respect that is unknown to au- 
 thoritarians who bend others to their system. 
 
 By calling out, in little simple stories, taken from nature 
 or from the everyday life about him, the whole background 
 of the psychic life, Jesus had discovered the only means of 
 teaching souls to free themselves from their inner compli- 
 cations and meet the Father in the most secret sanctuary 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 189 
 
 of their private experiences. It was an art in itself, but it 
 had been discovered without the resources of art, through 
 the creative intuition of a personality of which the founda- 
 tion was a radical and absolute sincerity towards itself. 
 Always in touch with his own innermost life, Jesus had 
 naturally and by instinct found the secret of reaching that 
 of others. The parables are the direct fruit of this in- 
 genuous and spontaneous sincerity. 
 
 There are some theologians who maintain, in opposition 
 to Renan, that the form of the parables was borrowed from 
 the teaching of the rabbis, Jesus having often observed 
 their method of instruction. On a superficial consideration 
 this is true. The rabbis evidently did utter parables; but 
 when one realises how great was their spiritual poverty and 
 how little they were able to draw from the reality that sur- 
 rounded them, one perceives that they can have given him 
 nothing but the bare framework and scarcely that. 
 
 One remark, in conclusion, which will enable us to pass 
 from the form of the teaching of Jesus to the content. As 
 we turn over the gospels, stopping to glance at the various 
 parables, we cannot fail to be struck by the fact that most 
 of them begin with these words: "The kingdom of God is 
 like unto a . . ." ^° There are a few exceptions, for 
 example the parable of the sower, or that of the prodigal 
 son. But even these, when we consider not merely the 
 words but the meaning, have the same object as the others: 
 to cause the reality and the significance of the kingdom to 
 rise before the eyes of the listeners. The S)mibols they 
 make use of and the allegories they employ always serve 
 this purpose. Thus the seed, the springing up of the grain, 
 
 1° Even if this stereotyped formula had been applied to all the parables 
 by the redactors of the gospels, it would not in any way alter the bear- 
 ing of our remark. The first Christian generation had felt instinctively 
 the significance of the parables and its formula, naively generalised, ex- 
 pressed a very sure and very just sense of the common aim of all the 
 parables. 
 
igo ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 the Father's house, the wedding chamber, the hidden 
 treasure, the pearl of great price, the net that gathers the 
 fish, all these figures endeavour to give an impression of 
 the great spiritual reality which Jesus is striving to com- 
 municate to men and which he calls the Kingdom. 
 
 § 3. THE ESSENCE OF CHRIST's TEACHING: 
 THE KINGDOM AND THE MESSIAH 
 
 The preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven or the King- 
 dom of God was thus the great work of Jesus. It was to 
 this that he dedicated his life. His only concern was to 
 reveal to men what the Kingdom of God was, how they 
 could enter into it and what they would find there. It was 
 in this way that he saw his messianic mission. The phrase 
 reappears continually in his sayings, and the thing itself is 
 constantly in his thoughts. 
 
 Now, what is the Kingdom of God? The theologians 
 have discussed at great length the exact meaning to be at- 
 tached to the phrase; and here, as elsewhere, they have 
 armed themselves with an ever growing and ever more 
 complex historical erudition devoted to the discovery of the 
 origins of this concept of the "Kingdom" in the times that 
 preceded Jesus and the works that he might have read. It 
 is obviously undeniable that he may have found the expres- 
 sion in earlier writings and that the history of the chosen 
 people may have furnished him with many of the features 
 of the doctrine of the Kingdom. But as we read the con- 
 tradictory statements of the theologians themselves and the 
 solutions which they reach we cannot escape from a certain 
 feeling of scepticism as to the historical origins of this 
 notion. After all, the best thing is to seek for the light 
 that illumined Jesus not in the past but in his own psy- 
 chology. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS igi 
 
 To him the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 meant the reign of the Father established in the heart 
 and on earth, that is to say, at once a future state and a 
 present state, something the advent of which has already 
 been proclaimed, but which has not yet been realised in 
 its entirety, since, while God reigns henceforth over the 
 souls that have accepted Christ's message, he does not reign 
 over all. With the first acts of the Christians the earth 
 begins to be subject to him. The Kingdom is thus a psychic 
 state before it is a social state; it is the psychic state, the 
 spiritual attitude which Jesus realises perfectly in himself 
 and which he desires to see become general, knowing as he 
 does that this is to have life, and to have it abundantly. 
 "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
 shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall 
 be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
 life." " ' 
 
 But then, if this is the Kingdom, we are again brought 
 back to the central experience of Christ, that mystical expe- 
 rience which he expresses when he says "the Father." The 
 Kingdom is the Father, as Jesus conceives him, feels him, 
 realises him; it is this Father received, obeyed, served at 
 every moment by men. Ever3^hing in the Gospel brings 
 us back to this essential point; and this point is the centre 
 of the inner experience of Christ. The new life which he 
 reveals to the world is the Father grasped as he has grasped 
 him. The salvation which he brings to the v/orld is the 
 Father known as he knows him. The love which he de- 
 mands for men is the Father served as he serves him. This 
 experience of the Father, however, rich, abundant, broad 
 as life, sovereign and full of solemn power, cannot be 
 grasped by reason, cannot be communicated by thought. 
 It must be awakened in the hearts of men by a purely 
 
 ^1 John iv, 14. 
 
192 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 spiritual contact, and words do not suffice for it. That is 
 why, in his teaching, Jesus did not give the people ideas or 
 doctrines, in spite of what the Church has said; he gave 
 them images, symbols, evocations tending to set in motion 
 the powers of the soul. This was the particular point 
 towards which his effort bore. He wished to render God 
 sensible to the heart. He wished to arouse and foster in 
 human individuals the glow of the divine energies and at 
 the same time to free the paths of the soul from the ob- 
 stacles, the repressions which constrain life and stifle it. 
 He wished to make men feel this Father who is in heaven 
 but who is at the same time on earth, so that Gdd should 
 no longer be regarded as a far-away monarch, but as the 
 closest of the loving beings who surround us. 
 
 To sum up, we may say then that at the centre of the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ is the teaching of the Kingdom, 
 and that at the centre of the teaching of the Kingdom is 
 the personal experience of Christ himself, imposed upon him 
 as supreme, decisive, and dominant with respect not only 
 to his own development, but also to that of the world. This 
 experience of the Father, the inner, personal God who is 
 also the creative and sovereign God, He who reveals him- 
 self to the world and whom the world seeks in vain to 
 understand — this experience is in a way unique with Jesus. 
 We find it in no other man invested with such sovereignty 
 or such absoluteness, especially with such an indisputable 
 clearness. If we must have a miracle we shall find it here, 
 in the supernatural evidence and the absolute and imperious 
 clearness which this central experience of the Father pre- 
 sents in the case of Jesus. It is this that lies at the base 
 of everything he is led to say; and in all his sayings it is 
 this which he seeks to reveal to men in the only manner that 
 is possible, that is, not by explaining it but by striving to 
 arouse it in others. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 193 
 
 The same thing is true of the idea and the concept of the 
 Messiah. Jesus felt that he was the Messiah more and 
 more, and in a manner he applied himself to playing the 
 part. He became aware of his Messiahship first and fore- 
 most through the experience which he had of the unique 
 originality of his feeling for the Father. He felt that he 
 was unique in having seen God as he had seen him, in the 
 spontaneous glow, in the urge of the inner life that consti- 
 tuted the essence and the principle of his personality. The 
 abyss which, in this respect, separated him from other men 
 seemed to him not a reason for doubt but an indication of 
 a unique vocation. He was, more than any one else, the 
 Son of Man, Man par excellence, because, more strongly 
 than any other, he felt his divine sonship. This Father who 
 stirs within him in so incontestable a way has given him 
 a mission: that of making his kingdom come. Jesus must 
 therefore assume the unique and central place in the king- 
 dom; he is, through his own personality, the secret and the 
 meaning of the Kingdom. It is by giving himself to others, 
 by confiding to them the mystery of his most intimate 
 psychic life that he will save them. That is why, without 
 pride, in the most sincere humility, he preaches, in a certain 
 sense, himself; he draws men to him, he wills them to him, 
 he entreats them to come to him. "Come unto me all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
 . . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ... I 
 am meek and lowly in heart," etc., etc.^" 
 
 The Kingdom and the Messiah, these two great pivots of 
 Christ's teaching are, therefore, in their original germ, two 
 psychic experiences of Jesus. First, that this God, the 
 Father, who manifests himself in the vital impulse which is 
 at the centre of the personality, must reign. Then the other, 
 which is only a prolongation of the first: the Father must 
 
 12 Matt, xi, 28-30. 
 
194 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 reign everywhere and in all men, in men's consciences and 
 in the world^ as he reigns in me. Here we have what might 
 be called the moral obligation of Christ, the imperative duty 
 which gives to his life its only possible meaning. 
 
 Now any such attempt thus to trace back to the personal 
 experience of Christ the whole Christian doctrine is certain 
 to be met with objections. And I clearly foresee what is 
 going to be said, and reasonably said, against it. I shall 
 be asked: "But what do you make of those discourses at 
 the end of his career in which there seems to be suggested 
 the millennial hope of a reign of the Messiah upon earth? 
 What do you make of the parables at the end of the gos- 
 pels, in which the reign of the Messiah is described in apoca- 
 lyptic colours and with terrestrial and not merely spiritual 
 expectations? How can you reconcile, for example, the de- 
 tails of Chapter XXIV of Matthew with the purely spiritual 
 experience of which you speak? 
 
 Here, indeed, the Kingdom of God does appear as a sort 
 of social and material, as well as a spiritual, revolution. We 
 have the sign of the Son of Man rending the heavens from 
 east to west; the sun is darkened, the moon does not give 
 her light, the stars fall from the sky. They that are on the 
 house-tops will not have time to come down. Woe unto 
 them that are with child in that day, for they shall not be 
 able to flee! People may well pray that this great day does 
 not come in the winter. . . . Then, to the sound of the 
 trumpet, the angels will gather together the elect from the 
 four winds for the judgment. This judgment will consist 
 of a separation of the good from the bad into two sharply 
 defined groups (the parable of the sheep and the goats) of 
 which the one will sit down to a feast presided over by 
 Abraham and the patriarchs, and the other will go dov/n 
 into Gehenna, "where the fire is not quenched." The place 
 of delights is separated from the place of torments by so 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 195 
 
 great an abyss that it is impossible to pass from the one to 
 the other (the parable of the wicked rich man and Lazarus). 
 
 All these features, it must be confessed, are singularly 
 material in character and scarcely harmonise with the con- 
 ception we were defending a moment ago. And indeed it 
 is true that in reading the gospels we are often arrested, 
 surprised and even a little shocked. How can we reconcile 
 all these things with the image which we have formed of 
 Jesus, the spiritual Saviour insisting, before everything else, 
 upon the inner life? 
 
 Here we are obliged to take contingencies into account 
 and remember that Jesus came among men as a man, and 
 with no other title. He sprang from a human lineage; he 
 felt the weight of human contingencies. His soul did not 
 develop differently from ours, and he received consequently 
 the stamp of his people and his environment. His religious 
 experience, his whole inner life was necessarily intellec- 
 tualised according to the moulds that were furnished him 
 by the times and the environment. He did not introduce, 
 it was not his mission to introduce, new ideas; what he 
 brought was a new life, which is a very different matter. 
 
 Now the effort of life, it is to be remarked, does not con- 
 sist in breaking away from everything that the race and 
 the times have slowly elaborated. To attempt this would 
 be to end in madness or to escape into egotistical and 
 destructive dreams, and Jesus had put this temptation from 
 him. The only effort of life that succeeds is one that avails 
 itself, on the contrary, of everything which the race and the 
 times constitute in order to benefit people spiritually and 
 lift to a higher level what people feel that they possess in 
 themselves. 
 
 The experience of the Kingdom, that of the Father, the 
 feeling of the unique place which he occupied, this inner 
 movement, this psychic elan, this spiritual urge had to be 
 
196 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 translated into intellectual terms, condensed into thoughts, 
 into words and images, as much in the case of Jesus as in 
 our own case. Life must always be translated in order to 
 be expressed; that is a law inherent in our human condition, 
 and it always translates itself in terms of the characteristics 
 and the images of the time in vv^hich we live. 
 
 What we find here, then, is the intervention of the influ- 
 ence and the properties of the Jewish environment in which 
 Jesus lived and the epoch in which he developed. The 
 environment and the epoch furnished him with two intel- 
 lectual frames or moulds, apocalyptic messianism and the 
 Judaic eschatology. 
 
 When Jesus reached the conviction that the reign of God 
 was approaching, that it was being inaugurated in himself, 
 that the Father spoke through him in an exceptional man- 
 ner, we must not imagine, as we are so prone to do, that his 
 brain and his imagination vi^ere em^pty of all ideas, that they 
 were like a blank page on which he had only to trace en- 
 tirely new characters. He was just like one of ourselves 
 when, in the midst of life, we become conscious of a new 
 spiritual revelation. The latter does not suppress at a 
 stroke the whole stock of ideas by which we have lived 
 hitherto and which has been slowly elaborated in us as a 
 result of the environment in which we have dwelt since 
 childhood. To Jesus the words: the Kingdom of God, the 
 Messiah, were not new words. They had acquired in the 
 Jewish mind a very precise meaning; they were accom- 
 panied by a throng of mental pictures that were, so to speak, 
 inseparable from them. When Jesus, following the clear 
 line of his inner experiences, reached the point of saying to 
 himself: "I myself am the Messiah," or "the Kingdom of 
 God has begun in me," there immediately appeared before 
 him all the images evoked by these two concepts in a Jewish 
 brain of the time. Adm.itting that he rejected some of them 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 197 
 
 as incompatible with his personal experience, others must 
 have remained. According to the moment, one or another 
 of them would appear. 
 
 And the problem is more complicated even than this, for 
 we must bear in mind here not merely the thought of Jesus, 
 but also that of his contemporaries who heard these words, 
 the first Christian generation that received them and put 
 them on paper. These people were Jews also, familiar with 
 the Jewish eschatology, imbued with the apocalyptic ideas 
 of the times concerning the Messiah, and some of them were 
 eager to show that their Master had fully realised the mes- 
 sianic expectations of the people. In the accounts that have 
 come down to us, we have thus not only to distinguish be- 
 tween that which comes from Jesus and that which comes 
 from his disciples, but to perceive that sometimes a saying 
 whose meaning is purely spiritual has been deformed and 
 altered owing to the incomprehension of people who were 
 imbued with the apocalyptic messianism. 
 
 We see how difficult it is, even when we hold to the very 
 letter of the gospels, to form an exact idea of what Jesus 
 expected. Was the Kingdom of God to come suddenly, like 
 a catastrophe, or was it to develop slowly, like a germina- 
 tion? Was the Messiah to return in triumph before this 
 generation had passed, or was he not to appear till the end 
 of the world, at some indeterminate time of which he him- 
 self was unaware? Would he have to wait for outward 
 signs that would announce this moment, or would there be 
 a dazzling revelation of a purely spiritual order? Such are 
 the many questions, the many problems which the theo- 
 logians settle according to their preferences. 
 
 The vagueness, the fluctuating and uncertain character 
 of the doctrine of the Kingdom have been the despair of 
 many. For us all this is an element of strength. It cor- 
 roborates what we have just said. As long as it is a ques- 
 
198 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 tion of a living experience, the Kingdom of God is a per- 
 fectly simple matter; it is when we draw away from the 
 inner experience and enter the domain of possible material 
 realisations that the idea becomes indeterminate and sub- 
 ject to diverse interpretations. It appears indeed as if 
 Christ took every possible pains to avoid giving distinct 
 material features to the certitudes of the moral order which 
 he held in this connection. There is no doubt that when he 
 spoke of the future he followed the broad lines furnished 
 him by the admitted beliefs of his generation on the subject 
 of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God, applying to them 
 undoubtedly at the same time the corrections which the 
 character of his personal experience had rendered necessary 
 for him. But we see by the manner in which these final 
 things are presented how little understood he was, how 
 readily people confounded what related to the end of Jeru- 
 salem with what related to the end of the world, and how 
 often what was only a symbol or an image was taken for 
 an exact, prophetic description. 
 
 Renan himself seems to believe that Jesus accepted all 
 the apocalyptic beliefs quite uncritically, that he expected 
 a heaven where there would be a new table and a new wine 
 and a new Passover in the material sense of all these 
 words." But this is not serious. Plainly, considering the 
 actual state of the texts, it is very difficult to know exactly 
 what Jesus said; we can, however, with a little intelligent 
 insight, discern that what was important for him was not 
 the material description of the Kingdom but its moral 
 reality. The manner in which he represented it to himself 
 bore no doubt the stamp of the Jewish ideas; but his trust 
 in life and in Him who makes Hfe went far beyond these 
 representations and he troubled himself very little about 
 any contradictions which they might occasionally have pre- 
 
 13 Renan, op. cit., pp. 290, 291. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 199 
 
 sented. Beneath the apocalyptic messianism and the tra- 
 ditional eschatology, the living experience remained the 
 capital thing. It is this which has endured and upon which 
 we seize eagerly to-day. The Jewish cc lours have faded 
 out; but the Kingdom of God remains as a reality of to-day, 
 to-morrow, and the eternal future, as a state of the soul that 
 is realised and propagated through communion with him 
 who first realised it, a state of the soul that will become 
 general some day in a transformed and regenerated hu- 
 manity. We no longer feel the need of casting this King- 
 dom in precise material and temporal forms. It suffices 
 for us to conceive it on the prolonged lines of an experience 
 that has already been lived.^* 
 
 1* Some theologians seem to take it for granted that Jesus made use 
 of concepts as clear-cut and ideas as accurately shaped and arranged 
 as those which they themselves, after a minute scrutiny of the gospels 
 and the apocalypses, have thought it necessary to form concerning the 
 Kingdom of God and the apocalyptic events. In this, however, they 
 distort the facts, lose connection with life and make out of a great 
 adventure of the open air, of sun and storm, a labour of the study, an 
 anaemic creation of myopic ideologues. 
 
 It is true that Jesus made use of the stereotyped symbols with which 
 the epoch and the environment provided him ; he could no more help 
 using them than we can help using our native tongue to express what 
 seethes within ourselves. But life overflowed the frame on every side, 
 experience brimmed over the vessel that contained it. When Jesus 
 spoke of "the Kingdom of God" he made use, I am well aware, of a 
 current expression that was clearly defined; just as a new convert, still 
 immensely moved by the living contact of his Saviour, makes use, when 
 he says "Jesus Christ," of a perfectly definite expression which is apt 
 to call up to the minds of his colder auditors nothing but a rigid and 
 inert historical image. For this neophyte there is, beneath the ex- 
 pression "Jesiis," a whole world, a whole life which is not so much as 
 dreamed of by his cold listeners who believe that they perfectly under- 
 stand what he is expressing. It is the same way with the theologians 
 face to face with the eschatology and the apocalyptic aspect of Jesus. 
 They have defined the exact historic meaning of the words they em- 
 ploy, and accordingly imagine that they have understood them. But 
 the unhappy souls have forgotten the palpitating personality which 
 vibrates behind these current images, and which has made use of them 
 simply because they are the only coins in circulation and because they 
 enable it to distribute through the heart of humanity the treasure, the 
 moral and religious capital, which it conveys. The whole work of 
 theology should be done over again with this fact in mind. We have 
 accomplished nothing if, in defining the meaning of a word or the 
 import of a concept that have been employed by a living, ardent, 
 
200 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 Thus, in its essence and in its form, the teaching of Jesus 
 has, as its original source, the very nature of his own per- 
 sonality. It is to this mystery that we are always and in- 
 evitably led back when we study his teaching. The essen- 
 tial problem is, therefore, a psychological problem. It is 
 the psychology of Christ that will deliver up to us, the more 
 we study it, the secret of his teaching; it is his personality 
 which, in the last analysis, gives us the key to what people 
 have called the evangelical doctrine of the Kingdom. Con- 
 sequently, we must grip this problem a little more closely 
 and try to understand what made Jesus, from the psycho- 
 logical point of view, a unique personality. But first it 
 remains to us to consider one final aspect of his public min- 
 istry and his activity. I mean the Miracles. 
 
 mystical soul, we have seen in them merely what others than himself 
 have put there. It is the very work of creative personalities to play 
 the midwife to old formulas and give to the world the new-born child 
 which they carry in their womb. Jesus spoke the eschatological and 
 apocalyptical language of the Jews ; but beneath the images, beneath 
 the ancient symbolism, he inaugurated a new creation of the Spirit the 
 meaning of which does not reveal itself through history or exegesis, 
 but through psychology alone. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE MIRACLES 
 
 If we are to believe the gospels, it is incontestable that 
 Jesus performed many miracles and that miracles played 
 an important part in his career. The gospel of Mark is 
 a tissue of them; that of John reports several that are even 
 more notable than the others. Under this term are included, 
 however, very different things: on the one hand, cures of 
 the sick (comprising the greater number of the miracles), 
 on the other, marvellous acts, belonging to quite a different 
 category, such as the miraculous draught of fishes, the 
 calming of the tempest, the walking on the waves, the mul- 
 tiplication of the loaves, the raising of the dead, etc., and 
 finally events of which the meaning and import are not 
 clearly explained, such, for example, as the changing of 
 the water into wine at the marriage in Cana and the cursing 
 of the sterile fig-tree which withers at the word of the 
 Master. 
 
 A first mistake which people have made and against 
 which we must be on our guard as we take up the study 
 of the miracles, is to consider them as violations of the 
 natural order. The word "miracle" has come to have as 
 its chief meaning one which it did not possess at all for 
 the contemporaries of Jesus, and this for a very simple 
 reason: at that epoch and in the Jewish environment people 
 had no idea of what is for us to-day the merest common- 
 place, a knowledge, namely, of the natural laws and their 
 inviolable order. We are born, so to speak, with this idea; 
 it is imposed upon us from the very moment when we 
 begin to reflect; our modern culture is impregnated with 
 it. This was by no means the case in antiquity. With 
 
 201 
 
202 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 the exception of the great scientiRc schools of Greece and 
 their Roman disciples, the whole world lived in a state of 
 bewilderment as to the natural and the supernatural order. 
 The men of those days were as ignorant as children of 
 any fixed sequence of causes and effects; they lived, as 
 it were, as children live, amid perpetual miracles. We have 
 all of us passed more or less through this stage and we 
 understand it through memory. To become conscious of 
 it we have only to recall the impressions of our childhood, 
 that happy age when it would not have struck us as more 
 extraordinary to see the heavens open and God himself 
 descend from them than to see a thunderbolt strike one 
 of the trees in the garden. The sudden realisation of one 
 of these events would not have seemed to us more re- 
 markable than that of the other. 
 
 For Jesus and the men of his time and country, the 
 miraculous did not represent, therefore, any violation of 
 the laws of nature. For them there were no laws; there 
 were only occurrences and persons whose operations or 
 whose activities seemed more miraculous at certain times 
 than at others and bore witness to the intervention of God 
 or of devils in human affairs. There was nothing to pre- 
 vent a miracle from taking place, A miracle was simply 
 an exceptionally marked sign of the presence of the divine 
 or demoniacal forces which were continually at work in 
 the natural world. Everything that was inexplicable seemed 
 miraculous; and people did not feel the need that besets 
 us to-day of explaining things scientifically, that is of con- 
 necting them with antecedents of the natural order rather 
 than with some supernatural cause. The difference between 
 the supernatural and the natural was scarcely felt or not 
 felt at all.' 
 
 1 We may note this facility in accepting the miraculous in th 
 of the time. For example, Josephus (38-100 A.D.) accepts 
 
 le writers 
 
THE MIRACLES 203 
 
 In approaching the study of the miracles, then, we must 
 bear in mind this difference in mentality between ourselves 
 and the men of the age of Jesus. 
 
 A second point, which we must also bear in mind, and 
 which is a consequence of this mentality, is that at that 
 time people expected miracles of every hero, especially of 
 every founder of a religion. It was quite natural, they 
 thought, that an exceptional man should manifest himself 
 by exceptional acts and should be pointed out to the mul- 
 titude by the god who protected him. There was pothing 
 to stand in the way of any such idea; there was not, as 
 there is to-day, any cycle of natural laws to be broken. 
 Everything concurred to render it reasonable; no contra- 
 diction existed between the miraculous and the natural 
 order. 
 
 It was taken for granted that the Messiah would per- 
 form miracles, as so many others had done. So many 
 others, the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, that Simon the 
 Magician of whom the Acts tell us," and Apollonius of 
 Tyana, whose biography has been preserved for us by 
 Philostratus, and the Alexandrian philosophers, Plotinus, 
 etc.^ It was even supposed that the power of working 
 miracles was not unknown to other rabbis who lived at the 
 same time as Jesus; the latter also made miraculous cures. 
 Jesus himself alludes to these when, having been accused 
 of casting out devils by the power of evil, he replies to 
 his accusers: "And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by 
 
 fectly natural the miracles that were believed to have preceded, at 
 Jerusalem, the war with the Romans and the siege that followed. He 
 does not question these signs and wonders which to-day make us smile : 
 the apparition of a star in the form of a sword, a cow giving birth to a 
 lamb in the Temple, the bronze gates opening of themselves, the 
 spectres of devils, the aerial chariots and armed battalions dashing 
 through the clouds, etc., etc. (Cf. Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., Book III, 
 Chap. VIII). 
 
 2 Acts viii, 9. 
 
 3 Cf. Renan, op. cit, pp. 260-261. 
 
204 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they 
 shall be your judges." * 
 
 S I. THE EXPLANATIONS 
 
 With these preliminary facts in mind, let us attempt to 
 approach more closely the miracles of Jesus Christ. At 
 all times they have engrossed the attention of readers of 
 the gospels. Regarded formerly as proofs of the Messiah- 
 ship of Jesus, they used to constitute for believers the 
 greatest supports of their faith; people found in reading 
 the account of them the greatest edification. To-day they 
 produce upon us the contrary effect. For many they con- 
 stitute an obstacle to faith; others find them a sort of 
 dead weight which they do not know how to dispose of. 
 Hence the various attempts to explain them which may 
 be grouped roughly under three heads. 
 
 1. First there is the rationalistic explanation which seeks 
 to account for all the miracles as natural. Certain theo- 
 logians, for instance, have reduced the cases of the healing 
 of the sick to various cures which Jesus accomplished with 
 very simple medical means. Some go so far as to maintain 
 that he was never separated from his doctor's bag and 
 carried it about with him everywhere. They have removed 
 the mystery from all the other miracles also. Thus the 
 multiplication of the loaves was simply the result of the 
 good will of the multitude which, having pooled its pro- 
 visions, found, to its great surprise, that it was sufficiently 
 well supplied, etc., etc. 
 
 2. The mythical explanation, advanced by Strauss, who 
 sees in the miracles of the New Testament simply memories 
 of those of the Old, exploited by the faith of the first 
 Christian community. The Messiah was obliged to perform 
 
 4 Matt, xii, 27. 
 
J THE MIRACLES 205 
 
 as wonderful things as the heroes of the Old Testament 
 had performed. Moses, for example, had miraculously pro- 
 vided food and drink for his people. Elijah had raised the 
 dead. As much, therefore, had to be attributed to the 
 Messiah, and the miracles were born as if by enchantment. 
 
 3. The symbolical explanation attempts to find in the 
 miracle a simple story told in images, a sort of parable 
 which Jesus related and which was later in some way 
 materialised, transformed into a real occurrence. Thus 
 the multiplication of the loaves was originally a story re- 
 counting how Jesus had fed the multitude with his words 
 alone. In time this was materialised, and the distorted 
 story ended by becoming a miracle. 
 
 We cannot ignore these explanations because they are 
 insufficient; they undoubtedly contain useful elements with 
 which we must reckon. All three of them, however, make 
 the initial mistake of regarding the miracle as a derogation 
 of the natural laws, whereas, in the sense in which the 
 contemporaries of Jesus understood it, the miracle may 
 easily have contained natural elements carried to the height 
 of the miraculous thanks to the mystery concealed in every 
 personal presence of a very lofty nature, side by side with 
 other elements which we are not yet perhaps in a position 
 to understand. 
 
 For my part, I believe it is a mistake to try to find a 
 single explanation for all the miracles. Under this term 
 have been united occurrences in the life of Jesus and per- 
 sonal acts of his so different from one another as to have, 
 as it were, nothing in common but their extraordinary char- 
 acter. To handle the matter rightly, we should take them 
 one by one and study them successively. As this method 
 of procedure would take too long, let us at least attempt 
 to group them in classes. Of these I distinguish three: 
 
 I. The healings, or miracles performed on persons. 
 
206 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 2. The miraculous acts which seem to bear upon objects, 
 but of which the moral import can be grasped. 
 
 3. The miracles of which, at present at least, we cannot 
 discern the moral meaning. 
 
 § 2. THE HEALINGS 
 
 Jesus performed a large number of miraculous healings: 
 of this, if we are to believe the gospels, there can be no 
 doubt. An extremely interesting study, however, might 
 be made of the conditions under which these cures were 
 performed. 
 
 It is to be observed first that there were certain occasions 
 on which Jesus was unable to perform miracles. This was 
 the case, we are told, at Nazareth, where the incredulity 
 of his fellow-townsmen raised an insurmountable barrier 
 against him.^ 
 
 On the other hand, Jesus adopted the belief which was 
 current among the people around him that sickness was, 
 for the most part, the work of devils; thus in working a 
 cure he believed that he was casting out the devil. But 
 it is also important to note that he did not always cast 
 out devils in the same manner, following, for instance, a 
 ritualistic formula; his procedure was by no means that 
 of the vulgar exorcists. On the contrary, each case was 
 treated, as it were, according to a psychic pedagogy whose 
 methods varied. With one he would begin by "forgiving 
 his sins"; he would command another to perform some 
 definite act, such as "Stretch forth thy hand," or "Arise 
 and walk I" Upon others still he operated himself, for ex- 
 ample putting spittle on their eyes. 
 
 In all this he certainly followed no prearranged method; 
 he worked by an inspired intuition which helped him to 
 
 6 Matt, xiii, 58.— Mark vi, 5-6. 
 
THE MIRACLES 207 
 
 find the path to his neighbour's soul. It is none the less 
 true that several of these processes correspond to those 
 which the most advanced neurologists and psychiatrists 
 prescribe to-day for the treatment of neuroses and mental 
 maladies. It is not, as a matter of fact, upon ailments and 
 external symptoms that the latter, in our day, set to work 
 first; they seek out the roots of the malady in the inner- 
 most recesses of the being; they push their investigations 
 into the subconscious of the patient to find the germs of 
 his illness. When this has been done, they reveal the 
 patient to himself, as it were, and the cure takes place 
 through the relief experienced by the neurotic in under- 
 standing himself, in being delivered from the chains that 
 have bound him inwardly, in expelling from himself the 
 false ego which has supplanted the true one. Jesus did 
 these things without the experimental science of the modern 
 psycho-analysts, but there is no need to suppose that he 
 did them in any different fashion. It was the influence 
 of a stronger, better-balanced personality that acted upon 
 these sick people, and this not in despite of all natural 
 laws, but rather through a perfect accord with the laws 
 of the psychology which we are now beginning to under- 
 stand and which at the time were totally unknown, though 
 they were none the less operative for that. 
 
 We see, in fact, in the sick of the time of Jesus, the 
 same hesitations and the same enthusiasms which modern 
 patients manifest towards their physicians. For example, 
 there is the curious phenomenon of transference of which 
 the psycho-analysts speak; this is just what we find in 
 the objurgations of the demoniacs who say to Jesus, "What 
 have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art 
 thou come to destroy us?" They transfer to the healer the 
 feelings of hatred which they have cherished for others, 
 before they realise that it is upon a part of their own "I," 
 
2o8 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 upon the demoniac portion of their own personality, that 
 this hatred ought to be accumulated in order to destroy it. 
 
 We might multiply these comparisons, showing, for ex- 
 ample, that the confidence of the patient in his healer is 
 one of the conditions, and the most important of the con- 
 ditions, of any possible cure. Jesus aroused this confidence, 
 and it was only upon those who gave it to him that he was 
 able to lavish his grace. 
 
 Thus in the miracles of this type we find nothing but 
 the influence exercised in the most natural way upon the 
 ill-balanced and the neurotic by an exceptionally strong 
 and psychically well-balanced personality. What consti- 
 tutes the miracle is, chiefly and simply, the personality of 
 Jesus itself, the fact that he possessed the personality which 
 he did possess. There was evidently something unique in 
 this: it was, as the gospels show us, the intuition which his 
 extraordinary sympathy gave him into the sorrows of others 
 and the faculty of penetrating to the depths of the souls 
 of those who approached him with the minimum of con- 
 fession. Here the mystery lies, not in any force contrary 
 to the laws of nature that overturned the order of the 
 natural forces. 
 
 The Healing of the Gadarene. — An example of these miracu- 
 lous cures will help us to understand them better. Let us take 
 that of the demoniac of Gadara, cited by the three synoptics.® 
 
 We observe at once a difference in the accounts of the evan- 
 gelists who relate this event. The briefest, that of Matthew, 
 mentions two demoniacs, while Mark and Luke speak of only 
 one, one who says, however, that he is called "legion," thus 
 indicating that he feels that he is the abode of several demoniacal 
 personalities. 
 
 "It is amazing," wrote Strauss, years ago, "how much time 
 the harmonists have wasted in their miserable attempts to show 
 that Mark and Luke mentioned only one man because this one 
 
 6 Matt, viii, 28-34. — I^'Iark v, 1-20.— Luke viii, 26-39. 
 
THE MIRACLES 209 
 
 was especially distinguished by his violence, whereas Matthew 
 mentioned two because he included the keeper charged with 
 watching over the madman, the dispute ending in a decision 
 to admit that there is an actual difference between the two 
 accounts." ^ Strauss protests later against the preference which 
 many theologians have accorded to the accounts of Mark and 
 Luke over that of Matthew, showing that the multiplicity of 
 devils which appears in the former had become in the latter a 
 multiplicity of demoniacs. But the knowledge we now possess 
 of these curious cases of double personality renders the suppo- 
 sition that Strauss disputed sufficiently acceptable and more plaus- 
 ible, perhaps, than it was in his time. 
 
 When he adds, "It is permissible to say, by an inverse process 
 of reasoning, that Matthew's account, which is closer to the fact 
 and which speaks of several possessed men and several devils, 
 does not lay sufficient emphasis on that which is especially 
 extraordinary and which we find in the accounts of the other 
 two, the fact that several devils should have inhabitated a single 
 individual," — we can no longer follow Strauss. As a matter of 
 fact, it would be stranger to see two madmen living together than 
 to encounter a demoniac who believed that he was the abode 
 and the prey of several devils. Thus the priority of the accounts 
 of Mark and Luke seems to us more probable, and the confusion 
 of the multiplicity of the devils with that of the demoniacs ad- 
 missible enough. 
 
 Here, then, we find ourselves face to face with one of those 
 strange cases of neuroses with which the psychiatrists have often 
 dealt.« 
 
 "^ Strauss, Vie de Jesus, French trans, by Littre. Paris, 1864, vol. II, 
 p. 30. 
 
 8 Cf., among others : Mesnet, Ern., De I'aiitomatisme de la memoir-e, 
 Paris, 1874. 
 
 Dyce, The Zoist, vol. IV, p. 158. 
 
 Proceedings of the Society of Psych. Research, VII, pp. 221-258; 
 XIV, pp. 396-398 ; I, p. 552. 
 
 Annales mcdico-psychol. Jan. 1892. 
 
 Boris Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion: A Research into the 
 Subconscious Nature' of Man and Society. New York, 1898. 
 
 Boris Sidis and Goodhart, Multiple Personality. London, 1905. 
 
 James, W., Principles of Psychology, I, pp. 381-384. 
 
 AzAM, Hypnotisfhe, Double conscience, etc. Paris, 1887. 
 
 Janet, L'Automatisme psychologiqiie, 4 ed. Paris, 1903. 
 
 Camuset, Annales mcdico-psychol. 1882, p. 75. 
 
 VoisiN, Archives de Neurologic, Sept. 1885. 
 
2IO ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 Strauss also points out a divergence, a contradiction even, 
 between the accounts which render them open to suspicion, "Ac- 
 cording to Matthew, the possessed, on catching sight of Jesus, 
 cry out, 'What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of 
 God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?' 
 According to Luke, the demoniac falls at the feet of Jesus and 
 entreats him, 'I beseech thee, torment me not!' Finally, accord- 
 ing to Mark, he runs to Jesus, falls on his knees and implores 
 him in the name of God not to torment him," ^ What does 
 Strauss make of these contradictions? He criticises the inter- 
 preters "who, taking Mark as a point of departure, must them- 
 selves admit that there is something contradictory about the 
 haste of a demoniac in throwing himself at the feet of Jesus, 
 whom he nevertheless fears." ^° Now to any one who is at all 
 familiar with psycho-analytic cures, or has even read the accounts 
 of some of these cures, there is nothing incomprehensible in this 
 contradictory behaviour of the sick man. It is a shining mani- 
 festation of the ambivalence ^^ of which the psycho-analysts have 
 
 Morton Prince, Dissociation of a Personality. New York, 1906. 
 
 Mason, R. O., Dupkx Personality; its Relation to Hypnotism and 
 to Lucidity, Journal of the Amer. Medic. Ass., 30 Nov. 1895. 
 
 Myers, F. W. H., Hutnan Personality and Its Survival of Bodily 
 Death. London and Bombay, 1907, ch. 11. 
 
 Flournoy, Th., Esprits et Mediums. Geneva and Paris, 191 1. 
 
 Id., Des Indes a la planete Mars. Geneva and Paris, 1909. 
 
 s Strauss, op. cit., pp. 32-33. 
 
 10 Id., ibid. 
 
 11 The psycho-analysts have made us aware of the fact that there 
 always exists in us a double current of contradictory feelings. In re- 
 lation to the same object our inner self reacts always and at the same 
 time in two opposite ways, and this gives rise to two series of con- 
 tradictory feelings. Thus when we love some one passionately, there 
 is also, in the subconscious depths of our being, a current of hatred 
 for him. Crimes of passion furnish us with a typical example of this. 
 "How much does one have to love a woman in order to kill her?" one 
 might ask. 
 
 This phenomenon is also perceptible in our common everyday life. 
 Let us examine it for a moment and try to form some idea of it. We 
 are leaving a gathering of friends who are particularly dear to us. 
 Hardly have we crossed the threshold when, if there are several of us, 
 we begin to criticise and perhaps censure these friends ; in any case 
 we make unkind comparisons or bring vtp various points in their be- 
 haviour towards us which we have not noticed before. We say things 
 about them that we would never say to their faces ; oh, not malicious 
 things, but still things that are more or less disagreeable. And if 
 some scruple restrains us from saying them, at least we think them, 
 which is exactly the same thing. What is the cause of this phe- 
 
THE MIRACLES 2.11 
 
 often spoken and which appears so frequently in cases of trans- 
 ference, in which the patient, attached to his physician, hates 
 and adores him by turns and concentrates upon his person all 
 the violence of the feelings which agitate him in relation to quite 
 
 nomenon? It is simply that the current of hatred, which has been 
 arrested by all the social constraints of the drawing-room, is liberated 
 in the street. This is a natural phenomenon, revealing in its way what 
 Bleuler has called the ambivalence of the feelings, and Silberer their 
 bipolarity. 
 
 The phenomenon of jealousy also illustrates very clearly this per- 
 sistence in us of two opposite currents of feeling in connection with 
 the same person. As a rule, we have no suspicion of this in ourselves, 
 for the simple reason that, while one of these currents is quite con- 
 scious, the other is flowing in the depths of the subliminal. Some ac- 
 cidental circumstance is necessary to bring it to light, but it exists 
 none the less. 
 
 Jones, in a study of the painter, Andrea del Sarto, tells how this 
 artist married while young a woman whom he adored, but who was 
 far from being on the level of his genius. According to Jones, it 
 appears that he must have had reason to consider her as an obstacle in 
 his life; nevertheless he loved her and chose her as the model for all 
 the madonnas he painted. But the subconscious current of hatred 
 manifests itself in one of his great paintings. Unintentionally per- 
 haps, he painted on the pedestal of the celebrated Madonna of the 
 Harpies, precisely those harpies which are the symbol of evil. It is 
 a vengeance of the subconscious. His wife had set him at variance 
 with all his friends ; she was a busy-body and she had imposed 
 upon him, under his own roof, the whole of her own family. Sub- 
 consciously, he had every reason to hate her ; but, to repeat, con- 
 sciously he loved her. His brush betrayed his inner self, and not once 
 only, for among the draperies which cover the knees of another 
 madonna for which his wife was the model we can distinguish again 
 the figure of a harpy. 
 
 All this is interesting; we might multiply examples. But nothing 
 can take the place of the study of oneself. If we face frankly that 
 multiple and delicate life of the feelings which is in ourselves, we 
 shall soon subscribe, I think, to this idea of the ambivalence of the 
 feelings. You are very fond of your friend X ; you feel for him an 
 inalterable tenderness, an old affection. Then why, just when he has 
 won a brilliant success, have you felt, in the midst of your pleasure, 
 a sort of secret discomfort? Why have you said to yourself that this 
 success is very fortunate, but that, after all, people are carrying their 
 admiration rather far? It is because, while you love your friend, you 
 hate at the same time the rival which he is for you. There we have 
 the ambivalence ! I shall certainly not do you the wrong of believing 
 that you give your consent to these sorry feelings. But do they not 
 exist, dissembled but rampant, in yourself? That is the whole question. 
 
 We were astonished to learn from several German newspapers, im- 
 mediately after the invasion of the north of France, that the Germans 
 loved the French, or at least had a certain sympathy for them. We 
 must not cry out in horror at this : it is one more manifestation of am- 
 bivalence, of the bipolarity of the feelings; for if there was an ele- 
 
212 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 other individualities, with whom he momentarily and subcon- 
 sciously identifies him.^^ 
 
 It may not be possible, with the aid merely of our three 
 accounts, to reconstitute exactly all the details of the scene. 
 But we feel how much this ambivalence of the feelings of the 
 demoniac and the contradictory nature of the conduct which 
 arose from it struck the spectators who later recounted the 
 events as best they could, and as they believed they remembered 
 them. 
 
 Concerning the healing itself there is not much to say. We see 
 Jesus trying to effect the dissociation between the false I of this 
 man and his real I by commanding the devil to come forth. This 
 was his usual procedure, and it must be admitted that it strangely 
 resembles that of the modern psycho-analysts who, having dis- 
 covered by recourse to his dreams and to analysis the borrowed 
 personality of the patient, reveal it to him simply so that he may 
 abjure it. 
 
 Resistance often takes place. This occurs in the case of the de- 
 moniac in question. Jesus attempts to overcome it by making 
 an appeal to the real personality which consists in asking for 
 his name. But here again the resistance simply braces itself 
 and the unconscious profits by the occasion to affirm itself. In- 
 stead of telling his real name, the man replies by assuming a 
 borrowed name on which is inscribed symbolically the very ab- 
 normality of his condition, his multiple personality. He declares 
 that he is called Legion. 
 
 Then, as it appears, Jesus profited by a question of the sufferer 
 himself, caught on the wing, in order to carry out his design and 
 
 ment of conscious hypocrisy in this affirmation, there was also per- 
 haps more subconscious sincerity than we wish to believe. 
 
 Cf . on ambivalence : Bleuler, Das autistische Dcnken, pp. 39 Jahr- 
 buch f. psychoanal. Forschungen IV. — Id., Ambivalenz, Universitat 
 Zurich. Festgabe zur Einweihung der Neubauten, 18 April, 1914, 
 III, pp. 93-106. 
 
 1- Cf. on transference (Uebertragung), Freud, Sammlung kleiner 
 Schriften cur Neurosenlchre, pp. 104. — Ferenzci, Introjektion und 
 Uebertragung, Jahrbuch f. psjchoanal. Forschung, I, pp. 422 — Jung, 
 Versuch ciner Darstellung der psychoanalyt. Thcorie. Ibid. V. — Pfis- 
 ter. Die psychoanal. Methods. Leipzig, Klinkhardt. 1913, pp. 394 et 
 seqq. — Id., Was bietet die Psychanalysc dein Erzichcr? Leipzig, 
 Klinkhardt, pp. 89. — Id., Wahrheit und Schonhcit in der Psychanalysc 
 Zurich, Rascher, 1918, pp. 135. — See also p. 250 et seqq. of the present 
 volume. 
 
THE MIRACLES 213 
 
 bring about the delayed dissociation. What happened was that 
 the demoniac "besought him much," as Mark tells us, "that he 
 would not send them [the devils] away out of the country." 
 "They besought him," says Luke, "that he would not command 
 them to go out into the deep." "The devils besought him, saying, 
 Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them" (Mark). 
 "And there was there an herd of many sv/ine feeding on the 
 mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to 
 enter into them" (Luke). "And he suffered them" (Mark and 
 Luke). 
 
 Jesus evidently saw in this prayer the salvation of the man 
 who was not atjle to separate himself from his devil. He gave 
 his permission. It is quite natural that at this moment the 
 demoniac, pursuing his idea, prey as he was to a violent emotion 
 and still identifying himself with his legion, should have turned 
 towards the herd to enter into them and should thus have fright- 
 ened them. Hence the panic, hurling the swine into the lake. 
 In the sight of them vanishing, drowned, the man had lost his 
 legion along with them; it was at last dissociated from him. His 
 devil, his devils were drowned with the swine and, like the swine, 
 in the lake. 
 
 The explanation is of course too simple for people to have 
 found it at once.^^ It has even been conjectured that the swine 
 were precipitated into the lake by the storm that had burst 
 during the crossing of Jesus and before he disembarked, and that, 
 wishing to heal the demoniac, he himself or one of his followers 
 convinced the man that the demons had already entered into the 
 swine and had dashed into the lake.^* As for Strauss, he sees 
 in the episode of the swine an addition to the legend intended 
 to serve as a proof of the actual expulsion of devils. It is a 
 fact that such conjurors as Eleazar (cited by Josephus), Apol- 
 lonius of Tyana, etc., in order to convince those who came to 
 consult them as to the reality of the expulsion of devils, would 
 cause the devil as he came forth to overturn some nearby object, 
 a vase full of water (Eleazar), for example, or a statue (Apol- 
 lonius). It was necessary for Jesus also to have this proof, and 
 the devil cast the herd of swine into the sea. 
 
 All this, we must confess, is rather pitiable. The scene, as 
 
 IS Neander comes close to it (cf. Strauss, op. cit., p. 41). 
 "The hypothesis of Krug (cf. Strauss, op. cit., pp. 4^-42). 
 
214 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 a matter of fact, is quite natural just as we have described it. 
 A few details, perhaps, such as Mark's enumeration of two thou- 
 sand swine, may be particularisations added after the event. But 
 the episode as a whole has the most striking air of truth, and 
 our modern studies of neuroses cast a new light upon several 
 of its features which we might formerly have supposed were 
 invented. This shows that we must not be in too great haste 
 to reject everything in the gospels that we do not clearly under- 
 stand, and that great patience is necessary in this connection. 
 
 g 3. MIRACLES OF WHICH THE MORAL IMPORT IS OBVIOUS 
 
 The second category of miracles of which we have to 
 speak here is much more difficult to study. It comprises, 
 in fact, events of which it is sometimes far from easy to 
 reconstitute the exact unfolding and the complete develop- 
 ment. They made a very lively impression on the minds 
 of the multitude or of the disciples; and those who were 
 present when they occurred saw miracles in them. 
 
 The difficult thing to ascertain exactly, however, is the 
 extent to which their emotion and their lack of what we 
 to-day call the critical sense may have prevented them from 
 distinguishing the physical facts from the moral facts that 
 stirred them. These miracles, as we follow the drift of 
 the accounts, appear to consist in a display of unknown 
 and consequently divine forces that have a direct influence 
 upon matter. But was this always really the case? How- 
 ever it may be, we must remember that for those who were 
 present at these occurrences such distinctions were very 
 vague, that for them the spiritual readily translated itself 
 into the m.aterial, that they did not experience the same 
 difficulty that we do in objectifying into a material fact 
 whatever happened to stir their psychic faculties. 
 
 Here, of course, we are dealing with one of the most 
 marked characteristics of simple, uncultivated minds; they 
 
THE MIRACLES 215 
 
 project into external phenomena the intensity and the colour 
 of the emotion that has agitated them. We know with 
 what caution the testimony given in the law-courts must 
 be regarded: the witnesses often imagine that they have 
 seen things which have never happened at all. This is be- 
 cause they transpose into physical facts the moral emotion 
 that has pervaded them at the moment of a crime, for ex- 
 ample, or some other scene that has greatly moved them. 
 We must bear this in mind Vv^hile examining the miracles 
 of which we are speaking. 
 
 On the other hand, it is also important to notice that 
 Jesus always refused when people asked him for signs, that 
 is for miracles that were simply miracles, for thaumaturgy.^^ 
 He was unwilling to give any sign but the sign of Jonas 
 going to the Ninevites who repented at his preaching, that 
 is a purely moral sign — or rather the sort of signs that any 
 one can find in nature and that have their parallels in the 
 life of the Spirit (See Matthew xvi, 1-4)." Thus Jesus 
 seems to have had a veritable aversion to performing mira- 
 cles. Those which he did perform he did not regard as 
 miracles, in the magical sense of the word, but rather as 
 a bringing into play for the benefit of others of the inner 
 and divine forces that he possessed. We have a right, 
 therefore, to challenge any report in which the miracle ap- 
 pears to have no practical, moral utility. Miracles of this 
 kind seem to indicate, when we take into consideration the 
 position of Jesus himself, an alteration of the events by 
 
 15 Cf. Mark viii, ii; Luke xi, 29-30. 
 
 1^ The text Matthew xii, 38-40, presents what is evidently an altera- 
 tion of the thought of Jesus resulting from the influence of the sur- 
 rounding mentality. The allusion to the three days and the three 
 nights in the belly of the whale does not appear in Luke xi, 29-30, 
 where the person of Jonas is taken as a sign because the Ninevites re- 
 pented at his word and not at all because he passed three days in the 
 belly of a sea-monster. We see from this example how the meaning 
 of the words of Jesus was occasionally misunderstood and uncon- 
 sciously modified by those who heard them or by the first generation 
 that followed them. 
 
2i6 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 witnesses who misunderstood them or understood them in- 
 completely. In order to make this clear, let us choose as 
 an example one of the miracles that we may regard as the 
 best attested in the gospels since we find it narrated in all 
 of our four sources: that of the multiplication of the loaves. 
 
 The multiplication of the loaves. — This scene is related by 
 Matthew (xiv, 13-21), Mark (vi, 30-34), Luke (ix, 10-17), and 
 John (vi, 1-15). It is all the more striking since it was at 
 this time that one of the turning-points in the life of Christ 
 occurred. Immediately after it, in fact, we see the multitude 
 beginning to abandon him, and he even asks his disciples if they 
 are going to leave him." This miracle thus resulted in a sort 
 of sifting and sorting of the followers of Jesus; it transformed 
 his activity as a popular orator who was beloved and followed, 
 as a leader of the multitude, into an activity that was more 
 limited and that was henceforth to be directed towards a deeper 
 work. What took place, then, on that memorable day? 
 
 John (vi, 14), we observe, is the only one who pronounces the 
 word miracle; the others confine themselves to relating the facts. 
 Now the facts are these: a multitude of more than five thousand 
 persons, Jesus anxious not to send all these people away hungry, 
 only five loaves and two fishes with which to feed them. After 
 Jesus has made every one sit down and has pronounced the 
 blessing and distributed the five loaves and the two fishes, it 
 is found that they are all satisfied, and they carry away twelve 
 baskets full of fragments that remain. The impression of abun- 
 dance and repletion succeeds the first impression that had pre- 
 vailed of dearth and distress. 
 
 The first idea that occurs to us upon reading this account, 
 and it certainly seems to have been that of the redactors, is 
 that Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. There is nothing to 
 prevent those who have a ready faith from accepting the miracle 
 in these terms and without going further. Yet it must be ob- 
 served that questions arise in connection with it. We know 
 nothing of any laws by which a sudden multiplication of this 
 kind could take place. 'The direct intervention of God," people 
 reply. So it appears, but God has hardly accustomed us to in- 
 
 17 John vi, 67. 
 
THE MIRACLES 217 
 
 terventions of this sort, even in the life of Jesus. He did not 
 make him known by means of miracles; on the contrary, Jesus 
 had to win through human labour and human suffering his cre- 
 dentials to humanity. 
 
 Pursuing this line, moreover, we cannot but connect the mul- 
 tiplication with the first temptation of Jesus. He had been 
 tempted, we remember, to make bread out of stones, and he 
 had refused to do so. It is true that the question then was 
 one of feeding himself and that here it was a question of feeding 
 others. But let us consider the circumstances. This multitude 
 had been fasting for a day; but is it as terrible as all that to 
 go a day without eating? Can we imagine that Jesus, who 
 recommended holding the flesh in check, would have kept his 
 pity and his mercy for a case, let us say it frankly, as futile 
 as this? If it was merely a question of corporal hunger, is it 
 not easier to suppose that he would have simply sent them all 
 away till the next day? We are thus confronted here with some- 
 thing that is not easily explained; a sort of mystery broods over 
 this episode. Some question of bread there was, of course; no 
 doubt there was a meal, and a material meal. But was nothing 
 involved besides this? And was it really in this that the true 
 miracle consisted? That, it seems to me, is the question we 
 have a right to ask. 
 
 Nor is this the only question; others follow. If we consult 
 John, who is so much more penetrating than the others as regards 
 the inner life, whose eye is so much more expert in grasping the 
 mysterious threads in the life of his Master, we find that on 
 the day after the multiplication of the loaves, the multitude again 
 began to search for Jesus and that when he met them he stopped 
 them with these words: "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the 
 miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. 
 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which 
 endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give 
 unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed." " Jesus him- 
 self thus seems to feel the need of throwing light upon an action 
 of his own which has been misinterpreted. It is not the "meat 
 which perisheth" that matters in the multiplication of the loaves; 
 it is something else which the witnesses have not understood. 
 And this beginning is merely the prologue to a long discussion 
 
 18 John vi, 26-27. 
 
2i8 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 in which Jesus finally reveals to them that he is himself the 
 bread of life and says to them such hard ^^ words that they turn 
 their backs on him for good and all. These words are that they 
 must ''eat his flesh and drink his blood," ^° all this from the 
 spiritual point of view,^^ in order to have eternal life. 
 
 For my part, I see in this discourse simply a clearer, more 
 direct, more emphatic explanation of the sense that Jesus himself 
 attributed to the scene which had taken place the day before. 
 They had not understood him. The multitude, roused to such 
 enthusiasm that they had wanted to make him king but from 
 which he had stolen away, had not grasped the deep meaning 
 of what he had performed there. The proof is that when he 
 explains himself better there is a complete revulsion of feeling, 
 and every one abandons him. 
 
 Hence, according to Jesus himself, the so-called scene of the 
 multiplication of the loaves was misunderstood by the multitude. 
 Those who were present laid stress upon what was of secondary 
 importance and disregarded what was essential. And what was 
 essential was a miracle that related to the person of Christ him- 
 self: the miracle of this very personality which was at that mo- 
 ment, for them, spiritual food. Quite secondary was the bread 
 which they had eaten. Granted that they bad been given loaves: 
 in one way or another (and here we can return to the rationalistic 
 explanation that the good will of all supplied the lack of a few), 
 in one way or another every one's hunger had been appeased, 
 and there were some fragments left. But the miracle did not 
 consist in this, and Jesus grieves because they have seen the 
 bread only and not the miracle. 
 
 In what, then, did the miracle consist? Here, it must be ad- 
 mitted, lies a mystery which the faith of Christians should seek 
 to interpret. Perhaps it was entirely in the emotion that made 
 this multitude hang for hours upon the lips of Christ, in the 
 spiritual bond that established, between himself and these men, 
 that living, vibrant communion in which their souls mingled. 
 It was an unforgettable moment, this, in which the Master ap- 
 peared as what he was to the charmed and astonished eyes of 
 the spectators; they felt in him the Messiah and the Son of 
 
 lojohn vi, 60. 
 ^oibid., 53-56. 
 -1 Ibid., 63-64. 
 
THE MIRACLES 219 
 
 God, and they rested in the security and the hope that came from 
 him. They were appeased not by the bread only, but also by 
 the divine words that fell from his lips. 
 
 But impressions of this kind do not last long with those who 
 do not deliberately cherish them. A day had not passed before 
 the multitude had ceased to think of anything but the bread. 
 Their spiritual impressions had been materialised and congealed 
 into expressions of a purely corporeal miracle, and they no longer 
 saw in the Messiah who had just been holding them under the 
 charm of his words anything but a man who could give them 
 bread again whenever it was necessary. 
 
 Thus what is important in the miracle of the multiplication 
 of the loaves is, to repeat, and as in the healings, the person of 
 Jesus, the psychic specificity of this person and the sort of 
 action that it exercised over others. This is the great miracle 
 which one finds under all the material garments that tradition 
 has superadded to it; this is the living germ about which the 
 whole legend has gathered. 
 
 We have not the leisure to undertake here a similar study 
 in connection with every miracle in the gospels. I should 
 like, however, to say one word more, which will necessarily 
 be too brief, on the subject of the resurrections of the dead 
 that Jesus performed: that of the son of the widow of Nain, 
 that of Lazarus, that of the daughter of Jairus. 
 
 What are we to think of these miracles? A preliminary 
 remark, which seems to me fairly decisive: supposing that 
 Jesus had the power to raise the dead, why, we are impelled 
 to ask, did he choose to raise some and not all? There 
 is an injustice in this, when we stop to think of it, that 
 would have horrified one like Jesus. And again, if we 
 are to believe that he raised all the dead of whom he had 
 knowledge, how are we to explain the fact that he was not 
 immediately taken for a god and adored as such? A man 
 who could feel himself in possession of such a power and 
 not exercise it on all occasions, whatever the consequences, 
 would appear a monster of egoism. It seems to me aston- 
 
220 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 ishing that this argument, simple as it is, has not bren more 
 often advanced. We cannot imagine Jesus, the Jesus we 
 know, realising that he was the master of death in this world 
 and not undertaking a crusade against it. 
 
 A second consideration must be added to this. How 
 does it happen that we are told nothing about the later 
 fate of those who were resuscitated in this way? Did they 
 live long lives? Were they obliged to pass through death 
 a second time? In that case, was their lot enviable? 
 Should we not feel rather pity than envy for people who, 
 thanks to the mercy of Christ, were called upon to pass 
 twice through that dark gate? These are all questions 
 indeed, and more serious from a moral point of view than 
 they may appear. 
 
 A third consideration, finally, is that we must take into 
 account here again the facility with which legends are 
 formed through the simple accentuation of a few details 
 of the reality. In the cases in question the death may 
 not have been real; it may have been an apparent death 
 or lethargy. What makes us incline to this hypothesis is 
 the fact that at least one of the stories of resurrections, 
 that of the daughter of Jairus,^^ shows evidences of the pas- 
 sage of history into legend. This story is usually offered 
 us as that of a resurrection; the death of the young girl 
 is announced by those who come to inform Jairus: "Thy 
 daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any fur- 
 ther?" "^ And it appears indeed as if the evangelists sub- 
 scribed to this affirmation and accepted it as true. But 
 Jesus, on reaching the house, affirms just the contrary: 
 "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth," ^* and he awakens 
 her from her sleep. Thus, by the testimony of Christ him- 
 
 22 Matt, ix, 18-26; Mark v, 21-43; Luke viii, 40-56. 
 
 23 Mark v, 35 ; Luke viii, 49. — Matthew represents Jairus as coming 
 at once to find Jesus because his daughter is dead (Matt, ix, 18). 
 
 2* Matt, ix, 24 ; Mark v, 39 ; Luke viii, 52. 
 
THE MIRACLES 221 
 
 self, there is no question of a resurrection here; and yet, 
 in spite of the clearness of the text, many pastors still 
 preach on this passage as if a resurrection were involved 
 in it. 
 
 It might be possible to see in the raising of the son of 
 the widow of Nain, and even in that of Lazarus, analogous 
 facts of which the sense was later obscured. We shall 
 not go to the lengths of some theologians who see, in the 
 case of Lazarus, a pious fraud arranged between Jesus and 
 the sisters of the dead man; nevertheless we seem to dis- 
 cern, in the exclamation of Jesus at the moment when the 
 tomb is opened, rather the granting of a prayer than a 
 resurrection. Lazarus is alive; Jesus sees it, and he thanks 
 God that he is alive. He does not bring him back to life; 
 he causes to come forth from the tomb one whom they 
 have believed dead and whose life he has asked of God. 
 
 From these various observations, the incompleteness of 
 which I do not conceal from myself, and which ought to 
 be taken up again and considered in detail in each case, 
 there yet rises the following hypothesis which I should like 
 to develop a little, without wishing to imply that it is the 
 only one possible: 
 
 The fewness of the resurrections of the dead which the 
 evangelists report leads us to believe that Jesus did not 
 raise all the dead whom he saw. It is to be remarked, 
 on the other hand, that we are never told of any failure 
 on the part of Christ, any attempt at resuscitation, in which 
 he did not succeed. It seems improbable, therefore, that 
 Jesus undertook a resuscitation on every occasion when 
 he heard of a death. When he did so, however, when he 
 approached a death-bed or a tomb, it was invariably with 
 the assurance and the kind of assurance that gives to those 
 who understand such things the power to struggle in prayer 
 and the triumph of having their prayers granted. This is 
 
222 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 very noticeable in the account of the raising of Lazarus. 
 In that of the daughter of Jairus, one finds in Jesus that 
 particular accent which moral certitude assumes when it has 
 been acquired after a short withdrawal in prayer. 
 
 To attempt to penetrate into this aspect of the psychology 
 of Jesus would be hardy indeed; we can only do so by the 
 aid of analogies, and unfortunately we lack precise testi- 
 mony regarding the certitude and the kind of certitude that 
 is felt by those who, while they are praying and before 
 they have actually seen the fulfilment, know that their 
 prayers are granted. This subject calls for a study which 
 has already been begun but which is still far from being 
 complete."^ In particular, one might compare the case of 
 those who in praying are aware in advance of the success 
 or failure of their prayer, with those curious cases of 
 premonition or telepathy in which, at times vaguely and 
 at other times in the most precise manner, certain indi- 
 viduals, endowed with mediumistic qualities, realise that 
 "something" expected or dreaded is about to happen. It 
 seems then as if tenuous threads were woven between the 
 
 25 Cf. Second, J., La pricrc, essai de psychologic religieuse. Paris, 
 Alcan, 191 1, pp. 364. 
 
 OsTERMANN, R., Contribution a I'etud-e cxperimentale de la priere 
 chrctienne (thesis). Geneva, 1907, pp. loi. 
 
 Leo, a., Etude psychologique sur la priere (thesis). Montauban, 
 1905, pp. 84. 
 
 Pfender, De la priere juive a la priere chretienne (thesis). Montau- 
 ban, 1905. 
 
 Beck, F. O., Prayer: a Study in Its History and Psychology. Amer. 
 Jour, of Relig. Psychol., II, pp. 107-121. 
 
 Ransom, S. W., Studies in the Psychology of Prayer. Ibid. I, p. 129. 
 
 Pratt, J. B., An Empirical Study of Prayer. Ibid. IV p. 48. 
 
 GuiMARAENs (F. DA Costa), Le bcsoin de prier et ses conditions 
 psychologiques. Rev. philosoph., 1902, LIV, p. 391. 
 
 Strong, Anna, The Relation of the Subconscious to Prayer. Amer. 
 Jour, of Relig. Psychol., 1906, I, pp. 129-142. 
 
 FosDiCK, H. E., The Meaning of Prayer. London, Stud. Christ. 
 Movement, 1916, pp. 196. 
 
 Heiler, Fr., Das Gebef, cine religionsgeschichtliche unr religions- 
 psychologische Untersuchung. 2nd. ed. Miinchen, Reinhardt, 1920, 
 5S8 pp. 
 
THE MIRACLES 223 
 
 expectant soul and the reality that is coming, big with still 
 invisible events.^** This is not quite the same thing as 
 prophetic foretelling; it is a sort of presentiment that the 
 possible is realisable, that it is going to be realised, that it 
 is already potentially realised, the feeling of a dynamic 
 co-operation which is at work on the very line of the desire 
 or the apprehension of the praying or awaiting individual. 
 These psychic processes, which are still wrapped in mys- 
 tery, place us on the track of a possible but still unknown 
 communication between the individual soul and what we 
 may call the forces that lead the world. Interpreted re- 
 ligiously, and particularly in relation to the question of 
 prayer, they suggest a communication with the Beyond 
 which surpasses the limits of the conscious personality. 
 With most men this communication remains vague and as 
 it were stunted. When it manifests itself spasmodically, 
 it often assumes an abnormal and agonising character; as 
 a rule, there are mingled with it more or less morbid phe- 
 nomena that agitate us. 
 
 In Jesus, who, in this sense, was a religious genius, we 
 have seen that the life with the Father assumed a character 
 of peaceful and normal reality such as is not to be found 
 in any one else. The communion with this "greater than 
 ourselves" did not appear to him as anything exceptional 
 and terrifying, but rather as the immutable, paternal source 
 out of which flowed at every instant his own personal and 
 visible life. He must have caught delicate nuances where 
 we can see nothing but a stormy and shadowy mystery. 
 In him there was a realised harmony between the subcon- 
 scious depths in which God speaks and the clear reasoning 
 consciousness. 
 
 Bearing in mind this fact, which remains to be defined 
 
 2" Cf. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. 
 London and Bombay, 1907. 
 
224 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 and analysed, I arrive at the conclusion that Jesus must 
 have felt, more deeply than we and in a much clearer 
 way, that the fulfilment was present, that the reality was 
 going to respond to the desire. And to speak more par- 
 ticularly of the resuscitations, he must have felt, in certain 
 cases, that a personal intervention was necessary, and that 
 the life was throbbing just beyond. We know too little 
 about what life and death are to solve the question. In 
 what degree is death complete? Is it a resurrection when, 
 by artificial respiration, we bring a drowned person back 
 to life? Jesus himself, in any case, did not concern himself 
 v/ith these questions. When he felt impelled to intervene, 
 he did intervene, with full confidence in the inwardly real- 
 ised strength of the Father who had sent him, but he did 
 not always intervene, and he never intervened when death 
 had taken place too long before.^^ 
 
 The hypothesis which I think we have a right to form 
 is, then, that Jesus only raised the dead under certain con- 
 ditions, and not always; that these conditions were not re- 
 vealed to him by any external study of the case, such as 
 we should make, but that the impulse took possession of 
 him imperatively when these conditions were present. He 
 felt their efficacy, without being conscious of it, felt it as a 
 paternal grant, since, to a degree which is unknown to us, 
 his inner self was in communication with the forces of life 
 that are at work in the world. 
 
 We refuse, therefore, to see in Jesus the unfeeling demi- 
 god of whom some people have formed an image and who, 
 
 27 The four days that Lazarus passed in the tomb are reduced to 
 three by our present method of reckoning. There is no reason to 
 suppose that Jesus ever attempted to resuscitate persons who had been 
 dead for a considerable period. Why, unless because certain condi- 
 tions, such as the decomposition of the body, opposed this and because 
 Jesus was aware of these conditions and submitted intuitively and in- 
 stinctively to them? When it was night for him he did not walk 
 (John xi, lo). 
 
THE MIRACLES 225 
 
 in possession of a discretionary power over life and death, 
 chose a few striking cases for the purpose of showing his 
 power, while he coldly allowed the rest of his contempo- 
 raries to die. Rather, far rather, we see in him the com- 
 passionate Saviour who shed the tears of a friend over 
 the grief of the two sisters of Bethany, the submissive Son 
 of the Father, hoping everything of the Father, and going, 
 when he had obtained his leave, to give consolation where 
 it was possible to give consolation, where God had permitted 
 life and given an assurance of it. 
 
 Here no more than elsewhere, then, do we deny the mirac- 
 ulous. We bow before the divine mystery which, through 
 Jesus, descended into the hearts of men. All that we are 
 opposing is the magically miraculous, this and the magician 
 into which people have tried to turn Jesus; we oppose 
 that unworthy, that lamentable counterfeit of the ineffable 
 things which, through him, the Father has communicated 
 and continues to communicate to those who follow the paths, 
 not of charlatanism, but of the moral conscience. 
 
 § 4. MIRACLES OF WHICH THE MORAL MEANING IS 
 DIFFICULT TO GRASP 
 
 We shall not linger long over this class of miracles, of 
 which some of the circumstances are unknown to us and 
 the edifying significance remains veiled. Such, for example, 
 are the episode of the marriage at Cana and that of the 
 cursed fig-tree. 
 
 This latter anecdote, in which Jesus says to a fig-tree 
 upon which he has found no fruit, and this at a season 
 when figs are not ripe, "Let no fruit grown on thee hence- 
 forward for ever," is most curious and disconcerting.^* 
 Perhaps the thing to do here would be to employ the sym- 
 
 28 Matt, xxi, 18-22; Mark xi, 13-19. 
 
226 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 holistic method and ask whether we are not confronted 
 with a parable uttered on some occasion by Jesus and 
 transformed later, owing to some confusion, into a narra- 
 tion of facts. This is the more plausible since the parable 
 exists in the text of Luke (xiii, 6-9), or at least a parable 
 resembling it, while Matthew (xxiv, 32) attributes to Jesus 
 a saying which makes the fig-tree the symbol of the ap- 
 proaching advent of the Messiah. It would thus be quite 
 natural that on another occasion, chancing to find a barren 
 fig-tree, he should have compared it to the withering of 
 those who lack faith and cannot see the signs of the times. 
 The disciples, misinterpreting his severe words, might have 
 supposed that the reprimand was addressed to the fig-tree 
 itself, just as, on another occasion, they thought that the 
 words of the Master about the "leaven of the Pharisees" 
 were a reproach addressed to them because they had for- 
 gotten to bring the bread for the journey they were mak- 
 ing.'^ 
 
 As for the marriage at Cana, I confess I can make little 
 of it. Was it a simple gift which Jesus made to a family 
 of whom he was fond and which was later transformed and 
 embellished by the legend? Shall we discover some day a 
 definite meaning in this event, a meaning that now escapes 
 us? We must be able to suspend our judgment and wait 
 patiently. Wisdom does not always consist in answering 
 questions. Here it must be admitted that perplexity is 
 permissible. 
 
 What conclusion are we to draw from this rapid exami- 
 nation of a few miracles, an examination that must obviously 
 be carried much further into detail? On the whole, it 
 leads us back, as does the study of the teaching of Christ, 
 to the moral personality oj Jesus. At bottom, it is in him- 
 self, in his presence, in his activity that the great miracle 
 
 29 Cf. Mark viii, 14-18. 
 
THE MIRACLES 227 
 
 lies. The impression which he produced upon his hearers 
 personally is at the centre of all these accounts in which, 
 beneath the physical marvels, there is always concealed a 
 profound and decisive psychic action. Whatever extraor- 
 dinary things the witnesses saw in this unique life they 
 saw because they were impressed in an even more ex- 
 traordinary manner in their inner selves; this disturbance 
 of their whole ego communicated itself, as it always does, 
 to their senses and coloured the physical reality with the 
 hues of the moral and psychic universe which was suddenly 
 revealed to them. The truth of Man, the human truth, 
 seized upon them suddenly and revealed God to them as 
 close beside them. The grip of this unexpected revelation 
 transformed the world in their eyes, and the new reality 
 took on for them that touch of the marvellous which is 
 called the miraculous. 
 
 It does not diminish these things to attempt to see them 
 in their inwardness. The false glory that we have been 
 accustomed to see in them may be a little tarnished per- 
 haps, but the real gold they contain only shines the more 
 splendidly. After all, it is life alone that matters; and 
 the activity of Jesus had but this one end, to bring new 
 lives to birth. Of this miracle, incessantly repeated, we 
 perceive in the accounts that we have studied the exterior 
 echo and as it were the fugitive reflection in the world of 
 the senses. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION 
 
 The scene of the Transfiguration occupies a place apart 
 in the life of Jesus. It cannot be considered as on the same 
 plane as the miracles, since it is an example, as Strauss very 
 justly observes, of a miracle performed in Jesus and not by 
 him. It is related to the others, however, by the external 
 character of the marvellous which it bears. What are we to 
 think of it? 
 
 Three explanations of it have been given. 
 
 1. The mythical explanation, advanced particularly by 
 Strauss, but also accepted by other theologians, Weisse, 
 Keim, etc. The scene was a pure invention put together 
 in the image of the traditional statements of the Old Testa- 
 ment in order to place Jesus in the direct line of tradition 
 and show him as fulfilling it. 
 
 2. Others see in it the account of a dream of the dis- 
 ciples, or of one of them; this is the opinion of Neander. 
 
 3. Finally, it has been thought that the Transfiguration 
 was a simple vision granted to the apostles in order to 
 strengthen their faith. That had been the idea of Ter- 
 tullian; later it was shared by Herder, then by Reuss and 
 Weiss. 
 
 There is probably an element of truth in each of these 
 opinions. The mistake comes as a rule from trying to 
 reduce things to a theory and thus unify them all. 
 
 There are three points to be considered in the story which 
 the first three evangehsts have handed down to us: ^ the, 
 
 1 Matt, xvii, 1-13; Mark ix, 2-13; Luke ix, 28-36. 
 
 228 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 229 
 
 radiance or the glory of Christ, the apparition of the two 
 personages, the voice that came out of the cloud. 
 
 First, however, let us locate the event. If we are to 
 accept the general opinion, it took place at a most important 
 moment in the life of Jesus. It was shortly after the scene 
 at Caesarea Philippi when Peter, questioned by the Master, 
 permitted to escape from his heart that confession which 
 was so full of enthusiasm and conviction: ''Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God." - Jesus had trembled 
 with spiritual joy upon hearing these words which, for him, 
 were the proof of a result that was henceforth assured. His 
 apostles had at last recognised him and embraced him; they 
 were on solid ground; they believed. In the face of this 
 faithful little group whom he had definitely won there was 
 the mounting opposition. Jesus realised whither it was 
 tending; he knew that nothing could stop it in its sinister 
 work, and he told his own followers of the sufferings, the 
 passion that awaited him. It was at this psychological 
 moment that the scene of the Transfiguration took place. 
 
 But in opposition to this a new idea has been advanced 
 by the recent works of Wrede, namely, that the Trans- 
 figuration took place not after but before the scene at 
 Caesarea Philippi. As a matter of fact, the accounts given 
 by Mark, in Chapters VI to IX, present the greatest con- 
 fusion, and it would be more easily explicable if the scene 
 at Caesarea Philippi were a consequence of that of the 
 Transfiguration and of the revelation which the disciples 
 (and especially Peter) had had there, in a moment of 
 ecstasy, of the Messiahship of Jesus. If this were so we 
 should also be able to understand more clearly the reply of 
 Jesus to Peter's confession, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- 
 jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 
 but my Father which is in heaven." Jesus had not intended 
 
 2 Matt, xvi, 13-28; Mark viii, 27-32; Luke ix, 18-22. 
 
230 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 to say that he was the Messiah; he had even forbidden his 
 disciples to do so as they descended from the mount of the 
 Transfiguration. But Peter had broken the prohibition. 
 Whatever we are to think on this point, it does not in any 
 way alter the psychological situation. On the one hand, 
 Jesus was aware of the sufferings that v^^ere in store for 
 him, and on the other he saw himself loved and believed 
 in by his followers. His own state of mind was the same, 
 whether the confession of Peter had taken place before the 
 Transfiguration or whether it had not yet been openly 
 uttered. And we can easily imagine what this state of mind 
 was. Jesus was confronted with these two realities: on the 
 one hand, the success of his message among his own fol- 
 lowers, the growing conviction in their hearts which cor- 
 roborated his own conviction, and on the other the hostile 
 attitude of the majority of the people and their leaders, 
 the evident rejection of his message on the part of the 
 official authorities, and consequently the certainty of im- 
 minent sufferings and perhaps the death which was indeed 
 awaiting him. 
 
 How can we doubt that at this moment he felt the need 
 of retirement and solitude on the heights in the great silence 
 of the mountain? On one side he had received a sovereign 
 consecration from On High, the seal that had been placed 
 upon his work by the Father in the faith of the humble 
 whom he loved and to whom he had given himself; on the 
 other, a cloudy and threatening future was emerging over 
 the nearby horizon. Under such conditions the hours of 
 introversion, of a return upon oneself, assume a keen and 
 poignant character which readily gives birth to ecstasy. 
 
 Now, on the mountain Jesus is in prayer. And it is 
 while he is praying that the disciples, awakened suddenly, 
 see him shining with an unaccustomed light. "His face did 
 shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light" 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 231 
 
 (Matt.). "His raiment became shining, exceeding white as 
 snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them" (Mark). 
 'The fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment 
 was white and glistening" (Luke). Beneath these expres- 
 sions, which, since they do not exactly agree, we are not 
 obliged to take literally, we must note the impression expe- 
 rienced by the disciples. Aroused from sleep, in that state 
 in which our waking life is scarcely to be distinguished from 
 our dreams, they suddenly see their Master in ecstasy, and 
 the brilliance, the splendour of his face and person strike 
 them acutely. 
 
 Strauss recalls here the story of Moses, of whom we are 
 told that "the skin of his face shone" because he had talked 
 with God,^ and he concludes from this that the Transfigura- 
 tion is simply a mythical creation. Strauss was quite right 
 in thinking of Moses, but his mistake lay in limiting his 
 inquiry to the Israeli tish past; he should have prolonged it 
 into the history that followed the Christian era. Moses is 
 not the only man of whom we are told that his face shone 
 when he talked with God. What is the source, for instance, 
 of the aureole which primitive painting places about the 
 heads of the saints? Of the crown of rays with which the 
 heads of certain gods are adorned? Is it not told somewhere 
 of Saint Francis of Assisi that his disciples used to look 
 through the key-hole of his cell when the saint was in prayer 
 in order to catch a glimpse of the marvellous radiance of 
 his ecstatic countenance? 
 
 The phenomenon is therefore not unique. We speak 
 every day of faces "hghted up by intense emotion." We 
 have only to carry this to the sublime and remember that 
 Jesus was Jesus; then, if we allow for the exaggerations of 
 language and the uncertainty of the impressions of men who 
 have just emerged from sleep, what will remain is the 
 
 3 Exodus xxxiv, 29 and 35. 
 
232 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 splendid vision that was granted to these men, the vision 
 of Christ in prayer, in the imposing silence of the moun- 
 tain. They were present perhaps at the moment, of all 
 moments the most solemn, when Jesus, fully conscious of 
 the two currents that heightened his existence and swept it 
 along — the triumphant love of the Father which gave him 
 courage, and his tragic rejection by the world which was 
 leading him to his death — accepted them both, united and 
 reconciled them in a submission that was also a triumph. 
 He was, at that instant, one with the Father; he drank deep 
 of the spring of love from On High, and his countenance 
 reflected this infinite ecstasy.* 
 
 But all at once the scene changes. One gains the impres- 
 sion from the accounts themselves that something sudden 
 
 ■* When modern theologians, referring to the prevailing eschatology, 
 speak of the predictions of his death which Jesus made after this scene 
 and distinguish between a dogmatic necessity for this death which 
 Jesus felt and a histonco-empirical necessit}' which he did not feel 
 (Schweitzer, op. cit., p. 439) they show to what a point of psycho- 
 logical blindness purely historical conceptions can lead. It is plain 
 that Jesus was greatly influenced by the eschatological conceptions of 
 his times and by the image that Isaiah called up of the Messiah dying 
 alone for others. But how little one must know about the nature of 
 great souls and the struggles of flesh and blood to believe that Jesus 
 could have coolly faced the necessity of dying as the prophets had 
 predicted if no other historical or existing facts, no concrete reality, 
 had pointed to the same thing ! These ideas are not of the sort one 
 accepts so easily when one is a living man ! Jesus had been familiar 
 with them for a long time, but he had not applied them literally to 
 himself. It was when he heard the Father's call, in events, on the 
 one hand, and on the other in his obligation, that he joined the two 
 ends of the chain : messianic prophecy and death. The Transfiguration 
 took place perhaps at this moment, a moment that was solemn and 
 tragic above all others. Plainly, as Schweitzer says, he might have 
 returned to Galilee and found once more a sympathetic multitude there 
 instead of going up to Jerusalem. But from the fact that he did not 
 do so, is it necessary to infer a dogmatic will to die? May we not sup- 
 pose that in a soul such as that of Jesus there existed a tormenting 
 desire to win over his people in the person of their leaders and that 
 he had reached a time when he could no longer be morally contented 
 with a peaceful, tranqiiil ministry in the Galilean countryside? The 
 problem is, in any case, of quite a different moral, psychological and 
 religious order and is much vaster than the theologians imagine, hypno- 
 tised as they are by the eschatological solution which they have substi-' 
 tuted for the excgetical solution. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 233 
 
 and unexpected has taken place. Jesus is no longer alone, 
 and he is no longer in prayer. Two personages have ap- 
 peared and he is talking with them. In actuality things 
 do not happen in this way. We see people coming before 
 they arrive. On the other hand, a prayer is not succeeded 
 by conversation without intermediate phases; people are 
 surprised, they are disturbed when they are interrupted in 
 their prayers; they rise, they change their attitude. 
 
 The absence of any transition in the story, without any 
 indication that the narrators are aware of the deficiency, 
 seems to show that, as a matter of fact, they had no sus- 
 picion that two scenes had taken place. This might mean 
 simply that the disciples, "heavy with sleep," as Luke 
 says they were, and striving to keep awake, saw the second 
 part of the scene in that state of half-dreaming in which 
 one still perceives the sensations that reach one from with- 
 out, but perceives them in a changed shape, causing them 
 to enter as constituent elements into the dream, which con- 
 tinues.^ Of Moses and Elias the apostles have just been 
 thinking; they are the forerunners of the Messiah, and 
 it is precisely with the messiahship of their Master that 
 their minds have been filled during the preceding days. It 
 is, at the moment, the subconscious web which underlies all 
 the events of their conscious life. This ruling thought of 
 the messiahship has attracted to itself and grouped about 
 it everything that is associated with it in their subconscious, 
 including the images of Moses and Elias. How can it 
 astonish us that, in the half-dream which immediately fol- 
 lows the brief vision of the Transfigured Master, they 
 should see him flanked by the two personages whom every 
 good Jew associated intimately with the glorious Messiah, 
 
 5 In connection with this state and the so-called hypnagogical and 
 hypnopompical visions which characterise it, see Myers, Human Per- 
 sonality. London, 1907, p. 96. 
 
234 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 and that they should awake with a start to see them dis- 
 appearing in the cloud that floated about them? 
 
 This explanation is corroborated by the incident that fol- 
 lows. We observe that as they descend the mountain the 
 disciples ask Jesus this question: "Why then say the scribes 
 that Elias must first come?" ^ Evidently they have no 
 very distinct impression of having actually seen Elias; there 
 is an uncertainty in their minds as to what they have wit- 
 nessed. 
 
 As for Jesus, he replies that Elias has already come and 
 that they have known him not, but have done unto him 
 whatsoever they listed; and from his allusions, the disciples 
 understand that he is speaking to them of John the Baptist, 
 that he is likening John the Baptist to Elias, who was to 
 return before the coming of the Messiah.'^ But at this 
 moment, Jesus does not even mention the immediately pre- 
 ceding apparition of Elias which is involved in the story 
 of the Transfiguration, thus showing plainly that he has 
 not seen this apparition. It is difficult to understand how, 
 if he had participated in the vision of the apostles, he could 
 have failed to connect or to distinguish between the two 
 facts of the presence of the prophet Elias on the moun- 
 tain at the moment of the Transfiguration and the identity 
 of Elias and John the Baptist. If the expected Elias is 
 John the Baptist, who is it then that has just appeared? 
 There is here a quid pro quo so enormous that Jesus could 
 not but have felt the necessity of dissipating it. And as 
 he is not conscious of it, he cannot have seen what the 
 disciples believed they saw. The apparition of Elias has 
 been a vision of the apostles alone; and Jesus, in answer- 
 ing them, leads them into a line of ideas that is entirely 
 different from their own because he is not aware of what 
 
 6 Matt, xvii, lo; Mark ix, ii. 
 
 7 Matt, xvii, 11-13; Mark ix, 12-13. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 235 
 
 they have just seen. Still quivering with their intense, 
 superstitious emotion, the apostles speak of the heavenly 
 Elias who has been there but an instant before. For Jesus, 
 on the contrary, the expected Elias is not an ancient prophet 
 come down from heaven, but simply John the Baptist. 
 There is no common measure between the two conceptions. 
 
 It remains to speak of the voice which is heard: "This 
 is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye 
 him." ® Three times in the gospels a voice rings out and 
 bears witness in favour of Christ: at the moment of the 
 Baptism, at the moment when Jesus declares to the Greeks 
 who have had Philip present them to him, that "except a 
 corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone," ^ and after the Transfiguration. Now, it is to be 
 noted that, on all these three occasions, Jesus happens to 
 be in a morally analogous situation: on one side there is 
 a strong solicitation to act, a call in the direction of ministry 
 and service, a summons to life and a promise of life, and 
 on the other a renunciation, a call to humiliation, an ex- 
 pectant sense of the sufferings that lie before him. On all 
 three occasions he accepts the continuation of the service 
 that carries with it the joy of success and the sufferings 
 together, and he unites this joy and these sufferings in a 
 tragic embrace in which life surmounts every antithesis. 
 While, however, at the time of the Baptism and in the peri- 
 cope John xii, it appears that the voice is heard by Christ 
 alone, on this occasion it is heard by the disciples; it is, 
 as it were, a testimony perceptible to the others. 
 
 If we are to suppose that the word of God is not some- 
 thing external but a silent witness which man interprets 
 under the form of a voice (and it certainly seems as if 
 we must so regard it) then we must conclude that, in that 
 
 8 Matt, xvii, 5 ; Mark ix, 7 ; Luke ix, 35. 
 
 9 John xii, 28. 
 
236 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 unforgettable moment when they saw Jesus in prayer, the 
 disciples caught, in the radiance of his features and his 
 glance, an irrefutable testimony to what he was. As never 
 before, they felt that he was the son of God; they felt 
 God saying to them, "This is my son!" just as we sometimes 
 feel, in an hour of communion with an elevated and ten- 
 derly loved soul, a sort of testimony rising from the depths 
 of life that consecrates the esteem and veneration we feel 
 for this soul, gives our feelings the stamp of truth and 
 sanctions them, so to speak, in our own eyes. These divine 
 consecrations occur that mark the life of our affections and 
 give them their full value. To one who met Jesus along 
 the roads of the world, it would have been impossible not to 
 experience them; and with what power must they have 
 affected those who loved him and followed him so closely! 
 
 The Transfiguration appears to us, then, as a capital 
 moment in the life of Christ: the moment in which, having 
 attained to a full consciousness of the two great movements 
 that swept his earthly existence along (the conquest of 
 hearts, the resistance of the world), and having experienced 
 their violence and discerned what their end would be, he 
 accepted them both and consecrated himself, entirely and 
 anew, in a supreme act of affirmation, to the gift of himself 
 in love. In an instant of ecstasy, after the experiences of 
 an already advanced ministry, and without abandoning any- 
 thing that he had undertaken, he had, so to speak, renewed, 
 in the arms of the Father, his pledge of service to hu- 
 manity. 
 
 The disciples, profoundly moved by the announcement 
 he had made to them of his sufferings, or by what they 
 half divined about them, overborne by fatigue and emotion, 
 disturbed in their half-slumber by these new and vivid im- 
 pressions, saw Jesus, as if in a flash of lightning, at the 
 highest moment of this consecration in which he was offer- 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 237 
 
 ing himself entirely. This spectacle, mingling with the as- 
 sociations of traditional ideas which the subconscious caused 
 to spring up in the state of half-sleep in which they were 
 plunged, composed the scene that has been handed down 
 to us, in which the marvellous borders on the sublime. 
 Perhaps the miracle is to be found not so much where 
 people have sought it as in the sublimity of the person of 
 Jesus himself; and the terror which the disciples felt was 
 that of the sacred hour that had been passed in the midst 
 of them and that had been but half revealed to them. It 
 left them with a firmer conviction, with an unlimited trust, 
 no doubt, in this mysterious "greater" being who was now 
 descending with them to the inhabited regions where men 
 suffer and die. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 
 
 We have attempted to indicate the scope of the teaching 
 and activity of Jesus, what he wished to do and how he 
 accomplished it, disregarding, as far as possible, everything 
 that is commonly known about him and applying ourselves 
 rather to pointing out what constitutes the originality of 
 his doctrine and his personality. It was difficult, in these 
 conditions, to adopt a strictly historical scheme and give 
 a conspectus of the gradual development through his life 
 of his ideas and teaching. It is obvious that Jesus lived 
 in too close a contact with reality, whether spiritual or 
 external, not to have taken the stamp of life. He accepted 
 the education which the Father gives men through the 
 continual cross-action of inner experience and external 
 facts; he did not shrink from the upward struggle that 
 every well-lived life implies and imposes. It should be 
 possible, therefore, to discover an evolution in the ideas 
 of Jesus during the course of his career, by which we 
 mean not that there was any indecision in regard to the 
 goal which he pursued, but that his aims underwent a 
 successive and progressive definition, that he had an ever 
 clearer and more conscious grasp of his own significance, 
 of his task and of the role of his personality. It would 
 be interesting to follow him from this point of view through 
 the years of his ministry. Others have done this. We 
 cannot linger over it. 
 
 Gathering together all the data we have acquired, we 
 should like to take up now the problem of the personality 
 of Christ himself. What did he desire to be? What was 
 
 238 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 239 
 
 he? In short, what is it that constitutes the very basis 
 and originality of his personalit}', what the Germans call 
 his Selbstbewusstsein, his consciousness of himself? In 
 order to understand him we must return to some of the 
 points on which we have already touched and attempt to 
 carry further, or rather deeper, the lines that we have 
 traced. 
 
 Professor Bousset of Gottingen has attacked this prob- 
 lem/ He begins by stating it as a fact that Jesus did 
 indeed wish to be the Messiah of his people. Even if some 
 of the passages on which one has to rely to sustain this 
 opinion present difficulties from the critical point of view, 
 we are still at a loss to understand how the Christian com- 
 munity could have arrived at this conclusion after the Res- 
 urrection unless something in the words and the teaching 
 of Jesus had led them to it. At the end of his life, in any 
 case, Jesus certainly wished to make his entry into Jeru- 
 salem as the Messiah, and he was condemned as a false 
 Messiah. The inscription that Pontius Pilate caused to 
 be fastened upon the cross corroborates this. It bore the 
 words, "Jesus, King of the Jews." 
 
 From what moment are we to date this consciousness of 
 his Messiahship? There is general agreement in admitting 
 that he referred to it openly to his disciples, enjoining them 
 to silence, after the scene at Caesarea Philippi when Peter 
 made his celebrated confession, "Thou art the Messiah, 
 the son of the living God." But in the Tight of what we 
 have said on the subject of the Baptism and the Temptation, 
 it seems clear that Jesus, in some sense or other, felt that 
 he was the Messiah and the son of God from the very 
 beginning of his public career. 
 
 How are we to reconcile this tardy revelation of his role 
 
 1 See in his Jesus, in the collection of Rcligionsgeschichfliche Volks- 
 biicher, the final chapter entitled "The Secret of the Personality." 
 
240 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 and his conviction to his disciples with the relatively pre- 
 cocious knowledge which he had of his Messiahship? It 
 is here that Bousset seems to me to have laid his finger 
 on the critical spot. "We can only find the reply [to this 
 question]/' he says, "in one direction. Jesus himself was 
 confronted here with an insurmountable inner difficulty. 
 He was dominated by a profound and immediate sense of 
 the inadequacy of the title of Messiah to express what he 
 was in the depths of his own consciousness. The idea of 
 the Messiah forms a part of the national hope and the 
 national religion of Judaism. The popular Jewish hope 
 looked for a king sent by God and of the race of David 
 who, as a powerful chief with sword in hand, would smite 
 the Gentiles, annihilate Rome, proclaim his dominion over 
 the world at Jerusalem, and then, upheld by the spirit of 
 God, reign henceforth with wisdom and gentleness over 
 the faithful and the submissive Gentiles, Even when this 
 king was conceived as super-terrestrial, and people no longer 
 expected a Messiah who would be the son of David, but 
 thought of him as a miraculous being coming from the 
 heavens as a judge of the world and clad in a divine dig- 
 nity, he still remained the national king who was to destroy 
 the Gentiles. How foreign was this form of hope, per- 
 meated throughout with a passionate national fanaticism, 
 to the inner being and the nature of Jesus! . . .^ The title 
 of Messiah thus became a danger if it was allowed to stand 
 for the expression of his inner being, his deepest person- 
 ality." 
 
 Why then, it will be asked, did he not reject this mes- 
 sianic idea altogether? Bousset answers: "Because it was 
 
 2 It may be remarked here fhat the desire to respond to the national 
 hope in its existing form constituted one of the temptations of Christ. 
 Rejected at the outset, it must have accompanied him and incessantly 
 renewed itself in his contact with a people that frankly looked for 
 this Messiah and could not understand him otherwise than in this 
 form. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 241 
 
 necessary on another side, namely, if he wished to make 
 himself understood by his people. He felt that he was 
 more than a prophet; he felt in himself the pressure of 
 something extraordinary and unique; he had come to an- 
 nounce the approaching kingdom of God. And according 
 to the popular conceptions, this advent was unthinkable 
 without the Messiah; his place was thus appointed. Jesus 
 could not be content with the role of a forerunner. He; 
 /felt himself in a proximity to God the Father such as no 
 |one, either before or after him, has known. He was aware 
 that he was pronouncing the ultimate and decisive word; 
 he was the fulfilment, and no one was coming after him. 
 The certitude and the power of his activity, the radiant; 
 splendour, the clarity and the freshness of his whole being 
 nested on this foundation. 'One cannot separate this super- 
 prophetic consciousness, this consciousness of being the one 
 who has come to fulfil, from the image of his person with- 
 out compromising it. And when Jesus wished to bring this 
 consciousness into the light, to bring it to certitude, when 
 he wished to give it expression and form, the only avenue 
 that lay open before him in his environment was the idea 
 of the Messiah, the apparition of the king who fulfils at the . 
 \end of time. 
 
 "Thus the idea of the Messiah was for Jesus the only 
 possible form of his consciousness, and yet an incomplete 
 form, a necessity, and a heavy yoke as well, under which 
 he walked silently almost to the end of his life; a testimony 
 giving to him the inward secret of his being which, at the 
 same time, surrounded him with insoluble external diffi- 
 culties." ^ 
 
 If Jesus wished to be the Messiah, then, it was not for 
 the sake of being the Messiah, but because it was the only 
 means of presenting himself personally to his people in such 
 
 3 The italics are ours. 
 
242 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 a way that the people would give him their attention or 
 take any interest in him, the only means, consequently, by 
 which he could be useful to them. 
 
 One of the consecrated messianic titles enabled him im- 
 mediately to define what he wished to bring, and this was 
 the one he chose: the Son of Man. This expression comes 
 in the prophetic line from Ezekiel and in the apocalyptic 
 line from Daniel, and it was not by chance that Jesus 
 adopted it in preference to others. The Son of Man, while 
 designating the messianic dignity, expressed something else 
 as well. The Son of Man is Man, man preeminently. 
 And this, preeminently again, was what Jesus wanted to 
 bring to his followers. He wanted to communicate to them 
 the human verity in order to bring them the divine verity; 
 he wanted to make them see man as he should be, as he 
 himself had realised the conception, to make them witnesses 
 of a perfect human experience, since this was the only means 
 by which they could find out what God was and under- 
 stand him. 
 
 The further he progressed in this task of revelation, 
 which consisted in presenting himself in the sincerity of 
 his moral stature, the more Jesus, giving himself, met with 
 human resistance. He saw it growing all about him, em- 
 bodying itself in the authorities who were opposing their 
 own will to that of God. This resistance became so strong 
 and it resorted to such means that the cross soon took shape 
 on the horizon as inevitable. The giving of himself im- 
 plied the necessity of going on, even unto death. He was 
 obliged, in order to communicate to others that which 
 formed the basis of life, to submit to losing his own life. 
 We shall see later what this last experience of the Messiah 
 was. For the moment, it is upon his experience of life 
 that I should like to dwell, asking once more. Who was 
 Jesus? What was this central experience which for him 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 243 
 
 constituted life so completely that his only aim, the only 
 possible meaning of his existence, consisted in revealing it 
 to men, his brothers, and in rendering them participants 
 in it? 
 
 This experience he summed up in one word, the Father. 
 Jesus, we may say, had discovered in the depths of himself 
 what God was. It was an attitude of his whole being which 
 he summed up in this way, his natural attitude, that which 
 ought to be the attitude of all humanity and which, alas, 
 was not. In receiving, in its plenitude, the influx of life 
 which made of him a human person, it was natural for 
 him to say "Father." This vital influx, this inner urge of 
 energy, which Gaston Frommel has called the moral obliga- 
 tion, which the psycho-analysts have named the libido, 
 Schopenhauer the will to live, and Bergson the Uan vital, 
 Jesus felt, differently no doubt but in the same sense, as 
 the Father.^ And he soon discovered that he felt it in a 
 different way from other men, that his way of feeling it 
 
 * We may be accused of treating as identical here terms which, in 
 the minds of those who have employed them, have not meant the same 
 thing. There is certainly a contradistinction between obligation and 
 libido, between clan vital and Father, between all these finite notions 
 of finite minds, just as there is a difference between the God of Jesus 
 Christ and the God we serve, as there is a difference between the God 
 whom I believe I should follow and the God of my neighbour who is 
 a Catholic or a Freethinker. And yet, in the last analysis, it is the 
 same God in every case, merely grasped in a different and incomplete 
 fashion by each of us. Similarly, there is but a single great reality 
 which animates us all and urges us on towards life; it is only when 
 we attempt to explain it or express it that we give it different and, as 
 sometimes happens, opposite characteristics. Encountering it within 
 ourselves, we each see it differently from the way in which others see 
 it and more or less exactly as it is conditioned by the faults and im- 
 perfections of our inner lives. The more depraved we are (and who 
 is not more or less so?) the more there takes place in us a distortion 
 of the forces of life which causes them to follow the path of the brute 
 instincts and necessitates a colossal effort of sublimation. ^Vith Jesus 
 it appears that this sublimation was, so to speak, immediate and con- 
 stant, so that he could hail with the name of "Father" the life-force 
 that sprang up in him. 
 
 We advise those who are shocked by our being able to see something 
 divine in the force that drives living beings to grow, to unite and to 
 
244 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 was the true way, that his attitude was the normal one 
 while that of others was abnormal, since it thrust them 
 outside of life, into aberrations, dreams, and sin. Hence 
 his suffering and at the same time his ardent, imperious 
 desire to save his brothers by giving them the secret of 
 life and causing them to assume his own inner attitude, so 
 that they might feel the paternal power in this vital influx 
 which penetrates the being inwardly. 
 
 They were seeking God elsewhere; they must be brought 
 back to the true God, and for this they must be brought 
 into touch with the true humanity in themselves, the true 
 man which each of them is potentially but which they have 
 allowed to become veiled and to be displaced by false im- 
 ages, by the idols of humanity. While in others a new 
 birth, a regeneration, is necessary in order that the true 
 attitude may be produced, in him, Jesus, this is natural. 
 He has assumed it from the first. This is what constitutes 
 his originality and consequently his unique vocation. "I 
 and my Father are one," ^ he says, expressing this inner 
 
 multiply to reread with fresh eyes the first chapter of Genesis. Who 
 was it, according to the Scriptures themselves, that gave this com- 
 mand to everything that lives upon the earth? 
 
 After that, why should v/e be scandalised by the fact that the psycho- 
 analysts have denominated as the libido the essential principle of 
 human nature? Only, to nature must be added supernature ; and what 
 must be especially borne in mind is that every one regards the force 
 which he feels quivering at the source of his Hfe as the initiator of 
 that zvhich properly constitutes the human being in hint; every one 
 names this expanding sheaf of life-forces in accordance with the 
 colour of his philosophy and the relative height of his own thoughts; 
 every one has in himself the image of man that he deserves. For 
 Jesus this inner force clothed itself preeminently in the features of 
 paternity. 
 
 Let it be admitted that moral obligation, mill to power, luill to live, 
 elan vital, libido are not the same thing. They are photographs, rather, 
 taken by different operators of unequal skill, of one colossal and mul- 
 tiple reality of which one and all succeed in obtaining but a partial 
 image, incomplete and deformed because of the inadequacy of their 
 lenses. Jesus alone caught a full view of this reality which creates 
 both persons and life, and he gave it the one name that seemed fit to 
 him and th.it we repeat with his warrant : the Father. 
 
 ^John X, 30. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 245 
 
 unity in such a way as to show that he had felt in his 
 meeting with the Father no sort of shock but rather a 
 paternal embrace. There- is a flawless continuity between 
 the Father and himself. Analysing this experience psycho- 
 logically, we cannot but assign to it a mystical character; 
 it is, in its inmost essence, a mystical experience. Thus we 
 may say that the great work of Jesus, the mission of his 
 life, his constant and supreme effort, was to help men to 
 discover the secret of life, by revealing to them that mystical 
 attitude of his own which at every moment brought him 
 face to face, through the Father, with life. 
 
 While we cannot call it anything else than mystical in 
 its nature, while it is, from a psychological point of view, 
 a mystical experience, an experience of inner communion, 
 that is, with a Beyond, this attitude differs nevertheless 
 from the phenomena that we are accustomed to find among 
 mystics in general. M. Flournoy commented on this con- 
 trast. "There is a striking difference," he observed, "be- 
 tween the mystics and Jesus in regard to the very content 
 of the mystical phenomenon, the kind of Beyond, if I may 
 so express it, which is revealed to them and which they 
 announce to the world on the evidence of their immediate 
 experience. With most of them it is a vague sphere of 
 joy and deliverance (the Buddhist Nirvana) or an infinite 
 and mysterious gulf whence emerge for an instant all finite 
 creatures, only to be at once re-absorbed into it (the One 
 of Pantheism); more rarely, as among the prophets of 
 Israel, who in this are indeed the forerunners of Christ, 
 the object of the mystical revelation is a personal Being, 
 singularly different and remote, however, from ourselves 
 
 (the Eternal, He that exists through Himself). Jesus is 
 the first to find in the depths of his own consciousness this 
 concrete Beyond, living, palpitating with love and holy will, 
 whose intimate, personal Presence, at once august and 
 
246 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 familiar, like that of another self or a Great Companion 
 of a superior essence, could not, it seemed to him, be better 
 expressed in terrestrial language than by the word 'Father.' 
 This term, finally, summing up as it does in itself the whole 
 religion of Christ — since he proclaims in a single word the 
 love of God and human brotherhood — expresses excellently 
 at the same time that perfect fusion of the moral and the 
 mystical elements which makes of Jesus the unsurpassable 
 type, the perfected personification of the religious genius." ® 
 
 It is only since the publication of that admirable little 
 book by Th. Flournoy, Le Ginie religieux, that psycho- 
 analysis has begun to be talked about among ourselves. 
 And this is to be regretted, for what might not its learned 
 author have added to what he tells us regarding Jesus's 
 idea of the "Father" if, at the time, he had possessed the 
 works of the psycho-analysts on the (Edipus-complex and 
 particularly on the paternal imago? We cannot hope to 
 make up for this, but let us at least add one or two words 
 on the subject. 
 
 The psycho-analysts have shown us the immense role 
 that is played by the (Edipus-complex in early childhood 
 and the place that is held in the psychic life of the child 
 by the persons of the father and the mother upon whom 
 come to be concentrated all the child's most vivid feelings. 
 Following this they have revealed to us the echo of these 
 first impressions in the psychic life of the grown man, in 
 his psychic aberrations (the neuroses), and again in his 
 literary or poetic, moral and religious conceptions. One 
 cannot help being struck by the equally important, though 
 quite different, role played by the notion of the father, 
 the paternal concept, the paternal imago, both in psycho- 
 analysis and in the religion of Christ. The connection 
 
 6 Flournoy, Th., Le Genie religieux, Association chretienne Suisse 
 d'etudiants, 1904, pp. 47; cf. pp. 9-10. 
 
THE PERSONALITY' OF JESUS 247 
 
 forces itself upon us. May not this connection furnish 
 us at least with some light on the nature of the central 
 experience of Jesus? 
 
 It will be understood that I only venture with hesitation 
 upon this slippery ground, and that I wish merely to indi- 
 cate a few lines of comparison that may aid us. 
 
 What role, what sort of role, have the psycho-analysts 
 discovered in this figure of the father, this paternal imago, 
 first in the life of the child, and afterwards in that of the 
 adult? They have found that the most intense emotions 
 that stir the child's soul attach themselves with great force 
 to this symbolic figure of the father. And they have also 
 found that the most contradictory feelings immediately at- 
 tach themselves to it as to their natural object, so that for 
 the child the father is at once the object of the greatest 
 hatred and of the greatest love. It seems so natural for 
 the child to love its father; this harmonises so well with 
 our ordinary views of duty and life that we scarcely notice 
 the feelings of affection which the child has for its father. 
 All this belongs in the picture, it is appropriate; it does 
 not attract our attention because it does not shock us. 
 It is another matter when we speak of the hatred of the 
 child for its father. We are immediately filled with a feel- 
 ing of disapproval, of revolt, a sense of unsuitability. When 
 we have referred in our lectures to this hatred of the child 
 for its father the resistance has instantly made itself felt 
 in the protestations of the audience: the latter tell us, in 
 all good faith, that on the contrary in their own children 
 they have observed a natural tendency to seek the father, 
 to enjoy being in his arms, to wish to have him near them 
 even in preference to the mother. There is nothing im- 
 possible in this, nor does it in any way invalidate the 
 psycho-analytic thesis. On the contrary, that mothers es- 
 pecially observe in their children feelings of affection, a 
 
248 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 loving inclination, for their father simply arises from the 
 fact that these sentiments fall in quite naturally with our 
 ways of thinking and the whole orientation of our moral 
 life. As we observe more closely, however, focussing our 
 interest if need be on what is displeasing to us morally, 
 we shall also discern in our children the opposite current. 
 
 This double direction of feeling — love and hatred — with 
 respect to the same object, in this case the father, has been 
 called by the psycho-analysts the ambivalence of the jeel- 
 ings.'' The infantile life is characterised by a very strong 
 ambivalence of the feelings; and since the figure of the 
 father is one of the most marked objects of interest in the 
 life of the child, it is with respect to him that this ambiva- 
 lence is most clearly manifested. The child loves his father 
 and hates him at the same time. I do not insist upon fine 
 distinctions. Hatred and love must be taken here in a 
 very broad sense; these expressions cover a whole gamut 
 of feelings that are still undeveloped, still in the embryonic 
 state. The child is a man only in posse; he is only a 
 potential man; he neither loves nor hates perfectly; the 
 primitive feelings that move him are as yet undifferentiated. 
 He is still, so to speak, in the purely unmoral stage of the 
 emotional life. Hence the fact that we do not judge severely 
 these impulsive manifestations which are characteristic of 
 the very young child; they leave us quite undisturbed when 
 they do not make us smile. 
 
 There exists, none the less, in this complete unmorality 
 of the natural ambivalence of the feelings in the child what 
 might be described as a prophetic call to sacrifice. Let me 
 explain: we who judge life morally, who are morally de- 
 veloped beings, are bound, when v;e turn to consider the 
 future of our children, to judge their unmorality as im- 
 moral. We say to ourselves that one of their tendencies 
 
 ' See, on ambivalence, p. 210 (note). 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 249 
 
 of feeling must be sacrificed for the benefit of the other. 
 The whole effort of education tends in this direction. The 
 natural ambivalence of the feelings must be surmounted in 
 some fashion in order that the child may attain to unity, 
 to the unification of the personality, to moral equilibrium. 
 
 Now, this education is not always successful. In neu- 
 rotics, for example, we have types with whom, from this 
 point of view, education has failed. The double current 
 of contradictory feelings has subsisted; one of them, hatred, 
 has been repressed, but it remains at work in the subcon- 
 scious and is not slow in bringing about disaster. In order 
 to cure these neuroses we have to bring this latent hatred 
 up from the depths of the subconscious into the light and 
 make the patient understand that it is not his father who 
 must die, but the false representations of the father which 
 he has himself formed. In a word, the patient's powers 
 of sacrifice must be directed towards a part of his life 
 which has developed wrongly and has remained outside 
 the control of his consciousness and his reason.* This mis- 
 take persisted in the patient when the child was becoming 
 a man; the ambivalence was not surmounted. 
 
 In the normal individual this is not the case. Normally 
 the mere play of life should effect a sublimation of the 
 primitive infantile tendencies. The ambivalence of the 
 feelings then gives place to a progressive unification. But 
 how does this unification occur? It occurs through what 
 I might call a differentiation of the object of the feelings, 
 in this case the father, and it occurs in this way. The 
 paternal imago divides, so to speak, in two. On one side 
 are the false or evil representations that the child has 
 made of the father, on the other the true repiesentations 
 which correspond to the reality. The hatred is directed 
 against the false representations of the father and finally 
 
 8 See the example quoted on pp. 120 et seqp. 
 
250 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 destroys them; the love attaches itself to the true father, 
 to the true image of the father (and, by extension, to the 
 whole of humanity whose ideal relations with the child 
 are symbolised by those of the father with him), and de- 
 lights in it. 
 
 Now how far are we normal in this respect, we indi- 
 viduals who consider ourselves perfectly healthy in mind 
 and body? We may well ask the question. If we observe 
 ourselves closely, especially if we allow our inner life to 
 be observed by a more impartial third person, by having 
 ourselves psycho-analysed, we shall find perhaps that very 
 marked traces of ambivalence still exist in our own feelings; 
 we shall undoubtedly become aware that with our deepest 
 love there is often mingled an unacknowledged fund of 
 rancour, resentment, jealousy that all but perceptibly ap- 
 proaches hatred and may easily become hatred under the 
 sting of the most insignificant happenings. 
 
 We certainly love the father; we love the enlarged 
 paternal imago, everything in humanity, that is, that touches 
 us paternally; but here again how many reservations we 
 make in which hatred has its innings! The frontiers be- 
 tween peoples, between the classes of society, war, the 
 whole state of modern Europe shows this with a wealth 
 of evidence that leaves nothing to be desired. We only 
 love paternal and fraternal humanity by hating it; we only 
 prove our love for it in the measure in which we hate it. 
 It is by killing that we show ourselves worthy to be called 
 men and brothers, and sons of our grateful country. It 
 certainly cannot be said that ambivalence has been sur- 
 mounted as yet. This incapacity of superficially Christian- 
 ised man to abate the original ambivalence of his feelings 
 and make a unity within himself is a humiliating fact, a 
 mark of inferiority and inaptitude for his task that fills us 
 with confusion. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 251 
 
 From man in general let us now pass to Jesus, still re- 
 membering this notion of the father, this paternal imago, 
 and try to see how the problem of the unification of ten- 
 dencies, the passage from the state of childhood to the 
 state of moral majority, was resolved in him. Here we 
 at once feel ourselves on a new plane, a higher level. In 
 Jesus, in so far as we are able to follow the path of his 
 psychic development (judged rather by its results than 
 through a study of details), it appears as if the ambivalence 
 had been surmounted, or at least had been resolved by a 
 differentiation of the object. Let us recall what we mean 
 by this. We have seen that, with normal individuals, as 
 with neurotics who are on the road to recovery, there oc- 
 curs, at a certain moment in their life, a sort of division 
 of the notion of the father. On the one hand, the false 
 or inferior representations which the individual has formed 
 of his father are set aside, and the individual, directing his 
 hatred towards them, overthrows them in himself and kills 
 them. What we have here is a sort of consecration of 
 the force of hatred to a noble end, a sublimation of the 
 hatred. On the other hand, the love is concentrated on 
 the real father and on his substitutes, fraternal humanity. 
 In the case of Jesus v/e observe a similar movement, but 
 how much more perfect and carried how much further! 
 The paternal imago divides also, but in a different way, 
 on a higher plane: on one side are the paternal human 
 representations, all humanity considered as a family, the 
 human beings who are his brethren, his mother, his sisters; ^ 
 then, on the other side, is a new paternal imago, unknown 
 before and of a purity and a force of attraction such as 
 are to be found nowhere else, which Jesus calls "the Father," 
 properly speaking, in opposition to all the other paternities. 
 It is upon this spiritual Father, who dominates life with 
 
 »Matt. xii, 46-50; Mark iii, 31-35; Luke viii, 19-21. 
 
252 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 all his divine loftiness and who animates life with all his 
 human intimacy, that the power of Christ's love is con- 
 centrated. It is this heavenly Father, attained and recog- 
 nised in a new and yet old experience, a true experience 
 but one which before Jesus had been merely potential in 
 humanity, had been merely anticipated, so to speak, — it 
 is this Father who is the real Father, it is he who has a 
 right to all the love. 
 
 And the hatred, against what is that directed in Jesus? 
 It is directed against all the imperfect representations of 
 the father which concrete reality had furnished hitherto 
 and which veiled from men, without their suspecting it, 
 the life of the veritable Father. Jesus, we remember, ut- 
 tered this paradoxical saying which has given the exegetists 
 a great deal of trouble: "If any man come to me, and hate 
 not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
 brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot 
 be my disciple." ^° Well, here is the solution; we find it 
 along the path of psychological analysis. It signifies this 
 spiritual hatred directed against all the paralysing repre- 
 sentations of human relationships that prevent one from 
 going to the true Father. 
 
 Jesus realised this saying to the letter. He directed his 
 power of hatred against everything that prevented him from 
 giving himself to the Father; and it was not only domestic 
 obstacles that had to yield before his vocation, his per- 
 sonal existence, to the last point, was obliged to yield also. 
 With him sacrifice was not a matter of evil personal ten- 
 dencies or false or morbid representations; it involved the 
 whole self so far as it was individual. He understood and 
 felt that one was obliged to "hate one's own life" when it 
 became a hindrance to the realisation of the will of the 
 Father. This annihilating force which is called hatred he 
 
 10 Luke xiv, 26. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 253 
 
 permitted to turn decisively against his own life when it 
 became clear to him that for him death was the only issue 
 that could assure to the very last his fidelity to the Father. 
 The paradox that frightens us had become in him a psychi- 
 cally experienced reality. He had hated his own life; he 
 had sacrificed everything that constituted his earthly ex- 
 istence so that he might love the true Father perfectly. I 
 do not know whether we can grasp in its completeness what 
 took place at this moment in that unique personality, but 
 at least we can attempt to understand it. Whereas with 
 us sacrifice is usually prompted by the evil tendencies that 
 have continued to exist in our souls and is directed against 
 these tendencies, in Jesus it seems to have resulted rather 
 from the encounter between an evil external reality and a 
 perfectly pure individual experience of the Father. ^^ Jesus 
 did not, as we do, sacrifice a part of his psychic self to 
 another part that ought to live; he sacrificed the whole self, 
 the whole human personality, to the life of Humanity which 
 he felt within him. This was the sublime in sacrifice: it 
 was the individual experience transcending its limits and 
 rising to the height of the collective human experience. 
 Thus one might almost say that Humanity was the ques- 
 tion with Jesus, that there was no question of individuality 
 at all; it was the person consecrated to the service of 
 Humanity, the son of man becoming Man par excellence 
 because he was more than the son of man, because he was 
 the son of God. 
 
 At the supreme moment of Gethsemane Jesus was so 
 completely the son of the Father that he was able to sac- 
 rifice everything that was individual in him to the realisa- 
 tion of the love of the Father for the children and of the 
 children for the Father. He gave all that he was so that 
 
 11 Let us note in passing that in this lies the chief difference between 
 the sacrifice of Jesus and ordinary asceticism or masochism (the pleas- 
 ure found in inflicting pain upon oneself). 
 
254 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 in contemplating this gift men might believe in love and 
 realise that there is a Father and that this Father is the 
 supreme reality. 
 
 By the light of psycho-analysis we can understand a 
 little better, I believe, what is meant by a sacrifice that 
 is necessary to life and how, in giving oneself, far from 
 destroying life, one furthers it, augments it, liberates it. 
 From this point of view, the sacrifice of Christ no longer 
 appears to us to have those arbitrary features that have 
 been an offence to some people. It follows the very lines 
 of life itself. It accomplishes marvellously, and through 
 an act of the will that has never been surpassed, that which 
 the very tenor and process of our psychic evolution pre- 
 figure and seem to announce: the soul's attainment of the 
 true Father by sacrifice and through a partial death. 
 
 But at this point there intervened very great difficulties 
 for Jesus himself. Briefly, how was he to make men un- 
 derstand his inner attitude? This difficulty lay not only 
 in the quasi-impossibility of communicating such an experi- 
 ence but also and particularly in the difference which he 
 perceived to exist between his own experience and that of 
 others. With them the opposite inner currents manifested 
 themselves; never did the influx of life arrive pure from 
 the unconscious layers of the being; it was not the Father 
 who was at work within them, but the devil.^^ While with 
 Jesus the entire group of instincts that constitute the libido 
 were sublimated in proportion as they penetrated into his 
 consciousness, in other men the strength necessary for this 
 sublimation does not always exist. Thus the harmonious 
 unity does not come about; there are jars, repressions; every- 
 thing is arrested, qualified, impaired, vitiated. In Jesus 
 the unity is effected between the consciousness and the 
 forces of the unconscious, but the distinction is also marked 
 
 12 John viii, 31-47 and partic. 44. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 255 
 
 between that which belongs to himself and the non-ego that 
 is in him: both himself and his Father exist in his ex- 
 perience in a perfect harmony but with a distinction that 
 remains unaltered. With the natural man, on the con- 
 trary, there is a confusion between all these subconscious 
 forces that appear to him at one time as if they were all 
 parts of himself, at other times as if they were all alien, 
 dominating, coercive and, in consequence, of a demoniacal 
 and debasing character. 
 
 There is a difference in nature between him and our^ 
 selves, but not a fundamental difference. He is himself j 
 Man; his experience is the true human experience. Men 
 as they are cannot attain this without being born again. ^ 1 
 Thus henceforth his whole activity, his whole effort of i 
 love, his whole testimony will tend to lead them on to this 
 new birth. He will give them his whole life in order to 
 show them how to live as he has lived. But alas! it is too 
 much to ask them to give up the false attitude towards 
 life which they enjoy. In demanding that men should die 
 to themselves, Jesus drew down upon himself the forces 
 of hatred. These invalids transferred their evil passions to 
 him, as if he had been their physician, and he became 
 the object of their hatred. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE DEATH OF JESUS 
 
 We have reached the last chapter in the life of Jesus, 
 that is to say the period in his ministry when the idea 
 of death begins to take shape in his thoughts. It is very 
 difficult to fix the exact date of this. From the outset, 
 no doubt, from the time of the Baptism and the Temptation, 
 the gift of himself had appeared to him as the essential 
 act, the central idea of his ministry and his career. But 
 while the gift of oneself is the possibility of death accepted, 
 it is not the same thing as death itself. Is there not a 
 certain difference between the acceptance of every other 
 sacrifice and the supreme acceptance incarnated, as it were, 
 in the glacial, irremissible fact of personal death, accepted, 
 willed, impending? 
 
 It seems as if the gospels wished to assign a precise date 
 to this invasion of the mind of Jesus by the idea of death. 
 We see it appearing in the reiterated declarations that Jesus 
 makes to his disciples, when he affirms to them, for instance, 
 that "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be 
 rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, 
 and be killed, and after three days rise again." ^ These 
 declarations begin after the scene at Caesarea Philippi and 
 the confession of Peter. We find them also at the moment 
 that follows the Transfiguration: "And as they came down 
 from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell 
 no man what things they had seen, till the Son of Man 
 were risen from the dead." " These two events, as we 
 
 1 Mark viii, 31 ; Matt, xv'i, 21 ; Luke ix, 22 and xxiv, 46. 
 
 2 Mark ix, 9 ; Matt, xvii, 9. 
 
 256 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 257 
 
 have observed, almost coincide, or at least follow one an- 
 other very closely, and opinions differ among the theolo- 
 gians as to the order in which they should be placed.^ 
 Then, a little later, at the time when Jesus is going up to 
 Jerusalem, "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem," he says to 
 them; "and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the 
 chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn 
 him to death, and shall deliver him to the gentiles: and 
 they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit 
 upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall 
 rise again." * 
 
 Such passages, however, just because of their preciseness, 
 should be accepted with caution; for if the disciples had 
 had any such exact warning, how could they have been 
 taken by surprise at the moment when death came or 
 have had so little expectation of the Resurrection? No 
 doubt Jesus had spoken to them on various occasions, prob- 
 ably in veiled and ambiguous terms, of the possibility of 
 his death, and these utterances v/ere later written down 
 and put into a more precise form in the light of subsequent 
 events. They therefore do give us a date, that on which 
 Jesus began to speak of his death to his followers, though 
 not the date, doubtless much earlier, when he began to 
 envisage it as possible in his inner consciousness. 
 
 Another passage, regarded as more convincing, is the 
 following: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." ° Here, we are told, is to be found an early inti- 
 mation of an expiatory death. But aside from the fact 
 that the expression "to give his life" does not necessarily 
 imply death, it would be possible to suppose that Jesus 
 attributed to his unmerited sufferings a virtue similar to 
 
 3 See pp. 229-230. 
 
 4 Mark x, 33-34; Matt, xx, 17. 
 
 5 Mark x, 45. 
 
258 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 that which Jewish tradition attributed to the sufferings 
 of the brothers martyred in the time of the Maccabees 
 which, according to the popular belief, were to turn aside 
 the wrath of God. Consequently, this passage does not 
 contribute very much to our knowledge. 
 
 There remains the Last Supper, the institution of the 
 Last Supper, which does indeed appear to be closely related 
 to the death of Jesus and seems to affirm in advance its 
 unique significance. And yet doubts have arisen in con- 
 nection with this also. It has been thought, and reasonably 
 thought, that Jesus had no intention of making this last 
 meal a sacrament for later times; it has been asked whether 
 the emphasis later laid upon the bread and the v^^ine as 
 representing the broken body and the shed blood was not 
 falsified or exaggerated; and whether Jesus had not been 
 insisting here again rather on life than on death, on that 
 living bread and that living blood upon which Christians 
 should nourish themselves. 
 
 However this may be, and whatever may be the value 
 of the different passages we have just examined, we cannot 
 but observe, in any case, and whether we wish to do so 
 or not, that the feelings and especially the intellectual certi- 
 tudes they presuppose in Jesus are in flagrant contradiction 
 to the story of his last moments as they are described to 
 us by these same gospels. To make certain of this we 
 have only to reread the scene of Gethsemane, the account 
 of the final moral struggle.*' What does this show us if 
 not that, even then, on the very eve of the supreme sac- 
 rifice, the hope of a possible deliverance still existed in the 
 heart of Jesus? The prayer, full of submission as it is, 
 nevertheless besought for this deliverance, and with what 
 an ardour of the whole being! 
 
 Even on the cross itself, it appears that Christ had not 
 
 6 Matt, xxvi, 36-56 ; Mark xiv, 32-52 ; Luke xxii, 39-53. 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 259 
 
 lost the hope of a possible intervention on the Father's 
 part; and does not the cry that one of the evangelists 
 reports as having been the only one which he uttered, the 
 tragic and terrifying cry: "My God, my God, why hast 
 thou forsaken me!'" does not this cry seem to be the 
 tragic avowal of this last hope which is vanishing? Oh! 
 there are obviously other ways in which it might be inter- 
 preted. How far is it not possible to carry interpretation? 
 But when we place ourselves candidly and open-mindedly 
 before this living scene and permit its poignant realism to 
 seize upon our hearts, then we recognise that this cry, modi- 
 fied as the sense of it may seem to be by other words 
 spoken at other times, is a cry of despair, the fearful 
 rending of a heart which, till then, has hoped for an inter- 
 vention of God that has never come. 
 
 Now that we have attempted to clear a little the approach 
 to the sanctuary, let us try to penetrate into the sanctuary 
 itself. The question to be considered for the moment is 
 this: "Did Jesus entirely understand the meaning of his 
 death and why he had to die?" 
 
 This question is important because to it is linked a whole 
 manner of regarding Christianity that depreciates the Chris- 
 tian life by making of it a drama that is played in heaven 
 and on earth by mere puppets under the whip of a destiny 
 which is more like the antique jatmn than the paternal 
 will of the God of Jesus Christ. There are many who 
 think that it was all decreed in advance and that Jesus, 
 actuated by omniscience, knew from birth what he would 
 have to undergo. Having the knowledge, he had the 
 strength, as a matter of course; and the events unrolled 
 as in a drama v/ritten by a sanguinary god whose son, dis- 
 illusioned actor and predestined victim, was condemned 
 to play the principal role up to and including death. The 
 
 7 Mark xv, 34. 
 
26o ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 horror of such a conception is only equalled by its stupidity. 
 For how is it possible that we should be served by a theatri- 
 cal redemption, played entirely outside the conditions of 
 real human life? 
 
 Now this was not the case. What, as a matter of fact, 
 do the texts that we have just passed in review reveal 
 to us? They show us a Christ who became conscious very 
 early of the psychological conditions of the life of a Saviour. 
 Either because of the resistance that he encountered or 
 through his reading of the Old Testament, particularly of 
 Isaiah LIII and the life of Jeremiah, the thought that the 
 death of the Messiah was possible, and even probable, had 
 taken possession of his mind: this thought had so forced 
 itself upon him that it became an anguish and a torment, 
 an evident necessity. He saw that he was to be condemned, 
 that he was doubtless to be put to death. But we know 
 what a difference there is between the thought of death 
 and the reality of death when it presents itself as inevitable 
 and imminent. Jesus may have finally realised that he had 
 to die, since this was the only issue that the fulfilment 
 of his duty left to him in the precise, the unique circum- 
 stances in which he was placed, but did he also understand 
 all the consequences of his death and the reason for it? 
 I do not believe so. To the very end he was submissive 
 in his obedience, but he was submissive in spite of the 
 obscurity of his mind, which did not perceive whither his 
 obedience was leading him. 
 
 Jesus was led step by step to his death, and he accepted 
 it through his entire confidence in the Father who was 
 guiding him: he saw, indeed, in the death that was de- 
 manded of him, the crowning of the whole moral logic of 
 his life. He had been led thither, and God, in consequence, 
 had made this demand of him. But why? This was the 
 riddle. Jesus did not perceive what we perceive to-day. 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 261 
 
 He died without knowing it; and that is what constitutes 
 the incomparable grandeur of this death. But he died, con- 
 fident and morally certain, nevertheless, because he was 
 sure of the Father who had led him thus far. A confidence 
 in the Father that goes to the- length of accepting death 
 for oneself, that is the great lesson which he gave to the 
 world; not in theory but in the fulness of life, in the earthly 
 existence of a human person. 
 
 Now it is precisely this that men must see, and upon 
 which they must reflect, in order to be able to pass through 
 a new birth. They cannot themselves attain this without 
 an inner death, without desiring and accepting the real 
 death of a part of themselves. And men had not dared 
 to take this step; they had not had enough confidence in 
 the hidden energies of the life within them, in the Father 
 who makes his voice heard in the depths of the soul, to 
 hazard this sacrifice. It was necessary for one of them, 
 the purest and most saintly, to show them the road, it 
 was necessary for him to enter entirely into thi3 obscure 
 death . , . without knowing why, through obedience. 
 Jesus took the risk that humanity had seen before it for 
 centuries without daring to brave it. He abandoned him- 
 self entirely to the paternal will that breaks and kills and 
 sacrifices, after having abandoned himself to the paternal 
 will that gives life. We needed to see this in order to 
 believe that life is born of death, to know it, to be certain 
 of it. Here again Jesus fulfilled what had been in gestation 
 for centuries in the human soul. This is what remains for 
 us to show now. 
 
 In a pamphlet of fifty-eight pages which appeared at 
 Leipzig in 19 15 under the title Durch Tod ziim Leben 
 ("Through Death to Life"), Herbert Silberer, one of the 
 most interesting of the psycho-analysts, gathered together 
 an impressive array of documents to show how deeply 
 
262 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 rooted in the subconscious layers of the human soul is 
 this theme of "through death to life." He points out the 
 traces of it even among the primitive peoples, among whom 
 a series of ceremonies and initiation rites turn upon this 
 truth that "it is only through death that one attains life," 
 expressing it in all sorts of symbols the meaning of which 
 has sometimes been lost even by those who use them. 
 
 In later times, in the secret societies of every type that 
 spring from the bosom of humanity, death is represented 
 as the key to the attainment of a higher life, a new birth. 
 Silberer quotes as examples the Greek and Egyptian de- 
 votional institutions, the mysteries of Mithra, the Gnostic 
 cults, the sects that practise baptism, certain philosophical 
 schools of antiquity; in the Middle Ages, the academies 
 of the Renaissance, a series of humanistic societies and 
 orders which had the outward appearance of associations 
 of artists or artisans but of which the principal and secret 
 interest was of a religious nature; then, nearer to our- 
 selves, the societies that arose from these latter companies, 
 the Rosicrucians, at the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, the freemasons who date from 171 7, and finally the 
 theosophical or occultist societies of our own epoch which 
 purport to be the custodians of profound secrets. 
 
 We cannot enter into circumstantial details, but I should 
 like at least to point out the frequency of these images 
 of the new birth through death, first of all among the 
 primitive peoples. Take, for example, the initiation cere- 
 monies which, among many of these peoples, are imposed 
 upon the youths at the moment when they reach manhood, 
 roughly at the moment of puberty. The general features 
 of these rites are as follows: first, the candidate is obliged 
 to remain for a certain time in some dark place, in a hidden 
 place in the forest perhaps; he is then obliged to undergo 
 tests of courage or resolution, and sometimes he is subjected 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 263 
 
 to the ceremony of a sham murder; ^ after this he is re- 
 turned to life as a new man, so new that he must be taught 
 again the simplest movements and actions, such as eating, 
 speaking, walking, etc., of which he is supposed to be ig- 
 norant. Next his guides teach him the secrets that are 
 not known outside the society of the initiates, and which 
 must never be revealed. He is a new being, he is born 
 anew, this time to the true life, the life of the group of 
 initiates.® 
 
 In the Mystery-Religions we find precisely the same con- 
 ceptions in a more conscious form, the same instinctive 
 needs of the soul expressing themselves under analogous 
 symbols. There is Attis, represented by the pine, the tree 
 that is always green, which dies and is carried to the tomb 
 in the shadow of the sanctuary; his adepts mutilate them- 
 
 8 Or a partial murder, the removal of a part of the body, the teeth, 
 for example, circumcision, etc. 
 
 3 Cf., on the initiation rites of primitive peoples : Freud, S., Totem 
 und Tabu. Leipzig anc]t.N Vienna, Heller, pp. 149. — Durckheim, Em., 
 Les form-es elementaires \ie la vie religieiise ; le systeme totemique en 
 Australie. Paris, Alcan, 1912, pp. 647. — Toy, C. H., Introduction to 
 the History of Religions. Boston, Ginn and Co., no date, pp. 639. — 
 Brinton, D., Religions of Primitive Peoples. New York, Putnam, 1897, 
 pp. 264. — DussAUD, R., Introduction a I'histoire des religions. Paris, 
 Leroux, 1914, pp. 292. — Junod, H. A., Zidji, etude de moeiirs siid- 
 africaincs. St.-Blaise, 191 1, pp. 22>Z- — Id., The Life of a South African 
 Tribe. 2 vols., St.-Blaise. — Tylor, Edw., Primitive Cultur-e, 2 vols. 
 London, Murray, 1913, 5th ed., pp. 973. — Le Roy, A., La religion des 
 primitifs. Paris, Beauchesne, 191 1, 3rd ed., pp. 522. — Sfencer and GiL- 
 LEN, Native Tribes of Central Australia. London, Macmillan, 1899. — 
 Id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, id., 1904. — Jevons, F. B., 
 Introduction to the History of Religion. London, Methuen, 6th ed., 
 1914, pp. 443. — Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites. Aber- 
 deen, 1S89. — Reinach, S., Orpheus. — Frazer, The Golden Bough. 2nd 
 ed., Ill, p. 422. — Crawley, The Mystic, Rose. — Hastings, art. Circum- 
 cision in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. — Ames, Ed. S., 
 Psychology of Religious Experience. London, 1910, part II. — Langloh- 
 Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe. — Arnoux, P. Al., Le cultc dc la Societe 
 secrete des Imandwa an Ruandu. Anthropos VII, 1912. — Peckel, P. G., 
 Religion und Zaubcrei auf dem mittlcrem Nezv-Meckl. Bisr.iarck- 
 Archipel. Anthropos I, 3, 1910. — Frobenius, L., Die Masken und Ge- 
 heimbiinde Africas. Nova Acta Abh. D. Kaiserl. Leopold-Carol, 
 deutsch Akad. d. Naturforscher LXXIV, i, 1898, etc.; and the Journal 
 of the Anthropological Institute. 
 
264 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 selves just as he did, according to the legend, and all but 
 die with him, so as to be born again with him to a new 
 life. There is Mithra, conceived under the image of the 
 sacrificed bull whose regenerating blood, received by the 
 initiates in baptism, makes new beings of them. Many- 
 other features of the ceremonies are enumerated in the 
 special works. Everywhere among the Mystery-Religions 
 we find this idea of death as necessary to the new birth. 
 
 In studying these ancient cults and these ceremonies, 
 some of which still flourish among contemporary peoples 
 but which represent a past stage of human evolution, one 
 is more and more struck — indeed one cannot fail to be 
 struck — bj'^ the incessant reappearance of analogous formu- 
 las, images, and concepts all of which lead us back to this 
 theme: "Through and by means of death to life." 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is not only in the past that these 
 images recur. We find traces of them everywhere in the 
 present. In the bosom of Christianity they are in full evi- 
 dence; but we observe them also in 'Movements that have 
 no connection with Christianity or even deny it, such as free- 
 masonry, as well as in the dreams and the visions of neu- 
 rotics. Everywhere this necessity of a new birth and of 
 death as a condition of it recurs and obtrudes itself as an 
 essential leitmotif of the human soul. Fairy-tales, legends, 
 and myths add further weight to the force of this inference; 
 for they are full of the same idea. 
 
 The conclusion is inescapable that we have here one of 
 the profoundest traits of the psychology of man. Whence 
 does it come? Why do we find it on all sides? Surely be- 
 cause these antithetic symbols, death, new birth, correspond 
 to an inner process which is that of life itself. 
 
 The progress of the inner life, of the psychic life of man, 
 is bound up with a necessity by which certain tendencies 
 must die in order that others may be able to develop. 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 265 
 
 The human being, if he wishes to give the full measure of 
 himself and be equal to the tasks of life, must consent to 
 die, at least in a portion of himself, so as to attain to the 
 full development to which he inwardly and instinctively 
 aspires. This truth, vaguely and as it were subconsciously 
 perceived, has been expressed, from the very dawn of his- 
 tory, in myths, legends, rites, and fairy-tales, that is to 
 say under the varied forms of the symbol. It never be- 
 came fully conscious, because too many contrary tendencies 
 of our nature imposed an insurmountable barrier against 
 it. We do not want to become aware of what is within 
 us because we are afraid of it. Man allows that which 
 torments him inwardly to escape, as if through a safety- 
 valve, in the form of literary and poetic dreams. Save in 
 a few exceptional cases, he has neither the strength nor 
 the will to see himseFf as he is and to undertake consciously 
 the life-task that lies before him. 
 
 The symbols of the death necessary to attain to a new 
 birth which humanity has presented to itself in its cults 
 and myths had not the power to evoke with sufficient phe- 
 cision the act of the inner life that must be performed in 
 order for one to be born again. It remained a symbol, 
 a cold dramatisation. The representation was palpably arti- 
 ficial till the day came when a man consummated, in the 
 fulness of human life, the absolute gift of self, realised 
 the death, had the power to obey the forces of life that 
 exalted him to the point of his accepting the death. There 
 was no longer any question of symbols on this occasion. 
 The inner reality was lived through. A man, in the com- 
 pleteness of humanity, had the courage and the requisite 
 plenitude of life to risk his whole personality in the tragic 
 adventure that is called death. 
 
 And this was not the dream-death, the death that the 
 mystics mean when they speak of their night, of their 
 
266 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 absolute ignorance, of the death of the jacidties; it was 
 not the death of the consciousness turned back upon itself 
 in introversion; it was active death, if I may so describe 
 it, accepted in full reality and in full activity, consciously 
 and deliberately. 
 
 Where every one had hesitated to die in part he was 
 willing to give himself entirely. Thenceforward the door 
 stood open and others could follow. 
 
 We are now in a position to understand the experience 
 which the disciples obtained from the Resurrection of Christ. 
 Whatever the nature of this latter was, and I shall not dis- 
 cuss that here, they had tasted the life and the triumphant 
 power of him who had died. They saw that death did 
 not destroy life; they had shared this unique experience, 
 which had transformed the world, that to die was to live, 
 since he whom they had seen die thenceforward lived in 
 them. 
 
 In this sense, one may say that Jesus had incarnated 
 in his death and in his resurrection an inner experience that 
 had existed potentially for centuries in the human soul but 
 that had never passed beyond the sphere of the dream. 
 He translated into life the secular dream of the peoples. 
 Sacrifice unto death is now no longer merely a symbol, 
 it has become an enacted reality; and in this lies the great 
 new fact that has changed the face of the world. Hence- 
 forth, to symbolise to themselves the psychic process through 
 which they must pass in order to have life, in order to 
 be born anew, men no longer have merely fairy-tales, 
 dreams, or legendary stones; they have a human life and 
 a human death that have been lived through, if the ex- 
 pression is not too strong. To assist them in working on 
 themselves they have a point of departure and a force 
 that are living and no longer merely imaginary. Something 
 has been realised that was never realised before. Hence- 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 267 
 
 forth, one can accept death, one can desire one's own death, 
 knowing, since one has beheld it in a historic human being, 
 that this accepted death is not a deceit, that it leads one 
 to the true life, to the sublime and eternal life, that he 
 who gives himself does not die, but lives again in others 
 and with them. This is the psychological meaning and 
 perhaps the raison d'etre of the death of Jesus. He alone 
 was able to untie the Gordian knot that held the soul 
 captive to itself, and this he did by accom.plishing in reality 
 and visibly what man had felt that he ought to accomplish 
 spiritually v/ithout ever being able to do so. His very 
 person thus becomes the living symbol of the most inward 
 and decisive psychic act, that of dying to himself and 
 abandoning himself to those forces of the inner life which 
 he felt to be paternal and which he called the Father. 
 
 Did he suspect that, without his death, the new birth 
 of which he had spoken so much would have been impos- 
 sible to the great majority of men? Perhaps he had some 
 intuition of this: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die," he said, "it abideth alone: but if it die, 
 it bringeth forth much fruit." ^° In any case his confidence 
 in the Father, who demanded the supreme sacrifice of him, 
 was not mistaken; it came to a happy issue, and this con- 
 sists in the number of those who, saved from themselves 
 by an inner death of the demoniacal instincts, follow him, 
 in newness of life, tov/ards the eternal horizons. We must 
 admit that in the course of the history of Christianity this 
 has often been perverted. The great mystics, or at least 
 most of them, have fallen back, through the paths of the 
 inner dream, of autism, to a death and a life that have 
 been played rather than realised. The stigmatists, those 
 neurotics who have counterfeited in themselves the suffer- 
 
 ^° John xii, 24. This text, it is true, is in the gospel of John. It may 
 be attrihutable to the experiences of a subsequent generation, though 
 this is not certain. Still, it remains a matter of doubt. 
 
268 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 ings of Christ, have been in this the playthings and the 
 victims of a temperament that is incapable of grasping 
 and mastering life. To follow Jesus is not to copy him 
 slavishly in a dream in which one shuts oneself away from 
 the society of men. Rather it is to accept day by day 
 the death which existence inflicts upon living consciences, 
 upon those who at all times desire the will of the Father; 
 it is to reproduce in the midst of life this heroism of 
 Christ's who risked his personality even unto death in the 
 service of the paternal will of which he had experienced 
 the full power in himself. To live, in the Christian sense 
 of the word, is not in fact to become absorbed in the 
 illusory dream that seems to conduct you to the enjoyment 
 of life through the terrors of death. It is, on the contrary,, 
 to confront the surrounding reality as it is, a reality that 
 kills uncompromising consciences; it is to desire, in the 
 midst of an earthly and social existence, what the Father 
 desires; that is to say, granting the forces that still rule 
 in this world, to expose oneself to the violence of humanity 
 even to the point, if it is necessary, of receiving death. 
 There lie in wait, for every authentic Christian personality, 
 constant outrages, partial deaths, deprivations that are 
 forced upon one unless one accepts them voluntarily. To 
 him who desires life, in the Christian sense of the word, 
 death is ever close at hand through the very fact that sin- 
 cerity is at daggers drawn with a world of hypocrisy and 
 violence. To dream the struggle is simply a way of avoid- 
 ing it. The great introverts have often withdrawn from 
 the reality of the living sacrifice; their very asceticism is 
 sometimes an evasion. 
 
 Jesus is greater because he neither willed nor desired 
 a dream-death. He accepted in the simplest fashion the 
 real death which the real life placed before him. It is upon 
 this ground of lived realities that one must follow him in 
 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 269 
 
 order to be a Christian. And this is why the Huguenots 
 and the Puritans have been greater saints than all those of 
 the Catholic Church, with the exception perhaps of the 
 Poverello of Assisi. And this is also why we must inces- 
 santly defend the form of Christian life which we call 
 Protestant as superior to the Roman Catholic form, since 
 it constantly leads life back to the moral ground, dragging 
 it pitilessly away from the easier but baneful derivations of 
 introversion. We suffer sometimes from the apparent dry- 
 ness of our Protestantism; many people who are fond of 
 poetry reproach us with the austerity which they see in it 
 without distinguishing the far superior moral beauty of 
 which this austerity is the external safeguard. Without 
 setting ourselves against anything that may add grandeur 
 to the Protestant religion, it is important to challenge the 
 ever-active influence that paganism has continued to exer- 
 cise upon Christianity since the time of the ancient mys- 
 teries, the influence which consists in causing the soul to 
 glide comfortably down the slope of dreams away from 
 life, in turning it away from the real life and the real death 
 which are always difficult and tragic, and replacing them 
 with symbolic counterfeits, with a poetic drama the charm 
 of which resides precisely in the fact that one can watch 
 it without taking part in it, and by being present at it 
 imagine oneself living it all without having to make any 
 decision or assume any responsibility. To follow Jesus 
 Christ is not to watch from a distance, as passive spectators, 
 a mystery that is greater and more beautiful than all those 
 that have been played on the world's stage before or since 
 his time; it is to live, with one who has lived and still lives 
 in his followers, a life of which the cross is the constant 
 end and renewal, a conjoined life and death which are 
 essential to the resurrection and alone render it possible. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE RESURRECTION 
 
 It is time now to pass on to the accounts that have been 
 preserved for us of the Resurrection of Jesus, so that we 
 may judge of their value and their import and try at least 
 to determine what facts are buried in them and what place 
 these facts occupy in the psychology of Christian humanity. 
 
 The gospels have preserved for us, in connection with 
 the Resurrection of Jesus, the echo of two traditions, the 
 characters of which are at once discernible. According to 
 one of these, the appearances of the resuscitated Jesus took 
 place in Galilee; he exhibited himself under the form of 
 a body which did not seem to be subject to the same laws 
 as our earthly bodies, which did not seem to be the body 
 that Jesus had had on earth before his death. This is 
 the tradition which appears in the gospels of Mark and 
 Matthew and in the apocryphal gospel of Peter. Accord- 
 ing to the other, which is called the Judaic or Jerusalemite 
 tradition, as distinguished from the Galilean tradition, the 
 apparitions took place in and about Jerusalem. Jesus ap- 
 peared in his corporeal body just as it had been before 
 his death; he shows his wounds to the apostles, he eats 
 before them, etc. This is the tradition of the gospel of 
 Luke. 
 
 In the gospel of John, as is natural considering its rela- 
 tively later date, the two traditions, the Judaic and the Gali- 
 lean, are united, though without blending as completely as 
 they are to do in the future. But these are only affirma- 
 tions; let us look at the facts. 
 
 270 
 
THE RESURRECTION 271 
 
 § I. THE DOCUMENTS 
 
 In Chapter XVI of the gospel of Mark we see Mary 
 Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome coming 
 to the sepulchre in which Jesus had been laid to anoint 
 the body. ''Who shall roll us away the stone from the 
 door of the sepulchre?" they ask one another. "And v/hen 
 they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away." 
 A young man, clothed in a white garment, tells them that 
 Jesus has risen and bids them go and tell the disciples that 
 they are to see him in Galilee. The conclusion of the chap- 
 ter, from verse 9, is possibly an addition to the gospel of 
 Mark: it is missing in most of the manuscripts. 
 
 In the gospel of Matthew (chap, xxviii) we find the 
 same or almost the same account. Instead of three women 
 there are only two here: Mary Magdalene and the other 
 Mary; instead of the young man in white garments there 
 appears an angel who frightens the guard stationed near 
 the tomb. He announces to the women that Jesus is risen 
 and that they shall see him in Galilee. Then, all at once, 
 Jesus himself appears before them, but only to command 
 them to go and tell his brothers to go into Galilee; they 
 are to see him there. Then the eleven disciples "went away 
 into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed 
 them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: 
 but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto 
 them. . . ."^ 
 
 The last development of the Galilean tradition is found 
 in the apocryphal gospel of Peter.^ It says here that on 
 
 1 Matt, xxviii, 16-18. 
 
 2 This gospel of Peter was known only by name before the year 
 1892 when Bouriant found in Egypt, near Alcmim, in the tomb of a 
 monk, a parchment codex which, among other texts, contained about 
 sixty verses of the gospel in question. They are those which relate 
 to the story of the Passion and the Resurrection. The gospel of Peter 
 was known before only through the quotations of Serapion of Antioch 
 
272 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 the night of the sabbath, the soldiers who were guarding 
 the tomb heard a great voice out of heaven; they lifted 
 their eyes; the heavens were opened, and two shining angels 
 descended and approached the sepulchre. The stone which 
 served as a door moved aside of itself; the two angels 
 entered, and the soldiers hastened to arouse their captain 
 and the Jewish elders who were with them guarding the 
 tomb and who were asleep. While they were telling them 
 what they had seen, behold, there appeared from the tomb 
 three men: Jesus Christ upheld by the two angels; the 
 cross, which had served in his execution, followed them. 
 The angels were so tall that their heads touched the sky; 
 but Jesus was taller still, and his head rose above the 
 heavens. A voice came down from the sky, saying, "Hast 
 thou preached to those who sleep?" And a reply came 
 from the cross, sajdng, "Yea." The company ran to relate 
 everything to Pilate. Nevertheless, at dawn, Mary Mag- 
 dalene came to the tomb with some other women to anoint 
 the body. An angel appeared to them and announced to 
 them the Resurrection, and they fled in fear. The angel 
 had said to them: "He is risen, and he is gone whither 
 he was bidden to go, that is to say, to heaven." ^ 
 
 The gospel of Luke ^ exhibits a tradition that is already 
 somewhat different. What do we find here? First, the 
 account of the women at the tomb. The terms of this 
 are about the same as in the first two gospels. Nevertheless, 
 we must point out certain features that are different. The 
 personages who appear are "two men in shining garments." 
 They affirm the Resurrection of Christ. On their return 
 from the tomb the women, three of whom are named (Mary 
 
 (Eusebius vi, 12, 3) ; and Origen. Eusebius. Theodoret and Jerome 
 mention its name only. The work itself must have appeared between 
 the years 130 and 200, we do not know exactly where, perhaps in Syria. 
 
 3 This resume is quoted from Staffer, Jcsus-Christ, sa parsonne, son 
 autorite, son ccuvre, t. Ill, pp. 236 et seqq. 
 
 * Luke xxiv. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 273 
 
 Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, but 
 there were others also), carry their news to the apostles, 
 but "their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they 
 believed them not." It must be added that, as Luke has 
 it, the women are not informed of the place where the 
 disciples are to see the risen one; no mention is made of 
 Galilee in this connection. 
 
 Luke contains also the episode of the disciples at Em- 
 maus. Jesus appears in person to two disciples on the 
 road from Jerusalem to Emmaus; he speaks with them 
 without their recognising him. The disciples urge him to 
 remain with them; he consents to do so, and it is only when 
 they are sitting at meat and he breaks the bread that they 
 recognise him. "And he vanished out of their sight." 
 
 Returning in haste to Jerusalem, these two disciples find 
 the eleven gathered together, and while they are relating 
 to the latter what they have seen, Jesus appears in the 
 midst of them. They imagine they are seeing a spirit, but 
 Jesus shows them his hands and feet, tells them to handle 
 him and see that he is really himself, with his own flesh 
 and bones, and eats before them the broiled fish and the 
 honeycomb. Then he leads them to Bethany where the 
 Ascension takes place. 
 
 Thus, in these accounts of Luke, we have a resurrection 
 of the very body which Jesus had before his death. All 
 the details tend to show that Jesus possesses a material 
 body. He disappears and he reappears, it is true; but he 
 eats, he carries the scars of his wounds; they touch him 
 and recognise the presence of the flesh and the bones. 
 On the other hand, everything takes place in the neighbour- 
 hood of Jerusalem: at Emmaus, at Jerusalem, and at Beth- 
 any. 
 
 From the gospel of Luke it would seem that all these 
 appearances occurred on the same day, or during two days 
 
274 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 at most. In the book of the Acts, however, Luke is more 
 definite; he states that the apparitions lasted over a period 
 of forty days and that they terminated in the Ascension, 
 which took place on the Mount of Olives.^ 
 
 We are thus clearly in the presence of two different 
 traditions, one of which places the appearances of Jesus 
 in Galilee*' and gives them a more spiritual character, the 
 other placing them in Judaea and dwelling on their material 
 nature. 
 
 In the gospel of John,'' the Galilean tradition and the 
 Jerusalemite tradition are united, which is in keeping, as 
 we have said, with the lateness of this gospel. Jesus ap- 
 pears to Mary Magdalene near the sepulchre, where she 
 is weeping. She supposes him to be the gardener until 
 he calls her by her name; then she recognises him, and 
 Jesus bids her go and tell his brethren that he is to ascend 
 to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God. 
 On the evening of the same day, Jesus comes into the midst 
 of the disciples "when the doors were shut" and shows 
 them his hands and his side. Here, then, we have imma- 
 teriality, since he passes through the doors, and materiality 
 at the same time, since he causes them to examine his 
 wounds. Eight days later occurs the episode of Thomas, 
 in which this sceptical disciple is confronted with the facts 
 and asked to behold the wounds and to touch them with 
 his finger and his hand. Finally, in a chapter that was 
 added to the gospel later, we find a scene in Galilee: the 
 apparition of Jesus on the shore of the lake of Tiberias 
 and the restoration of Peter to the apostleship.^ 
 
 5 Acts i, 12. 
 
 8 The apparition of Jesus to the women at the tomb, reported by 
 Matthew, does not invalidate this remark; we observe, indeed, that its 
 sole object is to arrange the meeting with the disciples in Galilee. 
 
 7 John XX. 
 
 ^Ibid., xxi. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 275 
 
 "According to the Galilean tradition," says Stapfer, "the 
 Risen One has but an ephemeral life and makes only brief 
 appearances. According to the Jerusalemite tradition, on 
 the contrary, the life of the Risen One is the continuation 
 pure and simple of his earthly life. The latter, interrupted 
 for a space of thirty-six hours, has begun again as it was 
 before. The days of the Resurrection are days supple- 
 mentary to those of the earthly ministry of Jesus and must 
 be added to it. This ministry continues. There are, it is 
 true, two differences: Jesus is not constantly present and 
 he is not always recognisable. He is transported in an 
 instant from one spot to another; he appears and dis- 
 appears; but he has the same body that was laid in the 
 tomb, the body that had died on the cross and become a 
 corpse. This body, this physical organism, has become 
 alive; it eats and drinks; it walks. Jesus, risen from the 
 dead, has conversations with his apostles, just as in former 
 times. 
 
 "It is interesting to observe that this Jerusalemite version 
 of the tradition becomes continually more affirmative in 
 regard to a materialisation of the body of Jesus. We can 
 easily follow the steps which it takes in this direction. 
 When the apostles see Jesus for the first time, they be- 
 lieve they are seeing a spirit (Luke xxiv, 37). But Jesus 
 speaks to them; he replies in advance to their objections 
 and finally eats the fish and the honey before them. This 
 continuation of the Master's life with them lasts just forty 
 days; the number is determined and, at the final appear- 
 ance, the material body of Jesus leaves the earth and 
 ascends to heaven, to the abode of God, who is above, in 
 the blue sky, beyond the clouds. From this day forward 
 Jesus is never seen again. He is no longer present cor- 
 poreally on the earth. Hitherto he has been so, but hence- 
 
276 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 forth he is seated in heaven, at the right hand of God, 
 and he is not to return till the Last Judgment." ^ 
 
 As we reread attentively and with an unbiased mind all 
 the evangelical accounts of the Resurrection and the appear- 
 ances which followed it, this is certainly the impression that 
 dominates us. With the best will to find a harmony among 
 them, we cannot in all sincerity escape from the contradic- 
 tions in detail. We have a strong feeling that these appear- 
 ances, accepted at first with the enthusiasm of surprise 
 and emotion, very quickly and quite naturally, in fact, be- 
 came the object of criticism. And to reply to the objections 
 of those about them the faithful emphasised the features 
 which made of the body of Jesus a material body. They 
 were told what they themselves had said to the women who 
 came to give them the news: "You have been dreaming; 
 it is a vision." They replied by supporting their inner 
 certitude with arguments of fact. Hence the Jerusalemite 
 tradition, born in an environment that was in more frequent 
 contact with the world and the very tenor of which proves 
 it to be of later origin. It seems likely that in the beginning 
 the accounts of the appearances did not dwell particularly 
 on the materiality of the body of Jesus, that they dwelt 
 rather on the reality of his presence. The Galilean tradi- 
 tion has an air of candour that inspires more confidence. 
 
 It remains exceedingly, almost insurmountably, difficult 
 to harmonise the accounts that have come down to us in 
 such a way as to discover exactly what took place. But 
 in addition to the reasons which we have for preferring 
 the accounts, or the portions of accounts, that do not insist 
 on the materiality of the body of Jesus or the resurrection 
 of the flesh, we have a still more peremptory reason. I am 
 referring to the testimony of Saint Paul, whose epistles 
 are, as we must not forget, of an earlier date than the 
 
 9 Staffer, op. cit., Ill, pp. 245-247. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 277 
 
 gospels and who also presents himself as a witness of the 
 Resurrection of Jesus. In the first epistle to the Corinthians 
 does he not say in these unmistakable words: ''He was 
 seen of me also"? ^^ And this affirmation is all the more 
 important since it is the only one that comes from an eye- 
 witness. In the gospels we have the echo of what the 
 apostles said; Saint Paul relates what he saw himself; and 
 he relates it in the year 57, that is to say, before any 
 of the gospels had been committed to writing. 
 
 Now what does Saint Paul say? In the first place, he 
 stoutly affirms the Resurrection, the fact of the Resurrec- 
 tion itself. "If Christ be not risen," he goes so far as 
 to proclaim, "then is our preaching vain, and your faith 
 is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of 
 God." " "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and be- 
 come the first fruits of them that slept." ^^ He is not 
 content with affirming this, he also mentions the appear- 
 ances, citing six of them: (i) to Peter; (2) to the Twelve; 
 (3) to more than five hundred brethren; (4) to James; 
 (5) to all the apostles, and (6) "last of all," he says, "he 
 was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For 
 I am the least of the apostles." ^'^ 
 
 The fact of the Resurrection is thus well attested by 
 Paul. But what does he mean by it? Does he refer to 
 appearances of the body which Jesus had before his death? 
 Not at all. In the same chapter Paul protests forcibly 
 and in a perfectly explicit manner against those who assert 
 that the dead rise again with the body which they possessed 
 on earth: "Thou fool," he says, "that which thou sowest 
 is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, 
 thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, 
 
 10 I Cor. XV, 8. 
 ii/fctif., 14-15. 
 i2 7fctd., 20. 
 ^^^Ibid., 5-9. 
 
278 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God 
 giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed 
 his own body." ^^ "Now this I say, brethren," he adds a 
 little further on, "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incor- 
 ruption." ^* 
 
 The apparition with which Paul was favoured, and which 
 was no doubt that on the road to Damascus, must therefore 
 be understood in this sense. Paul did not see the material 
 body of the Saviour, but he was convinced of his personal 
 presence. For the rest, this is in perfect accord with the 
 accounts of the conversion of Paul in the book of the Acts, 
 Chaps. IX, XXII, and XXVI, and with the passage in the 
 epistle to the Galatians which is often mistranslated: "It 
 pleased God to reveal his son in me" {rov 6i6v avrov iv 
 epioi)}^ Paul, in Chapter XV of the first epistle to the 
 Corinthians, establishes a striking parallel between the 
 Resurrection of Jesus and that of the other dead who will 
 be raised again to a new life. There is no difference in na- 
 ture between the one and the others; it is the same thing. 
 
 But how does he represent this to himself? It appears, 
 as we read the passage in question, that he pictures the 
 risen Jesus, and for that matter those who will rise after 
 him as well, as in possession of a "spiritual body." This 
 expression is recorded in I Cor. xv, 41 and 45. It is true 
 that, in the last analysis, this expression does not teach 
 us very much, containing, as it does, a contradiction in 
 terms. May we not, however, from the very fact that 
 Paul falls into a contradiction in terms as soon as he tries 
 to express his experience, deduce some indication of the 
 nature of this experience? It seems to me that we may. 
 
 13 1 Cor. XV, 37-38. 
 -^^Ibid., so. 
 15 Gal. i, 15. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 279 
 
 The apostle wished to account for the quasi-corporeal real- 
 ity of this presence of Christ, and yet he knew (and how 
 strongly he affirms it!) that no question of jiesh and blood 
 was involved. The expression "spiritual body" is an at- 
 tempt to approximate to this experience, in which the 
 material language of sensations becomes unfit for the ren- 
 dering at once of the reality of the fact and its spirituality. 
 If there is a contradiction in the terms, it is because all 
 the expressions which we have at our disposal for the 
 rendering of reality are impregnated with our own con- 
 fusion of reality and materiality." 
 
 We must therefore conclude that the Resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ is for Saint Paul a fact, but a fact of the 
 spiritual order, that it is for him an incontestable reality, 
 though in no sense material. In short, the experience of 
 Saint Paul is much more closely related to the Galilean 
 tradition than to the Jerusalemite tradition. And consider- 
 ing that his testimony is the earliest in date, this is of great 
 importance for the interpretation of what took place. 
 
 Such are the various reports which we possess concern- 
 is The passage in the epistle to the Colossians (ii, 9), "For in him 
 dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (o-w/iaTiKws)" does 
 not seem to me to alter the case, for Paul is unquestionably speaking 
 here of Christ glorified, a Christ to whom one must attach oneself, in 
 whom one must root oneself, by whom one must be edified (see ii, 
 6-7), and thus of an entirely spiritual Christ. The adverb "bodily" 
 cannot therefore be taken in a carnal sense. Again, in the passage 
 Philip, iii. 21, in which the apostle speaks of the "glorious body" of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, it is to be observed that a glorious body in the 
 sense in which Saint Paul meant it has nothing to do with a body of 
 flesh ; the passage I Cor. xv, 39-50 shows this admirably. Even if we 
 refer to the first epistle to the Thessalonians (I Thess. iv, 13-18) 
 which dates from a period when Paul was still expecting the return 
 of Christ upon earth, we find no expressions that point to a resurrec- 
 tion of the flesh^^ The dead will rise first, says Saint Paul (iv, 16). but 
 he does not say in what form ; then "we which are alive and remain 
 shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
 in the air. . . ." But here again there is no precise statement, at any 
 rate no affirmation, regarding a participation of the flesh in this ascen- 
 sion in the air. Saint Paul still remained, perhaps instinctively, vague 
 in regard to this matter. Later, when it became definite, his thought 
 was strictly spiritualistic. 
 
28o ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 ing the Resurrection of Jesus, We have tried to present, 
 as rapidly and summarily as possible, their substance and 
 value. What emerges from the event itself? 
 
 § 2 . THE EVENT 
 
 "The statements of Saint Paul," says Stapfer," "help 
 us to choose between the two evangelical traditions of 
 which we have spoken above; for certain it is that between 
 these two traditions we must choose." 
 
 We shall not go quite as far as that, or rather we shall 
 go further, but in a somewhat different direction from that 
 of Stapfer. It does not seem to us that in the present 
 state of the question the traditions to which we have alluded 
 have been sufficiently delimited for a choice to be useful 
 or even desirable. It is true that we can discern a very 
 clear tendency to materialise the appearances and make of 
 the Resurrection an event that is physical first and fore- 
 most. Certain statements of the apostles, placed side by 
 side with those of Saint Paul, render this very evident. 
 But does it follow that we are obliged, or even able, to 
 make a choice? We do not think so. The accounts as 
 we have them are precious because in a certain sense they 
 indicate the evolution of the psychology of the Christian 
 group; in this respect their very confusion constitutes a 
 precious element of knowledge, and the respective ages of 
 the documents also mark clearly the way in which the 
 development took place. We have, in fact, in the accounts 
 of the Resurrection, not only the affirmation of an event, 
 but also and especially the testimony as to the manner 
 in which this event was understood, its progressive and 
 relatively very rapid perversion through the subconscious 
 factors that are ceaselessly at work in the human soul. 
 
 1^ Staffer, op. cit., Ill, p. 264. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 281 
 
 We must therefore guard against making a choice and 
 thus excluding elements that are too useful to be elimi- 
 nated. It is much better to accept the accounts en bloc, 
 distinguish the currents that reveal themselves in them, and 
 seek to understand this movement and its underlying 
 causes. 
 
 At the outset, then, and at the base of these accounts, 
 we cannot fail to recognise that there exists a fact of the 
 highest grandeur in the spiritual sphere. He whom they 
 believed dead is alive: that is the experience of the dis- 
 ciples. "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
 in me," " exclaims Saint Paul. And all unite in recognising 
 that in this resides the very essence and substance of the 
 Christian faith. It is useless to return to what has been 
 said, and well said, many times, in this connection. The 
 life of the Christian community, the change in the attitude 
 of the disciples, the rapid development of the Church, its 
 extension and its missionary work would remain inexplicable 
 save for some spiritual event of the first importance that 
 had revolutionised the whole psychology of the first be- 
 lievers and transformed them completely. This event, ac- 
 cording to their own testimony, was the Resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ, the certitude of his life, to which death has 
 not put an end, the contact that has been effected between 
 himself and them in such a way as to leave no room for 
 doubt on their part. 
 
 This supremely joyous and inspiring experience of the 
 triumph of life over death, of the reality of the Resurrec- 
 tion, an experience purely spiritual in its basis, was soon 
 buried beneath the mass of accretions which the representa- 
 tions of the senses immediately add to moral realities and 
 which fasten upon them almost by force. No doubt it 
 was impossible that it should have been otherwise. This 
 
 18 Gal. ii, 20, 
 
282 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 sensible support of a spiritual reality was probably indis- 
 pensable from the beginning. The apparitions, whatever 
 they may have been, and even if one regards them as simple 
 hallucinations, could not have failed to occur as physical 
 concomitants of the powerful experience that invaded the 
 whole personality of the disciples at that time. We shall 
 not try to settle the question, realising as we do that our 
 knowledge of the nature of matter, as well as of the appa- 
 rition of phantoms, spirits, the disembodied is still insuffi- 
 cient to allow of clear and definite conclusions. We shall 
 merely remark that the projection into sensible paths of a 
 spiritual emotion of such a magnitude would amply suffice 
 to create the corresponding visual, auditory, or motor hal- 
 lucinations. The "spiritual body" of Saint Paul and the 
 fugitive and fleeting apparitions of the Galilean tradition 
 would find a sufficient explanation in this. 
 
 Very quickly, however, the need for a physical equivalent 
 of the spiritual impression, which already appears here, 
 became still more accentuated. People rapidly came to 
 connect the spiritual fact of the Resurrection not merely 
 with the vision of a body but with the very substance of 
 this body. To believe they claimed not only that they 
 had seen Jesus and heard him but that they had made 
 certain that the body which he had was actually his old 
 body, the corpse that had been laid in the sepulchre. They 
 would have it that the jlesh had participated in the Resur- 
 rection. This is the second stratum in the accounts of 
 the Resurrection, in which Saint Paul participates in no 
 way whatever, but of which we already find traces in Saint 
 John and Saint Luke. 
 
 How explain this development in the accounts, which 
 already constitutes a perversion? While the problem is 
 almost insoluble from the critical point of view, it is not 
 so psychologically. One might suggest as the cause of this 
 
THE RESURRECTION 283 
 
 materialistic evolution in the conception of the Resurrec- 
 tion the Jewish ideas according to which a soul could not 
 be understood without a body. It is undeniable that the 
 Jews had difficulty in representing the existence of a soul 
 independently of the body which was its support and habi- 
 tation. But the tendency which we observe here is not 
 exclusively Jewish; it is human; it is one of the most 
 constant tendencies of the psychology of the subconscious. 
 To transform a spiritual fact into a material fact is pre- 
 cisely the course of procedure that has been observed in 
 the progress of a great number of neuroses. This tendency 
 counterbalances the effort of sublimation that is ceaselessly 
 suggested to the consciousness, and offers, in place of this 
 effort, a physiological substitute; or rather it diverts, by 
 means of physical movements that cost no effort whatever, 
 the flight towards life that has been checked. 
 
 But let us be more definite. The following process has 
 been found to be at the base of many neuroses. The pa- 
 tient, because of the very circumstances of his life, has 
 been obliged to repress certain tendencies, certain impulses 
 of his deepest nature which have not comported with his 
 environment, with morality or accepted opinions. Hence- 
 forth all these things have been concealed from the light 
 of day; but they have remained alive in the depths of 
 the subconscious sanctuary and, not being able to manifest 
 themselves in words or actions, have adopted a roundabout 
 path which is precisely that of the body, the purely physical 
 life. They manifest themselves outwardly under the form 
 of a nervous crisis, a gesture incessantly repeated, a tic, 
 an unconscious movement that recurs at fixed intervals. 
 It goes without saying that the sufferer is completely igno- 
 rant of the relation that exists between his crisis, his habit, 
 his tic, and his spiritual life; and yet this relation is real. 
 In order to avoid realising the representations that distress 
 
284 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 him or obsess him, the neurotic has projected ^^ them un- 
 consciously into his body, into the material mechanism 
 of his organism; they are thus condensed into a gesture, or, 
 as sometimes happens, into a physical crisis that returns 
 periodically; and this purely physical issue that has been 
 given to the spiritual forces relieves him in a way by dis- 
 pensing him from returning to his preoccupations and apply- 
 ing his mind to them. This sort of transposition of a moral 
 problem into a bodily illness which forms the basis of cer- 
 tain neuroses is a manifestation of the congenital indolence 
 of man when he is faced with the task of solving personally 
 serious problems of the spiritual order. He follows here 
 the line of least resistance; and rather than suffer by allow- 
 ing himself to become clearly aware of what he is and 
 what he lacks, or by undertaking an act of courage or 
 revolt against his environment, he allows the combats of 
 the spirit to be transposed in terms of the flesh and thus 
 eludes them. 
 
 I cannot do otherwise than connect these facts on the 
 origin of neuroses with the psychic process which we have 
 just seen at work in the elaboration of the accounts of the 
 Resurrection. Something analogous, or at least approach- 
 ing the analogous, has taken place here. The same psycho- 
 logical laws appear to be at work. Men, sinful and spiritu- 
 ally lazy, found themselves faced with a death and a 
 Resurrection whose spiritual import was such that they 
 could not dispense themselves from a personal and laborious 
 participation in it. This drama reverberated to the very 
 depths of their hearts. It constituted an unanswerable 
 appeal to their consciences. To plunge to the bottom of 
 
 19 On the phenomenon of projection, see: Ferenczi, Introjektion und 
 Uebertragung, ein-e psychol. Studie. Jahrbuch f. psychoanal. Forsch- 
 ungen, I, 1910. — Morel, F., Essai sur I'introvcrsion mystique. Geneva, 
 IQ18. — Pfister, O., Die psychanalytische Methode (under the word 
 Projektion in the index). — Cf. also Freud, Zur Psychopathologie des 
 Alltagslebens. BerHn, Karger, 1912, 4th ed., pp. 198. 
 
THE RESURRECTION 285 
 
 this spiritual fact: the glorious and triumphant life of Jesus, 
 following his ignominious death, — was to be unable to re- 
 sist his example and the contagion of his example, it was 
 to commit oneself whole-heartedly to the paths of sacrifice 
 and to accept in earnest the death of the self that wins life. 
 But what renunciations lie along that path, what a sus- 
 tained effort of sublimation for all the instincts! It re- 
 quired the flinging of one's whole personality into the strug- 
 gle, as if one's life were at stake; it required the risking 
 of one's self in order to live. 
 
 I do not say that this inward struggle was conscious 
 among the first Christians; on the contrary, it was not so,^** 
 and it was by yielding instinctively to the law of least 
 resistance that they soon began to project the drama of 
 the death and Resurrection of Christ into the physical realm, 
 to restrict and relegate it to the corporeal, to turn it into 
 a material and organic process which one could henceforth 
 limit oneself to contemplating from the outside without 
 living it. 
 
 This tendency, for the rest, is to be found throughout 
 the whole course of the ecclesiastical evolution. The Church 
 has unceasingly transposed the spiritual into the physical, 
 well knowing that this transposition is mor > pleasing to the 
 masses and attracts them more than the bare and sober 
 spiritual reality. It was thus that people arrived at the 
 worship of relics and the veneration of holy bodies, which 
 dispense one from inquiring into the lives of the saints and 
 making an effort to imitate them in order to realise in 
 oneself the process by which these lives became remarkable 
 and strong. 
 
 We thus discover in the tendency that little by little lays 
 stress upon the revivification of the body and the flesh 
 
 20 Neuropaths are no more conscious of what is taking place in them 
 or of the psychic and moral origins of their illness. 
 
286 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 while gradually allowing the spiritual Resurrection to sink 
 into the shadow, the same psychic forces at work, or rather 
 the same inhibitions and the same passivity, as those which 
 become morbid in the neuroses and create those abnormal 
 states from which so many people are suffering to-day. The 
 human spirit recoils before the moral effort and the spiritual 
 labour that are demanded by the actually lived death and 
 Resurrection. Ardently solicited by the life, death, and 
 Resurrection of Christ to enter upon the path of an actual 
 spiritual realisation of these great facts, man is impeded 
 and held back by all the resistances of his egoism and indo- 
 lence, and by all the obstacles which the world and the 
 things of the world accumulate along his way. Thus, by 
 an unconscious subterfuge, he shifts the force of his desire 
 into a roundabout path, that of materialisation; he con- 
 verts into an act of the body that which ought to have 
 flowered in an act of the spirit. He proclaims the Resurrec- 
 tion of a body, the body of Jesus Christ, which is, after all, 
 as foreign to him as the body of the neurotic is foreign to 
 the sufferer during his crises — instead of entering into a 
 direct spiritual communion with the spirit of the dead and 
 risen Christ and living spiritually that which this com- 
 munion implies. He diverts into an outward gesture that 
 is independent of his will, the energies that should have 
 made him live; and, repressing the obligation to die and 
 rise again after the example of his Saviour and with him, 
 the Christian gives himself the spectacle of the Resurrection 
 of Christ as a physical fact that is, in consequence, foreign 
 to his own person and performed outside it. 
 
 In clinging to the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, in short, 
 we simply reject and remove from ourselves an act in which 
 our spirit ought to take part, so to speak, biologically. We 
 cut off the communion with the Christ who died and rose 
 again in newness of life, in the same way that the neurotic 
 
THE RESURRECTION 287 
 
 cuts off the living and conscious communion with his body 
 and allows it to act in the manner of a machine which has 
 escaped from his conscious control. In this way we tend 
 to make of the Resurrection of Jesus a drama that takes 
 place outside the life of the Spirit and beside it, a tragedy 
 exclusively symbolical in character in which it is no longer 
 necessary to participate oneself and which develops its 
 effects in the world without our co-operation. The Resur- 
 rection thus becomes a pure spectacle for contemplation 
 which veils from us the spiritual reality and prevents its 
 fulfilment — exactly as the crises or the frequently ridiculous 
 tics of the neurotics represent physically an extremely im- 
 portant moral drama which they also dissemble by diverting 
 it along lower paths where it is transformed into a mean- 
 ingless gesture. 
 
 The drama of a life that was played imaginatively out- 
 side the personality, the creation of a physical symbol that 
 exempted one from living the reality — this was what the 
 Mystery-Religions had presented to souls that were thirst- 
 ing for concrete reality. Deeply engraved upon all the 
 myths of the dead and risen gods of antiquity we find this 
 fallacious fulfilment of human desire. And this same ten- 
 dency to replace life by the game of life, the action by 
 the spectacle, has continued to operate in the human mind 
 since the career of Jesus just as it did before. It has been 
 perceptible in the Christian Church from the very begin- 
 ning; hence it is not surprising that such a theologian as 
 Strauss, examining the accounts of the Resurrection in the 
 gospels and finding in them thus early the first lineaments 
 of this psychic tendency, should have concluded that it 
 was a myth and reduced the whole story of the Resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus to a mythical construction. 
 
 What can we reply to this contention and the arguments 
 upon which it is founded? We can reply with a great fact 
 
288 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 that is historic. It is this: that the life, the death, and 
 the Resurrection of Jesus Christ put an end to the creation 
 of the divine myths of death and resurrection. This fact, 
 which may easily be demonstrated and is amply supported 
 by evidence, constitutes a peremptory and decisive argu- 
 ment. Before Jesus Christ the human soul was perpetu- 
 ally recreating, under constantly new and always insufficient 
 forms, myths that endeavoured to express and symbolise, 
 even while they perverted it, its incessantly reborn aspira- 
 tion. It had to have saviour-gods who died and returned 
 to life: Attis, Dionysus, Cybele, Isis. With Jesus Christ 
 this creation of the imagination definitely ceased. The Res- 
 urrection of Christ put an end, among the peoples who had 
 known him, to all the myths of resurrection. 
 
 Does not this mean that the unsatisfied need of the human 
 soul had found here its full and entire satisfaction, and 
 that ever since then spirits in quest of a new birth who have 
 sought it sincerely have found it in spiritual contact with 
 Jesus Christ, dead and risen? The need of an immortal 
 life and the desire for a new birth which have tormented 
 the subconsciousness of the human soul and deluded it by 
 symbolising death and resurrection in myths in which in- 
 vented gods have played before men the inner tragedy of 
 the spirit — this need and this desire have been fulfilled 
 biologically. A man has lived through, has realised in the 
 bald verity of facts, in the web of action, decision, feeling, 
 this psychic process of death to self and resurrection which 
 hitherto people have only succeeded in describing in poetic 
 imagery and ritualistic symbols. Henceforth, there is no 
 longer a reason for inventing imaginary substitutes, for 
 eluding the imperious psychic demand for the death of the 
 ego and its effective rebirth by projecting its principal 
 features into an invented story in such a way that one may 
 escape them and rid oneself of them. The realisation has 
 
THE RESURRECTION 289 
 
 embodied itself in facts; people can see it is alive, they can 
 feel it is alive, that soul of Christ which has passed through 
 the death that he accepted. Jesus put an end to the myths 
 of the saviour-gods because he lived through the moral 
 and psychic reality which the myths of death and resur- 
 rection expressed in the language of symbolism. The very 
 fact of the complete decadence of the contemporaneous 
 religions proves that humanity no longer needed them, that 
 it possessed henceforth in Christ the spiritual reality of 
 which, in the preceding cults, it had had but the shadow. 
 
 In opposition to Strauss, we shall insist then, in the name 
 of the very facts of history, that something was changed 
 by the death and the Resurrection of Christ. The incessant 
 mythical elaboration, that symptom of the anxiety of per- 
 petually unsatisfied souls, is arrested. And one myth added 
 to the others has never produced this result. Thus there 
 must have been something here that was different from 
 a myth and more than a myth: a response to the deepest 
 inner needs of the soul, a fulfilment of its restless search, 
 the realisation of the process of life for which it has sighed. 
 
 The Resurrection of Christ, the reality of his glorious 
 and triumphant life, is and remains, in this sense, the certi- 
 tude that has overthrown all the idolatries by implanting 
 in the very heart of humanity the faith in the possibility 
 of a life that is victorious even over death. It is because 
 the disciples knew that Jesus Christ was alive after they 
 had seen him die that they were able later to desire, in 
 the very substance of their spiritual life, the successive 
 deaths to oneself which create life; it is thanks to this 
 that Christians, instead of merely introducing a new cult 
 into the world, have infused a new life into the veins of 
 humanity. 
 
 But Strauss was not entirely wrong. Along with the 
 Resurrection and the affirmation of the Resurrection, the 
 
290 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 accounts of the gospels also contain an incipient myth, 
 the beginnings of a mythological construction that is born 
 again here, so true it is that the human spirit never entirely 
 loses its bad habits and that the disastrous tendencies of 
 the soul always return. The doctrine of the Resurrection 
 of the body and the flesh is nothing else than the myth 
 which tends to reappear in opposition to the spiritual reality, 
 and that in the very bosom of the religion which gave the 
 death-blow to the pagan myths; it is the play-drama as 
 opposed to the drama which must be lived spiritually and 
 in which one must take part personally, the spectacle pre- 
 ferred to the combat in which one risks one's person. 
 Through Jesus Christ the death and the new birth became 
 the flesh and blood of humanity, but the resistance has 
 grown equally with the revelation. Rather than pass oneself 
 through this death and this birth one will relegate them to 
 the individual body of him who first realised them; one 
 will set them aside and outside humanity and Christ will 
 bear off the victory without humanity and for it, in its 
 place and not in it. 
 
 Jesus gave himself entirely to men; he is dead but he 
 lives; through him and in him one can, then, by dying, live 
 also. But to evade this communion of the spirit, which 
 is a struggle, a torture, a death followed by the crowning 
 of life, to evade risking itself in the adventure, human 
 nature invents a subterfuge and substitutes a physical magic 
 for the communion of the spirit. It returns, by a detour, 
 to the old myth. In this Strauss was right. The insistence 
 on the resurrection of the body in the gospel accounts is 
 a return, in the Christian field, to the tendency of the 
 myth, an atavistic revival of a state of the spirit which 
 Christianity ought to have abolished, but which it has not 
 yet entirely eliminated. 
 
 It is also a way of ridding oneself of the spiritual Christ 
 
THE RESURRECTION 291 
 
 — who sweeps one along the paths of sacrifice towards the 
 life of the spirit with its struggles and its renunciations — 
 by substituting for this living Christ a deformed and 
 materialised image, a mythical figure in which the corpse 
 on the cross, the wounds, and that same flesh, brought back 
 to life and ascending into heaven, play the great role."^ 
 To avoid participating in a death and a resurrection which 
 are meaningless unless we realise them ourselves, in our- 
 selves, through Christ — to escape this spiritual test which 
 passes through sacrifice before attaining to glory, our in- 
 dolent dream invents a special body, a miraculous flesh 
 which alone could escape corruption and, also alone, return 
 to life — a spectacle, in short, in which it is sufficient to 
 believe and in which we are exempted from taking part. 
 Jesus is thus uprooted from humanity like a foreign body 
 the presence of which causes suffering to our too delicate 
 spirit. When we content ourselves with believing " in the 
 resurrection of his flesh, we separate ourselves from him 
 as from an exceptional being; we dispense ourselves from 
 suffering what he suffered, from willing what he willed, 
 from being born into his life by dying his death. We 
 create for ourselves a morbid Christianity in which the 
 acts and gestures of a holy body replace for us the processes 
 of the spirit. And we do not perceive that, like the neu- 
 rotics, we have turned aside along the paths of the physical 
 organism and reduced to a mere symbolic imitation the very 
 adventure of life that has required the whole of us for its 
 service. 
 
 No! The Resurrection of Jesus does not signify the re- 
 turn of a carnal body to life that it may later ascend to 
 heaven just as it is; it does not signify an invasion of 
 
 21 See, in this connection, the repulsive details of a certain very 
 fervent type of piety in Pfister, Die Frommigkeit des Grafen Ludwig 
 von Zinzendorf. Leipzig, Deuticke, IQIO, pp. 122. 
 
 22 With a purely intellectual belief. 
 
292 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 heaven by the flesh. What we have here is rather the first 
 spiritual life that ever triumphed over the obstacles and 
 the barriers of the flesh and that comes to add its energies 
 to ours so as to open to us the way to this triumph and 
 render it possible. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is 
 the new birth realised and made glorious in the heart of 
 men so that they, in their turn,0nay have the strength and 
 courage to hazard the death of themselves, knowing that 
 life lies beyond.3 
 
 Let us draw a practical conclusion. For a whole category 
 of Christians, of whom we find to-day representatives 
 equally in Catholic orthodoxy and Protestant orthodoxy, 
 the Resurrection of Jesus Christ has become a belief which, 
 when it comes to the point, exempts one from undergoing 
 oneself the tragedy of a personal death and resurrection. To 
 such minds as these, the Resurrection is nothing but a 
 material fact which, in its time, demonstrated the inter- 
 vention of the power of God in the order of material facts. 
 God brought a corpse back to life two thousand years ago. 
 As we were not witnesses of this, it is enough for us, in 
 order to be Christians, to believe that it happened, to cleave 
 to this fact with a purely intellectual belief. We still know, 
 in our own day, great numbers of people who consider that 
 to be a Christian consists in just this, and that it is enough 
 to admit that certain material events really took place in 
 order to receive the benefit of the promises of life. A very 
 paltry, a singularly mean idea to form of God! 
 
 As for ourselves, we believe that it is impossible even 
 to conceive what the Resurrection of Christ signifies with- 
 out having, to a certain degree, experienced what it is to 
 die with him. He reveals himself as living only to those 
 who have, in some way, gone down with him to death, to 
 those who have at least vibrated to the emotions and the 
 experiences through which he passed. One will never sue- 
 
THE RESURRECTION 293 
 
 ceed in feeling what the true Resurrection is save along this 
 road. To turn the Resurrection into a fact of the material 
 order is thus to misunderstand its nature; it is to choose 
 the symbol in preference to the reality. On the other 
 hand, by dying to oneself, by following the Christ who 
 bears his cross even to Golgotha, one becomes capable, little 
 by little, of feeling him and knowing him as alive. Strive 
 as one may to attain to this through an effort of belief, 
 one only succeeds in affirming a material fact which of 
 itself changes nothing and contributes nothing to life. It 
 is not by believing in the Resurrection of the flesh that 
 we can become new beings; it is only by experiencing the 
 life of him with whom and in whose footsteps one desires 
 to die daily. 
 
 The experience of the Resurrection of Christ is perhaps 
 the supremely triumphant and the most powerful of the 
 Christian experiences, but it is not the affirmation of a 
 material fact; it is the irrevocable testimony of a spiritual 
 contact which takes place only along the path of death 
 to self. To affirm that it is anything else is to prevent 
 oneself from feeling it, and those who believe that it is so 
 are often the furthest from experiencing its vital value. 
 
 I do not mean by this to deny that there exist orthodox 
 Christians who are also living Christians. On the contrary; 
 but if they are such it is not in virtue of their belief in the 
 material fact of the Resurrection but rather because, aside 
 from this belief, they have lived in direct communion with 
 Christ and have passed with him through that death which 
 leads to life. Unfortunately, there are others who, inherit- 
 ing from their co-religionists only the belief without the ex- 
 perience, firmly uphold the material fact of the Resurrec- 
 tion without ever having known what it was to die and 
 return to life, because they have been content to believe 
 without living, without passing through the vital experiences 
 
294 ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 that make a Christian of a man. It is these who are to 
 be pitied since they are the victims of that sort of neurosis 
 of the religious sentiment which transmutes into objects 
 of belief acts of life that might be called, in a certain sense, 
 duties of the Spirit, in the accomplishment of which one 
 meets face to face Him who is eternally alive and becomes 
 oneself ahve. 
 
 What, then, is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? We 
 may define it as an experience of life, and by this we mean 
 an experience through which one passes as a living being, 
 which attests itself in one not through an effort of thought 
 or will or through an exaltation of the emotions, but through 
 the opening of the whole being to a new life along the very 
 path of the gift of self and the death to self. Thus it is 
 only by returning to life oneself, by acceding to the new 
 life of the Spirit, that one truly learns, that one knows 
 that Christ is living. And this indeed was the Pentecost 
 which made of the apostles living beings and conquerors. 
 
 It is therefore not outside life, or beside it, that we seek 
 our certitudes of faith. But, having faith in life, we do 
 not avoid the struggles and the deaths to which it leads us, 
 and we find, in the bloody combat which confronts us. Him 
 who first braved this combat, more alive than ever, and 
 present in the innermost consciousness of the personality 
 which we have surrendered and found again. 
 
 END OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
APPENDIX 
 THE POETRY OF JESUS 
 
 Let us define first of all what we mean by the poetry 
 of Jesus. We are not speaking of the poetry that sur- 
 rounds like a golden nimbus the stories of the gospels, 
 or that which drifts about the manger and the wise men 
 or whispers like a soft breeze round the peaceful house 
 at Bethany or under the palms and in the gardens of 
 Jericho. It is not the poetry that surrounded Jesus Christ 
 of which I should like to speak here, but that which he had 
 in his heart, the intuition that made him observe the charm 
 of these things and, while conferring on them a new mean- 
 ing, engraved them forever in the memory of his disciples. 
 
 For Jesus, whatever else may be thought of him, was a 
 poet, a marvellous poet. Let it be understood that in 
 making this assertion I am not attempting to write poetry 
 myself; I am simply attempting to state a fact, a fact which, 
 in my eyes, is of great importance. 
 
 What, in reality, is it to be a poet? It does not consist, 
 as some people think, in composing impeccable verses on 
 this or that subject; there are great poets who have never 
 written a phrase in verse. Nor is it to be able to produce 
 magnificent tales in a cadenced and rhythmic prose. There 
 are undoubtedly great poets, perhaps the greatest of all, 
 who have never written or published a line. 
 
 To be a poet is to feel in a certain manner the realities 
 that surround one; it is to possess in oneself that divine 
 sense which makes one perceive intense harmonies, by turns 
 joyous and solemn, stamped with a religious sublimity or 
 
 295 
 
296 APPENDIX 
 
 with a mysterious grandeur, in everything that arouses or 
 attracts one's attention. A poet is a man who feels the 
 Universe taking life within himself, who sees in the spec- 
 tacle of everyday existence the reflection of higher verities 
 which the human eye hardly dares to contemplate. 
 
 Jesus was a poet in this sense, more of a poet and a better 
 poet than the greatest of men. He possessed as no one else 
 has possessed the intuition of those underlying harmonies 
 that reconcile all things in the majestic unity of God. He 
 felt as no one else has felt the unspeakable joy of those 
 harmonies and that rhythm, as well as the poignant tragedy 
 that sometimes springs out of them. Some of this radiant 
 and sublime poetry found expression in the name of Father 
 which he taught us to pronounce and to give to God. 
 By following him along the shining paths he trod one learns 
 to rid oneself of the artificial and factitious poetry of words 
 and to know the true poetry, that which animates life with 
 a breath of sincerity and infuses into it the divine, con- 
 soling forces. 
 
 The ages of life do not all have the same poetry. The 
 child plunges into nature; he lives in it, communes with 
 it in a way of his own and with a calm unconsciousness 
 which makes of this communion so serene and so beautiful 
 a reality that one never finds anything like it again. The 
 child floats in a lyric world. 
 
 Later, as he reaches the age of responsibilities, man 
 draws closer to his brothers and lives the epic of the heroes 
 of humanity. The poems which he then enjoys are those 
 that tell of man and his deeds of valour. 
 
 Then, when the hour for personal action approaches, 
 the hour when he must show what he is worth and par- 
 ticipate in the human task, it seems as if the poetry of other 
 days had been effaced to make room for realities that are 
 all too real. But as he that has eyes can easily see, it 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 297 
 
 has only left the domain of the imagination to return in 
 deeds and actions. Man then lives his destiny, and he 
 lives it tragically. Tragedy watches, fully armed, at his 
 side and speaks to him in its dramatic, richly coloured 
 voice. 
 
 The lyricism of nature, the epic of life, the drama of 
 the last moments and the cross: one finds in Jesus these 
 three ages of poetry. He lived them with splendid intensity 
 and pov/er. It is because we are too accustomed to the 
 stories of the gospels that we do not catch the splendour 
 of this poetry in them. But it is enough for our attention 
 to be drawn to this characteristic of the life of Jesus for 
 the words to leap before our eyes as we turn to them again, 
 for the whole story, read and reread so many times, to sing 
 to us like a new poem. 
 
 Listen, all you who are heavy laden, you who are tired 
 of life! You walk with bowed heads bent over your daily 
 task. You are disgusted with your brother men and their 
 doings. You no longer have the eyes you had as children. 
 
 Well, come, let us go forth for a moment and follow 
 Jesus. Behold him there! It is himself. He is walking 
 in that calm and radiant countryside of Palestine. He 
 advances to the shore of the lake. The fishermen are 
 mending their nets on the beach. He looks at them, and 
 suddenly a shaft of light unites for him the slow and meas- 
 ured gestures of these swarthy men toiling in the hot sun 
 with the great work that fills his heart. "Come ye after 
 me," he says to them, "and I will make you to become 
 fishers of men'' 
 
 Yonder on the rim of the horizon, an Oriental town, a 
 white town, outlines on the edge of the sky the bluish 
 shadow of its houses. One sees it, whatever one may be 
 doing. Every time Jesus lifts his head it is there before 
 him. It becomes an obsession to him. Since its white 
 
298 APPENDIX 
 
 houses fix his attention in this way, no doubt this town 
 has a message for him from God. He wonders, he looks, 
 he listens ... at last he has found it; and when he returns 
 to the village he bears in his heart, like a treasure, the 
 secret of a new revelation for his disciples. The next day 
 he will say to them: "A city that is set on an hill cannot 
 be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under 
 a bushel. Ye are the light of the world." ^ 
 
 Mornings have passed and evenings also. To-day he is 
 going to leave men and the sounds of toil behind him. He 
 feels the need of solitude and meditation. His steps lead 
 him to the fields; he moves on, brushing with his sandals 
 the tall grasses starred with numberless red and violet 
 anemones. Here and there the meadow lilies, deliciously 
 white and velvety, open like a secret perfume. Under the 
 last rays of the late sun the wide brow of the Master 
 bends. Of a sudden he sees these flowers, all these flowers 
 that seem to have sprung up about him by magic. A 
 moment ago, lost in his reflections, he was thinking of his 
 disciples, of their difficulties, the hardships of their life. 
 Now, escaping from this dialogue with himself, he contem- 
 plates what the Father has placed beneath his feet. In 
 the deep silence of the country a bird is singing; and while 
 twilight falls softly the Master returns with a slower step. 
 To-morrow he will tell these toiling men of their good for- 
 tune; he will say: "Behold the fowls of the air: for they 
 sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet 
 your heavenly Father feedeth them. Consider the lilies of 
 the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 
 and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory 
 was not arrayed like one of these. . . . Are ye not much 
 better than they?"^ 
 
 1 Matt. V, 14-15. 
 
 2 Matt, vi, 25-31. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 299 
 
 Behold him again, in the streets of Capernaum. He is 
 passing with his disciples. There is a sudden brawl, a shout. 
 A band of youngsters are dashing into a neighbouring alley. 
 Jesus has raised his eyes. Through a half -open doorway 
 he sees in the obscurity of a poor room the father standing, 
 about to cut a loaf of bread. Four or five children's heads 
 and as many pairs of eyes are turned towards the coveted 
 treasure, and hands are being raised in a beam of sunlight. 
 It is only a flash, this vision, a momentary glimpse, but 
 Jesus has seen the raised hands and the father's smile. 
 "Ask," he says, turning towards his disciples, "and it shall 
 be given you. What man is there of you, whom if his son 
 ask bread, will he give him a stone? If ye then, being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
 more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things 
 to them that ask him?" ^ 
 
 Jesus has observed so many things. He has known the 
 little paths, faintly traced, that climb the slopes of the hills 
 to the wonderful views; has known their charm and the 
 emptiness of the big dusty highways that lead to the noisy, 
 corrupt cities.* 
 
 He has felt the desolation of those clusters of reeds bent 
 by the wind in the solitudes: "What went ye out into the 
 wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?" ^ 
 
 What, in short, has he not contemplated in the richness 
 of his vision, from the sower, sweeping his arm in a mag- 
 nificent gesture over the fields,*^ to that woman, bending 
 over the kneading-trough and hiding her leaven in the three 
 measures of meal,^ from the tares that mingle their roots 
 with those of the wheat ^ to that net which strong arms 
 
 3 Matt, vii, 7-1 1. 
 
 ^ Ibid., 13-14. 
 
 5 Matt, xi, 7. 
 
 8 Matt, xiii, 4 ; Mark iv, 3 ; Luke viii, 5. 
 
 ■^ Matt, xiii, 2i2> ', Luke xiii, 21. 
 
 8 Matt, xiii, 25. 
 
300 APPENDIX 
 
 draw in over the beach to sort the golden and silvery fish.* 
 He has seen all these marvels which did not exist until 
 he had observed them and told us of them. It really seems 
 as if with him one walked in a world as fresh as the world 
 of children. This, as a matter of fact, he knows himself: 
 "I thank thee, O Father, because thou hast hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
 babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy 
 sight." ^^ It is towards the "lost sheep" that he goes, 
 towards those men and women whose souls have been closed 
 perhaps to the poetry of things and sullied for a time, 
 but who have sought and who now open their hearts to the 
 realities of other days, who have found again the eyes 
 of their childhood at the contact of his own soul with 
 theirs. 
 
 This poetry of Jesus is sober. No verbiage, nothing stere- 
 otyped, no insipid sentimentality! The beauties of nature, 
 the forms of men, the face of reality, he takes everything 
 just as it is; it is almost the nudity of antique sculpture. 
 Nothing but light clothes these bodies, but this light is 
 everything. Jesus saw the universe in the light of God. 
 With his heart full of the Father, he projected this light 
 of God over the spectacle of the world, and the world was 
 transfigured by it; he set himself to sing the praises of 
 God and he freely uttered all the truth that was in him. 
 
 Simplicity, sincerity: here lies the whole secret of this 
 lyricism, the fresh spring of which wells up in the soul of 
 Christ as if in the morning of creation. 
 
 But the youth of the heart, the glow of our first ventures 
 only last for a moment; men know this only too well, so 
 
 9 Matt, xiii, 47. 
 
 10 Matt, xi, 25 and 26. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 301 
 
 easily do they allow the poetry of their first twenty years 
 to be extinguished in them. After that fresh, confident en- 
 thusiasm, they fall victims to the dryness and avarice cf 
 the heart of the years that we are accustomed to call, some- 
 times mistakenly, more reasonable. 
 
 Now, life was severe to Jesus; no one will deny that. 
 If any one has ever come in contact with the hard realities 
 of existence, if any one has ever known the bitterness of 
 deceptions and unfulfilled dreams, it is assuredly he. But 
 the obstacles of the road did not stifle the poetry in Jesus 
 as they stifle it in most men; they only caused it to de- 
 velop; and perhaps that is what should always happen. 
 Under all the blows of existence, through sorrows and diffi- 
 culties of every sort, Jesus never lost his confidence in 
 life and in Him who directs life; and the reward of this 
 persevering faith in the face of everything was the inex- 
 haustible flow of poetry that never permitted his soul to 
 dry up in discouragement, revolt, or disillusioned scepticism. 
 Where many people believe that, at a certain moment in 
 life, it is suitable and expedient to surrender the confidence 
 and generosity of their past and fling themselves desper- 
 ately and unreservedly into the bitter struggle, Jesus never 
 cut this golden thread which unites the experiences of the 
 adult to those of the child. On the contrary, every time 
 that the circumstances of life disappointed him or men made 
 him weep or the future threatened him, he returned to the 
 experiences of the past, to the moral realities that he had 
 formerly lived through, and to the infinite poetry that re- 
 joices the heart of the child, and sought strength in them. 
 He did not abandon himself to the sterile dream which 
 drags one back or paralyses one. He charged his soul with 
 the convictions that one acquires in the springtime of life, 
 and he returned to the troubling realities of the present 
 
302 APPENDIX 
 
 with a force in himself that was stronger than them all: 
 the immutable certainty of the paternal and reassuring pres- 
 ence which is that of the home of our childhood and the 
 memory of which men allow themselves to lose. 
 
 This poetry — for this too is poetry — permeated all his 
 activity as a man working among men; and that is why, 
 when one has learned to read the gospels with the eyes 
 of the Spirit, the face of Jesus suggests no longer the gentle 
 dreamer evoked by Renan but rather the countenance of 
 an epic hero, winning, in the combats of life, marvellous 
 and still unsurpassed victories. 
 
 Let us try to surprise in his soul this evolution which, 
 by insensible transitions, led him from the poetry of nature 
 to that of man, to the beauty and the living and luminous 
 earnestness of the active human life. There is no question 
 here of theories; one might write volumes on this subject. 
 What I should like to show is a spectacle: the spectacle 
 of a life which develops while never casting off the royal 
 mantle of poetry with which God, in his infinite bounty, 
 covers every human cradle. But the only way to understand 
 this is to watch Jesus as he lives, to listen while he speaks, 
 and to allow the echo of his words to prolong its mystery 
 within our own hearts. 
 
 Behold him once more thenl It is in the midst of his 
 career, or, more exactly, just after the first sally, the first 
 emergence into the world of action in which he has gen- 
 erously bestowed upon the people and the crowds that fol- 
 low him the whole of his youth. He flings it all to them, 
 in armfuls, in thick, clustered sheaves: his affection, his 
 dreams, his confidence, his joy, his convictions, the poetry 
 that has sung in his soul as a valiant youth, the certitudes 
 that have shone from his great open eyes. And now he 
 has returned from the mountain whither so many ears eager 
 to hear, so many hearts anxious to know, have accompanied 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 303 
 
 him. He is in a synagogue, mingling with the multitude 
 which he loves and pities. There is a stir; they push be- 
 fore him a man with a withered hand. Jesus suddenly 
 understands. To-day is the sabbath. All these eyes that 
 are watching him, these arm.s impatient to drag the sick 
 man into his presence, these knowing glances that pass from 
 one to another, this dull murmur followed by a sudden 
 silence — it is all the work of a hypocrisy that is spreading 
 its nets, seeking to catch him in a snare, and this amid 
 the joy of the sabbath, on the day consecrated to God when 
 men should love one another. Something seems to rend 
 in the pure soul of Christ, and the rent grows wider and 
 wider. What an awakening! A moment ago there was a 
 perfect communion in the joy of nature: they listened to 
 him, they loved him, they greeted him with hearts full of 
 welcome. Now ice, the chill of falsehood, the torture of 
 the heart recoiling before that fearful thing, deceit, the 
 desire to tempt, incurable spite. 
 
 Others would have felt all their hope sink under the 
 shock. But Jesus looks into the past. He sees filing be- 
 fore his heart as a child the scenes of other days, all bathed 
 in the peaceful and tranquillising atmosphere of the Father: 
 the flocks dark against the countryside, the shepherds care- 
 ful to lose none of their sheep. He listens to the life- 
 bearing truth that comes to him with these memories of 
 the serenity of nature. Is he not also the shepherd of the 
 dark, restive sheep? And then, with his heart beating less 
 violently, instead of replying with a violent gesture to the 
 hatred that mutters about him, he takes this poetry of his 
 childhood which he has found again in the depths of him- 
 self, and offers it, as one would offer a bouquet, to those 
 who are trying to destroy him: "How much then is a man 
 better than a sheep!" he says to them. He leads their 
 thoughts back beneath the light of childhood whose eyes 
 
304 APPENDIX 
 
 were clear and could see; he tries to make them behold 
 this man with the eyes they had as children/^ 
 
 How many times has he attempted to do this: to restore 
 to this generation, on which he at first counted so much, 
 the clear vision of the divine beauty! And how many times 
 has this generation wounded his heart by refusing to see 
 anything in it! Here again we may say that, in a certain 
 sense, it was poetry that saved Jesus from discouragement; 
 not an artificial poetry that distracts one from life, but the 
 poetry of the Father's work, the angle of beauty from which 
 he perceives this great drama of the struggle that unites 
 all the generations and leads them step by step to judg- 
 ment. Let us recall, for example, how he sees the Ninevites 
 rising from their tombs to accuse the unbelievers of his 
 time, and the Queen of Sheba, the black queen, who also 
 comes to affirm that there is one here greater than Solomon 
 whose wisdom and glory she had yet come from the utter- 
 most parts of the earth to see.^^ 
 
 But these unbelievers, these men who will have none of 
 him, Jesus loves nevertheless. He takes them by the hand 
 and leads them with him back to his own memories of 
 childhood. This poetry of the past will speak to their 
 hearts as it speaks to his own. Are they not like those 
 children playing in the market-place? Some pretend to be 
 drawing sounds from an imaginary flute which they hold 
 between their agile fingers; the others show they have un- 
 derstood the gesture by beginning to dance. The first group 
 plays a funeral dirge; the others catch the idea that a 
 burial is taking place and imitate the tears and lamenta- 
 tions. "And you," Jesus virtually says to them, "you make 
 it a point not to understand the game of life and close your 
 ears to all the invitations that are offered you!" What tact 
 
 "Matt, xii, 9-13; Mark iii, 1-6; Luke vi, 6-11. 
 12 Matt, xii, 38-42 ; Luke xi, 29-32. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 305 
 
 and what touching charm in this poetry of childhood that 
 throws its soft veil over the sad and cruel reality and appeals 
 to the feelings without wounding these sinners to the quick." 
 
 This unspeakable love which he feels for them, this 
 agonising desire to save them, Jesus manifests on another 
 day when he makes them the most beautiful gift that a 
 man can make. He gives them all the hidden poetry of 
 the home. Stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, 
 he exclaims, "Who is my mother and who are my brethren? 
 Behold my mother and my brethren!" ^* We must be care- 
 ful not to see in this any sort of easy denial of his family 
 and maternal affection. On the contrary, by installing them 
 as it were in the family of his soul, he gave them all the 
 joy of his childhood, all the affection that had illumined 
 his early years, all that a man expresses when, in the midst 
 of suffering, he allows to escape from his almost uncon- 
 scious lips the simple word "mother." 
 
 The tact that Jesus shows in the appeal, this intimate 
 poetry that colours his whole life we find even in his silences, 
 for there is a poetry of silence and the grandest spectacles 
 render the deepest souls wordless. What a magnificent 
 sermon lies in the simplicity of his attitude before the woman 
 taken in adultery whom they bring before him to be judged! 
 Jesus, stooping down, began to write on the ground with 
 his finger. The woman stood there before him, filled with 
 mortal anguish. Time was running from the hour-glass of 
 eternity. . . . Then, one by one, the accusers, embarrassed, 
 stole away. "He that is without sin among you, let him 
 first cast a stone at her." These words burned their hearts. 
 Jesus continued to write on the ground. At last, raising 
 his head, he saw that he was alone with the woman. 
 "Neither do I condemn thee," he said to her. Would it be 
 
 ^3 Matt, xi, 16-19; Luke 31-35. 
 14 Matt, xii, 46-50. 
 
3o6 APPENDIX 
 
 possible to clothe with more poetic grace a judgment that 
 stirred the basest mire, whether in the accused or the ac- 
 cusers? ^^ 
 
 For the rest, on every occasion when Jesus encounters a 
 woman, a little poem slips into the gospels. We recall 
 Bethany and Martha and Mary," Jacob's well, and the 
 woman of Samaria,^'^ the scene in which the unknown woman 
 pours the ointment on his head and that phrase which is 
 so natural and so great: "Why trouble ye her?" ^^ Finally, 
 the last word of Christ to his mother as he points out to 
 her the beloved disciple: "Behold thy son." ^^ 
 
 The intense activity of Jesus, amid strife and suffering 
 of all kinds, that colossal work of appeal and conversion 
 which he carried on for two or three years among the men 
 and women of Palestine, was not tarnished for an instant 
 with the prosaic dryness and the sterile harshness that so 
 often sully the activity of Christians, and sometimes all the 
 more as it increases in devotion. It makes us ask ourselves 
 whence comes, in those who usually undertake good works, 
 that lack of charm in the doing of them. Assuredly it is 
 not from Jesus they have inherited it. He himself scattered 
 poetry over men and through all his work. 
 
 Now this new poetry which he brought to the world 
 was little by little reflected in his person. It could not 
 have been otherwise. An event that bears witness to this 
 in the gospels, an event before which we have often paused 
 without understanding it and of which at least a part of the 
 mystery lies in the poetry of Christ, is the Transfiguration.^" 
 On the mountain whither three disciples had followed him, 
 he was suddenly illumined, permeated, impregnated with 
 
 15 John viii, i-il, 
 
 16 Luke X, 38-42. 
 
 17 John iv, 1-42. 
 
 18 Mark xiv, 3-9. 
 
 19 John xix, 25-27. 
 
 20 Matt, xvii, 1-8; Mark ix, 2-8; Luke ix, 28-36. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 307 
 
 the light with which he had spent his life in flooding men 
 and things. He had always desired to see them through 
 what might be called the poetry of God, in the glory for 
 which God had created them. He had projected upon them 
 all that God had given him of holiness, beauty, truth, jus- 
 tice, the ideal. He had, so to speak, stripped himself of 
 all this glory to make it shine over others. Now that 
 the work is under way, it is necessary that for once at least 
 his companions should see him as he is in the eyes of 
 God, that they should contemplate him irradiated and glori- 
 fied in the very poetry of heaven. 
 
 The Transfiguration is the sudden revelation to common 
 eyes of all the divine poetry that was in Jesus Christ. They 
 saw him and then they fell silent, realising that there was 
 something here which could not be uttered. But hence- 
 forth they followed him more faithfully. A little of the 
 dazzling glory which he had had on the mountain clung 
 from this time forward to their Master. They looked upon 
 him differently because the divine splendour had trans- 
 figured him in their eyes. Having believed in the magnifi- 
 cence of the universe created by his Father and in the 
 moral beauty of man, in spite of all the disappointments 
 that nature and man had flung in his face, Jesus appeared 
 to his own clad in a dignity and a grandeur that no one 
 will ever surpass. 
 
 But tragic hours were approaching. Now, in every tragic 
 hour there is an element of terror and horror that unmans 
 the noblest natures and may destroy them at a blow. One 
 only escapes from the sinister clutch of tragic reality, from 
 the discouragement, the stupor it calls out, by depriving 
 it of its power to kill us or enfeeble us. It is only the poets 
 who know how to make of the tragedy of life an ally in- 
 stead of an adversary. They alone snatch from the tragic 
 
3o8 APPENDIX 
 
 horror of facts its impassable, its fatal mask and perceive 
 behind this fatality a face : the face of the august and solemn 
 Truth which attracts them by the passionate interest it 
 arouses. 
 
 It was in this way that the end, desperate in so many 
 respects, became for Jesus a triumph and an ascension. 
 But this divine metamorphosis of life was not the work of 
 a day. It came about slowly and, under the influence of 
 events, led him from the poetry of nature and childhood 
 to that of the heroic life and the joy that endures even 
 unto death. 
 
 The parable of the vineyard " initiates us into this last 
 period of his life and this stage of his poetic feeling. One 
 feels that he is pervaded there by a sorrowful certainty, 
 the result of long reflection and a very clear view of the 
 ways in which the Jewish aspirations are opposed to his 
 personal faith and irreconcilable with it. Jesus knows that 
 he will be rejected. The son of the owner of the vineyard 
 will be killed and cast forth from the vineyard, even as the 
 servants have been who preceded him, the prophets and 
 John the Baptist, the latest of them. Henceforth he must 
 advance with the certainty of final failure; and we can 
 imagine the shadows that must have spread over the soul 
 of Jesus as he came to believe this, to know it, to be so 
 sure of it that he could speak of it publicly. 
 
 Indeed he cherished no illusions; he saw, better than 
 any one, the mob of the perverse, the lazy, the evil, the 
 indifferent, in the midst of whom he must continue to bear 
 aloft the shining torch. The parables of the talents and 
 the virgins are evidence of this.^^ Sometimes these evil 
 folk appear to him in the proportion of one in three (among 
 the three servants there is one who hides his talent in the , 
 
 21 Matt, xxi, 33-46; Mark xii, 1-12; Luke xx, 9-19. 
 
 22 Matt. XXV, 14-30; Luke xix, 11-28; and Matt, xxv, 1-13. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 309 
 
 earth), sometimes they seem to him as numerous as the 
 good (there are five foolish virgins to five who are wise; 
 and for that matter, they all fall asleep without excep- 
 tion, the wise and the foolish; not one is able to keep 
 watch). 
 
 Thus one feels the circle of iron closing in. Jesus sees 
 the void that is forming about him. The treacherous spider 
 of human hypocrisy is spinning its web about his person. 
 The tragedy is gathering head in the darkness. He feels 
 it approaching in the very person of Judas, who is becoming 
 sullen, in the withdrawal of the deluded multitudes. And 
 what suffers first of all in him is his lovingly patriotic 
 heart. He wishes, before the end, at least to enter his 
 well-loved city in triumph; he wishes to taste, if only for 
 an instant, that poetry of joy of which he has dreamed; 
 and, seated on the royal mount, he solemnly passes through 
 the walls of Jerusalem, uplifted once more by that popular 
 enthusiasm of which he well knows that this is the last 
 outburst. But he also knows that "if these should hold 
 their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." -^ 
 
 Just after this royal progress of Palm Sunday, we ob- 
 serve the emotional reaction that seizes upon him to the 
 very depths of his soul. He looks upon the ramparts of 
 his city, the holy city of God, and upon the Temple yonder 
 shining under the rays of the sun; and from his trembling 
 lips falls that tragic poem which is so touching, so heart- 
 rending: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, 
 your house is left unto you desolate." "* Still later, before 
 the walls of the Temple, the solidity of which the disciples 
 have just been observing, he will exclaim: ''Verily, I say 
 
 23 Matt, xxi, i-ii; Mark xi, i-io; Luke xix, 28-44; John xii, 12-19. 
 2* Matt, xxiii, 2>7 '> Luke xiii, 34. 
 
3IO APPENDIX 
 
 unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon 
 another, that shall not be thrown down." ^^ 
 
 Sorrow, we might suppose, a clear vision of what is com- 
 ing, a prophetic glimpse that can leave in this betrayed 
 heart and this weary soul nothing but the sense of bitter 
 deception and cruel doubt. 
 
 So it would seem to human eyes . . . and yet, is that 
 what we find in the sweetness of the last conversations 
 (John xiv-xvii), in the calm with which they make ready 
 for the Supper on the eve of Good Friday, in the serene 
 and joyous authority that presides over the resurrection of 
 Lazarus? No, Jesus was not discouraged by the apparent 
 defeat of his work; for when one has toiled always hand 
 in hand with the Father, it is impossible that one should 
 be deceived. The life which he lives inwardly is truer 
 and stronger than all the lies that are opposed to it by a 
 concrete and, after all, transitory reality. It is onlj^ neces- 
 sary to turn upon the disturbing facts of earth the shining 
 rays of that life, that intimate communion which he has 
 with the Father. Then everything appears in its true light, 
 the dismay vanishes and the song of life asserts itself anew. 
 
 Death, his death which is there, which is in preparation 
 in the shadow, which is to come, insidiously and perversely, 
 and surprise him in the midst of his activity, in the midst 
 of his youth, must be, since the Father allows it to come, 
 a means of realising the plans of the Father. Then Jesus, 
 in order to understand the tragedy which awaits him along 
 his path, rereads the ancient tragedy, the poem announcing 
 the Man of Sorrow."'^ He sees filing past him, in a mag- 
 nificent sequence, all those who have given their lives. His 
 own shall be the crowning of them. 
 
 For the rest, must he call this death which awaits him a 
 
 25 Matt, xxiv, 2; Mark xiii, 2; Luke xix, 44 and xxi, 6, 
 
 26 Isaiah liii. 
 
THE POETRY OF JESUS 311 
 
 defeat and an end? No, it is a beginning, it is a triumph, 
 it is a joy. Above the sorrow, infinite joy soars like an 
 eagle. He will be the stalk to which all the shoots attach 
 themselves that they may live; he will be the vine that is 
 full of sap and that will henceforth bear up to the light 
 of God the leaves and the fruit, the clusters and the 
 branches. It is from his life that all life will spring, and 
 his sacrifice will give birth to the miracles of which men 
 have need in order to live." 
 
 He will be the bread and the wine with which they shall 
 nourish themselves. He will flood them, every one, with 
 the effluvium of life and joy that floods him because he 
 has been made one with God. Little by little, the last great 
 revelation dawns upon his agonised consciousness. It is 
 like a song that fills him entirely, like music that penetrates 
 him, a poem that sweeps him away on its large, abundant 
 rhythm. And strong with the strength of this supreme 
 and tragic poetry that he has found in God, he advances, 
 calm, peaceful, almost joyous, towards the Cross. 
 
 One should reread the last discourses which the gospel 
 of John alone has preserved for us. It is to them that we 
 turn instinctively when we have need of consolation, when 
 life has wounded or troubled us. They receive us like 
 maternal arms and their very cadence is like that of some 
 ancient cradle. Can one doubt that these things were said 
 at the distance of a few steps from the cross? Scarcely a 
 veil concealed it now, and for him who spoke it was already 
 there. The tone of these utterances is grave, but what 
 charm they have, what peace, what sweetness! 
 
 Contemplating Jesus at this moment, people have spoken 
 
 of his "acceptance." Acceptance, yes, truly, but not in the 
 
 sense of a resigned, dejected, passive submission. There 
 
 is something more than acceptance here; there is a sort 
 
 27 John XV, 1-8. 
 
312 APPENDIX 
 
 of grave and joyous accord with the very essence of life 
 and destiny, a poetry that is at once candid, childlike, and 
 conscious, a heroic poetry that uplifts you and bears you 
 over the ocean of Eternity. In fact, this man who is to be 
 crucified to-morrow speaks above all of joy: "Ye shall be 
 sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. . . . 
 Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. . . . 
 If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto 
 the Father." It is the joy of fulfilment, that which a 
 woman feels when, through her, another man is born into 
 the world. Jesus had attained, in this moment, to so power- 
 ful a realisation of the invisible things, to what one might 
 call so complete an incarnation of the poetry of God, that 
 the joy of the eternal truth effaces the shadows of suffering 
 and drowns them in its light. 
 
 Still to come is the cry of Gethsemane, still the few brief, 
 simple words from the cross. But above all the silence 
 . . . the silence of this great figure that passes from the 
 palace of Caiaphas and that of Herod, from the pretorium 
 of Pontius Pilate and the court of the soldiers . . . saying 
 nothing, his eyes fixed upon the sovereign realities of the 
 Beyond towards which he leads humanity. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
 N. B. — It seems to us useful to give here most of the lives of 
 Jesus that have appeared since the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. They are arranged as far as possible according to the date of 
 their first editions. But in order to avoid the constant repetition of 
 the name of the same author, we have grouped under the name of 
 each, where it appears for the first time, all those of his works that 
 should be mentioned. To lives of Jesus proper we have added 
 studies that belong more or less in this category, without always bear- 
 ing the title. 
 
 Venturini, K. H. — Naturliche Geschichte des grossen Prophet en von 
 
 Nazareth, 1800-1802. 
 Opitz, E. a. — Geschichte und Charaktersiige Jesu. Jena and Leipzig, 
 
 1812, pp. 488. 
 Greiling. — Das Leben Jesu von Nazareth. Etn religioses Handbuch 
 
 fiir Geist und Hers der Freunde Jesu unter den Gebildeten. Halle, 
 
 1813. 
 Jakobi, J. A. — Die Geschichte Jesu fiir denkende und gemiltvolle Leser. 
 
 1816. 
 Paulus, H. E. G. — Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Ge- 
 schichte des Urchristentums. Heidelberg. 1828, 2 vol., pp. 1192. 
 Hase, K. a. — Das Leben Jesu sundchst fiir akademische Studien. 
 
 1829, pp. 205. 
 Langsdorf, K. (von). — Wohlgepriifte Darsiellung des Lebens Jesu. 
 
 Mannheim, 1831. 
 Strauss, D. ¥.— Leben Jesu. 2 vol., 1835-1836, pp. 1480. 3rd edition 
 
 (point of view changed), 1838-39; 4th edition (return to point of 
 
 view of the first), 1840. 
 Id. — Das Leben Jesu fiir das dcutsche Volk bearbeitet. Leipzig, 1864, 
 
 pp. 631. 
 Id. — Der Christus der Glaube und der Jesus der Geschichte. Eme 
 
 Kritik des Schleiermacherschen Lebens Jesu. Berlin, 1865, PP- 223. 
 Neander, a. W.—Das Leben Jesu Christi. Hamburg, 1837. 
 Hartmann, J. — Leben Jesu. 2 vol., 1837-39. 
 Hennell. — Untcrsuchitngen i'lber den Ursprung des Christentums. 
 
 1840; English edition, 1838. 
 Salvator. — Jesus-Christ et sa doctrine. Paris, 2 vol., 1838. 
 Ammon, C. F. (von). — Die Geschichte des Lebens Jesu mit steter 
 
 Riicksicht auf die vorhandenen Quellen. 3 vol., 1842-47. 
 Sepp, J. N. — Das Leben Jesu Christi. Regensburg, 1843-46. 
 Bauer, Bruno. — Kritik der Evangelien. Berlin, 2 vol., 1850-51. 
 Id. — Philo, Strauss, Renan und das Urchristentum. Berlin, 1874. 
 Id. — Christus und die Cdsaren. Der Ursprung des Christentums aus 
 
 dein romischen Griechentum. Berlin, 1877, pp. 387. 
 Ewald, G. H. a. — Geschichte Christus und seiner Zeit. 1855, Sth vol. 
 
 of the Geschichte des Volkes Israel. 
 Lichtenstein, W. J. — Leben des Herm Jesu Christi. Erlangen, 1856. 
 
 31S 
 
3i6 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
 Pressel, Th. — Leben Jesu Christi. Tubingen, 1857, pp. 592. 
 Emmerich, Anna Katharina. — Leben Jcsu. Regensburg. 3 vol., 
 
 1858-1860. (A. K. Emmerich was a visionary; it was Cl. Brentano 
 
 who began the editing of her work.) French version : Vie de notre 
 
 Seigneur Jesus-Christ, ecrite par Clement Brentano d'apres les 
 
 visions d' Anne-Cath. Emmerich, by the Abbe de Cazales. Bray, 
 
 1860-62, 6 vol. 
 CoQUEREL, Athanase. — Christologie ou essai sur la personne de Jesus- 
 Christ en vue de la conciliation des Eglises chritiennes. 2 vol., 
 
 1858. 
 Renan, Ernest. — La vie de Jesus. Paris, Michel Levy, 1863, pp. 462. 
 Alm, R. (von der) (pseudonym of Ghillany). Theologische Brief e 
 
 an die Gebildeten der deutschcn Nation. 1863. 
 ScHLEiERMACHER, Fr. E. D. — Das Leben Jesu. 1864 (edited by 
 
 Riithenik from the notes of the course given in 1832). 
 Schenkel, D. — Das Charakterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864, pp. 405. 
 Weizs^cker, K. H. — Untersuchungen iiber die evangelische Geschichte 
 
 Ihre Quellen und den Gang Ihrer Entwicklung. Gotha, 1864, 
 
 pp. 580. 
 CoLANi, T. — Jesus-Christ et les croyances messianigues de son temps 
 
 Strasbourg, 1864, pp. 255. 
 Veuillot, L. — La vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Paris 1864, 
 
 pp. 509- 
 RiGGENBACH, C. — Vie du Seigneur Jesus-Christ, trans. Steinheil. Paris, 
 
 Meyrueis, 1864, pp. 636. 
 Pressense: (E. be). — Jesus-Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 
 
 1865, pp. 684. 
 Wallon, H. — Vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Paris, 1865, pp. 355 
 Seeleys, T. — Ecce Homo. London, 1866, re-edited in 1908 with a 
 
 preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. 
 Hollard, R. — Essai sur le caractere de Jesus. Paris, 1866. 
 Keim, Th. — Die Geschichte Jesu von Nasara. 3 vol., Zurich, 1867-72, 
 
 pp. 1729. 
 Stricker. — Jesus von Nazareth. 1868. 
 Hanson. — The Jesus of History. 1869. 
 
 Kruger-Welthusen, W. — Leben Jesu. Elberfeld, 1872, pp. 271. 
 ScHEGG, P. — Seeks Biicher des Lebens Jesu. Fribourg, 1874-5, pp. 1200. 
 Farrar, F. W. — The Life of Christ, 1874, French translation, 1875 and 
 
 1888, the latter by Mme. de Witt-Guizot. 
 NoACK, L. — Die Geschichte Jesu auf Grund freier geschichtlicher 
 
 Untersuchungen iiber das Evangelium und die Evangelien. Mann- 
 heim, 1876, pp. 1 109. 
 Kulischer, M. — Das Leben Jesu, eine Sage von dem Schicksale und 
 
 Erlebnissen der Bodenfrucht, insbesondere der sogenannten 
 
 paldstinensisclien Erstlingsgabe, die am Passahfestes im Tempel 
 
 dargebracht wurde. Leipzig, 1876, pp. 123. 
 Hase, K. — Geschichte Jesu. Nach akademischen Vorlesungen. Leipzig, 
 
 1876, pp. 612. 
 Soury, Jules. — Jesus et les cvangiles. Paris, 1878, pp. 190. 
 Id. — Jesus et la religion d'Israel. Paris, 1898. 
 Stalker. — The Life of Jesus Christ. 1879, PP- i5i- 
 Id. — Imago Christi, the Example of Jesus Christ. New York, 1889. 
 Id. — The Ethic of Jesus Christ According to the Synoptic Gospels. 
 
 New York, 1909. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 317 
 
 Weitbrecht, M. G. — Das Lcbcn Jesu nach den vier Evangelien, 1881. 
 VoLKMAR, G. — Jesus Nacarcniis und die crste christliche Zeit, mit den 
 
 bciden ersten Erzdhlcrn. Zurich, 1882, pp. 403. 
 Weiss, Bernhard. — Das Lebcn Jesu. 2 vol., 1882. 
 
 Seydel, R. — Das Evangelium Jesu in seinen Verhdltnissen zur Buddha- 
 Sage und Buddha-Lehre. Leipzig, 1882, pp. ZZ7- 
 Id. — Die Buddha-Legende und das Lcben Jesu nach den Evangelien. 
 
 2nd ed., 1897, pp. 129. 
 Le Camus, E. P. — La vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. 3 vol., 1883. 
 Edersheim, Alf. — The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 vol., 
 
 London, 1883. 
 Beyschlag, W. — Das Leben Jesu. 1885-86, pp. 945. 
 Delff, H. — Gcschichte des Rabbi Jesus von Nazareth. Leipzig, 1889, 
 
 pp. 428. 
 Grimm, J. — Das Leben Jesu. 2nd ed., 6 vol. Wurzburg, 1890-1903. 
 DiDON (Le Pere). — Jesus-Christ. Paris, Plon, 1891, 2 vol., pp. 952. 
 Ziegler, H. — Der geschichtliche Christus. 1891. 
 GoDET, Fr. — Le temps de la vie de Jesus qui a precede son minist^re. 
 
 1891. 
 Porret, J. A. — Trois vies de Jesus (Strauss, Renan, Keim). Etude 
 
 de critique historique. 1893. 
 Brandt, W. — Die evangelische Gcschichte und der Ursprung des Chris- 
 
 tentums. 1893. 
 NoTowiTSCH, N. — La vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ. Paris, 1894, pp. 
 
 301. 
 Regla (Paul de). — Jesus de Nazareth. Paris, 1894. 
 Proudhon, p. J. — Conclusions sur la vie de Jesus. 1896. 
 Strada (Jos6 de). — Jesus et I'cre de la science. La veritable histoire 
 
 de Jesus. 1896. 
 Reville, Albert. — Jesus de Nazareth, etudes critiques sur les an- 
 tecedents de I'histoire evangelique et la vie de Jisus. 2 vol., Paris, 
 
 Fischbacher, 1897, pp. 1022. 
 Langius, G. — Der Christus der Gcschichte und sein Christentum. 2 vol., 
 
 1897-8. 
 Staffer, Edm. — Jesus-Christ, sa personne, son autorite, son oeuvre. 
 
 3 vol., Paris, Fischbacher, 1898. 
 Barth, Fr. — Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu. 1899, pp. 333. 
 Schmidt, P. W. — Die Gcschichte Jesu. Fribourg, 1899, pp. 175. 
 Sertillanges (Le Pere). — Jesus. Paris, 1899. 
 
 Vismes, (J. de). — Quelques traits du Jestts de I'histoire. Paris, 1899. 
 Gardner, P. — Exploratio evangelica. A brief Examination of the Basis 
 
 and Origin of Christian Belief. 1899. 
 Taxil, Leo. — La vie de Jesus. 1900. 
 
 Robertson, J. M. — Christianity and Mythology. London, 1900, pp. 472. 
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 Fox, a. — The Son of Man. A Simple Life of Our Lord. London, 
 
 1901, pp. 390. 
 Watson, J. — The Life of the Master. London, 1901, pp. 301. 
 Dawson, W. J. — The Man Christ Jesus. London, 1901, pp. 454. 
 Holtzmann, Oskar. — Das Leben Jesu. Tiibingen, 1901, pp. 417. 
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 1902, pp. 26 (lecture). 
 Id. — War Jesus Ekstatikcr? Tiibingen, 1903, pp. 139. 
 Id. — Christus. Leipzig, 1907, pp. 148. 
 
3i8 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
 Wrede, W. — Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Zugleich ein 
 
 Beitrag sum Verstdndnis des Markusevangeliums. Gottingen, 1901, 
 
 pp. 286. 
 Schweitzer, Alb. — Das Messianitdts und Leidcnsgeheimnis. Eine 
 
 Skisse des Lebens Jesu. Tiibingen-Leipzig, 1901, pp. 109. 
 Id. — Geschichte der Leben-J esu-F orschung . Tubingen, Mohr, 1913 (2nd 
 
 ed. of Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906). 
 Krauss, Sam. — Das Leben Jesu nach judischen Quellen (Toldoth 
 
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 ScHMiEDEL, O. — Die Hauptprobleme der Leben-J esu-P orschung. Tubin- 
 gen, 1902, pp. 71. 
 Id. — Die Person Jesu im Streite der Meinungen der Gegenwart (lec- 
 ture). Leipzig, 1906, pp. 31. 
 ViLLARD, R. P. — Le Christ devant I'histoire et la raison. 1902. 
 Boseij:y. — Christ the Carpenter and His Trade and His Teaching. 
 
 London, 1902, pp. 144. 
 Morgan, G. C. — The Crises of the Christ. London, 1902, pp. 430. 
 Kalthoff, Ale. — Das Chris tusproblem. Grundlinien zu einer Sosial- 
 
 theologie. Leipzig, 1902, pp. 87. 
 Id. — Die Entstehung des Christ enttims. Neue Beitrdge ziim Christus- 
 
 problem. Leipzig, 1904, pp. 155. 
 Bosc, Ern. — La vie esoterique de Jesus de Nazareth et les origines 
 
 orientales du christianisme. Paris, 1902. 
 Otto, R. — Leben und Wirken Jesu nach historischkritischer Auffassung. 
 
 1902. 
 ScHRENK (E. von). — Jesus und seine Predigt. 1902, pp. 234. 
 Furrer, K. — Das Leben Jesu-Christi. 1902. 
 Pfleiderer, O. — Das Urchristcntum, seine Schriften und Lehren in 
 
 geschichtlichen Zusammenhang beschrieben. 2nd ed., Berlin, 1902. 
 Id. — Die Entstehung des Christcntums. Miinich, 1905. 
 Id. — Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in religionsgeschicht- 
 
 licher Beleuchlung. Berlin, 1903, pp. 116. 
 Schell, H. — Christus. Mainz, 1903, pp. 152. 
 Amos. — The New but True Life of the Carpenter. Bristol, 1903, pp. 
 
 336. 
 Pick, B. — The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ: a Record Drawn from 
 
 Uninspired Sources. New York, 1903, pp. 312. 
 Schmidt, 'N.—The Prophet of Nazareth. New York, Macmillan, 1903, 
 
 pp. 422. 
 Classen, W. — Der geschichtliche Jesus. 1903, pp. 32. 
 Id. — Jesus von Nazareths Worte und Taten nach den drei dltestcn 
 
 Evangelien. Munich, 1917. 
 Besant, Annie. — Esoteric Christianity. London, 1901. 
 SoDEN (H. F. von). — Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu. Berlin, 
 
 1904, pp. III. 
 Id. — Hat Jesu gelebt? Berlin, 1910, pp. 54. 
 JoNGE (de). — Jeschuah. Der klassische jiidische Mann. Zerstdrung 
 
 der kirchlichen Enthiillung des ji'idischen Jesus-Bildes. Berlin, 
 
 1904, pp. 112. 
 Arnal, a. — La personne du Christ et le rationalisme alleniand con- 
 
 temporain. 1904. 
 Bois, H. — La personne de Jesus et I'evangile de Jesus d'aprcs Harnack. 
 
 1904. 
 Id. — La personne et I'ocuvre de Jesus. Orthez, 1905, pp. 126. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 319 
 
 BoYE, P. — Vie de Jesus-Christ d'apres les documents contcmporains. 
 
 1904. 
 Briggs, C. a. — New Light on the Life of Jesus. Edinburgh, 1904, 
 
 pp. 196. 
 Clark, H. W. — The Christ from Without and Within. London, 1904, 
 
 pp. 224. 
 Sampson. — The Life of Christ. 1904, pp. 380. 
 GouNELLE, Elie. — Le Probleme du Christ. Journal "L' Avant-garde," 
 
 Nos. 27-34, 1904-05- 
 Kralik (R. von). — Jesu Lcbcn und Werk. Kempten-Nuremberg, 1904, 
 
 pp. 481. ... 
 
 Neumann, A. — Jesus, wie er geschichtlich ivar. 1904, pp. 198. 
 Messert, Fr. — Die geschichtliche Existens Christi. M-Gladbach, 1904, 
 
 PP- 95- 
 BoussET, W. — Jesus. Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbiicher. Halle, 1904. 
 Id. — Die Bedeutung der Person Jesu fUr den Glauben. Berlin-Schone- 
 
 berg, 1910, pp. 17 (lecture). 
 FuNCKE, R. — Die historischen Grundlagen des Christentums. Leipzig, 
 
 1904, pp. 282. 
 LoosTEN (de) (pseudonym of Dr. G. Lomer). — Jesus Christus vom 
 
 Standpunkt des Psychiatrikers. Bamberg, 1905, pp. 104. 
 Rasmussen, Em. — Jesus. Eine vergleichende psychopathologische 
 
 Studie (translated from the Danish). Leipzig, 1905, pp. 104. 
 WiNSCH, W. — War Jesus ein Nasirderf Berlin, 1904, pp. 80. 
 Id. — Mein Christusbild. Berlin, 1905, pp. 40. 
 
 Whittaker, Th. — The Origins of Christianity. London, 1904, pp. 233. 
 Wabnitz. — Histoire de la vie de Jesus. 2 vol., Paris, Fischbacher, 
 
 1904-6. 
 Frenssen, G. — Hilligenlei. Berlin, 1905 (cf. pp. 462-593). 
 Capitaine, W. — Jesus von Nasareth. Regensburg, 1905, pp. 192. 
 HiJHN, Eug. — Geschichte Jesu und der dltesten Christenheit, 190S, pp. 
 
 158. 
 Ihmels, L. — Wer war Jesus? Was wollte Jesus? 1905, pp. 65. 
 Bird, R. — Jesus the Carpenter of Nazareth. London, 1905, pp. 296. 
 Ollivier, M. J. H. — La vie cachee de Jesus. Etude sur fenfance et la 
 
 jeunesse du Redempteur. Paris, 1905, pp. 465. 
 Sanday, W. — Outlines of the Life of Christ. Edinburgh, 1905, pp. 241. 
 Id. — The Life of Christ in Recent Research. Oxford, 1907, pp. 328. 
 Id. — Christologies Ancient and Modem. Oxford, IQIO, pp. 244. 
 Smith, D. — The Days of His Flesh: the Earthly Life of Our Lord. 
 
 London, 1905, pp. 549. 
 Stewart, A. — The Life of Christ. 1905, pp. 124. 
 
 Beecher, H. W. — The Life of Christ. New York, Harper, 1906, pp. loi. 
 Ninck, Joh. — Jesus als Charakter. Leipzig, 1906, pp. 376. 
 Hess, W. — Jesus von Nazareth ini Wortlaut eines kritisch bearbeiteten 
 
 Einheitsevangeliums. 1906, pp. 77. 
 Id. — Jesus von Nazareth in seiner geschichtlichen Lehensentwicklung . 
 
 1906, pp. 120. 
 Peabody, F. G. — Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, 1904. 
 Jensen, P. — Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der WeltUtteratur (ist vol.: The 
 
 legends of the patriarchs and Jesus). Strasbourg, 1906, pp. 1030. 
 Id. — Moses, Jesus, Paulus. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1910, pp. 63. 
 Id. — Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt? Frankfurt-am- 
 Main, 1910, pp. 32. 
 
320 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
 ScHMiEDEL, Paul. — Die Person Jesu im Streit der Meinungen der 
 
 gegenwart, 1906. 
 Smith, W. Benj. — Der vorchristliche Jesus nebst weiteren Vorstudien 
 
 sur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums. Jena, 1906, pp. 243. 
 
 2nd ed., 1911. 
 Id. — Ecce Deus. Die urchristliche Lehre des reingottlichen Jesus. Jena, 
 
 191 1, 315. — English edition, London, Watts, 1912. 
 Gardiner, Ayres Sam. — Jesus Christ Our Lord. New York, 1906, pp. 
 
 502. 
 Monnier, H. — La mission historique de Jesus. 1906. 
 BoLLAND, G. J. -P. J. — De evangelische Josua. Leyden, 1907, pp. 74. 
 Id. — Het Evangelie. Leyden, 1909, pp. 160. 
 Simpson. — The Fact of Christ. 1907. 
 Daab, Fr. — Jesus von Nazareth, wie wir ihn heute sehen. Diisseldorf, 
 
 1907, pp. 224. 
 Heyn, J. — Jesus im Lichte der modernen Theologie. Greifswald, 1907, 
 
 pp. 147. 
 Bennet, W. H. — The Life of Christ According to St. Mark. London, 
 
 1907, pp. 308. 
 
 Resa, F. — Jesus der Christus. Leipzig, 1907, pp. iii. 
 
 Robertson, M. A. — Epochs in the Life of Jesus. New York and 
 
 London, 1907, pp. 192. 
 Garvie, a. E. — Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus. London, 1907, 
 
 pp. 556. 
 Weinel, H. — Jesus im igi^n Jahrhundert. Tubingen, Mohr, 1907. 
 Id. — 1st das liberale Jesusbild widerlcgt? Tiibingen, 1910, pp. iii, 
 Werner, H. — Die psychische Gesundheit Jesu. Grosslichterfelde-Berlin, 
 
 1908, pp. 64. 
 
 Kneib, Ph. — Modcrne Leben-J esu-Forschiing untcr dein Einfluss der 
 
 Psychiatric. Mainz, 1908, pp. 76. 
 Binet-Sangl6. — La folic de Jesus. Paris, Malvine, 1908. 
 Pfannmuller, G. — Jesus im Urteil der Jahrhunderte. Leipzig-Berlin, 
 
 1908, pp. 578. 
 Dole, Ch. F. — WItat We Know about Jesus. Chicago, 1908, pp. 89. 
 Weidel, C. — Jesu Personlichkeit. Halle, igo8, pp. 47. 
 Breitenstein, J. — Jesus ct Paul. Bale, Finckh, 1908, pp. 50. 
 Kautsky, K. J. — Der Ursprung des Christentums. Stuttgart, igo8, 
 
 pp. 508. 
 Drews, A. — Die Christusmythe. Jena, 1909-11, pp. 642. 
 Id. — Die Petruslegende. Ein Beitrag zur Mythologic des Christentums. 
 
 Frankfurt-am-Main, 1910, pp. 55. 
 Jordan, H. — Jesus und die modernen Jesusbildcr. 1909, pp. 113. 
 Fillion, L. Cl. — L'existence historique de Jesus et le rationalisme con- 
 
 temporain. Paris, 1909, pp. 412. 
 Bauer, W. — Das Leben Jesu im Zeitaltcr der neutestamentlichen 
 
 Apokryphen. Tubingen, 1909, pp. 568. 
 Carus, Paul. — The Pleroma. An Essay on the Origin of Christianity. 
 
 Chicago, 1909, pp. 163. 
 Hartmann, Fr.— T/ie Life of Jehoshua, the Prophet of Nazareth. 
 
 London, 1909, pp. 198. 
 Maurenbrecher, M. — Van Nazareth nach Golgotha. Berlin, Schone- 
 
 berg, 1909, pp. 271. 
 GiRAN, Et. — Jesus de Nazareth. Notes historiques et critiques. 2nd 
 
 ed., Paris. 1909, pp. 205. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 321 
 
 Delius, (R. von). — Jesus. Sein Kampf, seine Personlichkeit und seine 
 
 Gegner. Munich, 1909, pp. 182. 
 Loisy, Alf. — Jesus et la tradition evangelique. Paris, 1910, pp. 287. 
 PiEPENBRiNG, C. — J csus historique. Paris, 1909, pp. 194. 
 Id — Jesus et les Apotres. Paris, 191 1, pp. 329. 
 
 JuLiCHER, Ad. — Abriss in "Kultur dcr Gegenwart," i, 4, 1909, pp. 42-70. 
 Id. — Die Gleichnisreden Jesu. Fribourg, 1888-99, PP- 641. 
 MoNTEFiORE, C. G. — Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus 
 
 According to the Synoptic Gospels. London, 1910, pp. 171. 
 NiEMojEWSKY, A. — Gott Jesus (trans, from the Polish). Munich, 
 
 1910, pp. 577. 
 LuBLiNSKi, Sam. — Das werdende Dogma vom Leben Jesu. Jena, 1910, 
 
 pp. 187. 
 Id. — Die Entstehung des Christentuvis aus der atttiken Kultur. Jena, 
 
 1910, pp. 257. 
 Weiss, Johannes. — Jesus von Nazareth. Mythus oder Geschichte? 
 
 iQio, pp. 171. 
 Schmidt, Ferd. J. — Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der 
 
 Geschichte. Frankfort, 1910, pp. 79. 
 Leroy, H. — Jesus-Christ, sa vie, son temps. 2 volumes, Paris, Beau- 
 
 chesne, 1910-12. 
 Klein, G. — 1st Jesus eine historische Personlichkeit f Tiibingen, 1910, 
 
 pp. 46. 
 Laible, H. — Lebte Jesus? Berlin, 1910, pp. 64. 
 Schneider, Th. — Vom Ursprung des Christentumi. Wiesbaden, 1910, 
 
 pp. lOI. 
 Id. — Jesus als Philosoph. Leipzig, 191 1, pp. 48. 
 Beth, K. — Hat Jesus gelebt? Berlin, 1910, pp. 53. 
 Delbruck, T. — Hat Jesus gelebt? Berlin, iQio, pp. 34. 
 Hauck, A. — Hat Jesus gelebt? Zehlendorf -Berlin, 1910, pp. 16. 
 Zimmern, H. — Zum Strcit urn die Christiismythe. Berlin, 1910, pp. 66. 
 Krieck, Er. — Die ncueste Orthodoxie und das Christusproblem. Jena, 
 
 1910, pp. 63. 
 
 Horneffer, Er. — Jesus im Lichte der Gegenwart. Leipzig, 1910, pp. 36. 
 
 Tyrrell, G. — Christianity at the Cross-roads. London, 1910, pp. 282. 
 
 BuRKiTT, Fr. Cr. — The Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus Christ. 
 Boston, 1910, pp. 131. 
 
 Id. — The Eschatological Idea in the Gospel. Swetes. Cambridge Bibli- 
 cal Essays, London. 1909, pp. 556. 
 
 Abbott, Edwin. — The Son of Man. Cambridge, 1910, pp. 920. 
 
 Thoma, A. — Jesus und die Apostel. Gotha, 1910, pp. 211. 
 
 Trceltsch, Er. — Die Bedeulung der Geistlichkeit Jesu filr den Glauben 
 (lecture). Tiibingen, 1911, pp. 51. 
 
 Id. — Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte. 
 1901, pp. 150. 
 
 Frey, J. — Die Glaubwilrdigkeit der Ueberlieferung uber Jesus. Reval, 
 
 191 1, pp. 53- 
 
 Valensin, a. — Jesus-Christ et V etude comparee des religions (lecture). 
 Paris, Gabalda, 1911. 
 
 Clemen, C. — Dcr gcschichtUche Jesu. Giessen, 191 1, pp. 120. 
 
 Jahn, G. — Ueber die Person Jesu und Uber die Entstehung des Chris- 
 tentums. Leyden, 191 1, pp. 251. 
 
 Brepohl, F. W. — Die Wahrheit iiber Jesus von Nazareth. Berlin, 191 1, 
 pp. 72. 
 
322 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 
 
 DuNKMANN, K. — Der historische Jesus, der mythologische Christus 
 und Jesus der Christ. 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1911, pp. iii. 
 
 Felder, H. — Jesus Christus. Apologie seiner A4essianitdt und Gottheit 
 gcgenilber der ncuestcn ungldubigen Jesu-Forschung. Paderborn, 
 
 191 1, pp. 523. . . 
 GuNTHER, Er. — Die Entwicklung der Lehre von der Person Christt 
 
 ini ncunzehnten Jahrhundert. Tiibingen, 191 1, pp. 443. 
 Mehlhorn, p. — Wahrheit und Dichtung im Leben Jesu. 2nd ed., 
 
 Leipzig, 191 1, pp. 140. 
 Jefka. — Jesus von Nazareth und die Christologie. Strasbourg, 191 1, 
 
 pp. 402. 
 Haussleiter, "i.— Jesus (six lectures). Munich, 191 1, pp. 98. 
 KiEFL, F. X. — Der geschichtliche Christus und die moderne Philosophie, 
 
 Mainz, 191 1, pp. 222. 
 Bacon, B. W. — Jesus the Son of God; or Primitive Christology. Lon- 
 don, 191 1, pp. lOI. 
 Jeremias, Alf. — Hat Jesus Christus gelebt? Leipzig, 1911, pp. 64. 
 Kxostermann, E. — Die neuesfen Angriffe auf die Geschichtlichkeit 
 
 Jesu (lecture). Tubingen, 1912, pp. 52. 
 Lepin, Max. — Jesus-Christ, sa vie, son auvre. Esquisse des origines 
 
 chretiennes. Paris, Beauchesne, 1912. 
 Gilbert, G. H.— Jesus. New York, Macmillan, 1912, pp. 321. 
 VoLLMER, P. — The Modern Student's Life of Christ. New York, Revell, 
 
 1912, pp. 353- , . - 
 Lelievre, p. — La religion de Jesus d'apres I evangile. 1912, pp. 280. 
 Thorburn, T. J. — Jesus the Christ: Historical or Mythical? Edin- 
 burgh, Clark, 1912, pp. 311. 
 
 WoRSLEY. — The Apocalypse of Jesus. Bennett. ipi2, pp. 362. 
 FuHRMANN, Ch. P. — Der Astralmythus von Christus. Die Losung 
 
 der Christussage durch Astrologie. 1912, pp. 284. 
 Baumgarten, O. — Jesus Christus in der Gegenwart. Tiibingen, 
 
 1912. 
 Mackintosh, H. R.—The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1912, pp. 540. 
 BusiNGER, L. C. — The Life of Christ. 1913, pp. 439- 
 Heitmuller, W. — Jestis. Tiibingen, Mohr, 1913, pp. 184. 
 Id. — Art. Jesus Christus, I-III in Die Religion in Geschichte und 
 
 Gegenzvart. 
 Kaehler, M. — Der sogenanntc historische Jesus. Leipzig, 1913, pp. 206. 
 Leipoldt, J. — Vom Jesusbilde der Gegenwart. Leipzig, 1913, pp. 445- 
 Seiling, M. — IVer zvar Christus? Munich, Kuhn, 1913. 
 Westphall. — Jesus de Nazareth d'apres les temoins de sa vie. 2 vol., 
 
 Paris, 1914. 
 Menegoz, Eug. — Notre seul Mattre. Paris, Fischbacher, 1914, pp. 61. 
 Berthe, a. — Jesus Christ: his Life, his Passion, his Triumph. St. 
 
 Louis, Mo., 1914, pp. 514. 
 FuLLiQUET, G. — La doctrine du second Adam, etude anthropologique et 
 
 christologique. Geneva, Kiindig, and Paris, Fischbacher, 191S, PP* 
 
 361. 
 Wernle, p. — Jesus. Tiibingen, Mohr, 1916, pp. 368. 
 Lepsius, J. — Das Leben Jesu. Potsdam, 1917, ist vol., pp. 382. 
 Glover, T. R. — The Jesus of History. Student Christian Movement, 
 
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 Jeannet, Pierre. — Le Christ. Lausanne, La Concorde, 191 7, PP- 30- 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LIVES OF JESUS 323 
 
 Stanley Hall. — Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology. Double- 
 day, Page & Co., New York, 1917, 2 vol. 
 
 Frovig, D. a. — Das Sclbstbczinisstsein Jesu als Lehrcr und WundertHter 
 nach Markus und der sog. Rcdequelle untersucht. Ein Beitrag 
 nach der Mcssianitdt Jesu. Leipzig, Deichert, 1918, pp. 263. 
 
 Patry, Raoul. — Jesus de Nazareth, in Les Etapes de la foi. (ist 
 section, 2nd part) Manual of gospel history published by the Union 
 des Eglises reformees de Normandie. Dieppe, no date. 
 
 FosDiCK, H. E. — The Manhood of the Master. National Board of 
 Y. W. C. A., New York, pp. 175, no date. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abnormal, 174 
 
 Adolescence, 49-50, 149 
 
 Adultery, 305 
 
 Affirmations, 181 
 
 Ambivalence, 210, 211, 248 
 
 Andrea del Sarto, 211 
 
 Angels, 170, 171, 178 
 
 Animals in legends, 113, 118 
 
 Annunciation, 100, loi 
 
 Apocalytic eschatology, 136 
 
 Apocalytic messianism, 196 
 
 Apparitions, 282 
 
 Archelaus, 95 
 
 Ascension of Jesus Christ, 59, 273 ; 
 
 of the soul, 57 
 Ashur-bani-pal, 79 
 Assumption of the Virgin, 59 
 Astral theory of myths, 107 
 Attis, cult of, 44, 55, 263, 288 
 Austerity, 269 
 Autism, 267 
 
 Babylonians, 107 
 
 Bahrdt, K. R, 137, 140 
 
 Baptism, 57; of Jesus, 153 
 
 Barabbas, 82 
 
 Baskets, 48, 118 
 
 Bastian, Adolf, 106 
 
 Bauer, Bruno, 76; on the Tempta- 
 tion, 162 
 
 Beauty, 304 
 
 Belief, 5, 292, 293 
 
 Bergson, Henri, 243 
 
 Bethany, 273 
 
 Bethlehem, 95 ; as birthplace of 
 Jesus, 97 
 
 Beyond, 223, 245 
 
 Biblical criticism, 27 
 
 Bibliography of the lives of Jesus, 
 313 
 
 Bipolarity, 211 
 
 Birth of Jesus, 95 ; circumstances, 
 99; date, 95; place, 97; psycho- 
 logical truth of the legend, 125 ; 
 two methods of psycho-analytical 
 interpretation, 123, 125 
 
 Bleuler, Eugen, 211, 212 
 
 Bouriant, Urbain, 271 
 
 Bousset, W., 239, 240 
 
 Bread, changing stones into, 171 ; 
 
 stones for, 299 
 Bread of life, 179, 218 
 Bridegroom, 51 
 
 Brother and sister marriage, 48 
 Brothers, 53 
 Buddhism, 185 
 
 Caesarea Philippi, 229, 239, 256 
 
 Cana, miracle at, 78, 225, 226 
 
 Capernaum, 180, 299 
 
 Caravans, 145 
 
 Carnal tendencies, 42, 64 
 
 Catechism, 142 
 
 Catherine, Saint, 51, 158 
 
 Catholic saints, 269 
 
 Catholicism, Roman, 45 
 
 Censor, 18, 20, 108 
 
 Census, Roman, 95 
 
 Ceremony, Sacred, 39 
 
 Childhood, no, 112; duality and 
 unity, 150; drama of, 109; ex- 
 posed child in legends, 112, 118, 
 124 ; feelings toward father, 247 ; 
 of Jesus, 130 
 
 Christian community in which the 
 gospels were born, 90 
 
 Christianity, deforming elements 
 of, after Jesus' time, 63 ; essence 
 and substance, 281 ; Jesus' rela- 
 tion to, 62, 64; legends and 
 myths as contributors to, 83 ; ma- 
 terial view of the Resurrection, 
 292 ; morbid, 291 ; Mystery-Re- 
 ligions and, 27 ; Mystery-Reli- 
 gions and parallelism of pro- 
 dromes, 33 ; Protestant versus 
 Roman Catholic, 269; psycho- 
 analysis and, 23 ; symbolism and 
 its relation to that of the Mys- 
 teries, 38 
 
 Christians, as brothers, 53 ; ortho- 
 dox versus real, 292, 293 
 
 Christmas, 100; poetry, 104 
 
 Church, central fact of spiritual 
 life, 281 ; transposition of the 
 spiritual into the physical, 285 
 
 325 
 
326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cicero, 31 
 
 Clergy as fathers, 52 
 
 Coe, George, on the psychology of 
 religion, 10, 12; on structural 
 and functional points of view, 
 
 ^^' ^5 . . 
 Communication with the Beyond, 
 
 ■22.Z, 24s 
 Communion, 44, 236; see also 
 
 Lord's Supper 
 Complex, 19, 26 
 Compromise, 177 
 Consecration, 236 
 Consolation, 311 
 Conversion, 22; 56; age of, 143; 
 
 psychological explanation, 147 
 Convictions, 22 
 Creed, 10 
 Criticism, gi 
 Critics, 88 
 
 Cross, poetry of, 311 
 Cures, 201, 203, 206 
 Cybele, 44, 48, 52, 55, 288 
 Cyrus, legend of, 115 
 
 Daniel, 242; book of, 134, 135 
 
 Dante's Hell, 58 
 
 David, 102; city of, 77, 97; son 
 of, 240 
 
 Dead, raising the, 219, 221 
 
 Death, 220, 224; dream-death ver- 
 sus the death of Jesus, 265-266; 
 life through, 261, 264; thought 
 and reality of, 260 
 
 Death of Jesus, 256; grandeur, 
 261 ; Jesus' understanding of, 
 259; joy of, 311; predictions of 
 Jesus, 232; psychological mean- 
 ing, 267 
 
 Decadence, Hebrew, 34 
 
 Delacroix, Henri, on mysticism, li 
 
 Dementia praecox, 168-169 
 
 Demoniacs, 207, 208 
 
 Desert, 161, 163 
 
 Desires, repression of, 18 
 
 Devil. See Satan 
 
 Devils, casting out, 203, 206 
 
 Dieterich, Albrecht, 47, 48, 51 
 
 Dionysus, 78, 288 
 
 Disciples, 184, 197 
 
 Disease, 19 
 
 Doctrine, 8; see Dogma 
 
 Documents, on the life of Jesus, 
 65 ; validity of early, 27 
 
 Dogma, 5, 8 
 
 Double nature of man, 170, 177 
 
 Dove, 156; symbolism, 158 
 
 Drama of childhood, 109 
 
 Dream of peoples, 108 
 
 Dreams, 45, 61, 63, iii, 174, 265, 
 269; Freud's study of, 19; 
 myths and, 108 ; teleological 
 point of view, 119; two meth- 
 ods of interpreting, with exam- 
 ple, 120, 122 
 
 Drews, Arthur, 66, 81 
 
 Duplicity, 150 
 
 Dupuis, C. F., 75 
 
 Durckheim, E., 11 
 
 Duties, positive versus negative, 
 181 
 
 Earth Mother, 52 
 
 Edification, works of, 66, 83-84, 91 
 
 Education, 131, 249 
 
 Egyptian Book of the Dead, 58 
 
 £lan vital, 20, 24, 243 
 
 Electra-complex, 11 1 
 
 Elementary ideas, 106 
 
 Eleusinian Mysteries, 48, 57 
 
 Elias, 233, 234 
 
 Elijah, 205 
 
 Emmaus, 273 
 
 Empedocles, 31 
 
 Enoch, book of, 134, 135 
 
 Epic, 296 
 
 Epoptic, 57 
 
 Eschatology, Judaic, 196 
 
 Essenes, 137 
 
 Essenism, 141 
 
 Eucharist, 45 
 
 Evangelists, 67 
 
 Evolution of religion, 37 
 
 Extraverts, 166 
 
 Ezekiel, 242 
 
 Faith, 294 
 
 Family, 305 
 
 Family-complex, 40, 43, 46, 49, 52, 
 54; birth of Jesus and, 125; 
 meaning, no; myths and, 109; 
 symbolic expression, 113, 119 
 
 Fanaticism, 174 
 
 Father, child's hatred of, no; 
 child's relation to, 247 ; Jesus' 
 relation to, 223, 243 ; Kngdom 
 and, 191 ; personal experience 
 of God the Father, 192 ; return to 
 the true Father, 129; unity with, 
 244; see also Paternal imago 
 
INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Father's business, 14S-146 
 
 Fathers, clergy as, 52 
 
 Fatum, 24, 259 
 
 Feast, sacred, 44, 57 
 
 Feeling and thought, 166 
 
 Fig-tree, 225 
 
 Fishers of men, 297 
 
 Fishes and loaves, 216 
 
 Flight into Egypt, 124 
 
 Flournoy, Th., on Freud's ideas, 
 in; on Jesus' idea of the Fa- 
 ther, 245, 246 
 
 Following Jesus, 268 
 
 Fowls of the air, 298 
 
 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 231 
 
 Frazer's "Golden Bough," 81 
 
 Freemasonry, 264 
 
 Frenssen, Gustav, 132 
 
 Freud, Sigmund, 16; disciples of, 
 22 ; modifications of his ideas 
 by Flournoy, iii; on the fam- 
 ily-complex, 109, no 
 
 Freudian works, 23, 24 
 
 Frommel, Gaston, 6, 7, 243 
 
 Fulfilment, 181, 312 
 
 Gadarene, healing of, 208 
 
 Galilee, 180; nature in, 133 
 
 Gehenna, 194 
 
 Genealogies of Jesus, 102 
 
 Gentleness, 185 
 
 Gethsemane, 84, 253, 258, 312 
 
 Gilgamesch, Epic of, 79 
 
 Gnosticism, 31, 59 
 
 God, as father, 53; of Mysteries, 
 35; Kingdom of, 190; physical 
 union with, 46; symbolism to 
 express, 39; talking with, 231; 
 true, 243, 244; union with, sym- 
 bolized by marriage, 50; union 
 with, symbolized by paternity 
 and sonship, 51 
 
 Godparent, 54 
 
 Gods, material union of man and, 
 43 ; nature, conception of, 42 ; 
 sexual union concept, 46; union 
 with, conception of, 42 
 
 Good, one who is, 84 
 
 Good Friday, 310 
 
 Gospels, character, 66; documen- 
 tary value, 87; historical fea- 
 tures, 85; as products of faith, 
 83 ; sources, 68 ; value, 91 
 
 Great Mother, 44, 48, 53 
 
 Greco-Roman paganism, 27, 29; 
 
 Hebrew prophecy and, 61 
 Guisan, Rene, on results of study 
 
 of the synoptics, 70 
 
 Hall, G. Stanley, 7 
 
 Haman, 82 
 
 Happiness, 182 
 
 Harmonies of the universe, 295 
 
 Hate, no, 207; for father, no, 
 247 ; spiritual, 252 ; sublimation 
 of, 251 
 
 Healings, 206 
 
 Heaven; see Kingdom of God 
 
 Heavens, opened, 156, 157, 159 
 
 Hebrew prophecy, 33 ; Greco-Ro- 
 man paganism and, 61 ; Mys- 
 tery-Religions and, 35, 37 
 
 Hell, Dante's, 58; descents into, 
 58 
 
 Hellenistic thought, 29, 62 
 
 Herod, 95, 124 
 
 Heroes, 128, 129; see also Leg- 
 ends ; Myths 
 
 Historical criticism, 67, 87 
 
 History, 67 
 
 Holy Ghost, 124; dove as symbol 
 of, 158; as father of Jesus, 102, 
 103 
 
 Holy Spirit, 46 
 
 Home, poetry of, 305 
 
 Huguenots, 269 
 
 Humanity, 253; of Jesus, 15; 
 Jesus' observation of, 132 ; 
 legends of heroes as symbol of 
 highest life, 128; psychic unity, 
 185-186 
 
 Hunger, 171 
 
 Hypnotism, 19 
 
 Hypocrisy, 309 
 
 Hysteria, 17 
 
 Ideas, elementary, 106; life versus, 
 
 195 
 Idols, 244 
 Images, 196, 205 
 Imago, paternal, 246, 250 
 Incest, 54, III, 157 
 India as source of myths, 106 
 Infancy, 108, no, 112 
 Initiation rites, 262, 263 
 Instincts, 18; repression, 18, 21; 
 
 sublimation, 21 
 Intellectualism, 6 
 
328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Introversion, 34, 40, 45, 156; in 
 Jesus' life, 168; psycho-analy- 
 sis of, 165; temptation of, 165; 
 three issues of the crisis, 168 
 
 Introverts, 166, 268 
 
 Irenaeus, 48 
 
 Ishtar, 58 
 
 Isis, 48, 53, 55, 288 
 
 Jairus, daughter of, 219, 220, 222 
 
 James, William, 7 
 
 Janet, Pierre, 17 
 
 Jealousy, 211 
 
 Jensen, Peter, 78-79, 81 
 
 Jerusalem, 256, 309; Jesus in the 
 Temple, 142; Renan on the pil- 
 grimage to, 144 
 
 Jesus, Ascension, 59; authenticity 
 of his words, 8g; baptism, 153; 
 "beside himself," 101-102; birth, 
 95; as bridegroom, 51; central 
 experience, 247 ; childhood and 
 youth, 130; Christianity's rela- 
 tion to, 62, 64; conversion, 148; 
 death, 256; deniers of his his- 
 toricity, 75; education, 131; 
 Essenes and, 137; evolution of 
 ideas, 238; evolution of soul, 
 302; following, 268; fulfilment 
 of humanity's dream, 261, 266; 
 genealogies, 102 ; hard realities 
 of his life, 300; humanity, 15; 
 introversion, 168; libido, 254; 
 love of mankind, 305 ; love of 
 nature, 132 ; Messiahship, con- 
 sciousness of, 239 ; moral obli- 
 gation, 194, 243 ; mythical figure 
 of, 63 ; observation of human 
 life, 132; oral tradition, 68; 
 parents, 103 ; paternal imago 
 in, 251; Paul's epistles on, 66; 
 personality, 89, 200, 208, 219, 
 226, 238 ; poetry of, 295 ; psychic 
 experiences, 193 ; psychology of, 
 90, 200 ; Resurrection, 270 ; sac- 
 rifice, 253 ; sayings of, 69 ; 
 Scriptural knowledge, 134; sin- 
 lessness, 84; sources on hislife, 
 65; structural and functional 
 points of view concerning, 15 ; 
 sublimation of human instincts, 
 64; submission, 311; teaching, 
 180; temptation, 161; tragic 
 hours, 307 ; Transfiguration, 
 228; youth, 130 
 
 John, gospel of, 70; problem, 67; 
 
 psychology of the author, 90 
 John the Baptist, 69, 0, 155, 234 
 Joseph, father of Jesus, 102 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 137 
 Josephus, Flavius, 65, 202 
 Joshua, cult of, 77 
 Joy, 312 
 
 Judaic eschatology, 196 
 Judaism, 3 
 Judas, 309 
 Judea, 95, 97 
 Judgment Day, 194 
 Jung, C. G., 157; on introversion, 
 
 i6s 
 Jupiter, 52 
 
 Kalthoff, A., 78 
 
 Keller, Pastor, 120 
 
 Kierkegaard, S. A., on the life of 
 Jesus, 88 
 
 King, J., II 
 
 Kingdom of God, 189, 190; doc- 
 trine of, 194, 197 ; material, 198, 
 199 ; as social revolution, 194 
 
 Kings, children as, 114 
 
 Last Supper; see Lord's Supper 
 
 Laws of nature, 202 
 
 Lazarus, raising of, 219, 221, 222, 
 224 
 
 Lazarus, rich man and, 195 
 
 Lftgends, 100, 105; origin, 126; 
 psychoanalysis and, 105 
 
 Legion, 212 
 
 Leuba, J., 7, 11 
 
 Liberty, 24 
 
 Libido, 20, 41 ; childhood and, 
 147, 149; Jesus, 243, 254; in 
 religion, 23 
 
 Life, 227, 255, 269; bread of, 179, 
 218; central experience of Jesus, 
 242-243 ; experience of, 294 ; 
 hating, 252; Jesus' gift of, 
 257; new, 195; progress of in- 
 ner life of man, 264; secret 
 of, 244; through death to, 261 
 
 Light t»>.f the world, 298 
 
 Lilies oj the field, 298 
 
 Littre, Emile, on the accounts of 
 Jesus, 127 
 
 Loaves, multitude and, 204, 216 
 
 Logia of Matthew, 70, 85 
 
 Logic, 5 
 
 Lohengrin, legend of, 116 
 
INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 Lord's Supper, 44, 45, ^^, 141, 258, 
 310 
 
 Lost sheep, 300 
 
 Love, iio; dove as symbol of, 
 158; for father, 247; Jesus' 
 love of men, 305 ; of mother, 
 IIO; sexual and true, 49 
 
 Luke, gospel of, 67 
 
 Lyric world, 296 
 
 Maccabees, 258 
 
 Maeder, Dr., 58 
 
 Magic, 168, 169, 172, 225 
 
 Man, 242, 253, 255 
 
 Man of Sorrow, 310 
 
 Manger, 124 
 
 Mark, gospel of, 67; authenticity, 
 85 ; priority, 68 
 
 Markosians, 48 
 
 Marriage, 167 ; brother and sister, 
 48; Christ and the Church, 51; 
 symbol of relation between man 
 and God, 50 
 
 Mary, mother of Jesus, 97, 99; 
 Annunciation, loi ; miraculous 
 birth and, 102 
 
 Materialisation, 286 
 
 Maternity, 53 
 
 Matthew, gospel of, 6"] 
 
 Meat which perisheth, 217 
 
 Memory, 86 
 
 Mental disease, 207 
 
 Messiah, 34, 36, 62, 98, 135, 164, 
 178; inadequacy of the title, 
 240 ; Jesus' feeling, 193 ; King- 
 dom of God and, 190; magical, 
 173 ; reign on earth, 194 
 
 Messiahship, consciousness of, 239 
 
 Messianism, 164 ; apocalyptic, 196 
 
 Micah, 98 
 
 Mind, states of, 12; states of, 
 analysis, 16 
 
 Miracles, 192, 201 ; explanations, 
 204; healings, 206; inner mean- 
 ing, 226, 227 ; mistake about, 
 201 ; sources, 78 ; those having 
 moral import, 214 ; three groups, 
 205-206 
 
 Mithra, cult of, 44, 52, 78, 264 
 
 Moral import of certain miracles, 
 214 
 
 Mordecai, 82 
 
 Morel, Ferd., 17 
 
 Moses, 114, 205, 231, 233 
 
 Mother, 305; child's love of, no; 
 as symbol, 187 
 
 Mountain, Jesus' retirement to, 
 230 
 
 Mystery-Religions, 3, 287 ; Chris- 
 tianity and, 2J ; Christianity 
 and, parallelism of prodromes, 
 2,Z', conception of life through 
 death, 263 ; desires and consum- 
 mation, 60 ; Hebrew prophecy 
 and, 35, 2)7 '< psychic nature of 
 process that created, 32-33 ; 
 psychological questions, 32 ; 
 symbolism and its relations to 
 that of Christianity, 38 
 
 Mystical experience, 245 
 
 Mysticism, 169; Catholic Church's 
 distinction, 169; diabolic, 176 
 
 Mystics, 24s, 267 
 
 Myths, y-], 78, 81, 105; astral 
 theory, 107, 108; of death and 
 resurrection, 288 ; dreams and, 
 108; interpretation, two meth- 
 ods, 122 ; psycho-analysis and, 
 105; Rank's type, 112; Resur- 
 rection of Jesus and, 288, 290; 
 three theories as to formation, 
 106 
 
 Nain, widow of, 219, 221 
 
 Napoleon, 75 
 
 Natural law, 201 
 
 Nature, 132, 133, 296; Jesus and, 
 298 
 
 Nazareth, 97, 206 ; Renan on, 130 
 
 Neander, A. W., on the Trans- 
 figuration, 228 
 
 Neo-Platonists, 31 
 
 Nero, 65 
 
 Nervous disorders, 17, 19 
 
 Neuroses, 207, 214, 283 
 
 Neurotics, 249, 267 
 
 New birth, 25, 42, 56, 157, 255, 
 261 ; images of, 262 
 
 Nicodemus, 137 
 
 Ninevites, 215, 304 
 
 Nirvana, 245 
 
 Nuns, 158 
 
 Obedience, 260, 261 
 Obligation, 194, 243 
 CEdipus complex, no, 246 
 Oint, yy 
 
330 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Old Testament, 3, 181 
 Orphism, 31 
 Osiris, 48 
 Osiris-Tammuz, "]"] 
 
 Pagan myths, ^^, 78, 81 
 
 Paganism, gospel of Christ and, 
 30; Greco-Roman, and Hebrew 
 prophecy, 61 ; Hellenistic, 62 ; 
 in Christianity, 64, 269; psy- 
 chology of, 4; symbols, 57 
 
 Palm Sunday, 309 
 
 Pantheism, 245 
 
 Parables, 184, 189, 308 
 
 Parents, illustrious, legend of, 112, 
 118, 124; inferior or poor, res- 
 cuers in legends, 112, 118, 124 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 114 
 
 Paternal imago, 246, 250; Jesus 
 and, 251 
 
 Paternity, 51 ; evolution of con- 
 cept, 52 
 
 Paul, Saint, expression of, 28, 
 46; Gnosticism and, 31 ; on the 
 life of Jesus, 66, 83 ; on the 
 Resurrection, 276-277 ; virgin 
 birth of Jesus and, 103 
 
 Pedantry, 91 
 
 Pentecost, 294 
 
 Perdition, 24 
 
 Perseus, legend of, 114 
 
 Persia, 134 
 
 Personality, Jesus and other hu- 
 man personalities, 13 ; mystery 
 of, 62 ; secret of, 14, 16 ; suicide 
 of, 169 
 
 Personality of Jesus, 89, 208, 219, 
 226, 238 
 
 Persons, evaluation of, 12; psy- 
 chology and, 10, 12 
 
 Peter, 84; confession, 229, 239, 
 256 
 
 Peter, gospel of, 271 
 
 Phallus, 48 
 
 Pharisees, 181, 183 
 
 Philo, 30 
 
 Piety, 291 
 
 Plato, 31 
 
 Pilate, yz 
 
 Pindar, 31 
 
 Poet, 295 
 
 Poetry, ill; of Jesus, 180, 295 
 
 Poseidon, 78 
 
 Posidonius, 30 
 
 Pratt, J. B., II 
 
 Prayer, 222; Gethesemane and the 
 cross, 258-259; Jesus on the 
 mountain, 230 
 
 Prediction of misfortune, in leg- 
 ends, 112, 118, 124 
 
 Premonition, 222 
 
 Primitive peoples, initiation rites, 
 262, 263 
 
 Prohibitions, 181 
 
 Projection, 119; phenomena, 284 
 
 Prophecy, 99; see also Hebrew 
 prophecy 
 
 Prophetic faculty, 36 
 
 Prophetic lines, different out- 
 comes, 60 
 
 Prophets, Hebrew, 34 
 
 Protestant Christianity, 269 
 
 Protestant theologians, 6 
 
 Psycho-analysis, 15 ; application 
 to the accounts of the birth of 
 Jesus, 123, 125 ; Christianity 
 and, 2Z ; paternal imago and, 
 246; study of myths and legends 
 and, 105 
 
 Psychology, human, 63 ; of pagan- 
 ism, 4; of religion, 7, 15; struc- 
 tural and functional points of 
 view, II, 15; theology versus, 
 9; three psychologies in the life 
 of Jesus, 90 
 
 Puberty, 142, 143, 262 
 
 Purgatory, 58 
 
 Purim, feast of the, 82 
 
 Puritans, 269 
 
 Pythagoras, 31 
 
 Quirinus, 95 
 
 Rabbis, Jewish, 86, 189, 203 
 
 Rank, O., on the myth of constant 
 type, 112, 118 
 
 Reality, 268 
 
 Redemption, drama of, 259 
 
 Reed shaken by the wind, 299 
 
 Regeneration, 25, 30 
 
 Relics, worship of, 285 
 
 Religion, dogmatic conception, 5 ; 
 evolution of, 27', psychology of, 
 a new idea, 7, 15; relation to 
 life, 23 
 
 Religious quest, 38 
 
 Renan, Ernest, on the Essenes, 
 137 ; on Galilee, 133 ; on Jesus 
 and his Kingdom, 198 ; on Naza- 
 reth, 130; on the parables, 185; 
 
INDEX 
 
 331 
 
 on Persia, 134; on the pilgrim- 
 age to Jerusalem, 144; on the 
 Temptation, 162; on the will of 
 Jesus, 13 
 Renunciation, 157, 173, 175 
 Repression of instincts, 18, 21 
 Resurrection of Jesus, 257, 266; 
 accounts, 270; central fact of 
 the Christian faith, 281 ; docu- 
 ments, 271; event itself, 280; 
 material fact, 292; new life pro- 
 duced by, 289 ; Paul's testimony, 
 276-277 ; Paul's understanding 
 of it, 2T] ; perversion of ac- 
 counts, 282 ; result produced, 
 288; significance, 291-292; spec- 
 tacle for contemplation, 287 
 Resurrections from the dead, 219, 
 
 221 
 Righteousness, 155 
 Risk, 183 
 
 Robertson, John M., 76, 82 
 Romulus and Remus, 113 
 
 Sabbath, 183, 303 
 
 Sacraments, 44, 258 
 
 Sacrifice, 50, 248, 252, 266; in 
 Jesus, 253 ; in the light of psy- 
 cho-analysis, 254; substitute for, 
 291 
 
 Saints, 269, 285 ; mystic union with 
 the divine, 51 
 
 Salpetriere, La, 17 
 
 Salvation, 24, 30, zi^ 39; Chris- 
 tian, 62 
 
 Sargon, legend of, 114 
 
 Satan, 170, 177 
 
 Saviour-Gods, 35, 42, 76, 288 
 
 Schema, 142 
 
 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 6 
 
 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 243 
 
 Schubert, R., on m3^hs, 107 
 
 Schure, M., 137 
 
 Schweitzer, A., 136, 232 
 
 Scripture, Jesus' knowledge of, 
 
 134 
 Secrets, 262 
 Seneca, 31 
 Sepulchre, 271 
 Sermon on the Mount, 69 
 Serpent, 47, 171 
 Sexual symbols, 48 
 Sexual union with divinity, 46 
 Sexuality, cults tinged with, 55 ; 
 
 in conception of union with 
 
 divinity, 42 < 
 
 Sheep and goats, 194 
 Sheep and shepherds, 300, 303 
 Shepherds, 103, 124 
 Sickness, 183, 206, 207; curing, 
 
 201 
 Signs, 215 
 Silberer, Herbert, 157; on the 
 
 crisis of introversion, 168; 
 
 "Through Death to Life," 261 
 Simeon, 124 
 Simplicity, 300 
 Sin, 24, 183, 206 
 Sincerity, 300 
 Sinlessness of Jesus, 84 
 Sinners, Jesus and, 155 
 Skies, opened, 156, 157, 159 
 Sleep, 231, 2Z2> 
 Smith, Wm. Benj., 81 
 Societies, secret, 262 
 Son, Jesus as, 54 
 Son of God, 235, 239, 253 
 Son of Man, 193, 194, 242 
 Song of Songs, 51 
 Sonship, 51, 160 
 Soul, ascension, conceptions and 
 
 symbols, 58; death of, 172, 173; 
 
 journeys of, 58 
 Sources on the life of Jesus, 65 
 Spirit, Holy, 46 
 Spiritual body, 278, 282 
 Spiritual fact transformed into 
 
 material, 283 
 Spiritual food, 217 
 Spiritual problems, escape from, 
 
 284 
 Spiritual wedding, 158 
 Spiritualisation, of symbols, 54 ; 
 
 progressive, 57 
 Spirituality, in Mystery-Religions, 
 
 55 
 
 Stapfer, E., on education among 
 the Hebrews, 131 ; on the 
 fourth gospel, 72 ; on the Res- 
 urrection, 27s, 280 
 
 Starbuck, E. D., 11 
 
 Stars, 107 
 
 States of mind, 12; analysis of, 
 16 
 
 Stigmatists, 267-268 
 
 Stoicism, 30 
 
 Stones, changing into bread, 171 ; 
 for bread, 299 
 
 Strauss, D. F., 313; on the mira- 
 
332 
 
 INDEX 
 
 cles, 204, 208, 209, 210; on the 
 Resurrection, 287, 290; on the 
 Temptation, 162; on the Trans- 
 figuration, 228, 231 
 
 Subconscious, 18, 25, 36, 109 
 
 SubHmation of the instincts, 21, 
 42, 47, 55, 59, 64 
 
 Submission, 311 
 
 Suetonius, 65 
 
 Supernatural, 202 
 
 Swan, knight of the, 116 
 
 Swine, 213 
 
 Symbolism, agrarian, 41 ; Chris- 
 tianity and the Mysteries, rela- 
 tion, 38; double — of God and 
 of salvation, 39; material and 
 mystical, 41 ; naturalistic and 
 sexual, 56; sexual, 48 
 
 Symbols, 61, 186; confounded 
 with prophecy, 198; sameness, 
 187; spiritualisation, 54; value, 
 188, 192 
 
 Sympathy, 208 
 
 Synoptic problem, 67 
 
 Taboos, 181 
 
 Tacitus, 65, 66 
 
 Talents, parable of, 308 
 
 Tammuz, ']^ 
 
 Teaching of Jesus, affirmative 
 character, 180-181 ; essence, 
 190; form, 180 
 
 Telepathy, 222 
 
 Tell, William, 159 
 
 Temple at Jerusalem, 309; epi- 
 sode, 130, 142; pinnacle, 174 
 
 Temptations of Jesus, 151, 161 ; 
 first in detail, 171 ; meaning to 
 Jesus, 165; offer of the three 
 issues of introversion, 169-170; 
 second in detail, 174; stupidities 
 on the subject, 162; third in 
 detail, 176 
 
 TertuUian, 4, 228 
 
 Thaumaturgy, 215 
 
 Theologians, Christian, 9; Protes- 
 tant, 6 
 
 Theology, 5; Jewish, 86; psychol- 
 ogy versus, 9 
 
 Theosophists, 137 
 
 Theresa, Saint, 51, 159 
 
 Thought and feeling, 166 
 
 Tiberius, 96 
 
 Tics, 283, 287 
 
 Totemism, 186 
 
 Tradition about Jesus, 68, 71 
 
 Tragedy, 297, 307, 309 
 
 Transference, 119, 207, 211 
 
 Transfiguration, 306; three ex- 
 planations, 228 
 
 Trust, 184 
 
 Unconscious, role of, 25 
 Unmorality, 248 
 
 Venturini, K. H., 137, 139, 140; 
 
 on the Temptation, 162 
 Vineyard, parable of, 308 
 Virgin birth, 99, 103 
 Virgin Mother, 53, 188 
 Virgins, parable of, 308 
 Visions, 228, 233 
 Voice from heaven, 156, 160, 
 
 235 
 Volney, Count de, 75 
 
 Water of life, 191 
 
 Wieland, C. M., 75-76 
 
 Wild beasts, 170, 171 
 
 Wilderness, 170 
 
 Wise men, 103, 124 
 
 Witnesses, 215 
 
 Woman taken in adultery, 305 
 
 Women, Jesus and, 305, 306 
 
 Word of God, 235 
 
 Wrede, W., 136, 229 
 
 Wundt. W. M., 7 
 
 Youth of Jesus, 130 
 
 Zeus pater, 52 
 
 Zurich school of psycho-analysts, 
 20, 119, 120 
 
z^-