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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

Just Published,
THE LIFE OF JESUS.
By ERNEST RENAN.
A handsome 12mo., cloth bound.
Peice $1.50.

STUDIES

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM.

M. EKNEST KENAN,
MKUBBK OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND AUTHOR OF " THE LIFE OF JESUS.*

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.
O. B. FROTHINGHAM,
PA6TOE OP THE THIRD UNITARIAN OHUROH
IN NEW YORK.

SBitf) a Bfograj fjital Introfrurttoit.

NEW YORK:
Car/eton, Publisher ; 413 Broadway.
Paris: Michel Levy Freres.
m docc lxiv.

Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1864, by
F.V. GHEISTEEN.
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of Now York.

R. CRAIGHRAD,
Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper,
Caitcm JSuiltrhig,
81, 83 and S3 Venire Slreei,

TEANSLATOE'S PEEFACE.

THE interest excited by the publication of M. Kenan's
" Life of Jesus" suggested the translation of this
volume of Essays in which the critical principles
and views of the author are explained and applied to other
portions of his great theme. The plan has been submit
ted to M. Eenan, and has received his cordial approval.
The Essays have been taken from the " Etudes d'His-
toire Religieuse," with the exception of the third, which is
the famous Introductory Lecture in the College of France,
and the last, which was published as an article in the Revue
des deux Mmdes, October 15th,, 1860.
The account of M. Renan's life and labors has been care
fully prepared by Mr. Henri Haerisse, of New York, a
gentleman whom a long arid intimate acquaintance with all
M. Renan's works, an admiration of his genius, and a sym
pathy with his character, render peculiarly competent for
the task.
Should this volume be greeted with welconie, other books
from the pen of this great master of the modern French
school of criticism may be offered to the public.
0. B. F.

M. Ernest Renan, . . 9
Author's Preface, . . 37
The Religions of Antiquity, 61
History of the People of Israel, 107
The Part of the Semitic People in the History of Civiliza
tion  109
The Critical Historians of Christ, 168
Mahomet and the Origins of Islamism, 226
John Calvin,  285
Channing,  298
M. Feuerbach and the New Hegelian School, 331
The Future of Religion in Modern Society, . 342

M. ERNEST RENAN.

4t Le devoir du savant est d'expri
mer avec franchise le resultat de
ees etudes, sans chercher a troublei
la conscience des personnes qui ne
sont pas appelees a la meme vie
quo lui, mais aussi sans tenir compte
des motifs d'interet et des preten-
dues convenances qui faussent si
souvent l1 expression de la v6rite."
Ernest Kenan-.

THE Faculty of the Theological Seminary of Saint Sui-
pice were once engaged in preparing their annual
examinations, when a young candidate for the dea-
conship, who had always been noted for his great
modesty and studious habits, asked leave to submit a num
ber of questions which perplexed his mind, and seemed to
depress his religious spirit. Unless they were solved to
his satisfaction, he could not hope to enter into holy-orders !
His earnestness astonished and alarmed the entire Faculty.
They refused at once to examine questions which to them
appeared novel or subversive ; and justly fearing that a
neophyte who on the threshold of the priesthood was
besieged with such misgivings might become a cause of
strife in' the Church, they withheld their protection and
bade him depart from the consecrated place.
This inquisitive, and conscientious student was Joseph
Eknest Renan. Born on the 27th of February, 1823, at
Treguier in Britany, of humble but respectable parentage,
his boyhood had not been without hardships and priva
tions. After several years of close application and success
in the college of his native town, he was sent to Paris, and
entered as a foundation scholar one of the primary theolo-

X M. EKNEST RENAN.
gical schools of the capital. At Saint Nicholas, as at Tre
guier, he soon became noted as an acute, diligent and
remarkably sedate student, who neglected all diversions,
and kept aloof from his comrades. He went through the
prescribed course in half the time allotted to it, and after
obtaining the highest prizes in the gift of the institution
was transferred to the Seminary of Issy.
His mind and disposition were then already mature.
Thoughtful in the extreme, distant without pride, and inde
pendent without dogmatism, ever ready to ponder, but
unwilling to bow before authorities which carried in them
selves no other weight than the dust of time, he ever
endeavoured to probe all questions, and examine all
opinions by the light of reason alone. "Worried with
doubts imparted by the very books which were to enlighten
him, he took upon himself to study the philosophers who
had been thrust out of the course. A new light then
seemed to dawn on him, and he resolved to bring all sub
jects within the range of method and ratiocination. As a
countryman of Abailard and Descartes, he could do no

Books open books, written thoughts unfold the mind,
but fail to reach the inward recesses of the heart, which, in
a man like Renan, needed nurture and consolations. The
personal influence of a friend, sensible and congenial, teach
ings prompted by love and affection, alone could effect it.
His sister Henrietta became the guide who soothed him in
distress, and unfolded from her retreat beyond the Rhine,
the radiant horizons which he never could have discovered
from the loop-holes of the Issy Seminary. She was a very
superior and highly educated woman, who resided in Ger
many, and conveyed to her younger brother not only coun
sels and encouragements, but thoughts and facts, doctrines
and opinions, derived from a daily intercourse with the
leading theologians and scholars of that country. It is
thus that in early life he became acquainted with the
works of Ewald, which have always exercised the greatest
influence over his own doctrines.
The time had arrived when the course prescribed for all,
required M. Renan to forsake science and metaphysics for
theology, and to enter the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. ,It
was in that celebrated institution that he gave the first indi-

M. EKNEST KENAN. xi
cations of a remarkable faculty for the study of Hebrew,
Syriac and Arabic. But if he devoted much time to the
Oriental languages, and acquired as a linguist a reputation
that extended beyond the walls of Saint Sulpice, it must
not be inferred that he limited himself to the bare meaning
and mechanism of words. He knew even then how to
impart to his philological studies a character and import
ance which were fully revealed, when several years after
wards, he planned a general history of the Semitic lan
guages. His first intention had been simply to give a sur
vey of the grammatical system of the Semites, exhibiting
the manner in which they succeeded in giving through the
medium of speech a complete version of the process of
thinking; but he was soon led to alter his plan. Lan
guage, said he, being the immediate result of human con
sciousness, follows its modifications ; and therefore, the
true theory of languages resides in their history. Even
mere grammatical surveys imply an extensive knowledge
of literary history. How can we give a complete exposi
tion of the system of the Hebraic language without first
establishing the chronology of the Hebrew texts? Can
the seeming oddities of the Arabic grammar and dictionary
be explained without knowing the circumstances under
'which the literary idiom of the. Mussulman world was
formed ? The scientific theory of a family of languages
consists, therefore, of two essential parts, viz. the external
history of the idioms composing it, the part they have
acted in space and time, their geography and chronology,
the order of the written documents — and their internal his
tory, the inorganic developments of their processes, their
comparative grammars, viewed not in the light of an immu
table law, but as the subject of perpetual, changes.
Considered from such a stand-point, philological studies
cease to require perseverance and memory only, and we
can more easily appreciate the motives which may have
prompted a thinker so bold and original to devote his
entire life to a study which, in the opinion of many, seems
to end in a field of threadbare technicalities. But his aspi
rations were not limited to the reputation of a great philo
logist, nor had he been matriculated at Saint Sulpice to
excel in the Oriental languages to the exclusion of every
thing else ; and at the close of the second year, he showed

Xll M. ERNEST RENAN.
himself such a thorough master of ecclesiastical history and
of the early Fathers, that he was readily allowed to pass
through the preliminary steps towards admission into holy
orders. Another year rolled on, every step in the study of the
origins of the Church increasing his perplexity. It was in
vain that he endeavoured to resist, his conscience repelled
all attempts at conceding points which he deemed vital and
absolute; and undaunted by the bleak prospects that
awaited him if he once dared betray the least hesitation, he
confessed his doubts to the eminent professors who presided
over the institution. With what success, we have already
seen. But if M. Renan was compelled to leave Saint Sul
pice, he did not depart without preserving the esteem of
his superiors'! and it was through the influence of M.
Dupanloup,'then President of the Seminary, now Bishop
of Orleans, and his most bitter opponent, that he obtained
a situation as tutor in the college Stanislas. The drudgery
of a lecture-room could but dampen his ardour, had he ever
entertained the intention of submitting to it longer than
was necessary to protect him from pressing wants. Impa
tient to carve out for himself an independent position,
requiring every moment of his time and attention to attain
his object, he soon left the college, and after an ordeal of
poverty and privations, such as very few students were
ever known to have endured, even in the Latin Quarter, he
passed with the highest honors his examination for Univer
sity Professor of Philosophy. He then sought by giving
private lessons, the means of carrying out his favorite
studies with that freedom which alone can develop genius
and foster originality.
In France, knowledge and merit do not long remain
unknown and unrewarded. There Are many opportunities
which every one can seize upon and work into means of
acquiring influence, resources and fame. The prizes
awarded yearly by the five Academies invariably go
beyond the purse and crown of ivy leaves which are
adjudged in so solemn a manner to the successful candi
dates. They open new careers, remove disabilities, and
lead the way to preferment through life. Science itself
becomes a gainer, for the Academicians, in preparing the
lists of subjects and in setting forth the conditions of the

M. EKNEST RENAN. xiii
programme, do not so much keep in view the interests of
the unknown scholar as the claims of a progressive science,
which must not be allowed to depend merely on the initia
tive of the thinking world. A direction must be imparted
to the intellectual efforts of the inquirer and the learned ;
and it is unquestionable that none can give the impulse
better than the members of the French Institute. True it
is that the conditions which they impose are often exacting
in the extreme, and the tendency is to increase the burden
still more, but the consequence of a rigor rendered neces
sary by the exigencies of the times, is only to thrust out of
the arena those who cannot add to^ a thorough knowledge
of the facts, original discoveries, and new combinations of
thoughts presented in a form concise, forcible and elegant.
Despite the arduousness of the task, M. Renan was fully
prepared to enter all the lists, for his proficiency now lay
in the exact as well as in the philosophical sciences; but
unwilling to compete for prizes which did not come fully
within the range of his particular field»of inquiries, he
waited patiently until the Institute felt disposed to accept a
philological subject, giving ample^scope for critical investi
gations. At last the attention of the Academy of Inscrip
tions and Belles Lettres was called to a memoir of his, in
which he endeavoured^ boldly to do for the Semitic what
Bopp had so successfully accomplished for the Hindoo-
European languages. The year following (1847), M. de
Tocqueville, in the name of the Academy, awarded him
the coveted Volney prize and a gold medal. This memoir
became the basis of a more extended work, which when
published in its final form under the title of General His
tory and Comparative System of the Semitic Languages, sealed
M. Renan's reputation as one of the greatest orientalists
France has produced since the days of Sacy and Burnouf.
It would prove interesting to follow M. Renan in his
survey of the Semitic dialects, to show that they did not
Spring one from the other, and thus establish the hypothesis
of a common prototype for all of them. We might then
set forth his theory concerning the origin of languages,
and how they spring into life in a state of completeness,
and with- an amazing complexity. Taking the development
of the Semitic languages, which he divides into three his
toric parts, commencing with the Hebrew, from time imme-

XIV M. ERNEST RENAN.
morial tp the sixth century before our era ; the Aramean,
till the seventh century after Christ; and finally, the
Arabic, which ends by absorbing all the other dialects,
we should be led to see the Hebrew occupying among the
Semites a philological position analogous to that held by the
Sanscrit in the Hindoo-European family ; and to study the
beauties of a language so rich in that order of ideas pecu
liar to the race and its aspirations. Thus it contains four
teen synonyms to express confidence in God, nine for the
forgiveness of sins, twenty for the observation of the law ;
and withal it can boast of only five hundred primitive
words or radicals ! The literary history would also afford a
vast field. From the supposed existence of an ancient
Semitic literature, the old fragments in the historical books
and psalms to the classic period under David and Solomon,
and the new style inaugurated by the Prophets, we might
ascertain the time when the Hebrew ceased to become
a spoken language. M. Renan is inclined to place this
event at the time, of the Babylonian captivity, six centuries
before Christ. But although no longer spoken, it re
mains in force as a written language, witnesses a revival
under the Maccabees, absorbs Greek and Latin words, and
finally, in the hands of the rabbis, assumes the form of an
artificial and barbarous patois, with a goodly number of
Spanish and Portuguese expressions that many Jews, to this
day, repeat, devoutly believing them to be unadulterated
Hebrew. It is also in the General History that M. Renan sums up
the results of his vast ethnological researches ; beginning
with the inferior races, which appeared on the globe at a time
that geologists alone can ascertain. Those races entirely
disappeared whenever they came in contact with the civil
ized races ; for the Semites and Aryans found in the coun
tries they sought to inhabit, semi-savage people which they
exterminated. Thesq, however, still survive in the myths
of nearly all civilized nations under the form of magical
or gigantic races. Then, according to M. Renan, came the
first civilized races, as the Chinese in Eastern Asia, the
Couschites and Shamites in Western Asia and Africa, with
a primitive civilization founded upon materialism and reli
gious instincts imperfectly developed, and which possessing
only crude notions in regard to art and elegance, showed

M. ERNEST RENAN. XV
its characteristics in a literature devoid of ideality, mono
syllabic languages without flexions and hieroglyphical
writing ; no military talents, no public spirit, but a perfect
administration, and all energies turned towards trade and
comfort. These races reckon from three to four thousand
years of history, preceding the Christian Era. Afterwards,
.appeared the noble races, now called Aryan and Semitic,
which came from the Himalaya Mountains. They came
at«the same time, the Aryan in Bactriana and the Semitic
in Armenia, 2000 years B. c. Although originally infe
rior to the Couschites and Shamites in regard to external
civilization as exhibited in manual labours and administra
tive talents, they far surpassed theni ih vigour, courage a'nd
religious spirit. From the beginning, the Aryans over
stepped the Semites in political and military aptitude, and
v afterwards in intellectual efforts, but the latter preserved
for a long time their religious superiority, and finally
brought all the Arj-ans to monotheistic ideas. Their task
once accomplished, the Semitic races declined rapidly, and re
linquished to them the destinies of mankind. Thus, Compara
tive Philology, with the help of Critical History, finally suc
ceeds, if not in solving, at least in circumscribing the mys
terious problem of the origin of mankind. It establishes,
beyond a doubt, the unity of the Hindoo-European race,
connects with it the Semitic and Couschite, and shows the
possibility of a perfect unity of all the races which have
founded civilization in Western Asia, in Europe, in the
North and East of Africa ; fixes with almost a certainty
the starting point of the Aryan race in the Himalaya
Mountains, in which it is also disposed to place the cradle
of the Semites, but hesitates to do the like for the Chinese,
and especially for the inferior races which formed the first
human stratum of the globe. It gives the chronological
order in which these different races made their appearance
in history ; and with becoming modesty, finally proclaims
" that in the actual condition of science, all systems can
only be provisionary, especially if we compare the little we
know with the enormous mass of knowledge it is yet pos
sible to acquire."
Later in life, when in a position to devote some of his
time to purely scientific studies, which from his youth he
favored so highly that he always regretted not to have

Xvi M.' ERNEST RENAN.
applied himself exclusively to them, M. Renan brought into
the investigation of physical phenomena the ardour, skill,
and ingenuity which stamp his philological and historic
works with such originality. Familiar with the great dis
coveries of Claude Bernard, Bunsen and Kirkoff, Laurent,
Peclet, Berthelot, Pasteur, and that host of scientific men
who have done so much for science, he strove to go beyond
the history of the world as Comparative Philology depicts
it to us, and to ascertain whether matter itself could not be
interrogated or made to yield its quota of information in
regard to the progressive modifications which may be said
to have prepared the abode of mankind. It is interesting
to bring together the above recapitulation and a condensed
statement of his, which might be termed the history of
primeval existence. We translate it from an article lately
published in the Revue des Deux-Mondes* on the Natural
and Historical Sciences.
" 1°. The period of atoms, existing at least in a virtual condition, — age
of mere mechanical forces, but containing already the germ
of all that was to follow ;
2°. The molecular period, when chemistry begins, and matter as
sumes distinct groups ;
3°. The solar period, when matter is collected in space, into colossal
masses, all separated by enormous distances ;
4°. The planetary period, when in each of these systems, distinct
bodies, which possess an individual development, detach
themselves from the central mass, and when the planet Earth
in particular begins to exist ;
5°. The period of the development of every planet, and especially
of the Earth, through the successive evolutions which geo
logy reveals, when life first appears, and botany, zoology, and
physiology begin to have an object;
6°. The period of unconscious human existence, which is revealed
to us by comparative philology and mythology, and extend
ing from the day when beings deserving the name of men
began to exist, up to the historic times ;
7*. The historical period, which dawns in Egypt, and reckons about
5000 years, of which only 2500 have a certain continuity,
whilst only the last 300 or 400 possess a full consciousness of
the existence of the entire planet and of the whole of man
kind."
However hypothetical as a -whole, this cosmogony is evi

* Oct. 15, 1863.

M. ERNEST RENAN. xvii
dently true in its parts ; and it has rarely happened that a
man of imagination, and who devoted so much of his life
to history, ethics and philosophy; has exhibited such a
clear understanding of the results of modern science.
M. Renan's next attempt to emerge from obscurity proved
equally successful. The opinion had long been held, even
among scholars, that in consequence of the barbarian inva
sions, Western Europe had nearly lost its knowledge of
antiquity, and ceased to study the Greek authors and lan
guage, which, when the two Churches divided the Roman
world, were wholly forgotten. This, however, was a sup
position which M. Renan proved to have been altogether
erroneous, in a critical memoir on the study of the Greek
Literature during the Middle-Ages, to which the French
Institute awarded the first prize. Although occasionally
quoted, it has not yet appeared in print. Soon afterwards
(1848), he published an essay on the Origin of Language,
which in 1852 assumed the proportion of an elaborate
octavo volume. Opposed by Henry Ritter, but almost en
dorsed by Grimm, who himself gave, at the time of the
reprint, a volume on the same subject with identical con
clusions, M. Renan attempts in that work to solve this
abstruse and difficult question, not by resorting to abstract
considerations, as had been invariably the case, but by
means of the science of Comparative Philology. He as
sumed that language was formed all at once, and sprang
instantaneously from the creative genius of every~-race ;
granting, however, that the elements pre-existed, as in the
bud or unexpanded blossom, the flower exists entire with
all its essential parts, although the parts themselves are far
from having attained their final form and fulness. This
essay was followed by a publication of Sanchoniatho's Pheni--
cian History.
Such constant and erudite labours could not fail to at
tract the attention of the dispenser of all governmental
favours in France, as well as of the learned publie; and in
1849, the Secretary of State sent him on a literary mission
to Italy, from which he brought back the materials for a
very remarkable work on Averroes and Averroism, which
was republished in book form in 1852, at the request of
M. Cousin. On his return, he was appointed assistant-
librarian in charge of the Oriental manuscripts in the
2

xviii M. ERNEST RENAN.
National Library. Free henceforth from anxious_ cares, he
applied himself with renewed ardour to the studies which
formed the solace of his life ; and in 1852, stood with eclat
his final examination for Doctor of Philosophy, selecting
as a thesis, Be Philosophia Peripatetica apud Syros. He
was at this time married to a daughter of Henry Scheffer,
the great French painter.
It has always been one of fhe leading characteristics of
the French journals to set a high value on literary contri
butions, and to open their columns to elaborate essays, often
the first efforts of men destined in after life to occupy the
highest rank in the science and literature of their country.
When in the full enjoyment of a well earned reputation, so
far from ceasing to write for the journals which brought
them into notice, those grateful and now eminent publicists,
take a certain pride in maintaining through life a connexion
which enables them also to keep in constant contact with a
public ever willing to peruse in the columns of a daily
paper, essays which vie in importance with the most finish
ed dissertations to be found in the leading European Re
views. On the other hand, the editors themselves, alive to
the necessity of responding to a taste which has become
general in France, strive to secure the writers of promise
and talent whose assistance is calculated to add interest
and value to their journal. The Debate, especially, has inva
riably been successful in discovering and securing contri
butors of uncommon literary abilities, who may be said to
have attained through its columns a European reputation.
The Bertins, a family of editors known for their great tact
and foresight, and who have presided over the destinies of
that celebrated paper for more than half a century, were
not tardy in espying the latent abilities which M. Renan
was soon to display as an original essayist and fearless
critic. Availing themselves of the earliest opportunity,
they placed him side by side with Messrs. de Sacy, Saint-
Marc Girardin, Franck, Emile Littre, Laboulaye, and a
number of thinkers, historians, scholars and critics, who
take the lead in all that pertains to literature, science and
criticism in France.
The numerous articles since published by M. Renan in
Les Debats and some Reviews of high standing, like the
Revue des Deux-Mondes and the Journal des Savants, dis-

M. ERNEST RENAN. xix
play the soundest erudition, joined to a breadth of views
and fearless independence which excite surprise and chal
lenge admiration, when we consider the age of the author,
his times and country. The most abstruse questions, the
subjects which were supposed to belong exclusively to the
domain of technical science, are elucidated in an eloquent
manner, and placed, through a style of extreme clearness,
within the reach of the vast majority of readers. The
popularity of these essays was so-marked, that a selection in
two separate volumes soon attained a sixth edition. So
great a success, unprecedented in works of such character,
was mainly due to the extraordinary merit of the essays
themselves ; but it must be conceded that it may also be
ascribed to the Preface, which, setting forth boldly the
principles of what is generally termed modern criticism —
La Critique Moderne — assumed the importance of a mani
festo. The time had arrived when the manifold labours
which characterized so vividly the tendency of the age, and
opened new channels in nearly all branches of knowledge,
should find an exponent, eloquent and untrammelled, pro
minent and sufficiently bold, who, deaf to the clamours of
the crowd, and rising above all prejudices, would assert
the claims of modern science and its right to broach all
opinions based upon scientific truths and principles. M.
Renan became that fearless advocate, and the preface
to the essays, was the open declaration of the new
school. Without challenging refutations or shrinking from con-,
troversies, the Preface to the Etudes gives the method fol
lowed by that array of progressive scholars who are deter
mined to enjoy and permit others to enjoy, the greatest
latitude in every thing which pertains to tne pursuit of
science under all its different aspects"; and who, notwith
standing a bitter opposition, have succeeded in making
themselves heard and even respected by their opponents.
There is nothing polemical in their efforts; they do not
strive to oppose any existing doctrine, but seem to be ad
vancing speedily in the path of investigation without caring
for the uproar which at times impedes their labours, with
out lessening their exertions. In less than a quarter of a
century, they have remodelled the old sciences, created new
ones, and brought to bear upon them all, a critical method

XX M. ERNEST KENAN. .
which thus far has proved too successful ever to be abandon
ed or despised.
In a task which embraces the most important problems,
it is impossible to avoid questions relating to the origins of
religions, "I was drawn towards them by an invincible attrac
tion, for religion is certainly the highest of the manifesta
tions of human nature, and that which among all poetry
approaches nearer the essential aim of art, in elevating man
above common life, and awakening the consciousness of his
celestial origin," says M. Renan; and in this he is only
the echo of all those who live for the sake of truth alone,
and endeavour to reach the lofty regions from which it often
sends forth the effulgenpe of divinity. Disclaiming all in
tentions of lessening our religious tendencies, he sincerely
wishes to elevate and purify them, believing that the study
of religions can only "soothe the soul and promote a bless
ed life." Religion being an integral part of human nature,
is true in its essence, although impressed with the defects
pertaining to the particular forms of worship of all times
and countries. As to discussing purely theological ques
tions, he does not think himself any more obliged to do it,
than Burnouf, Creuzer, Guignaut and all critical historians,
deemed themselves bound to undertake the apology or
refutation of the different religions which formed the subject
of their investigations. Withal, he submits with evident
sorrow to the sad condition " of being thrust out of the
great religious family, in which may be found some of the
, best-hearted people in the world, and of knowing that those
with whom he. would wish so much to live in moral com
munion deem him a perverse being." Such, however, has
always been the case ; and despite a vaunted progress in
matters .of religious tolerance, all rationalists, whatever may
be their, origin and sincerity, must resign themselves to
being cursed and excommunicated by those who believe
that beyond the pale of their own creed, there exist only
errors and heresies.
Notwithstanding the subversive character of his doctrines
and the dissatisfaction of the clergy, M. Renan was made a
knight of the Legion of Honour ; and in 1856, he saw his
efforts crowned with the greatest reward which can be
awarded to a scholar, in being elected a member of the Insti
tute of France, in place of the lamented Augustin Thierry

II. ERNEST RENAN. XXI
The bent of his genius, now that he had relinquished all
hopes of devoting himself to the Natural Sciences, and
especially to, that of Comparative Physiology, for which he
always expressed a strong predilection, was evidently to
wards the history of the Eastern World, the languages of
its several nations, and their, place in the progressive march
of the human race. He had already accomplished enough
to become what might be called the representative of the
Oriental, races among the scholars of his country; but
ambitious to do more, he again resumed his scientific re
searches, and published successively a new translation of
the Booh of Job (to which Ary Scheffer intended to add a
series of illustrations, left incomplete, unfortunately, by his
sudden death), a commentary on the. age and characteristics
of, that great poem^ and a version in. French of, the Song
of Songs, brought back, ,according to Bunsen^s idea, to its
original form, which,, as is now supposed, was an adaptation
to the stage of that early period. In 1860, he was intrusted
by the Emperor with a mission for archaeological explora
tions on the supposed sites of the Phenician cities^
If from that expedition the scientific world reaped an
ample collection of epigraphic monuments of the highest
' importance, and valuable, specimens of Phenician: art, from
the time of the Assyrian domination to that of the Seleu-
cides, wrenched from the necropolis of Sour and Sidon, the
explorer purchased dearly the honour of having first brought
to light those vestiges of a by -gone civilization. Whilst in
the Lebanon, M. Renan's beloved sister, who accompanied
him in that , arduous journey, from which she hoped to
gather blissful reminiscences to last her through life, sud
denly expired in his arms. Nothing, perhaps,' can express
in fitter terms the feelings of her bereaved brother, than
the dedication which opens in so solemn a manner his Life
of Jesus:
TO THE SPIRIT OT MY SISTEE HENRIETTA, WHO DIED AT BTBLOS ON THE
24lH DAT OF SEPTEMBER, 1861.
" Doest thou remember, from thy resting place, in, the bosom, of God,
those long days at Ghazir, where alone with thee, I wrote these
pages inspired by the scenes which1 we had just traversed? Silent
close to me,, thou reasdst every leaf, and copied it as soon as written,
whilst the sea, the villages, the ravines, the mountains, spread then>

XXU M. ERNEST RENAN.
selves at our feet. When the overpowering light of day had yielded
to the innumerable army of stars, thy ingenuous and delicate ques
tions, thy discreet misgivings, brought me back to the sublime object
of our common thoughts. One day thou saidst that thou wouldst
love this book, first because it had been written with thee, and also
because it pleased thee. If at times thou apprehendedst for it the
narrow opinions of frivolous men, yet thou always believedst that
truly reHgious spirits would in the end be pleased with it. When in the
middle of grateful meditations, death struck us both with its wing, the
sleep of fever seized us both at the same hour ; I awoke alone I . . .
Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblos, and
the sacred springs where the women of the ancient mysteries came
to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O my good genius, to me whom
thou lovedst, those truths which rule over death, save us from fearing
and make us almost love it."
M. Renan was yet in the East, when the Professors of
the College of France, and the Members of the French
Institute who enjoy the right of proposing the candidates
for all the vacant chairs of that celebrated institution, justly
impressed with the necessity of adding to their number a
scholar of his attainments and reputation, proposed that
he should accept the Professorship of the Hebrew, Chal-
daic and Syriac Languages and Literature, vacant since
1857 by the death of the great orientalist, Etienne Quatre-
mere. On his return, the Emperor appointed him ; but
before taking possession of his chair, M. Renan submitted
to the competent authorities a detailed programme of the
course which he intended to follow. He could not view
this appointment simply in the light of a personal prefer
ment to a high office. Deeply regretting the discredit into
which the Historical Sciences in matters of Biblical exegesis
had fallen in France ever since the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, and anxious to elevate them again to the high
standard they held before their introduction into Holland and
Germany, he only accepted that coveted professorship, hoping
to enjoy like all his predecessors free scope in his method
of instruction. Notwithstanding its close connexion with
the history of the origin and early monuments of the pre
vailing religion, the Chair of Hebrew was not and never
could be transformed into a theological one. What theo
logy would he have taught ? There is scarcely an import
ant passage in the Bible which is not interpreted in a dif
ferent manner by every creed. Must he choose one or
endeavour to conciliate all these opposing interpretations ?

M. ERNEST RENAN. xxiii
Clearly not. The dogmatism or religious import of the
sacred writings does not come within his province. In
the building adjoining, called La Sorbonne, theologians
and orthodox students can obtain the biblical knowledge
they seek, and in the manner best adapted to their mode
of inquiry. In the College of France, the case is different.
Ever since its foundation in the sixteenth century, at the
time when the Reformation was working such momentous
changes in the scientific notions and modes of thinking of
the French people, it has always been considered as a lay
and independent establishment, where profane and secular
doctrines in all matters of knowledge might be substituted
for what we may appropriately term oracular explanations.
We have already seen how elevated and philosophical
were M. Renan's notions in regard to philological stu
dies ; and now that he had before him such precedents, it
is easy to infer that he was disposed less than ever to ban
ish from the curriculum historic and critical investigations.
If the result of such a course is to bring forth facts or
opinions at variance with the belief or interpretations of
churchmen, let churchmen maintain their ground if they
can, and oppose the new-fangled doctrines in the manner
best calculated to promote the interest of the Church.
The field is open to tbem as to all exegetical scholars ; the
texts are the very ones offered by themselves in evidence,
and as they do not hesitate to appeal to reason when faith
fails to open the way to an unlimited credence in matters
pertaining to religious history, they should not lay claim
to universal sway in this respect. At all events, it is not
the place of a professor in the College of France to trans
form his chair into an arena for polemical or apologetic
teachings, nor is he debarred from the privilege of investi
gating the historical character of religions in general, whe
ther they are professed by heathens or Christians. It does
not follow that by virtue of his office he necessarily be
comes an infallible interpreter, and that his views thereby
acquire the force of a rescript. From the moment that
he resorts solely to science and reason, he is amenable to
the laws of science and reason, but without regard to the
exigences of faith, whether religious or traditional.
Principles so open and spirited could not admit of com
promise, nor was M. Renan disposed to make any conces-

XXIV M. ERNEST RENAN.
sion. The last request of his dying sister had been to
relinquish all hopes of ever advocating his opinions from
a chair or tribune, rather than yield to the pretensions of
a bigoted crowd. And when he was called at last to face
the eager multitude which on the day of his inaugural
thronged all the seats and avenues of the college, he bold
ly and eloquently set forth a programme which expressed
in unmistakable language his convictions, hopes and ever
lasting aspirations. The Church party, always powerful in
France, even when seemingly at variance with the govern
ment, viewed with anger and alarm the appointment of
such an intrepid thinner to the oldest chair in the first
institution in the land. Forming a cabal, they strove by
clamorous interruptions to deafen the voice of the young
professor, who, calm and undaunted, compelled at last his
opponents to hear and listen. He had taken for the text
of his inaugural address, a survey of the part played by
the Semitic peoples in the History of Civilization. Could
he unfold the annals of that great race, and omit the last
period of its momentous influence over the religious doc
trines of the world ? Was. not Christianity the offspring
of Judaism ? To use a metaphor employed in that me
morable discourse, you might as well allow the professor
of Botany to describe the root of the plant he wishes to
depict but forbid him to analyse its flower and fruit. And
when, the exigence of the subject requiring him to speak
of the sublime founder of the Christian religion, he let fall
from his lips a sentence which brought forth angry and deaf
ening demonstrations on the part of the adherents of the
clergy, the students who had congregated in force when in
formed that the Church party were endeavouring to drive the
eloquent orator from his chair, invaded the hall, and respond
ed with, loud and earnest applause. This is the sentence :
" A man incomparable, — so great that although every
thing here should be considered from a scientific point of
view, I do not wish to contradict those who, struck with the
exceptional character of his works, call him God."
In vain did the clergy endeavour to stifle a voice so
fearless..- Who knows but this solitary phrase is destined
to become the turning point of a religious reformation
among those who heard it?
The government deemed it necessary at that particular

M. ERNEST RENAN. XXV
juncture to conciliate the Clerical party ; and on the next
day, the official column of the Moniteur contained a decree
suspending M. Renan's course indefinitely. The Adminis
tration could possibly afford to yield to the demands of an
influential party which in this instance assumed the dic
tatorial character of a faction; but the, vast majority of the
educated'class were not willing to submit quietly to restraints,
justly deemed by them unwarrantable. They protested,
visited, and serenaded nightly the persecuted professor, and
for several days filled the spacious amphitheatre of the College,
hoping that before such an outburst of disapprobation the
order would be rescinded. It was in vain; M. Renan
never appeared before them ; but firm in the belief that his
course met the approbation of all impartial thinkers, and
bent Ton fulfilling a mission which his opponents by their
rash conduct rendered imperative, he appealed to the press.
In a manly address, he asked of his colleagues and hearers
to weigh his reasons, and await with patience the time
when he could once more expatiate in public upon the
origins of a religious history, certainly misunderstood and
perhaps perverted.
M. Renan had long cherished the hope that the results of
his vast researches might be made to converge into a work
of general import which the masses could easily grasp, and
in the course of time evolve, irrespective of consequences.
Whilst in Palestine, with no other help than a few books,
and under the cheering influence of his sister, he com
menced this great undertaking, which was yet unfinished
when her untimely death hastened his return to France.
Free henceforth from all the restraints and occupations
incident to a professorship, he resumed his labours with
diligence; and just one year after the scene enacted in the
College of France, and, as a tacit reply to the attacks of the
clergy, M. Renan published his Life of Jesus. The publi
cation of this work is a grave event. It opens, at least
among the French, a new era, and for the first time com
pels the vast majority of readers to face, disduss, and if
possible, solve for themselves, questions' of vital import
which have hitherto been left to tKe precepts of orthodox
exponents or the mutterings of traditional faitk
There are in the sphere of historical studies, phenomena
which historians and philosophers often hesitate to investi-

XXVI M. ERNEST RENAN. „
gate, and names surrounded with such a halo, that they
rarely fail to dazzle those who attempt to unravel their
mysterious character. The advent of Christianity is one of
these phenomena, and the name of its sublime founder the
dazzling obstacle which bids defiance to the curiosity of
all. True it is, that the world has never been wanting
in deists, sceptics and free-thinkers, but their influence was
transient, because_ passion, and not the love of truth alone,
prompted their efforts. It is only during the present
century that those who aim solely at dispelling the mist
which still surrounds the origins of the greatest religious
transformation known, and whose labours rest absolutely
upon a scientific basis, have succeeded in obtaining a place
among the influential and respected scholars of all nations.
Yet, notwithstanding their efforts, a life of Jesus, which all
could peruse, and in keeping with the actual state of scien
tific knowledge ; that is, a history where the historical
Christ was not formally and absolutely separated from the
evangelical Jesus, such as the gratitude of the modern
world has framed it within the hidden recesses of religious
consciousness, had yet to be written. M. Renan has at
tempted it. Forty thousand copies sold in the space of six
weeks, the bitter denunciations of the official clergy, and
sincere applause from numberless thinkers and scholars
every where, attest the merit of that work, which may yet
prove to be the first of a long series of lofty endeavours
destined to revive and modify the religious creed of a
people who, in matters pertaining to religion, have been
heretofore submissive, sceptical or indifferent.
M. Renan's book is more than a biography of Jesus, it is
the introduction to a history of the origins of the religion
which now rules the world. Will he ever complete it?
His language betraj^s a state of doubt and hesitation ; for it
is a momentous task to not only restore the annals of the
early times of Christianity, but to describe the strange
revolutions undergone in the sphere of religious principles
during the first two centuries of the Christian era. How
imposing a subject, and how fraught with great teachings !
After tracing the outline of the sublime drama which,
commenced noiselessly in an obscure town of Galilee, ends
its first act amidst such clamours and lamentations on the
bleak Golgotha, the historian would describe tbe wondrous

M. ERNEST RENAN. xxvii
efforts of the apostles and agony of the martyrs of the new
religion under the pagan emperors, its eventful struggle
and final triumph over the Roman Empire. Impelled by
a necessity which no impartial historian can avoid, he could
not limit himself to a mere recital of facts. Ideas would
soon command his attention, and take the place of names,
dates and chronology. And it is unquestionable that the
most striking features of such a history must be the de
scription complete, unbiased and fearless, of the extra
ordinary modifications and almost subversive changes, in
troduced by the disciples in the original idea and leading
principles of their sublime master. Let us hope that M.
Renan's History of the Origins of Christianity (intended
to consist of four volumes, of which the Life of Jesus is the
first) will develop these lofty considerations, which, above
all, should be set forth, with the truthfulness and eloquence
which constitute the chief merits of all his works.
As to the Life itself, it is necessarily based upon the books
of the New Testament. The profane literature of the first
centuries of our era, the apocryphae and Talmuds united,
contain almost nothing that can prove of any avail to the
historian. Yet, it does not follow that the canonical
gospels must be accepted wholly as the Church hands them
to us, and followed with servile adherence to the literal
meaning of every word. Experience has shown that while
exegetes must study the Scriptures with feelings of rever
ence, they may also search them freely, and hope to succeed
in separating the grain from the chaff. It is thus, that in
Montauban, as well as at Tubingen, they have come to con
sider the books of the New Testament as legendary and
impersonal compositions. Luke's only betrays an unmis
takable identity. M. Renan's opinion is that we have
neither of the original gospels which bear the names of
Matthew and Mark ; while the books ascribed to them are
only subsequent, arrangements which were completed one
by the other. Yet, he believes himself capable of restoring
what belonged to each originally, with sufficient certainty
to fix the exact weight of these compositions in tbe scale of
historical worth. Thus, Matthew can be trusted for the
discourses, whilst Mark possesses greater precision, less
credulity, and is therefore freer from fables. As to Luke's
book, it is wholly derived from Matthew's and Mark's.

XXVIU • M. ERNEST RENAN.
And strange as it may seem, the Gospel to which M Renan
ascribes the first place, so far as biographical and historical
assertions are concerned, is the most contested of all ; namely,
that which bears the name of John. Despite the remark
able discrepancies which all impartial exegetes cannot fail
to detect when comparing that gospel with the other three
discourses ascribed to Jesus, and which are so much at
variance with the Logia that M. Renan feels compelled to
acknowledge that, " if Jesus spoke as Matthew relates, he
cannot have spoken as John asserts;" notwithstanding
metaphysical notions not only wholly novel but. contrary
certainly to the spirit of Christ, he does not hesitate to accept
it as the basis of his history. To show his preference, M.
Renan takes the example of Socrates, and asks whether it
is Xenophon or Plato who sets forth the Socratic teachings
with greater truth ? It is not doubtful, says he, that it is
Xenophon. Yet, in writing a life of Socrates, he would not
therefore reject the details found in Plato, inasmuch as John
(who in this comparison represents the great Academician)
is a better and more complete biographer than Matthew.
M. Renan then accepts as authentic the four canonical
gospels, but after having first shown the degrees through
which they have been made to pass. That is, the original
documents which are now lost ; then a state of admixture,
where the original documents were amalgamated without any
endeavour to polish or accord, — which is the actual condition
of Matthew's and Mark's ; — followed by a state of com
bination, concordance and wrought redaction, as exhibited in
the gospel of Luke. As to John s, it is apologetic and sectarian.
If the Gospels could be so modified, the word authenticity
would not convey to us its usual meaning. It may be that
a book can be authentic in all its parts, taken separately,
and spurious as a whole ; and we imagine that it is in this
sense that the New Testament is accepted by modern exe
getical scholars. If so, we may more readily understand how
they can combine, blend, embody and re-embody them accord
ing to their own conception of Scriptural History. They
may even add elements gathered from different, though
homogeneous sources, such, for instance, as the fragments
from old gospels found in Papias and the early Fathers.
Yet, notwithstanding a latitude which many critics, how
ever tolerant and liberal, would deem excessive, the author

M. ERNEST RENAN. xxix
might compose a life of Jesus perfectly orthodox, superior
perhaps to those which we owe to Riccius, Genoude, or our
own Jeremy Taylor, so far as style and method are con
cerned, but which woujd hardly correspond to the actual
state of the science of evangelical exegesis. To write such
a history the historian should advance one step; but so
great is the ^effort that it has caused many to hesitate, and
recede at the last moment : — He must deny the possibility
of miracles. M, Renan did not pause to consider whether
a denial so bold would estrange him at once from his
associates and excite the anger of his opponents. As early
as the year 1849, in a periodical called La Liberie de penser,
he maintained that we must not accept marvellous recitals
literally, whatever may be their origin or antiquity, inas
much as the essence of Criticism is the negation of
supernatural agencies. And that there should be no mis
understanding in the meaning of the word supernatural, he
gave a definition which is remarkably exact. "What I
mean here by that word," said he, "is the miracle; that is,
a particular act on the part of the Deity, inserting itself in
the series of physical and psychological events in the world ;
thus disturbing the natural course of facts, in view of a
particular government of mankind."
All facts, then, must be considered as the results of laws
immutable, universal, and, susceptible of a rational explana
tion. Many may still appear, to us extraordinary, incom
prehensible or wonderful, but they are nevertheless entitled
to a place in the domain of analysis and science. That
science cannot yet explain many of them, is only a dire
necessity to which we must submit, but without relinquish
ing the hope of solving the mystery which still surrounds
them and conceals their exact character. We believe that
there is a time fixed in the progressive march of the human
intellect for the study of certain facts and the admissibility
"by all of the solutions found by a few. But it is absolutely
necessary that the facts alleged should be facts, and above
all, verified; and it is when submitted to such an ordeal,
that many allegations and assertions, unable to bear the test,
lose much of their worth and importance.
In answer to certain questions asked M. Renan through
the columns of the Opinion Rationale, he wrote to his friend
M. Gueroult, a letter which showed that time and experi-

XXX M. ERNEST RENAN.
ence, so far from modifying his opinions on these important
questions, had imparted to them a form and intensity which
could but become manifest in all his subsequent works. It is
no longer the doctrine of miracles, asset forth in the preface
to the Etudes, which claims his attention, but the momentous
problem of the relation of God to Nature, as illustrated by
" the order, so oonstant, divine, perfectly wise, just and good,
which reigns in the laws of the Universe." We reprint
the leading passages of that letter from the Philobiblion :
" You admit that science cannot prove the existence of a Free Being,
superior to man, interfering in Nature for the purpose of changing its
course. But, you add, can science prove that such a Being does not
exist ? I do not inquire whether it can, in a metaphysical and a priori
way. But the experimental proof is sufficient. Such a Being has
never revealed himself in a scientifically-proved manner. When he
shall reveal himself, we will believe in him. It is not for us to demon
strate the impossibility of a miracle ; it is for the miracle to demon
strate itself. What proof have we that sirens and centaurs do not
exist, except that they have never been seen? What has banished
from the civilized world » faith in the old demonology, except the
observation that all the deeds formerly attributed to demons are well
enough explained Without their agency ? A being who does not
reveal himself by any act, is, for science, a being without existence.
" I know that people are often led to distinguish the simple inter
vention of a superior will, in the ordinary course of things, in view
of a certain end, from what is, properly speaking, a miracle. It is,
however, a. distinction which fades away before a rigorous analysis.
In fact, what means such intervention ? It means that the things of
this world may take, in consequence of a supernatural force, acting
in a given moment, a different course from what they would have
otherwise taken. A miracle is nothing else. The flagrant violation
of the accustomed order, which constitutes a miracle in the eyes of
men, implies only a greater degree of difficulty ; but the words easy
and difficult have no meaning when we are speaking of an all-power
ful being. Por God, it is no more of a miracle to resuscitate the dead,
to make a river flow back to its source, than to change the direction
of the wind during some day of battle, to stay a sickness which
might prove mortal, to sustain an empire which might fall, or to vio
late the liberty of human resolve. In the one case, the violence done
to natural laws is most evident ; in the other it is hidden. For God
there is no difference. Bashful miracles (miracles honteux), seeking
to conceal themselves, are none the less miracles. Providence, then,
understanding the word in its vulgar acceptation — is a synonym for
thaumaturgy. The whole question is, to know whether God emits
particular acts. For myself, I believe that the true Providence is not
distinct from the order, so constant, divine, perfectly wise, just, and
good, which reigns in the laws of the universe.
" You seem to believe, my dear sir, that such a doctrine is synony-

M. ERNEST RENAN. xxxi
mous with atheism. Here I strongly protest. Such a doctrine is the
exclusion of a capricious God, thaumaturgic, acting by fits and starts ;
allowing the clouds generally to follow their course, but making them
deviate when he is prayed to do so ; leaving such a lung or intestine
to decompose up to a certain point, but staying the decomposition
when a vow is made to him ; changing his mind, in a word, accord
ing to his views of interest. Such a God, I am free to say, is
unscientific. We do not believe in him ; and should the saddest conse
quences i result from this fact, the absolute sincerity of which we
make profession obliges us to say so.
" But, in removing so gross an idea of the Divinity, we beheve
that we cdmbat superstition, and not real religion. Malebranche has
admirably demonstrated this before us, in his Meditations Chretiennes :
' God does not act by individual wishes' (Dieu rCagit pas par des
volontes particulier es). This profound orator, bolder than we are,
established this thesis <J priori, from the consideration of the
Divine perfections. We establish the same thesis by the absence of
facts proving the contrary, and we translate it thus: 'There has
never been shown, in Nature or in history, any fact caused mani
festly by an individual will superior to that of man.' When this
observation shall be overthrown by a single proved fact, we shall
hasten to modify the' theory which we beheve ourselves justified in
deducing from it.
" As to the true God o'f the human conscience, he is unassailable.
He has his right to be, in an invincible faith, and not in a more or less
ingenious process of reasoning. Nature is immoral; the Sun has
looked down upon the most crying sins without veiling himself; he
has smiled upon the worst of crimes. But in the conscience rises a
sacred voice, which speaks to man of quite another world — the world
of the ideal; the world of truth, of goodness, of justice. If there
existed nothing but nature, we might ask ourselves if God is neces
sary. But since first there existed an honest man, God has been
proved. It is in the world of the ideal, and there only, that the
various faiths of natural rehgion have their legitimate origin. But, I
cannot repeat it too often, it is the ideal which really is, and the fleet
ing reality which only seems to be. The just soul which sees .through
the crystal of this world the pure idea, disengaged from time and
space, is the most clear-seeing. He who shall consecrate his life to
the good, the true, and the beautiful, will be the best-advised. This is
the living God who is felt, but does not prove himself. I need no
miracles to believe in him ; I need only in silence hearken to the
imperative revelation of my own heart.
" Thus the men who have had a really fruitful sentiment of God,
have never put these questions in a contradictory way. » They have
been neither Deists, after the manner of the French school, nor
Pantheists. They have never lost themselves in those subtle ques
tions where their genius would have vainly consumed itself. They
have powerfully felt God; they have lived in him; they have not
defined him. Jesus occupies an exceptional rank in this Divme
phalanx. In recognising himself as the Son of God, in authorizing
men to call God their Father, in overthrowing the superstitions of the

XXXU M. ERNEST RENAN.
ancient worships by his beautiful theory of prayer (Matt., chap, vi.),
of spiritual adoration (John, chap, iv.), in giving the example of a hfe
entirely consecrated to the works of his Father, he has realized the
highest consciousness of God which has probably ever existed in
humanity. For this reason, the truly religious men, of all ages,
would be his disciples, even though they should disagree with almost
all the points of faith which the Churches issuing from him have
developed under his name.
'"Besides Nature and Man, is there, then, nothing? ' you ask.
" There is every thing, I would answer. Nature is only an appear
ance; man is only a phenomenon. There is the eternal foundation,
there is the infinite, the substance, the absolute, the ideal; there is,
according to the fine Mussulman saying, that which endures ; there is,
according to the finer Jewish saying, that which is. This is the Father
from whose bosom all things issue, and to whose bosom all things
return. Let us take away from the Divine life every notion belong
ing to our fleeting existence. Is this Absolute Being free ? Is he
conscious? Does the conscious particle which returns to him preserve
its consciousness ? Tes and no are equally inapphcable to these sorts
of questions. They imply an absolutely incurable delusion, the ten
dency to transport the conditions of our finite existence into the infi
nite existence.
" We do not conceive of existence except under the form of a
limited ego. In order to represent to himself an existmg God, it was
inevitable that man should make him in his own image ; that is to
say, make him also a limited ego. But who does not see that such a
conception is self-contradictory ? the infinite being presented as a
finite — the pure spirit endowed with the attributes which presuppose
organs I In order to be consistent, they should push anthropomor
phism to its last results. For — let us not deceive ourselves in this
matter — all the faculties which the vulgar Deism attributes to God
have never existed without a brain. There has never been memory,
foresight, perception of exterior objects, consciousness, finally, with
out a nervous system. The human vocabulary applied to Divinity
shocks us at every instant. Why attempt to express the Infinite by
words and phrases which are essentially hmited? Why wish to
reason concerning that which we recognise as ineffable ? With an
immense variety of formulae, and to enormously different degrees of
simplicity or refinement, humanity will adore to all eternity that sin
gle substance with many names (ASschylus, Prometheus, v. 218), that
common Father of all those who seek the good and the true. Every
one creates his own theology according to his needs, and all violent
attempts to change quickly the received ideas upon this matter are
full of danger. But we do no violence to the opinion of any one, in
expressing what we believe. The listener or the reader remains free
before the doctrine which is exposed to him. He will agree to it, if
it suits his degree of culture ; he will not agree to it, if it is either
premature or too backward for him.
" Besides, who is deceived here, and what a comedy is human life, ii
it is composed of some millions of thinking beings occupied in simu
lating with each other faiths which they do not hold I It is not by

M. ERNEST RENAN. * XXxiii
hypocritical reticence that a faith which has run its course, can be
made to live a day longer. Every opinion, freely conceived, is good
and moral for him who has conceived it. From all sides we come
to sum up the exterior legislation on rehgion in a single word —
Liberty." Resting on principles so broad and liberal, and availing
himself of the labours of the more recent exegetical
writers in France and Holland, M. Renan with great elo
quence and sincerity unfolds the life of Jesus. Theologians
may object to the interpretations or refuse to hearken to
the teachings which this remarkable book contains, but no
impartial judge will deny it a place among the works des
tined to command a lasting and wholesome influence every
where. Yet, when examined closely, many pages betray
feelings of regret and deep emotions, which when con
sidered from a practical point of view, may well seem a
want of decision on the part of the historian. These invo
luntary misgivings admit, however, of justification when we
recollect that respect for the religious creed of his aged
mother, who still watches by his side, and the remembrance
of years of belief which at one time may have filled the
heart without satisfying the mind, continue to war against
the dictates of a more enlightened conscience and the
instigation of a science which appeals solely to reason.
An inward struggle of such a character could not but
manifest itself through a certain irresolution, which might
not escape the notice of those eager to consider the slightest
hesitation as a blemish altogether irremissible. Taking for
instance the chapter where M. Renan endeavours to explain
the resurrection of Lazarus, those rigid critics needed only
appeal to the faith of orthodox Christians or the profound
admiration which we all feel for the sublime character of
Jesus, to dispel the sad impression left upon the mind after
we have tried to solve the dilemma which springs from the
author's bold suppositions. The difficulty is so much the
greater with M. Renan, that after having denied the exist
ence of miracles, and even the possibility of them, if we
take his early declarations, he now contents himself with
the assertion that no miracles as yet have been proved. On
the other hand, he takes as a basis for his history, the Gos
pel of John, which he decides to be the most complete and,
by inference, the most reliable of the four, so far as biogra-
3 .

XXXIV M. ERNEST RENAN.
phical details or material facts are concerned. Now, in
that gospel, there is a lucid, detailed and perfectly intelligi
ble account of a man who is alleged to have risen from the
dead; and the relation is couched in such unmistakable
terms that M. Renan feels compelled to admit "that in
Bethany something happened which was considered a
miracle." Having accepted the outward character of the
fact, he endeavours to explain it from a rational point of
view, and resorts to several hypotheses to make it tally
with his conception of past events. To take only one of
his suppositions. Granted that Lazarus was not dead, and
that the followers of Christ were guilty of a fraud in
endeavouring to give Lazarus, whom they knew to be liv
ing, the appearance of a man dead and buried, it is evident
that Jesus cannot have acted the part ascribed to him with
out sharing in the guilt of that fraud : —
Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. . . .
Lei us go unto him. . . Thy brother, said Jesus to Martha,
shall rise again. . . . Then they took away the stone from the
place where the dead was laid. . . He cried with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound
hand and foot with grave-clothes.
Now, if we once admit that the act on the part of Jesus
was so performed, and that such were the words which fell
from his lips; and on the other hand, if we deny that
Lazarus actually rose from the dead, it is unquestionable
that Jesus, knowingly and premeditatedly, performed an act
which then as well as at present, would be deemed insidious
and fraudulent. Call its motives pious, endeavour to excuse
or explain it away by taking into consideration the times,
place and necessities to which all prophets and reformers
were then subjected, the act itself is nevertheless blamable,
and so totally at variance with the lofty character of Jesus,
such even as it appears from every page and from every line
in M. Renan's book, that the supposition must be rejected.
Unable to believe in a miracle, or unwilling to consider
John's recital as tantamount to a proof, and it being utterly
impossible to accuse Jesus of having committed a fraud,
there seems to be no alternative left than to deny the
resurrection of Lazarus altogether, regardless of texts and
consequences.

M. ERNEST RENAN. XXXV
Contrary to all expectations, the Life of Jesus, elicited
praise and commendations, not only on the part of scholars
and professional critics, but from the reading public in
France, Holland, Germany, and, to a certain extent, in. Eng
land. At Rome, the Pope deemed himself obliged to com
mit to the flames several copies of the work in the gardens
of the Quirinal. The leading French reviews and journals
devoted to it series of criticisms prepared' by their ablest
writers ; even one of the professors in the College of France
did not hesitate to write for the Revue des Deux~Mondes an
elaborate article, in which praises were bestowed with no
sparing hand. This apology, however, has since been
anathematized by a learned Bishop, who set the example
for numberless pamphleteers whose brochures now over
whelm all the bookstalls in Paris. It must be, confessed,
however, that most of those contributions are little calcu
lated to promote the science of evangelical exegesis.. They
deal in generalities, and dwell on the philosophical bearing
of the work, rather than on its historical importance. True
it is, that theologians alone are expected to possess the
critical knowledge which is required to do justice to works
of such character and importance. In England, where they
are much better versed in the Scriptures, several of the
critics have undertaken to follow M. Renan through all his
interpretations, while some theological writers following
him step by step, from Papias to the Council of Nice,
endeavoured to show what seemed to them incorrect deduc
tions. Yet, with the exception of the orthodox critics,
none come to a positive conclusion. M. Renan justly com
plains of this want of decision on the part of his reviewers ;
for he is the first to solicit at all hands and at all hazards,
the criticisms which alone may enable him to meet his
antagonists on a neutral ground, where accepted texts
might be interpreted by means derived exclusively from
science. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that
the Life of Jesus broke forth upon the thinking world like
a storm through a clear sky. Few were prepared to meet
it scientifically ; and although many received it with admira
tion, it may be that its success thus far is due chiefly to a
secret longing on the part of those who hope to encircle with
in the limits of reason, the sublime object of a love and grati
tude which will endure, nolens volens, to the end of time !

XXXVI M. ERNEST RENAN.
Considered from a literary point of view, the Life of Jesus
is a work of rare perfection. On that point the opinion of
all critics is unanimous. It would be difficult to find among
the French writers of the present day, one whose style
possesses more charm or greater purity than are exhibited
in all of M. Renan's writings. To the force, elegance, and
extreme clearness which constitute the merits of the great
authors, he adds analytical faculties, which betray the true
philosopher, and descriptive powers worthy of a poet deep
ly enamoured of truth and nature. The tranquil and
benevolent spirit by which he is evidently actuated, mani
fests itself in the kindly nature of his style. And if at
times the vehemence of an ardent conviction prompts pages
which sap the foundations of a creed long trusted and
cherished, let us not forget that his only aim is to elevate
our religious nature, and to dispel for ever the mist of super
stition : — Religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas /*
H. H.

* Anx. Gell.

STUDIES

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM.

PREFACE.
THE custom of collecting in volumes essays al
ready published in periodicals, a custom which
many regard as indicating a deplorable tendency
in the literature of the day, is due wholly to the import
ance attained of late years, by reviews and by the literary
department of some of the daily journals. It would be
useless to reprint simple notices designed merely to an
nounce a work and containing no original discussion. But
when critical articles have, rightly or wrongly, ceased to be
extracts and analyses, and have become solid works, one
cannot take it amiss that the author chooses to give a
more lasting publicity to fragments which often have cost
him more research and reflexion than an original book.
Perhaps, this new kind of literature will some day be re
garded as belonging especially to our epoch, and con
sequently as that in which our epoch has excelled.
Whether that would be a eulogy on the times we live in,
or a criticism on them, I do not inquire. The admission,
that at the present moment this is • one of the most import
ant forms of intellectual production, is enough to relieve
authors who collect pieces that have small merit possibly,
but on which they have bestowed their utmost care — from
the charge of putting forward unreasonable claims, or of
exaggerating the importance of their works.

38 STUDIES OF
It is very true that volumes thus made up, if regarded
as books, sin gravely against the rules of regular com
position and the laws of unity. Even when one has
endeavored, as I have, in the present volume, to bring
together only pieces that are kindred by their subject,
and that form a whole ; it is impossible that frag
ments artificially combined should not include many points
that had a reason for appearing in a periodical, but have
not so much reason for standing in a book. Especially
would this be the case, if among the pieces reproduced
some are of a date already remote. Without having any
thing to disavow, one, as he reads over fragments written
eight years ago — those years filled too with somewhat ac
tive thought — may well find some details which he would
now present in a different way. In the reproduction of
essays like these, two rules, as it seems to me, must be ob
served. On one side, it would be a grievous thing for an
author to feel obliged to change the original character of
his work, and to give it exactly the form he would
choose, if he were composing it for the first time. On the
other side, the respect due to the public forbids the
bringing to the light works which one is able to
improve. I have tried to meet both these obligations,
and I think I can say that the present volume, while it
contains fragments written at a remote period, remote,
certainly, considering the events which have crowded on
since their publication, still includes nothing that does not
answer to my actual thought. These remarks apply par
ticularly to the Essay on the Critical Historians of Jesus,
and to a few other pages, composed in a style different
from that I have since adopted. I cannot say that I should,
to-day, write ' these pages just as they are ; but I put
my name to them without scruple, because they offer
nothing but what seems to me conformable with the
truth.

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 39
The excellent custom of relraclationes* which antiquity
so freely practised, does not belong to our literary code :
that criticism of one's-self, which, if sincere, might
bear such fruits both for the author and for the public,
would, in our days, be regarded as a refinement of vanity ;
and the writer who should allow himself to indulge it,
would undoubtedly pay for his candour by the harm he
would do his reputation. Theological dogmatism has led us
all to an idea of truth so narrow that the man who does
not stand forward in the attitude of an infallible teacher,
runs the risk of losing the confidence of his readers.
The scientific spirit, proceeding by delicate approaches,
inclosing the truth little by little, modifying its formula
ries incessantly, in order to bring them, to a more and more
exact expression, changing its points of view, so as to neg
lect nothing in the infinite complexity of problems presented
by the universe, is commonly little understood, and passes
. for an avowal of incapacity or of caprice. At the risk of
exposing myself to these reproaches, but perfectly resolved
never to sacrifice a particle of what I believe true, to a
conceited pretension to infallibility, I shall make here
two observations which concern, one my religious, the
other my scientific character.
The article on Channing, at the time of its publication,
raised, on the part of his admirers, objections the justice
of which I in some respects acknowledge. In addressing
these to me they seemed to overlook the terms of sym
pathy which I used in speaking of the American reformer.
1 confess, however, that the misunderstanding was, to a
certain extent, well grounded, owing to the disproportion

* This word has not in Latin the sense that we attach to the word
retractation : it indicates mostly the labour of au author in takiDg up his old
works and noting the changes which the progress of his thought suggested
to him.

40 STUDIES OF
of praise and of censure in the article. Satisfied with
having once for all expressed my admiration of the good
work done by Channing, and presenting on the reverse
side at great length the objections which his system is as
open to as another, I may have left the impression that I did
not place in the rank it deserves, the best religious move
ment that our generation has seen. When I wrote that
article I was -preoccupied chiefly with the absence of that
fine culture and exalted genius at the price of which pro
gress in the material order and even in some phases of the
moral order is too often purchased ; the honest and reason
able philosophy of the American school seemed to me
cheap and mean as compared with the amplitude of Catho
licism, and with the noble critical, philosophical and poeti
cal style of Germany. I have not been able, on review,
to modify my first opinion ; but I willingly add that it
casts no reproach on Channing. Good things must be taken
frankly : each order of greatness has its own eminence,
and should not be contrasted with another. A philanthro
pist who, called to pass judgment on Goethe, should set
him on a line with Vincent de Paul, would find himself
viewing the greatest genius of modern times as a mere
egotist who did nothing for the happiness or the moral
improvement of his contemporaries.
The article on the " Religions of Antiquity" seemed
to me equally susceptible of additions, after I became
acquainted with the labours of Germany on the compara
tive mythology of the Indo-European race — labours which
did not exist, or which had not reached France at the, date
of my writing the article. These labours, the bearing of
which is not yet, I think, fully understood even by their
authors, when adjusted to parallel views on the Semitic
religions, in the exposition of which I may have had some
share, must present the religions of antiquity under aspects
rather different from those to which the efforts of the sym-

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 41
bolical and of the purely Hellenic schools conduct. The
unity of the Indo-European race as opposed to the Semitic,
a unity recognised in religions as in languages, will serve
henceforth as basis for the history of the religions of anti
quity. This does not affect the doctrine of the article in
question, but it explains the silence I have kept in regard
to those recent discoveries which will make an era in sci
ence. If I have made no attempt at filling up this gap,
it is because the discoveries I refer to have not reached
the point at which it is proper to present them to the
public as definite results.
The pieces composing the present volume all relate to
the history of religions, and will be found to embrace
impartially the principal forms assumed by the religious
sentiment, in antiquity, in the middle age, and in modern
times. These topics have for me a charm which I do not
conceal and which I cannot resist. Of all the manifesta
tions of human nature, religion is certainly the loftiest and
the most fascinating. Among all kinds of poetry, this best
reaches the ultimate end of art which is to lift man above
the vulgar life and to awaken in him the sentiment of his
heavenly origin. Nowhere do the lofty instincts ,of the
heart show themselves with more clearness ; and even
if one adopts the special doctrine of none of the great
religious systems that have shared, or which still share
the world among them, there results from them all one
great feet which, to my view, constitutes the most consoling
pledge of a mysterious future when the race and the indi
vidual will reap the fruit of their labours and sacrifices.
A grave difficulty attaches, I know, to these studies, and
timid people are led to ascribe to the writers who take them
up, tendencies and aims to which they are strangers. It is
in the nature of religions to exact an absolute credence,
consequently to set themselves above common rights, and
to deny the impartial historian's competency to judge them.

42 STUDIES OF
In fact, religions, in order to support their claim to be
exempt from all reproach, are obliged to have a special
philosophy of history, founded on a belief in the miraculous
intervention of Deity in human affairs — an intervention
whose benefits accrue to them alone. Religions, moreover,
are not free to dispose of their past ; it must bend to the
necessities of the present, and furnish a base for institutions
that have plainly been introduced in the course of time.
Criticism, on the contrary, whose rule is to. follow the
straight and loyal way of induction without the smallest
side-thought of policy ; criticism, whose first principle is,
that miracle has no more place in the tissue of human
affairs, than it has in the series of natural facts ; criticism,
which begins by proclaiming that every event in history
has its human explanation, even though the explanation
escape us through lack of sufficient knowledge, evidently
cannot fall in with the theological schools which employ a
method opposed to its own, and pursue a different end.
Sensitive, like all powers that claim for themselves a divine
source, religions naturally construe as Hostility, even the
most respectful expression of difference, and see enemies
in all who exercise on them the simplest rights of reason.
Must this unfortunate misunderstanding, which will last
for ever between the critical spirit and doctrines that are
thus absolute in their claims, stop the human mind in its
career of free research ? We think not. At the outset
human nature never consents to self-mutilation. One might,
perhaps, conceive it possible that reason should consent to
its own sacrifice in case it found itself opposed to a solitary
doctrine, which all humanity adopted ; .but seeing that a
crowd of systems claim each for itself the absolute truth,
that all cannot possess it at once, that no one of them pre
sents a title that can reduce to naught the pretensions of
the rest — the abdication of criticism would iu no wise help to
give to the world that most desirable blessing' of peace and

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 43
unanimity. Were the strife between religion and criticism
to cease, the religions would strive for supremacy among
themselves ; were all the religions to be reduced to one, the
different fractions of this one would curse each other:; and
even supposing that all the sects were to come to the recog
nition of a sort of catholicity, internal disputes, twenty
times more animated and angry than those which separate
rival religions and churches, would serve to feed the eternal
craving of individual thought, to create the divine world
after a fashion of its own. What must we conclude from
all this ? That in suppressing criticism, we should not sus
pend trial, and should perhaps depose the only judge who
can clear up obscurities ; that the right of every religion
to assert as absolute its own truth, a right to be entirely
respected, and winch no person thinks of disputing,
excludes neither the parallel right of other religions, nor
the right of criticism, which holds itself aloof from them
all. It is the duty of civil society to maintain these oppos
ing claims in full front with each other, not trying to
reconcile them, which would be an impossibility, and not
allowing them to absorb one another, which could not be
otherwise than injurious to the general interests of civiliza
tion. It is important to remark, in short, that criticism, in
exercising on history the right which belongs to it, commits
no outrage of which any can complain ; I say this not
merely in view of its equal rights (that is too clear, since
religious controversialists indulge every day in the most
violent attacks on independent science), but even making
the largest possible concessions to the fitness and to the
majesty of the established worship. Religion, while it
touches the pure heaven of the ideal with its summit, plants
its base on the moving soil of human affairs, and shares in
their instability and defects. Every work, whose material
is furnished by man, being but a compromise between the

44 STUDIES OF
opposing necessities which constitute the passing life, is
necessarily open to criticism ; and he says nothing against
an institution who limits himself to the inoffensive remark
that it has not wholly escaped from the fragile nature of all
terrestrial structures. A religion must be of one style and
not of another. Now, this essential condition of all exist
ence implies a limit, an exclusiveness, a defect. Does art,
which, like rehgion, aspires to represent the infinite under
finite forms, renounce its mission because it knows that no
image can represent the ideal ? Would it not vanish into
the vague and intangible the moment it aspired to be infi
nite in its forms, as it is in its conceptions ? So religion
exists only on condition of being very definite, very clear,
very limited, and in consequence very open to criticism.
The rigid, partial, and special side of each religion which
constitutes its weakness, constitutes also its force ; for men
are drawn together by their narrow thoughts, far more lhan
by their broad ones. It is a small thing to have shown
that every religious form is out of all proportion to
its divine object, if one does not make haste to add that it
could not be otherwise, and that every symbol must seem
meagre and coarse when compared with the extreme deli
cacy of the truths it represents. The glory of religions is
precisely here, that they propose an aim that is above human
strength, that they boldly pursue the realization of it, and
nobly fail in the attempt to give a fixed shape to the infinite
aspirations of the human heart.
Eternal and sacred in their spirit, religions cannot, for
this very reason, be equally so in their forms, and history
would be mutilated in its fairest part, were it obliged to
make account of the dogmatic exigences which forbid sects
to display their weak sides. What do I say ? It would be
suppressed, for the exigences of different sects being contra
dictory, it would follow that in order to wound none, there
must be a settled silence in regard to the chief element in

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 45
the development of man. In the political order, each
government asserts its right absolutely, yet no government
on that ground lays an interdict ' on history ; at all events,
States that have carried their superstitious regard for them
selves to this point, have found that they brought on their
own fit punishment, in moral decadence. Spain presents a
striking example of the intellectual ruin to which an
exaggerated self-esteem in political as well as in religious
affairs fatally conducts. • On the other hand, the breadth of
ideas, and the intelligence which distinguish the catholics
of Germany are due more to the perpetual friction of pro
testant criticism, than to the superiority of the Germanic
race, in all that concerns the liberal culture of the mind.
I protest then, once for all, against the false interpreta
tion they give my labours who regard as polemical works
the different essays on the history of religion which
I have published, or which I may publish hereafter. As
polemical works, these essays, I shall be the first to
admit, would be very clumsy indeed. Polemics demand
a strategy with which I am unfamiliar. One must know
how to fasten on the weak side of his adversaries,
hold to it, never to start doubtful questions, to beware
of all concessions, that is to say, to renounce that
which constitutes the very essence of the scientific spirit.
Such is not my method. The fundamental question on
which religious discussion turns, that is to say, the
question of fact in regard to revelation and the super
natural, I never touch : Not that I have not answered it to
my entire satisfaction, but because the discussion of such
a question is not scientific, or rather, because independent
science supposes it already answered. Surely, if we are
pursuing any polemical or proselyting aim, this would
be a capital fault ; it would be carrying into the sphere of
delicate and dark problems a question which allows of
much clearer treatment in the coarse terms ordinarily

46 STUDIES OF
employed by the controversialists and apologists. Far
from regretting the advantage I thus abandon, I shall
rejoice if I can thus convince theologians that my writ
ings are of a different order from theirs, that one need
seek in them only pure Erudition assailable as such
which attempts sometimes to apply to the Jewish
and Christian religion the critical principles that are
followed in other branches of history and philology.
As to the discussion of questions strictly theological,
I would no more enter on them, than MM. Burnouf,
Creuzer, Guigniaut, and many other critical historians
of the ancient religions, would undertake from a sense of
duty to refute or to defend the worships they espoused.
For me, the history of humanity is a vast whole, where all
is essentially unequal and diverse, but where all belongs to
the same order, issues from the same causes, obeys the
same laws. These laws I investigate with no other inten
tion than to discover the exact shades of things as they are.
Nothing will induce me to exchange a role humble but
serviceable to science, for that of a controversialist, a r61e
easily taken because it secures for the writer an assured
favour with persons who think it a duty to meet war with
war. For this kind of polemic, the need of which I am
far from disputing, but which is suited neither to my tastes
nor to my talents, Voltaire suffices. One cannot be at the
same time a good controversialist and a good historian.
Voltaire, so weak as a man of learning, Voltaire who seems
so bare of sentiment for antiquity, to us who are instructed
in a better method, Voltaire is twenty times victorious
over adversaries who are still more destitute of criticism
than he is himself. The new edition that is preparing of
this great man's works will satisfy the need which just now
seems to be felt, of an answer to theological assaults;
answer bad in -itself, but suited to the case it meets ; old-
school answer to old-school science. Let us do better, all

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 47
of us who are possessed by a love of the truth and a noble
, thirst for knowledge. . Let us leave such^debates to those
who «njoy them ; let us toil for the small number who
march in the front rank of the human mind. Popu
larity, I am . aware, fondly clings to the writers who, in
stead pf producing the loftiest form of truth, set them
selves to combat the opinions of their time ; but by a
just return they have no value the moment the opinion
they have combated has ceased to be. They who refuted
magic and judicial astrology in the 16th and 17th centu
ries rendered an immense service to reason ; yet, their writ
ings are unknown to-day ; their very victory has made them
forgotten. - But the names of Scaliger, of Bochart, of Bayle,
. of Richard Simon, notwithstanding their works are in many
points of detail surpassed, will for ever remain inscribed
among those of the great promoters of human knowledge.
The sad but inevitable quarrel over the history of a
.religion hetween the sectaries of the religion and the
friends of impartial science, should not then bring on
science the accusation of anti-religious propagandism. If
for a moment, under the force of a passing impulse, the
devotee of critical research experiences something of St.
Paul's desire : " Would that all men were such as I am !"
the sentiment vanishes before a fairer estimate of the
limits and the reach of the human mind. In the matter of
religion every one adapts his shelter to his stature and his
deeds. To venture to lift a hand against this pet work of
the individual's powers, is rash and dangerous ; for no one
has a right to penetrate deeply enough into another's con
science, to distinguish there the accessory from, the prin
cipal. In seeking to eradicate beliefs which one thinks
superfluous, there, is risk of touching the vital organs of
the moral and religious life. All propagandism is out of
place in the concerns of high scientific or philosophic cul
ture, and the most admirable intellectual discipline im-

48 STUDIES OF
posed on people who are not ready for it, has none but bad
effects. It is the duty of the scholar, therefore, to announce
frankly the result of his studies, without trying to disturb
the conscience of persons who are not called to the same
life that he leads, but also without respecting the motives
of ipterest or the. pretended proprieties which so often
falsify the utterance of the truth.
There js, again, one side on which the sternest critic, if'
he have any philosophy, can sympathize with those who
are not privileged to be as tolerant as he. He knows that
with high believers dissent almost always takes the tone of
anathema ; if he dislike anathema, the motive that dic
tates it gains his respect, and thus he comes to compre
hend and almost to love the anger he inspires. In fact,
this anger, although it supposes a certain littleness of
mind, proceeds from an excellent source, the vitality of
the religious sentiment. The harshest penalty which
the man who has reached a life of reflection suffers in
expiation of his exceptional position, is doubtless that
of seeing himself thus cut off from the great family of
religions to which the best_souls in the world belong, and
of thinking that the people with whom he would best love
to dwell in moral communion, must perforce regard him
as perverse.. One must needs be very confident not to be
troubled when women and children clasp their hands
and exclaim : "Think as we do I" He comforts himself by
believing that this chasm between the simple and the cul-
. tivated opens by a fatal law of our transition state ; and that
there is an upper realm of lofty souls, where those who
curse each other often meet without suspecting it ; an ideal
city beheld by the Seer of the Apocalypse, into which
press a countless multitude of every tribe, of every
nation, of every tongue proclaiming with one voice the
creed in which all join, " Holy, holy, holy is He who is
who was, and who shall be."

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 49
The word religion being that, which in the view of
the majority has thus far summed up the life of the
soul, a coarse materialism only can assail in its essence,
this need, happily eternal, of our nature. Nothing is
more faulty than ^he speech that confounds with irreli
gion the refusal to adhere to this or that credence which
gives itself out as revelation. The man who takes life
seriously, and employs his activity in the pursuit of a
generous end, he is the religious man ; the frivolous, the
superficial, with no lofty morality, he is the impious. Those
who worship anything are brothers, or at least are less
hostile than those who obey nothing but interest, and who
pretend that their sensual pleasures may really take pre
cedence of the divine instincts of the human heart. The
religious passions can make no falser calculation than when
they seek to ally themselves with levity or indifference, in
opposing dissenters who conscientiously and according to the
special cravings of their minds look for the truth.
For the immense majority of mankind an established
religion is in every respect calculated for the practical cul
ture of the ideal. To suppress or to weaken in the class
deprived pf other means of education this grand and unique
remembrancer of nobleness is to debase human nature, and
to take away from it the mark which distinguishes it essen
tially from the animal. The popular consciousness in its
sublime and lofty impulse, attaching itself to the spirit
alone, and seeing nothing of the scoriae mixed with the pure
gold, sanctifies the most imperfect symbol. In the faith of
the people the religion is always true ; for the people being no
theologians, and entering scarcely at all into details of dogma,
take only what is true — I mean the breath and the higher
inspiration4. In this sense, the philosopher is much nearer
to an understanding with the simple-hearted man than
with the man half cultivated, who carries a kind of awkward
reflexion into matters of religion. How charming to see
4

50 STUDIES OF
in cabins and in common dwellings, where sordid use
crushes everything, these ideal figures, these images which
represent nothing actual! How sweet for a man, bent
under his week's toil, to come the seventh day to contem
plate, resting on his knees, the tall columns, the vaulted
ceiling, the arches; the altar, to drink in the chants, to hear
a wise and consoling word ! The food which science, art,
the high exercise of all the faculties, furnish to the cultivated
man — religion alone is charged to supply to the illiterate. I
know that this elementary teaching, naturally persuaded of.
its own superiority, ends in cramping the minds that
are shut up in it. But most of those whom religion
cramps were already small before they committed them
selves to her ; narrow and limited with religion, they would
possibly have been wicked without it. Intellectual eleva
tion will always be the property of the few ; if these
few are at liberty to develop themselves freely, they will
give themselves little concern as to the way the rest fashion
God after their own proportion. For the people the
established dogma possesses neither meanness nor dan
ger, for criticism is not their vocation ; and, consequently,
superstitions which displease us in the cultivated man
charm us in the people. The simple faith is the true
faith ; and I confess I should be inconsolable if I knew
that my writings could ever give offence to one of those
artless souls who in spirit adorp so truly. But they are
protected by their ignorance; the assailable dogmas not
being vehicles of explicit affirmation with them, their minds
are not disturbed ; it is the privilege of pure sentiment to
be invulnerable, and to play with poison without being
harmed. The haughty divisions which philosophy is 'sometimes
accused of establishing among men, on the ground of their
various religious capacity, is really, then, neither an injury
to the mass of men nor is it a result of pride. The fact is,

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 51
Science is not made for all ; it supposes a long intellectual
education ; years of study and mental habits of which few
are capable. But nobody is on this ground excluded from
the ideal ; the simple man finds in his natural instincts
full compensation for all he lacks on the side of reflexion.
Even admitting that great intellectual culture combined
with religious sentiment is superior to natural faith, what
inference could be drawn from that ? Inequality, at bottom
more painful to the privileged than to the inferior, is
established by Nature. Mary chooses the better part, but
Martha need not be blamed for all that. There is perfect
truth here in the theological formula. All have sufficient
grace to work out their salvation ; but all are not called
to the same degree of beatitude. Every man has a right
to his ideal ; but it would give the lie to evidence to claim
that all can alike worship the perfect.
It is important to maintain this distinction between reli
gion in its general sense, and the particular forms which on
the page of history succeed each other, with different for
tunes and different perils. Far from seeking to weaken
the religious sentiment, I wouJd gladly contribute some
thing to raise. and purify it. It seems to me, in fact, that
from the independent study of religion there flows one
consoling result which is sufficient to calm the good man
and give a ground for the happy life. This result is, that
religion being an integral part of human nature, is in its
essence true, and that above the special forms of worship,
necessarily, stained with the defects of the age and the
country to which they belong, there remains Religion, a
clear proof of man's superior destiny. For if it be demon
strated that religion always has been, and always will be,
that which inspires the most of love and hate ; if it be
demonstrated that man, by an unconquerable effort, rises
to the conception and the adoration of the perfect, is not
that the best proof of a Divine Spirit in us, which, by its

52 STUDIES OF
aspirations, responds to a transcendent ideal? To my view,
I confess, there is no more reassuring thought ; yes, here
one may pronounce the decisive word certainty, which no
special dogma, no formula philosophical of theological can
Utter. The infinite cannot be inclosed in a system; how
can the human mind grasp — how can speech render that
whose essence is the unspeakable ? But is not this inability
of speech and reason to exhaust the idea which we form of
the Divine world, the chief element of adoration, and
the most significant fact in faith? Far from leading to
denial, the philosophical history of religion leads to belief by
showing humanity's constant faith in a heavenly principle
and a supreme order — not to the; belief which by gross
symbols materializes its object, but to that which requires
no assent to the supernatural in order to seize the ideal,
to that, which, to borrow a thought from St. Augustine,
sees divinity better in the immutable order of things than in
deviation from the eternal order.
Facts now passing before our eyes, which will have
weight in the history of the human mind, confirm me in
this method respectful at once, and free, by which the pass
ing form is distinguished from the spirit which abides
eternally. Indeed whatever reservations one may make
on the seriousness and the depth of the religious reaction
we are witnessing — a reaction which like all movements of
opinion has served in many cases as a cloak for base calcu-
lationj and for failing vitality— it cannot be denied that there
lurks in it a genuine moral fact. If this reaction has almost
everywhere taken the shape of conversion to Catholicism,
it is less to Catholicism itself, than to the religious sentiment
that people are returning. Catholicism being the most
characteristic, if I may venture to say so, the most religious
of religions, every reaction towards religion necessarily
accrues somewhat to its benefit. But, say we, the cathot-
licism with the majority of those who go back to it, is hot so

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 53
much the collection of credences vast in extent and infinite
in detail, that fills the volumes of a theological treatise, as
it is religion in its general sense. Among the neophytes
who attach themselves to it most zealously, there are few
who seriously think of the dogmas they embrace ; when
these dogmas are explained to them literally, they reject
them, or fritter them away by agreeable interpretations ;
nearly all are heretics without suspecting it. They are
brought back. to the church by the eternal instinct which
leads man to attach himself to a religious creed— instinct so
imperious that, rather than rest in doubt,he accepts blindly
the faith that he finds > ready made. The 18th century,
whose commission was to clear from the field of the human
mind, a heap of obstacles; which the course of ages had piled
on it, carried into this work of destruction the ardour men
always put into the discharge of conscientious duties.
Skepticism and impiety, or rather the show of skepticism
and impiety, for at heart; few ages went about their work
with so much conviction and religious devotion, it enjoyed
for their own sake, and experienced a kind of pleasure in
the acquittal of a task which can rarely be accomplished
without tears. But the next generation, come back to the
inner life, finding in itself the need of believing, and of
communing in faith with other souls, did not comprehend
the joy of this first passion, and, rather than remain in a
system of negation thaihad beeome intolerable, endeavoured
to set up again the very doctrines which its fathers over'
threw. When people cannot build new churches, they
restore and copy old ones ; they can dispense with original
ity in religion, but they cannot dispense with religion
Who, passing through our ancient towns,* has not stopped
before those gigantic, monuments of the antique faith,
which alone attract attention, amid the dead level of
modern commonplace1?., Everything around them has been
renewed; the cathedral alone remains, a little defaced as

54 STUDIES OF
high as a man can reach, but profoundly rooted in the soil.
True as it is that in the matter of religious creation the
ages have resolved on denying themselves the privilege
they so freely grant to the centuries past ; it is as true that
rational science, being by its nature the prerogative of
a small number, cannot, in the actual condition of soci
ety, bear upon the credence of the world with a decisive
weight. We perceive now what distance separates the controver
sialist eager to change existing religious forms, from the
scholar who proposes to himself none but a speculative aim
with no immediate reference to the actual order of things.
A stranger to the causes that produce those brisk changes
of opinion which are legitimate in the circle of worldly
people, but do not extend beyond it, the scholar is not
obliged to put faith in fashionable caprices, nor to submit
to silence because his studies have not led him to the ideas
which this or that party judges to be most suitable at the
moment. The actual regulation of affairs belongs, in fact,
to quite other forces than those of science and reason. The
thinker regards his title to direct the concerns of his planet
as being very frail, and satisfied with his portion, accepts
without regret his powerlessness. A spectator in the uni
verse, he knows that the world belongs to him only as
an object of study, and that the part of reformer almost
always supposes in those who assume it defects and quali
ties which he has not.
Let us then keep in its place each of these often conflict
ing elements, which are necessary to complete the develop
ment of humanity. Let us allow religions to proclaim them
selves unassailable, since otherwise they will not gain due
respect from their adherents ; but let us not subject science
to the censorship of a power that has no scientific charac
ter. We will not confound legend with history ; but neither
will we try to banish legend, for it is the form which the

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 55
faith of humanity of necessity assumes. Humanity is not
made up of scholars and philologists. It is frequently
deceived, or rather it is necessarily deceived in regard to
facts and persons ; often it misdirects its sympathy and its
homage ; more often still it exaggerates the role of indivi
duals, and heaps the meed of whole generations on the
head of a favourite. To see the truth in all this demands a
fineness of intellect and a fulness of knowledge it does not
possess. But in the object of its worship it is not mistaken.
What it adores is really adorable ; for what it adores in its
ideal characters is the goodness and beauty it has itself put
there. It is safe to say that were a new manifestation of
religion to break forth, the mythical would find a place in
it after the timid measure that our age of reflection admits.
Whatever pains might, be taken at the start to repel all
deviations from the purest rationality, the second genera
tion would doubtless be less puritanical than the first, and
the third less still. Thus successive complications would
be introduced,- amid which the great imaginative instincts
of humanity would give themselves full career, and on
which criticism, after some generations, would be found
resuming its task of analysis and discrimination.
I know that people who are more sentimental than scien
tific, and more practical than speculative, hardly compre
hend the use of such researches, and generally receive them
with displeasure. Their feeling is to be respected, and we
must be careful not to censure it. I venture to advise those
who have it not to read the productions of modern criti
cism; since they can but provoke in. them grievous reac
tions. The very pain experienced in reading them proves
that such reading is not suitable to this class of minds.
The conservative mind— at least what is called so — which
necessarily borders in many respects on narrowness, is essen-
'tial to the regulation of this world. A ship without ballast,
and overcharged with canvas, is as ill adapted for sailing

56 STUDIES OF
as a heavily-laden lighter with no sails at all. Is not Ger
many's incompetency in action the result of the incompara
ble gifts in intellectual speculation with which nature has
endowed her ? The practical man cannot have the mental
largeness of the man devoted to thought. On his side, the
thinker who will take part in this world's business is com
mitted to a tangle of compromises which belittle him and
hurt his genius. Here, as in all things, the wise regulation
of the human mind is found in liberty. Let these peaceful
and harmless researches be left to pursue in congenial ob
scurity their own ends. Science would be very rash if she
aspired to modify opinion. Her processes have no hold,
save on the small number. Repulsive and without charm,
how could she compete with the numerous powers which,
doubtless with better right, sway the world? All she asks
is liberty. Under liberty, minds classify themselves, and
each one spontaneously chooses the path that for it is the
path of truth.
I am not unmindful of the misunderstandings to which
he exposes himself who touches on matters that are objects
of credence to a large number of men. But all fine exer
cise of thought would be forbidden, were we obliged to
guess all the possible perversions that prejudiced minds
may fall into when reading what they do not understand.
Persons unfamiliar with subjects of thought often affect an
air of lofty wisdom by falsifying and exaggerating opinions
at whose expense they would earn the praise of moderation.
By these persons writers must needs be summarily classi
fied : by their leave, one is Pantheist or Atheist without
knowing it. They create schools on their own authority ;
and often one learns from them with some surprise, that
he is the disciple of masters he never knew. People of
the world are ready enough to claim the merit of good
sense by summing up in some absurd and self-refuting
phrases the great theses of science or of genius. Thus

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 57
Strauss is a madman who called in question the existence
of Jesus ; Wolf a fool who denied Homer ; Hegel a
fanatic who said there was no difference between yes and
no : and were I to say here, that far from denying the ex
istence of Jesus, Strauss supposes it, and affirms it in every
page of his book ; that Wolf has impugned only the lite
rary composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey ; that Hegel,
even in his boldest formulas, designed merely to signalize
the relative and partial character of all our affirmations,
I should pass for a disciple of Strauss whom I earnestly
opposed ; of Wolf with whom I never meddled ; of Hegel
whose intellectual loftiness I admire, but with whom I
have little sympathy. Inconveniences of this kind are
unavoidable. To distinguish nice shades of thought will
always be the business of a small number ; but this small
number, in matters that concern works of intellect, is the
only body whose verdict should be sought.
Among the objections that I anticipate, there is one
which ought to be met here in advance ; — It may be regret
ted that in broaching certain ideas opposed to the belief
generally held in France, I have not felt it my duty to
make a more imposing display of demonstration. But
this defect is inseparable from the very nature of the frag
ments composing the present volume. The following
essays are not treatises wherein learning and philosophy
can give themselves full range ; they are expositions pre
pared for reviews and journals, wherein results, detached
from their scientific supports are alone in place. If people
will consult the works I review or th6se I quote on the
points in discussion, they will there find the proofs that I
could not detail, and to which,' besides, I have seldom any
thing to add. Critical labours designed for periodicals
would be impossible if in a book reviewing, one were
obliged to set up again all the scaffolding which served
the author in the construction of the work. In another

58 STUDIES OF
series of labours of a more technical character, particularly
in my General History of the Semitic Languages, I have
essayed to treat under their more special form some of the
problems which here I could present only on their gene
ral aspect. What seems to be taken for granted in the
glimpses I now open to the public, will one day, I hope,
appear in its full light, if, in conformity with a contem
plated plan of study on completing the history of the Semi
tic languages, I am permitted to throw some light on the
history of the Semitic religions and the origin of Christi
anity. I will then spare none of those details which the
nature of the writings now collected precludes.
When I began, I proposed replying here to some recent
criticisms which, on account of their errors of fact, and the
strange reasonings mixed with them, far more than by any
weight they had, seemed to call for correction. But the
attack regulates the defence, and I would have found it hard
to answer sophistry and subtlety without .being somewhat
sophistical and subtle. The silence I have thus far pre
served, and which my enemies are welcome to exult in as
an acknowledgment of their victory, I shall preserve still.
While I am ready to receive with gratitude, to discuss, to
adopt, if need be, all suggestions really scientific that may
be addressed to me ; I shall to the same degree persist in
holding as impertinent the declamations of the sectarian
spirit, and in avoiding at all cost the pitiful debate which
too often, by substituting personal questions for the pure
search for truth, make learning ridiculous. If people
imagine that by insults, by false citations, by anonymous
and cowardly slanders, by cunning equivocations designed
to deceive the uninitiated, they can stay my adopted
course of study and thought, they are mistaken. These
studies early had for me a supreme interest ; they will
ever remain under a form more and more extended, the
chief object of my investigations. Were I like so many

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 59
others the slave of my desires, did interest or vanity
guide me in the direction of my labours, people might, no
doubt, by such measures force me to abandon studies
whose usual reward is abuse. But desiring only to do
good — asking no recompense for study but study itself — I
am bold to declare, that no human motive has power to
make me utter one word more or less than I am determined
' to say. The liberty I demand being identical with that
of science, cannot be refused to me : if the seventeenth
century had its Holland, mental restriction, however gene
ral, will hardly go so far in our day, that the corner of
the world shaU be left where a man can think at his ease.
Nothing, therefore, shall force me to deviate from the plan
that I have marked out, and hold to be the line of my
duty ; inflexible search for the truth according to the
measure of my ability, by all the means of legitimate
investigation which are at the disposal of man ; firm and
frank expression of the results that seem to me probable
or certain, wholly regardless of their bearing, and careless
of conventional opinion ; willingness to correct myself
whenever the criticism of competent persons or the ad
vance of knowledge, brings me to it. As to the' assaults
of ignorance and fanaticism they will afflict without stag
gering me when I think them sincere ; when I cannot
think them so, I hope through practice to reach a serenity
that they will not ruffle by an emotion of sadness.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.

CRITICISM is born in our generation, and it is grant
ed to the most delicate criticism alone to discern, un
affected by dogmatism, as by controversy — the true
importance of the study of religions. If man has any dignity,
it is in being able to raise himself above the commonplaces of
life, and to reach through his moral and intellectual faculties,
a world of superior insight and of unselfish joy. Religion
is the ideal domain in human life; all it is, is in that
saying : " Man lives not by bread alone." There is, I am
aware, another power which claims to take up the spiritual
life of humanity, and the moment would be ill chosen to
decry it ; but we do not disown philosophy, we assign to it
its just place, the only place where it is grand, strong,
unassailable, when we say that it is not for the multitude. '
Sublime, as one associates it with the circle of the sages
whose nourishment and diversion it has been, in the his
tory of humanity philosophy is an insignificant feature.
We might count the souls it has ennobled ; we might set
down in four pages the history of the small aristocracy
that has grouped itself under that banner ; the mass aban
doned to the torrent of their dreams, their terrors, their
enchantments, have rolled on pell-mell through the dan
gerous valleys of instinct and frenzy, seeking a reason for
action and for belief, nowhere, save in the dazzling fan
cies of their brains and the palpitations of their hearts.
The religion of a people, being the most complete ex
pression of their individuality, is, in one sense, more in
structive than their history. In fact, the history of a people

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 61
is not altogether their own ; it includes an accidental or a fatal
element which is not dependent on the nation, which some
times crosses its natural development; but the religious
legend is really the proper and exclusive work of the genius
of each race. India, for example, has not left us one line of
history in a strict sense of the word ; the learned now and
then regret this, and would pay its weight in gold for a
piece of chronicle, a list of kings ; but, truly, we have some
thing better than that : — we have its poems, its mythology,
its sacred books ; we have its soul. In the history we might
have found a few facts drily told, the true character of
which criticism would have seized with the utmost diffi
culty 5 the fable gives us, as with the stamp of a seal,
a faithful image of the way the .people felt and thought,
their moral portrait drawn by themselves. What the
18th century regarded as a heap of superstition and
puerilities has thus become, in the view of a more perfect
philosophy of history, the most curious of documents
touching the past of humanity. Studies which once seemed
food for light minds have risen to the rank of the highest
speculation, and a book devoted to the interpretation of
fables which Bayle found fit only to amuse children, has
taken its place among the most serious works of our gene
ration. To appreciate the full importance of this book, — we
mean the last mythological encyclopaedia which one of the
worthiest representatives of French learning has grouped
round a recently finished translation of Dr. Fr. Creutzer's
Symbolism* — we must go back to the epoch when the
meritorious work was undertaken of domesticating here
a whole series of studies so flourishing among our neigh
bours, so neglected among ourselves. When the first Vol-
* Religions de Vantiquite considerees principalement dans lews formes sym-
bpliques el mylhologiqiies, du Dr. Creuzer, ouvrage traduit et refondu par J. D.
Guigniaut.' 10 vols, in 8vo. Paris, 1825—1851.

62 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
ume of the- Religions of Antiquity appeared in 1825, it fell in
with that movement of curiosity which was then exercis
ing minds, and leading them to seek in history better
understood, the solution of problems that were exciting
enlightened thought. It is rare that such labours are finished
in the midst of the movement that sees them begun ; but if
the last volumes of the Religions of Antiquity have not
met the same eager and expectant public that welcomed
the first, they have proved at least that there is no change
in the zeal of the scholar, who for a quarter of a century
has been the interpreter of one of the most important
branches of German erudition, and to whom no one will re
fuse the title of regenerator of mythological study in France.
The translator of the. Symbolism found these studies
sunk among us to the last stage of mediocrity. It was the
time when M. Petit-Radel wrote grave dissertations on the
adventures of the cow, Io, and arranged in a memoir a
comprehensive table of Helen's lovers, with their age, as
related to that of "this princess." Germany, on the contrary,
initiated into the knowledge of antiquity by the noble
generation of Wolfs and Heynes, by its genius too so sym
pathetic with the religious intuitions of the early ages', was
already rich in excellent writings on the old mythologies
and their interpretation. The first thing to be done, was to
bring up more than a half century of arrears, and to render
accessible the treasures of sound learning which Germany
had amassed while France kept up the shallow critical tra
ditions of the eighteenth century. The Symbolism 'of M.
Creuzer, by its imposing proportions, its European reputa
tion, the elevation of its views, the high philosophy and
science displayed by its author, claimed immediate atten
tion. M. Guigniaut, however, saw that the translation of a
single book, already distanced in some points of detail by
more recent labours, would but imperfectly reach the end
he proposed. He therefore resolved to collect about M

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 63
Creuzer's book the results of contemporaneous or later la
bours ; in a word, to make of the text of the Symbolism
the woof of a vast synthesis, embracing all the mythological
studies of Germany. Learned Europe long ago pronounced
its Yerdict on the value of the plan, and on the way it has
been wrought out. France has recognised in it the model
to be imitated in the difficult task of introducing the fruits
of German science among us. Germany, on its side, has
given to the French edition the highest praise, for it seems
to have adopted, on nearly every important point, the modi
fications suggested by the translator. The book of M.
Guigniaut, bravely finished amid shifting and sometimes op
posing circumstances, has become the indispensable manual,
not only of the antiquarian and philologist, but of all
inquisitive minds who believe that the history of religions
is one of the most essential elements of the history of the
human mind, that is to say, of true philosophy.

Religions strike so deeply into the inmost fibres of the
human consciousness, that a scientific explanation of them
becomes, from a distance, almost impossible. No efforts of
the most subtle criticism can correct the false position in
which we find ourselves placed with regard to these primi
tive works. Full of life, of feeling, of truth for the people
who have animated them with their breath, they are but
dead letters, sealed hieroglyphics to us; created by the
simultaneous effort of all the faculties acting in perfect har
mony, they are for us but objects of curious analysis. To
construct the history of a religion, one need not believe it
now, but one must needs have believed it once. We rightly
comprehend no worship save that which has stirred in us
the first impulse towards the ideal. Who can be just to

64 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
Catholicism if he has not been cradled in that wondrous
legend — if, in the music of its hymns, the ceilings bf its
temples, the symbols of its devotion, he does not revive the
first sensation of his religious life? The most essential
condition of a fair appreciation of ancient religion will for
ever therefore be missing with us, for one must have lived
in the bosom of those religions, or at least be able to repro
duce the sentiment they convey, with a depth that the most
privileged historical genius can scarcely attain. With all
our efforts, we shall never so frankly renounce our modern
ideas as to find the tissue of fables which is commonly
offered as the belief of Greece and Rome, anything but
an absurdity unworthy the attention of a serious man.
For persons unfamiliar with historical science, it is an
endless subject' of astonishment to see men who are pre
sented to them as masters of the human mind, adoring gods,
drunken and adulterous, and admitting extravagant stories,
and scandalous adventures among their religious dogmas.
The simplest thinks he has a right to shrug his shoulders
at such prodigious infatuation. We must, however, start
from this principle, that the human mind is never absurd
on purpose, and that whenever the spontaneous creations of
the mind appear to us senseless, it is because we do not
understand them. When a man has shown capacity to
produce such works as Greece has left us, to institute a
political lesson like that which carried Rome to universal
dominion, would it not be strange if in one respect it had
remained on a level with people who were given over to
the grossest fetichism ? Is it not quite probable that by
putting ourselves fairly where these ancients stood, this
pretended extravagance would disappear, and we should
recognise that fables, like all other products of human
nature, were once in a degree rational ? Good sense is all of
one piece, and it would be inexplicable if nations which, in
civil and political life, in art, poetry, philosophy, have filled

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 65
up the measure of man's ability, had not in religion sur
passed worships whose absurdity is now revolting to the
reason of a child.
For the rest, this misunderstanding is of very old date.
Not in modern times has Paganism begun to be the object
of perpetual falsification. It is evident that antiquity itself
had ceased to comprehend its religion, and that the old
myths, the flowering of the primitive imagination, early
lost their significance. The idea of making a chronological
cabinet of them, a sort of staple entertaining history, dates
not from Boccaccio or from Demoustier. Ovid illustrated
it in a book but little more respectable than the Letters to
JSmilie. I would not contemptuously overlook the charm
there is in this endless wreath of witty stories and piquant
metamorphoses; but what sacrilege, in a religious light,
this making sport of symbols consecrated by time, 'Wherein,
too, man had deposited his first views of the divine world !
Mascarelli's design of setting the whole history of Rome
to madrigals was more rational than the undertaking to
travesty ancient theologoumena into immodest tales which
are as much like the original myths as old paper flowers,
yellow and smoky, are like the flowers of the fields.
Now, this style of dealing with the religions of antiquity
belonged to all mythologists nearly down to our own
time. Mythology [this was the word which designated
those compilations of grotesque and commonly indecent
stories] became a series of biographies, in which, under
sacred texts, they narrated the unedifying life of Mercury,
the intrigues of Venus, the domestic passages of Jupiter
and Juno. Far from regretting the discredit which our age
has cast on the common use of these fables, the astonish
ment is that so many fine minds of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries should not have felt their insipidity.
When science began to apply itself seriously to the inter
pretation of ancient symbols, its efforts in France at least

66 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
were hardly more happy. France is not the country for
mythological studies; the French mind lacks that flexibility,
that facility of reproducing the intuitions of former ages
which are so essential for the understanding of religions.
The scholars of the old school, Jean Leclerc, Banier, Larcher,
Clavier, Petit-Radel, did not rise above a coarse Evhemer-
ism,* or a system of allegorical explanations quite as super
ficial ; fortunate when, resisting the prejudices which seduced
Bochart, Huet, Bossuet, and the whole theologic school,
they did not look for an altered form of the Bible tradi
tions in the mythology of Greece ! The critics who were-
inspired by the philosophy of the eighteenth century, Bou-
langer, Bailly, Dupuis, abandoned this method only to try
a symbolism less satisfactory still. Sainte-Croix carried
into the studies of the mysteries a more solid erudition, but
an insight as dull as that of his predecessors. Finally,
Emeric David, in his Jupiter, gave the finishing touch to
the French symbolism. His system is very simple : it is
unmixed allegorism. ¦ " Mythology is a collection of riddles
calculated to give a knowledge of the nature of the gods
and the dogmas of religion, to people who get at their secret."
The word to be guessed, holds the dogma. Thus by sub
stituting for the name of Apollo, the word " Sun ;" by read
ing "sea" instead of Amphitrite, all is told, for the key
lies in a single word. Trying afterwards to disengage
the religious doctrines hidden under these enigmas, Emeric
David finds seven, which sum up the Greek theology. My
thology is thus a sort of catechism in conundrums; the
fables have been simply invented to cover dogmas ; each
one has a very clean and a very definite sense. How did
this enigmatical form help to render the dogma more intel
ligible ? How could the human mind, possessed of a clear

* The reader recollects that Evhemerus saw iu the gods only men who had
been deified.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 67
thought, have hit on the fancy of explaining it by a thought
more obscure ? How could a whole race have let itself be
ensnared by this passion for puzzles, purely for the puzzle's
sake ? You need not put such questions to Emeric David.
Had not Locke taught that the human mind proceeds from
the simple to the complex ; that in order to associate two
ideas it must first have held them apart ? To assert that in
the human mind the notion of a thing does not precede the
Bign of it ; that man spontaneously creates the symbol with
out knowing precisely what he puts into it, would probably
have been unintelligible at a period when people were con
vinced that the mind had always proceeded according to
the rules laid down by the Abbe Condillac.
While France tried to interpret the religions of antiquity
after its superficial philosophy, Germany penetrated them
by its kindred religious genius rather than by the solidity
of its erudition. Goethe centred his poetic life in Olympus.
Lessing and Winklemann, the hebraic Herder himself, dis
covered in the ancient worships the religion of beauty.
Goerres looked there for the foundations of his mystieism.
Schelling thought it no digression in his writings on the
transcendental philosophy, to descant (with but little suc
cess, to be sure) on the gods of Samothrace. A crowd of
philologists and antiquarians tried to decipher in the writ
ten and graven monuments of antiquity, the meaning of the
great enigma bequeathed to science by the primitive world.
As the result of this accumulation' of facts and systems,
appeared from 1810 to 1812 the work which was to con
dense the whole 'early movement of mythological study,
the Symbolism of Dr. Frederic Creuzer. It was a great
phenomenon, something like a revelation, the sight of all
the gods of mankind, Indian,1 Egyptian, Persian, Phenician,
Etruscan, Grecian, Roman, brought together for the first
time in a scientific pantheon. The sustained elevation,
the deep religious tone, the sense of the higher destinies of

DO THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
the race that breathed through the book, announced that a
great revolution was accomplished, and that a better school
reconciled by synthesis with the whole of human nature^
was about to succeed an age which was irreligious because it
was exclusively analytical. The neo-platonic spirit of Plo-
tinus, Porphyry and Proclus seemed to revive in this
grand philosophic method of interpreting the antique sym
bols, and the- shade of Julian must have trembled with
delight, on hearing a doctor of Christian theology take up
his thesis, proclaim that paganism might suffice for the
deepest needs of the soul, and absolve the noble minds who,
at the supreme hour, endeavoured to warm in their bosoms
the fainting gods. *
It is especially true in historical science, that the cha
racteristics of a method are its defects, and that what con
stitutes the truth and force of a system also constitutes its
error and weakness. That mystical enthusiasm, the first im
pulse of the philosophy of nature, then growing in Ger
many, that sympathetic style which marked a real progress
in mythological study, must have had its excesses, and in
some degree its delirium. As compared with the cold,
unintelligent dissertations of the French school, M. Creuzer
has all the faults of his Alexandrian masters ; the symbolic
exaggeration, too marked a disposition to look for mystery
everywhere, an inclination to join things sundered which
sometimes runs into intemperance. Jamblichus and Non-
nus figure by the side of Hesiod and Homer, as inter
preters of the same myth. In his eyes, the Alexandrians
are good expositors, true restorers of paganism, who often
by their philosophical insight arrived at the original sense
of dogmas ; the Orphics themselves, so suspected of char
latanism, had preserved the spirit of the primitive religion.
It seems that time had no existence for M. Creuzer. He

* See Religions de tAntiquite, vol. i. page 3, and voL Iii. jage 830.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 69
looks too high for his solutions, because he lives too
much aloft himself, because he has no feeling for the simple,
natural, childlike life, wholly sensuous, yet wholly divine,
which the first Indo-Hellenic races lived. One must have a
soul intoxicated with poetry to comprehend the ravishing
delirium that the man of those races felt in the presence
pf nature and of himself. We, accustomed to look for
good sense everywhere, insist on finding deep combinations
where there was only instinct and fancy. We, serious and
positive, exhaust our philosophy in following the dream
plots of a child.
, The Greek mythology, or, in a more general sense, the
mythology of the Indo-European peoples, taken in its first
flight simply reflects the sensations of young and delicate
organs without a trace of dogmatism, a vestige of theology
or a shade of limitation. One might as well explain the
sound of bells or look for shapes in clouds as hunt for
a precise meaning in these dreams of the golden age.
Primitive man sees nature with the eyes of a ehild ; now
the child overlays all things with the marvellous that he finds
in himself. The charming little intoxication of life whieh
makes him giddy, causes him to see the world through a softly
colored vapour; casting on every object a curious and joyous
look, he smiles at all things, and all things smile at him.
We undeceived by experience, expect nothing extraordi
nary from the infinite combination of things ; but the child
knows not what may come from the sportive throwing of the
dice that goes on before him — he believes more in the
possible, for he knows less of the actual. Hence his joys
and his terrors ; he creates his own fantastic world, which
by turns enchants and frightens him. He tells his dreams ;
he has not that sharp analysis which, in a reflecting age,
places us face to face with reality as cold ^observers. Such
was the primitive man. Hardly detached from nature, he
conversed with herj- spoke to her, heard her voice; that

70 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
great mother to whom he was still arterially bound, seemed
to him living and breathing. The sight of physical phe
nomena made on him various impressions which, taking
body from his imagination, became his gods. He adored
his sensations ; or to speak more correctly, the vague and
unknown object of his sensations ; for not yet distinguish
ing object from subject, the world was himself, and he was
the world. In presence of the sea, for example, of its
voluptuous lines, of its hues now brilliant now sombre,
the sense of the vague, the sad, the infinite, the terrible, the
beautiful whieh rose in his soul, revealed to him a com
plete group of melancholy, eapricious, many-formed, im
palpable gods. Dissimilar were the impressions and the
divinities of the mountains, dissimilar those of the land ;
quite different those of the flame and the volcano, quite
different again those of the air and its varied phenomena.
In this way, nature reflected herself completely, in these
primitive souls, under the>,shape of nameless deities.
"It seems," says M. Creuzer, "as if one were dealing not
with men like ourselves, but with elementary spirits, en
dowed with a marvellous insight into the very nature of
things ; with a kind of magnetic power to see and compre
hend every thing." ^ Hence those mysterious races, the
Telchines of Rhodes, the Curetes of Crete, the Dactyles of
Phrygia, the Carcines and the Sintiers of Lemnos, the Ca-
bires of Samothrace, fantastical and magical races, like the
Trolls of Scandinavia, in immediate communication with
the forces of nature. Every thing that struck man, every
thing that excited in his soul the sentiment of the divine,
Was a god or the attribute of a god ; a great river, a high
mountain, a star remarkable for its splendour, or the pecu
liarity of its course, — a thousand objects whose symboli
cal sense has vanished for us. Examine the spots which
antiquity holds sacred, it will always be impossible to dis
cover the motive that could have made people suppose the

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 71
Divinity was more present there than elsewhere. Those
spots; aside from the associations that attach to them, tell
us very little. The Capitol, regarded simply as a hill, has
not much character; Lake Avernus, which struck the
imagination of the ancients so vividly, presents to us a
sweet little landscape, nothing more.
To pretend to seize the gossamer threads of these first
religious intuitions and to describe the capricious path of
the imagination in these delicate creations which man and
nature with the most cordial understanding combined to
form, would be like feeling after the track of the bird in
the air. A fact of history, a moral thought, a glimpse of
atmospherical, geological, astronomical phenomena, a keen
sensation, a fright, found expression in a myth. Language
itself, says M. Creuzer, was a fruitful mother of gods and
heroes. The trait which characterizes wit in its most atte
nuated form, the play on words, the pun, was one of the most
familiar sources of the primitive mythology. Many an im
portant myth of antiquity rests on nothing firmer than a
fanciful etymology, an alliteration such as gives sport to the
imagination of a child. Witness the ivory shoulder of
Pelops, Drepane and the sickle of Ceres, Tarsus and the
winged heels of Perseus. In other cases distortions, literal
mistakes gave birth to fantastic tales. It is thus that the
Nile vase — the canope surmounted by a human head, whose
image doubtless struck the first Greek that travelled in
Egypt— became, through a long course of cock and bull
stories, a Greek hero who assisted at the siege of Troy.
The hero, Cantharus, originated in a similar way from the.
cantharus or drinking cup, and was at once the vase and
the companion of Bacchus. Finally almost imperceptible
associating of ideas, rhythmical motives such as determined
the contour of an arabesque, presided at the formation of
these strange fables. Why are Neptune and the horse,
Venus and the sea constantly associated ? Perhaps no other

72 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
reason is to be sought than the infinite grace of the liquid
element, the. undulations of its surface, and the resemblance
of its harmonious curves to the flexible lines of the love
liest type of animal nature.
It is impossible, we perceive, to classify gods that come
from all the four winds of heaven. Indefiniteness of mean
ing, under the utmost definiteness of form, is the essential
character of the art as of the mythology of Greece. My
thology is a second speech, born like the first from the echo
of nature in the mind, as inexplicable by analysis as the
first, but whose mystery is disclosed to him that can com
prehend the hidden spontaneous forces, the secret accord of
nature and the soul, the perpetual hieroglyphic that sug
gests the expression of human sentiment. Each god thus
represents to us a finished epoch, a region of ideas, a tone
in the harmony of things. It is not enough to say with
the old allegorical school : " Minerva is prudence, Venus is
beauty." Minerva and Venus are feminine nature looked
at on its two sides : — the spiritual and saintly, the esthetic
and voluptuous. If Mercury were only the god of thieves,
and Bacchus the god of wine, as the children are told, they
would be fictions of moderate ingenuity, very poor figures
of rhetoric, suitable to Boileau's epopee; but antiquity
never adored gods so grossly puerile. Mercury is human
nature viewed in its aptitudes and industry, the youth beau
tiful in his vigor and suppleness, the pattern of a gymnast.
On the other hand, all the ideas of juvenility, pleasure,
voluptuousness, adventure, easy triumph, terrible passion,
gathered about Bacchus. He stands for the brilliant side
of life : he is the boy cherished by the nymphs, always
young, handsome, fortunate, waited on with caresses and
kisses ; his soft languor, his yielding form, his roundness,
his feminine type often degenerating into the hermaphro
dite, disclose a less noble origin. Compared with the Greek
god par excellence, Apollo, he is a stranger, who, in spite

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 73
of a long sojourn in Greece, has not lost his Asiatic air ; he
is clad in a long Thracian garment (Cassaride), for he is
afraid to go naked ; his brow is encircled by the oriental
mitre because his hair is insufficient to crown it.
One of the myths which seem to me calculated to convey
an idea of these extreme complexities, these fugitive aspects,
and these numberless contradictions of the ancient fables, is
that of Glaucus, an humble myth, to be sure, a myth of
poor people ; but, for that very reason, retaining all its ori
ginal and popular character. Those who have passed their
infancy on the borders of the sea, know how many associa
tions of deep and poetical ideas are formed in presence of
the lively spectacles from the shore. Glaucus is the per
sonification and the exponent of these ideas and impressions,
— a god created by sailors, summing up the whole poetry
of sea life, as it appears to poor people. Old age oppresses
him ; a prey to despair, he plunges into the sea and be
comes a prophet ; prophet pf misfortune, sad old man, he is
wet sometimes, his body wasted by the action of the water,
covered with shells and marine plants. According to
others, he plunged into the waves, because he could not
prove his immortality. From this time he makes a yearly
visit to the banks and islands. In the evening, when the
wind pipes, Glaucus — that is to say, the yellow wave — rises
and utters loud oracles. The fishermen crouch in the bot
tom of their boats, and endeavour by fasting, by prayers,
by incense, to turn aside the evils that impend. Glaucus,
however, mounted on a rock, in angry tones threatens their
fields and flocks, and bewails his immortality. They told,
also, of his amours — loves, sad, unfortunate, ending like a
painful dream. He loved a beautiful mermaid, named
Scylla. One day, hoping to touch her, he brought for her
amusement shells and young halcyons without feathers. She
saw his tears, and took pity on them ; but Circe, through jea
lousy, poisoned the young girl's bath, and she became a bark-

74 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
ing monster,- the personification of the natural horror which
the squalls and perils of the Sicilian sea inspire. The poor
Glaucus, from this moment, is awkward, mischievous, com
plaining, spiteful. He is seen on monuments with his
beard of sea-weeds, his gaze fixed, his brows contracted.
The Loves make merry at his expense: — one pulls his hair;
another slaps him. Sometimes he is Glauci, that is the tint
between green and blue which the shallow sea assumes
when it reposes on a white sand ; the colour of the sea thus
becomes a woman, as the fleecy crest of the waves becomes
the white head of the Grees (old women) who terrify the
sailors. Sometimes it is Lamia, who attracts men and
seduces them by her charms ; at other times a hawk that
circles and plunges on his prey ; then again, an insatiable
siren holding a youth by each hand. Mix up all the ideas
of seafaring people, jumble the vagaries of a sailor's dream,
and you have the myth of Glaucus ; a haunting melancholy,
troublesome and formless dreams, a keen sense of all the
apparitions of the waves,. perpetual disquiet, danger every
where, seduction everywhere, the uncertain future, the
strong impression of fatalism. Glaucus is at once the colour
and the sound of the sea ; the billow that whitens, the
reflection of the skies on the back of the surge, the
evening wind which foretells the next day's storm, the
plunging movement, the stunted forms of the mermen —
the impotent desires, the sad returns of solitary life, the
doubt, the struggle, the despair, the long weariness of a fixed
condition, wasted on illusion, and the mournful immortality
which can neither get assurance nor deliverance, painful
riddle, echo of that dismal feeling which suggests to man
his unknown origin and his divine destiny ; truth which to
his sorrow he cannot prove ; for it is above his understand
ing, and man can neither demonstrate it nor avoid it.
We see how these delicate and scarcely tangible sketches,
these vestiges of fugitive impressions, must appear unintel-

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 75
ligible to an age of advanced reflection. The ancients
often felt the same embarrassment before their mythology
that we feel. They wished to find reality in the vague
images, to give body to the dreams. But such was the
indefinite character of the antique fables, that each could
find in them what he looked for. Some adopted the flatly
impious system of Evhemerus, who explained all the mar
vellous traditions by historical facts. Others, imbued with
a higher philosophy, sought in the myths a symbolical
rendering of their philosophy. The gods of pure anti
quity eat and drink. That means, said Proclus, they
incessantly create by the mingling of infinite and finite ;
ambrosia, the solid food, represents the finite ; nectar
the liquid food stands for the infinite. Uranus, Saturn
and Jupiter are with Plotinus, the three principles
of the intelligible world, the one Intelligence and Soul.
Jupiter begetting Venus is the universal soul outwardly
producing itself. Saturn devouring his children is Intel
ligence whose law is to re-enter ceaselessly into itself. Thus
all was allegory and metaphor. The flowers opening to
the sun in the early season, the charming childishness of
the nascent consciousness became in the hands of phi
losophical pedantry, cold and graceless enigmas. If there
lis one myth which has preserved, most transparently,
through the covering of anthropomorphism the trace of the
primitive nature worship, it is without dispute, that of the
nymphs. It is hardly necessary to change their names
and attributes to discover the springs and flowing waters
in these fresh, living, delicate, bounding, smiling, now
visible, now invisible divinities, which leap among the
rocks waltzing and singing like children, with sweet mys
terious voice, never sleeping, spinning the sea-green wool,
or weaving the purple stuff in the rocks, pitiful goddesses
who cure maladies and sometimes ravish and kill. Yet,
from this source Porphyry in his " Cave of the Nymphs,"

76 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
will draw a complete philosophy. Nymphs are souls;
their veil is the body ; the cave is the world. The inte
rior of the cave represents the sensible dark side ; the
exterior the intelligible luminous side, &c.
The fundamental defect in M. Creuzer's system is that it
considers paganism too exclusively in this mystical and
philosophical aspect. It is as if from the works of the new
Catholic School, one should reconstruct ,the theory of
primitive Christianity. The myth has really its full
significance in those epochs only when man having no
definite notion of natural laws, feels that he still lives in a
divine world. Now, long before the decline of paganism,
that first simplicity had disappeared. The supernatural was
merely the miraculous, that is, a deviation from the esta
blished order by divinity ; a conception radically differ
ent from that of the primitive man, for whom there was
no natural order but a continual play of living and free
powers. At that ancient period there was nothing that
could be called dogma — positive religion — a sacred book.
The child does not dispute, has no need of answers for he
lays down no problem ; for him all is clear. The glory
with which the world shines in his eyes, the deified life,
the poetic cry of his soul, that was his worship, a celestial
worship involving an unselfish act of adoration and free
from all the subtlety of reflection.
It is then a very grave mistake to suppose that men at
a remote period created those symbols for the purpose of
covering dogmas, and with a distinct view Pf the dogma
and of the symbol. All that is born simultaneously of one
union, and in one moment, like thought and word, idea
and expression. The myth does not include two ele
ments, an envelope and a thing inclosed ; it is indivisible.
The question — did the primitive man comprehend or did he
not, the sense of the myths he created ? — is put aside, for in
the myth the meaning was not distinct from the object.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 77
The man comprehended the myth without seeing anything
beyond it, as a simple thing and not as two things. The ab
stract language which we are obliged to use in explaining
the old fables must not deceive us. Our habits of analysis
compel us to separate the sign from the thing signified ; but
for the spontaneous man the moral and religious thought
came wrapped in the myth as in its natural garment. The
primitive age was neither grossly fetichistic, for everything
had a significance for it; nor finely spiritualistic, for it
conceived nothing in an abstract way without sensible
covering; it was an age of confused unity in which man
saw the two worlds open before him, one in the other, and
one expressing the other.
Grant that in antiquity there were allegories, properly so
called — personifications of moral beings-— such as Hygeia,
Victory, patrician Modesty, womanly Fortune, Sleep, &c;
admit that there were myths invented or at least developed
by reflection like that of the Psyche ; no one will deny it.
But a deep line of separation exists between these clear,
simple, spiritual allegories, and those old enigmas real pro
ductions of the Sphinx, in which the idea and the symbol
are absolutely inseparable. M. Creuzer saw plainly enough
that the meaning of the ancient symbols was lost at a very
remote period ; that Homer already was a bad theologian ;
that his gods were but poetic personages on a level with
men, leading a free and joyous life divided between plea
sure and activity, like the chiefs of the Hellenic tribes j
that the most dignified myths became in his hands piquant
histories, pretty themes for narratives coloured with the
tints of humanity. But was it fair to conclude from this,
that before the age of the epic, there was a grand age of
theology, during which Greece, of course, became a priestly
country with a rooted religion, venerated symbols, ecclesi
astical institutions, and a basis of monotheism borrowed
from the East? We think not. Let people say as much

78 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
as they will, that the Hellenic period was one of religious
decadence, of triumph of hero and poet over priest, of a
religion popular, clear, facile, but" empty of meaning as re
garded the sacred arcana; laic in a word — it does not follow
from this that the Pelasgians had a definite theology, an
intelligent symbolism, an organized priesthood. " People,"
says Ottfried Mulier, " always start from this supposition,
that a poet, an ancient sage, would purposely have wrapped
clear ideas in symbols and allegorical myths, which later
must have been taken for real facts and detailed as history.
But the epoch we are dealing with, representing all the rela
tions of divinity, of nature, and of man as so many distinct
persons, so many significant acts, what we call mistake or mis
conception existed in the principle that lay at the heart of
the myth itself, and was not brought to it from the outside."
It would be an extravagance, as opposed to the truth of
history as to a sound view of human nature, to claim that
the Hellenic religion was wholly wanting in sacerdotal and
dogmatical organization. The oracles, that at Delphi in
particular, were like a permanent revelation, revered even
by the polity which used them. What is the " Theogony"
of Hesiod but the first rudiment of a national theology, an
essay towards the organization of the city of the gods and
their history, as the tribes and cities of Greece tended of
their own motion to form a solid national organization ?
The name of Orpheus serves, we cannot doubt, to cover an
attempt of the same kind. Later, the mysteries gathered
into their bosom the elements of the most finished religious
life. It must nevertheless be confessed that Greece was not
destined to be an ecclesiastical land. All the great revolu
tions of Greece, the successive conquests of the Hellenes,
the Heracleidse, the Dorians, are so many triumphs of the
lay spirit, so many outbreaks of popular energy against the
imposition of sacerdotal usage. The priest, remanded to
the temple, will henceforth be of small account : the poet

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 79
has nothing more to do with him. Homer constantly ex
alts the poet at the expense of the sacrifyers and sooth
sayers. Here is the charm of the Homeric world : it is the
awakening of the common life, liberty disporting in the full
sunshine, humanity coming out of its cellars and shaking
off its sleep to spring to the field of warlike activity, and
to revel in the thousand adventures of heroic life. The
same revolution goes on in art. Sacred art, limited in its
types, sacrificing form to meaning, beauty to mysticism,
gives place to an art more disinterested, whose aim is to
excite the sentiment of beauty, and not the sentiment of
sanctity. India thinks of no better way to exalt its gods
than heaping signs on signs, and symbols on symbols;
Greece, under better inspiration, fashions them after its
image, as Helen honours Minerva of Lindos by offering her
a cup of yellow amber, made the size of her bosom.
Doubtless the symbolism lost something in this trans
formation. The modest Venus of the earliest ages had a
holier character than the deified courtesan who sat enthroned
on the altars when Praxiteles with the folds of her robe
let fall that air of reserve which still showed the goddess.
We fancy too, that by a feeling very common to epochs of
religious decadence, the later devotees of paganism may
have been seized with a retrospective admiration for the
rigid forms of sacerdotal art. Thus in our time, the coarse
art of the middle age appeared to many the genuine form
of religious art. Indeed it cannot be denied that the Chris
tian mystery, as mystery, was much better understood by
Giotto and Perugino than by Leonardo da Vinci and Titian.
M. Creuzer, however, exaggerates a partial truth when he
sees a decadence, a sacrilegious travesty in the process by
which the gods were stripped of their higher physical signi
ficance and converted into purely human personages. It
would be easy to show that, even from a religious point of
view, this was a real gain. Phidias was not a scoffer, as

80 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
some would have us believe, because he sought the type of
his Jupiter in his own thought and not in tradition. Re
spectable testimonies aver on the contrary that this modifi
cation of art corresponded to a new birth of religion and
contributed to re-kindle piety in souls. They were esteemed
unhappy who died without having seen the image of the
Olympian Jupiter, and their religious initiation was deemed
defective because they had not contemplated the highest
realization of the ideal. Is not the human form the most
expressive of symbols ? Will any say that the canopi, the
jar-gods, the swathed dwarfs, of the cabiric age were more
significant than the gods that sprang into life from the
chisel of Praxiteles and Phidias ? It must be remembered
besides, that Greece seized a thousand analogies between
human forms and pure ideas which escape us, and that fail
ing to catch the meaning of actual nature, it saw every thing
transformed into a living being. The country which raised
Philip of Crotona to the rank of the demi-gods, because he
was the most beautiful Greek of his time, is the same that
represented the country by a faun ; that in denoting a foun
tain, instead of shade, water, and verdure, made the figure
of a woman's head with fishes in her hair, and that found
no more suitable epithet for a river than xxMiirupBites (the
lovely virgin) in view of the whiteness of the waves which
in its imagination took the shape of young girls.

II.

The chief mistake of M. Creuzer was indicated by the
title of his book. It is too symbolic. Always full of theo
logy and sacerdotal institutions, misconceiving the artless
and popular side of antiquity, he looks for abstract and
dogmatic ideas in light creations, which often contain
nothing but the joyous trifles of childhood. Persuaded

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 81
that the religion of Greece must, like others, have had a
sacerdotal period, and meeting nothing of this kind in the
spontaneous creations of the Greek genius, he throws him
self back on the colonies and the influences derived from the
East. To this double exaggeration corresponded, in the
movement of mythological studies in Germany, a double
reaction ; to the excess of symbolism, a negative and anti-
symbolic school opposed itself, represented by Voss, G.
Hermann and Lobeck; the abuse of Oriental influences
was resisted by the purely hellenic school of MM. Ottfried^
Mulier, Welcker, and others.
J. H. Voss was unquestionably the roughest adversary
the Symbolism at first encountered. A zealous Protestant
and an avowed rationalist, he thought he saw in Dr.
Creuzer's work a dangerous tendency towards the mys
tical doctrines then springing up in Germany. This book
which many timid consciences in France regard as a work
of intolerable audacity, was in the Germany of 1820, re
ceived as a Catholic manifesto, an apology for the priest
hood and the theocracy. . Some conversions which made a
good deal of noise, in particular that of Count Frederic of
Stolbergj came in to fortify the fears of Voss in regard to
the dangers of the league which he supposed had been
formed between the Symbolical System and the Roman
propaganda. In M. Creuzer, he fancied he saw a disguised
agent of the Jesuits, and undertook the examination of his
book in seven consecutive numbers of the Literary Gazette
of Jena (May, 1821). The bitter tone of this criticism
made the friends of M. Creuzer indignant. The author of
the "Symbolism" replied to the diatribes of Voss by a
little piece in which he contemptuously decHned entering
into discussion with an adversary incapable of conceiving
the spirit of his theories, for the understanding bf which
sentiment and poetic taste were as. necessary as learning
and analysis. Voss returned to the charge and published at

82 . THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
Stuttgart, in 1824, his " Anti-symbolism," a learned pamph
let, filled with the most irritating personalities. On all
sides, a cry was raised against such violent polemics ; M.
Creuzer felt it his duty to be silent.
In M. Lobeck, the "Symbolism" found an adversary more
moderate in his- terms, but equally narrow. The "Ag-
laophamus" (1829) is a flat denial of M. Creuzer's system.
Never did criticism run more rapidly from one pole to
another ; never did opposite qualities and defects establish
between two men a more absolute dissonance. Led astray
by the neo-platonic exegesis, M. Creuzer supposed high
antiquity to be far more mystical than it really was ; M.
Lobeck positive, analytical, convinced that horror of mys
ticism is the beginning of wisdom, seems to take pleasure
in reducing it to insignificance. Wherever M. Creuzer dis
covers high moral thought, rites holy and dignified, M.
Lobeck descries nothing but obscene buffoonery and child
ishness. The ancient pelasgian religion, wherein M. Creu
zer thought he detected an emanation of the Oriental
symbolism, is but an absurd and coarse fetichism, in the
eyes of M. Lobeck ; those mysteries, the remains, according
to M. Creuzer, of a pure, primeval worship, are to M.
Lobeck only juggleries analogous to those of the Masonic
lodges. Full of holy indignation at what Voss called
"the allegorical filth," the "lies of Plato," he haughtily
repels every interpretation that wears a religious badge. M.
Creuzer, drawn on by his vivid imagination, constantly
oversteps the bounds of admitted knowledge. M. Lobeck
is never happier than when he can deny, and can show
that his predecessors have asserted too much. No mytho-
logist has equalled him as a critic of original texts ; but if he
compares texts, it is not to get light out of them — it is to
grind them together, and show that nought but darkness
is there. The conclusion of his book is that we know
nothing about the ancient religions, and that there is not

THE RELIGIONS .OF ANTIQUITY. 83
even roo'm for conjecture. His attacks, moreover, do not
stop at the religions of antiquity. It is not towards Eleusis
and Samothrace alone, that M. Lobeck shows himself irreve
rent and mocking. Every form of religion that supposes
a priesthood and mysteries, is repugnant to him. Pitiless
towards popular superstitions, he is more so towards the
interpreters who would find in them a lofty sense. Reli
gion and philosophy, in his view, have nothing to do with
each other ; the neo-platonists. are impudent forgers, who
have only succeeded in marring the face of the old religion
without rendering it more acceptable. What is the use
of trying to be absurd half way ? What is the use of
sweating blood and water to find sense, where there is
none? If M.. Lobeck possesses eminently the faculties of the
critic, we must own that he lacks one sense, for mythologi
cal interpretation — the religious sense. One would say, in
sooth, while reading him, that mankind invented religion
for amusement, as they invented charades and conundrums.
M. Lobeck exults in demonstrating that the ancient religion
was a mere tissue of anachronisms and contradictions, that
no two writers on myths can be found who agree on the
dates, places, genealogies; but what has he proved by
this? Simply one point, — that mythology must not be
dealt with as a real thing, that its essence is contradiction.
Now, it is precisely for this reason that criticism has an ill-
grace, when it demands history where there is nothing his
toric, and reason where nothing rational is proposed.
Certainly it is good that there should be minds of the
stamp of M. Lobeck's ; but it is important to maintain that
a method like his can satisfy neither philosophy nor criti
cism. Nothing is gained by attacking religion with the
positive intellect, for religion is of another order. The
religious sentiment carries its certainty in itself, and reason
can neither fortify nor«weaken it. It is superfluous to re-

84 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
proach religions with the absurdities that they maty present
to the view of common sense ; it is like arguing with love,
and proving to passion that it is unreasonable. If the Eleu-
sinian drama were represented before us, it would pro
bably have the effect of a miserable parade ; and yet, will
you doubt the veracity of the thousand witnesses who
attest the consoling virtue and the moral efficacy of these
sacred ceremonies? Did Pindar speak seriously, or did he
not, when he said of the mysteries of Ceres: "Happy he,
who, after having beheld this spectacle, descends into the
^bowels of the earth I He knows the end of life; he knows
its divine origin ?" Was.Andocides joking in the face of
the Athenians when, exhorting them to gravity and jus
tice, he said : " You have contemplated the holy rites pf
the goddesses to the end that^you should punish impiety, •
and should be saviours of those who defend themselves
against injustice." . The sincere Protestant, looking on at
Catholic ceremonies, feels only indifference or disgust; and
yet, these rites are full of charm for those who have been
accustomed to them from infancy. This is why every word
of contempt and levity is misplaced when we are dealing
with the practices of a religion. Nothing is significant,, in
itself, and man finds -in the object of his worship nothing
but what he puts there. The altar on which the patriarchs
laid sacrifices to Jehovah was, materially, nothing but a
pile of stones ; and yet, regarded in its religious significance,
as a symbol of the abstract and formless God of the Semi
tic pedple, that pile of stones was as saered as a Greek
temple. We must not ask reasons of the religious senti
ment. The wind, bloweth where it listeth. If it chooser to
associate the ideal with this, with that, what have you to
say? While the skeptical professor of Konigsberg used all the
resources of his learning and critical acumen to strip the
gods of their glory,, and to cheapen, the secret of the mys-

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 85
teries, mythological science aspired more and more to plant
itself on the clear basis of history, at an equal remove from
the mystical fancies of M. Creuzer, and from the anti-reli
gious prejudices of M. Lobeck. Buttmann, Voelcker,
Schwank, by philosophy and the study of texts; Welcker,
Gerhardi and Panofka, by archaeology "and the study of
monuments, tried to seize, among these different presump
tions,, the exact shade of the truth. All, or nearly all,
agree in acknowledging, against M. Creuzer, the originality
of the Greek mythology. All agree in rejecting, as a blas
phemy, the proposition that Greece was ever a province of
Asia ; that the Greek genins, so free, so untrammelled, so
limpid, owed anything to the obscure genius of the East.
Doubtless, the primitive populations of Greece and Italy,
like all the branches of the wide European family, pre
served, in their religious ideas, as well as in their speech,
the traits common to the race to which they belonged; and
this primitive parentage may be recognised still in some
Striking resemblances. But that is not the question; for
these identical principles, which all the people of the great
race carried with them as provision for their voyage, are
found as much among the Germans, the Ofelts, the Sclaves,
whom we never think of placing under the tutelage of the
Orient. It is important to maintain the independent de
velopment of the hellenic mind in its essential parts; to
contend that, excepting the first spark and some accessions
of secondary moment, Greece owes nothing, save to its
gods, its seas, its skies, its mountains; that this favoured
corner of the earth, this divine leaf of the mulberry flung
into the midst of the ocean, saw the chrysalis of the. human
consciousness bloom in its natural beauty for the first time.
This is why Greece^ is truly a Holy Land for him whose
civilization is worship. Here is the secret of that invinci
ble charm she has always exerted over men initiated into
liberal life. The true beginnings of the human mind are

86 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
there ; all the nobles of the intellect recognise there the
country of their fathers.
At the head of this exclusively hellenic school, stands
the rare man whom the sun of Delphos carried away too
soon for science, who in a life of forty years ^earned how
to indicate or to solve, with marvellous sagacity, the most
delicate problems in the history of the hellenic races. I
speak of Ottfried Mulier. • While admitting, with M. Creu
zer, a mysterious cultus among the most ancient popula
tions of Greece, M. Mulier differs wholly from the chief of
the symbolic school in rejecting the out-worn hypothesis of
oriental colonies, and in denying the sacerdotal and theo
logical cast of the primitive worships. The religion of
the Pelasgians was the adoration of nature, apprehended
chiefly by sense and imagination. The Earth Mother (Da-
Mater) and the deities of the nether world, such as Perse
phone, Hades, Hermes, Hecate, whose worship was perpe
tuated in the mysteries, were gods of the Thracian and
Pelasgic, tribes from whom the Hellenes borrowed their
mythological credences to transform them after their more
moral and less cosmic mode of conception. These worships
were neither primitive revelations nor institutions imported
from abroad, but simply expressions of the genius, the
manners, the political life of the several tribes of Greece.
The distinction of races thus becomes, in the hands of Ottfried
Mulier, the basis of mythological interpretation. Hence
came those excellent monographs on the Dorians, the
Minyens, the Etruscans ; those delicate researches on the
nationality of each god and his successive conquests. The
struggle of Hermes and Apollo, is the struggle of the old
rural divinities of Arcadia with the nobler divinities of the
oonqueror ; the inferiority of the vanquished races shows
itself in the subordinate rank of their gods ; admitted by
favour into the hellenic Olyropus, they attain to no emi
nence there, and only come to be heralds and messengers

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 87
of the rest. What, in fact, is Apollo but the incarnation
of the Dorian genius? No mysticism in his worship, no
orgie, none of that savage enthusiasm which characterized
the Phrygian religions. Hostile to the laborious agricultu
ral gods of the Pelasgians, this ideal type of the Dorian has
no mission on the lower earth but that of the warrior, the
avenger, the protector, the chastiser ; labour is beneath him.
What is Artemis, at his side, but the feminine personifica
tion of the same genius — the Dorian virgin whom a male
education has made the equal of men — chaste, proud, her
own mistress, needing neither protector nor master ? How
remote from these Pelasgic deities, hardly detached from
the earth, covered with sweat and smoke, as if they had just
come from the laboratories of nature, exposing their artless
obscenity without shame ! Here we have immaculate gods.
exempt from effort and from trouble : physical phenomena
no longer make the canvas for the divine myths ; humanity
is decidedly in the ascendant.
Gifted with an admirable historic perception, with. a just
and fine mind, Ottfried Mulier had marked out the way to
a truly scientific mythology. And we may believe that,
but for the deplorable accident* which took him away from
science so young, he would have corrected the trifling stiff
ness of his first manner. So fluid and incdnsistent are the
ancient myths, that no exclusive system applies to them,
and one can only venture to make an assertion in a matter
so delicate on condition of following it wiA numberless
qualifications which nearly take back all that had been said
before. Let him say, for example, Apollo is a Dorian god,
Apollo presents, in the first instance, no solar characteristic ;
nothing truer as announcing merely a general trait, an ap
proximation. But if more be intended, M. Creuzer will
 — — ^  . 
* He died at Athens in 1849, from the effects of a sun-stroke, which ho
had received while visiting the ruins of Delphos.

88 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
show you that the identity of helios and Apollo, though
not at first so apparent as it became, later, still existed at the
bottom of the Greek idea, and that the arrows of the divine
archer are also the rays of the orb that darts life and death.
Alas ! the unfortunate Ottfried was to feel the fatal influ
ence. " Unhappy man," wrote M. Welcker to the translator
of the Symbolism, "he had always disowned the solar di
vinity of Apollo. Did the god avenge himself by making
him feel among the ruins of his own temple how formida
ble his rays are to him that dares to brave them!"
M. Preller,* in many respects, may be considered as the
continuer of Ottfried Midler's method. In* his view, also,
the mystical element in the Greek religion belongs to the
Thracians and the Pelasgians. The fundamental idea of
the Pelasgic worship was the adoration of Nature re
garded as living and divine, of the earth, and above all,
of the divinities of the lower world. In contrast with the
i
naturalism of the Pelasgians, M. Preller places the
anthropomorphism of the Hellenes, represented by the
Homeric age, which gave a definite foundation to the popu
lar national theology ; bnt when the torrent of that warlike
epoch had passed by, in the age of Solon and Pisistratus,
there was something like a reaction in favour of the old
worships, which found expression in two forms, Orphism
and the Mysteries, both rather modern, both mixed some
what with charlatanism, both eagerly taken up later by
the neo-platonists.
The distinction of epochs is thus the basis of M. Preller's
studies: the gods have their chronology as well as their
nationality. In general, antiquity soon tired of its symbols ;
a cultus rarely lasted more than a hundred years ; • fashion
went a great way in devotion, as with us. Religion, being
one of the living products of humanity, must be alive, that
* "Demeter and 'Persephone," Hamburg, 1837. '

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 89
is to say, must change with it. In our churches, do the
saints of oldest date and best temper, enjoy the most favour,
receive the most vows and prayers ? Greece allowed her
self full license in this regard,. and very often treated her
gods, not according to their merit and their antiquity, but
according to their youth and their beauty. . The smallest
god coming from a strange' land, was sure of obtaining, in
a little while, more vogue than those who had been longer
domesticated among them. Thus the Cabires, shapeless
dwarfs of Samothrace, were banished to their forges and
their bellows4. Almost all the Pelasgian divinities were
subjected to affronts of this kind. Old Pan hardly gets a
place in the retinue of Dionysus, a young god high in the
fashion. Hermes, the great Pelasgic god, is reduced to
keeping watch at street corners, and showing travellers the
road, for money. Honest Vulcan, that conscientious work
man, so useful, so laborious, ascends Olympus only to feel
the weight of Jupiter's foot, the rebuffs of Venus. All
these old gods of an industrious people — smith gods, farmer
gods, shepherd gods, sad, serious, useful gods, little favoured
by the graces — become demi-gods, satellites, pr menials of
the nobler deities. In general, the heroes represent the
strange gods, who have not acquired rank among the
national divinities, or divinities out* of society, and just
Hving on in the popular superstitions. Dethroned gods,
indeed, were rarely without their compensation. The new
worships did not destroy their predecessors, but cast them
into the shade ; oftener still assimilated them, becoming" as
it were, vast crucibles, wherein the myths and the attri
butes of the older gods were melted, to be recast under new
names. In this way the myths of Ceres and Proserpine
absorbed nearly all the rest; in this way the Sabazian
mysteries of Phrygia made their fortune by appropriating
those of Bacchus.
It was particularly after the invasion of the Sabazian

90 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
mysteries, towards the first century before our era, that the
Greeks manifested that singular curiosity in regard to
strange rites, which St. Paul, like an excellent observer,
gives as one of the traits of their character. The worships
of Attis, of Cybele, of Adonis, with their fierce orgies,
their clamours, their savage and licentious spirit, took by sur
prise the pure taste of Greece. ' There was one in particu
lar, a dead god Zagreus, who suddenly made a prodigious
fortune. It was Dionysus himself, the god always young,
who was supposed to have been smitten in his flower, like
Adonis, and who was honoured with bloody rjtes. Repelled
with disgust by persons of- intelligence and honesty, these
worships were turned to profit by coarse charlatans, who
imitated the shameful depravities of the Phrygian priests,
ran through the streets and crossways, and made dupes of
the credulous crowd. They remitted sins for money, traf
ficked in indulgences, made filters and cured maladies.
" Next to the mendicants of the mother of the gods," says
one of the interlocutors of the " Banquet " of Athenseus,
" these, by Jupiter, are the most detestable brood I know."
Thus the .oriental influence which M. Creuzer had so
much exaggerated, is reduced to its just value. If we de
duct original elements, this influence is not exercised till a
comparatively modern date, and marks a degeneracy rather
than an advance in the Hellenic religions. The barbaric
element first glides in under the appearance and colour of .
the Greek myth. Later the foreign religions no longer
take the trouble to change their dress. Isis, Serapis, Mith
ras, will occupy the throne in full view of Greece, wearing
their strange garb, as if to prelude those monstrous amalga
mations in which the superstitions of the East and those of
the West, the excesses of religious sentiment and those of
philosophic thought, astrology and magic, theurgy and neo-
platonic ecstasy seemed to clasp hands.
¦"•-< All progress in mythological study, since M. Creuzer,

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 91
has confined itself as we see to the task of distinguishing
the times, the places, and the races which the illustrious
author of the " Symbolism" had too often confounded. M.
Creuzer constructed the history of Paganism in the same
way that the Old School constructed the history of Chris
tianity, that is to say as if it had been a body of doctrines
always the same, which passed through the centuries with
no other changes than such as proceeded from external
circumstances. Now, if modern criticism has taught us
anything it is that, in the infinite variety of times and
places, nothing is stable enough to be held thus fixedly
under the eye, and that the history of the human mind, to
be just, must offer a picture of incessant motion.

HI.

With so rich a range of study before him, M. Guigniaut's
method was already traced. The wise academician might
have added one system more to those which Germany had
created ; he chose to put himself outside of theories, and
to confine himself to the more delica'te task of discussion,
not aiming at a mean refutation, but aspiring towards high
impartiality and an intelligent reconciliation. In this, he
but followed the course imposed oh all serious minds in
France in the 19th century. The character of the 19th
century is critical. That systems were once useful and
necessary ; that a great development of important ideas is
ordinarily produced only by the strife of rival schools,
history stands by to prove, but the history of the human
mind in our days establishes no less clearly, that the time
for systems is gone by, the masters not having sufficient
authority to found a school, nor the pupils sufficient docility
to accept dictation. In this sense eclecticism is the method
forced on our generation, and on France in particular.

92 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
The intellectual temperament of France is a mean betwixt
opposite qualities, a compromise between extremes; it is
lucid, simple, moderate. Let us not regret it; for it' is
after all, perhaps, the combination of mental faculties
which is permitted to ^embrace most closely the truth.
Schools are, in science, what parties are in politics ; each is
right in its turn, and it is impossible for an enlightened
man to confine himself so exclusively in any one that he
cannot perceive what may be reasonable in the others.
It is especially towards questions that relate to worship
and the mysteries that M. Guigniaut has felt it necessary to
direct the efforts of his criticism. These questions, in fact,
are in one aspect more important than those which concern
the myths. The purely mythological portion of the
ancient religions had even with the ancients no dogmatic or
definite character. The same myth is never presented
by two authors in exactly the same way. Each reserved
here the right of embroidering after his own fashion ; and
very early, the myths became mere themes of romance
which the artist cut and fitted to suit his taste. The mys
teries, on the contrary, appear to have been the really
serious part of the religions of antiquity. What were
these mysteries round which the imagination, the spirit of
system, and false learning took pleasure in gathering clouds ?
What were the Eleusiniaii mysteries in particular, on whose
majesty and sacredness antiquity had 'but one voice?
No doubt on this subject can be entertained to-day; we
can describe the different scenes of what Clement of Alex
andria calls the "mystic drama of Eleusis" almost as well as
one of the initiated. Let us first recal the fact, that the
name "mystery" has been borrowed by the Church from
pagan language, and let us not fear in explaining its ori
ginal sense to have recourse to the use which the Church has
made of it ; let us not be afraid even of committing an
anachronism by mentioning the "Mysteries" of the middle

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY-. 93
*
ages. Let us represent to ourselves the primitive Christian
mystery, the prototype of the Mass. What do we find in
it ? A grand symbolic act accompanied by significant cere
monies. Let us take the Christian worship at a more ad
vanced epoch of its development, let us follow the ceremo
nies of hojy week in a Mediaeval Cathedral ; what again do
we find there ? A mystic drama, rites commemorative of
a-historical fact, or what was so considered,, alternations of
joy and of grief continued many days, a complicated sym
bolism, an imitation of facts with a view to their recal, often
even scenic representations more or less frank, in which the
divine story is told sensibly to the eyes of the spectators.
Setting aside the immense superiority of the Christian
dogma, setting aside the lofty moral spirit which pervades
its legend, and to which nothing in antiquity can be com-
. pared, perhaps, if we could be permitted to assist at an
ancient mystery, we should see the same things there ;
symbolical spectacles in which the mystagogue was actor
and spectator at once ; a group of representations traced on
a pious fable, an,d almost always relating to the sojourn of
a god on the earth, to his passion, his descent into hell, his
return to', life. Sometimes it was the death of Adonis,
sometimes the mutilation of Attis, sometimes the murder
of Tagreus or of Sabazius. One legend, in particular,
contributed wonderfully to the commemorative represen
tations ; it was that of Ceres and Proserpine. All the cir
cumstances of this myth, all the incidents of the search for
Proserpine by her mother, gave room for a picturesque
symbolism which powerfully captivated the imagination.
They imitated the actions of the goddess, they revived the
sentiments of joy or of grief, which must successively
have animated her. There was first, a long procession
mingled with burlesque scenes, purifications, watchings,
fasts followed by festivals, night marches with torches, re
presenting the mother's search, circuits ih the dark, terrors,

94 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
anxieties, then all at once splendid illuminations. The
gates of the temple opened, the actors were received into
the realms of delight, where they heard voices. Changes of
scene produced by theatrical machinery, added to the illu
sion; recitations, of which we have a sample- in the
Homeric hymn to Ceres, broke the monotony of ^he repre
sentations. Each day had its name, its exercises, its
games, its stations, which the actors 'went through in
company. One day it was a mimic battle in which they
attacked each other with stones. Another day they paid
homage to the mater dolorosa, probably a statue of Ceres
as an addolorata, a veritable Pield. Another day they
drank the Cyceon ; they imitated the jests, by which the
old lambe succeeded in amusing the goddess; they made
processions to the spots in the neighbourhood of Eleusis, to
the sacred fig-tree, to the ocean ; they ate appointed meats ;
they practised mystic rites, whose significance was almost
always lost on those who observed them. Mixed with
these were bacchanalian ceremonies, dances, nocturnal
feasts, with symbolical instruments. On their return they
gave the reins to joy ; the burlesque resumed its place in
the gephyrismes, or farces of the bridge. As soon as the ini
tiated had reached the bridge over the Cephissus, the in
habitants of the neighbouring places, running together
from all quarters to see the procession, launched out into
sarcasms on the holy troop, and licentious jokes to which
they with equal freedom replied. To this, no doubt, were
added scenes of grotesque comicality, a species of masque
rade, whose influence on the first sketches of the dramatic
art is very perceptible. Ceremonies which involved a
symbolism so vague under a realism so gross, had a great
charm for the ancients and left a profound impression;
they combined what man loves most in works of imagina
tion, a very definite form and a very free sense. Their
popularity depended, in a great measure, on the manner in

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 95
which they were executed, and it was by a singular magni
ficence that the mysteries of Eleusis eclipsed all the others,
and excited the envy of the whole world.
Such then were the mysteries. We cannot say that they
were altogether mystical in the sense which M. Creuzer
adopts, nor altogether void of sense as M. Lobeck will
have it. We must not seek in them either a revelation
from above, a high moral teaching, or a profound philoso
phy. The symbol was its own proper end. Can we be
lieve that the women who celebrated the festivals of Adonis
thought much of the mysterious sense of the actions they
performed ? Is everything explained when we have said
that Adonis is the sun, traversing for six months the upper
signs of the zodiac, and for six months the lower signs ;
that the boar which kills him is winter ; that he himself, in
another view, is the annual vegetation with its different
periods of blooming time, of haying time, etc. ? One may
doubt whether these abstract considerations had any great
charm for the Greek women. What then was- it that made
them run in crowds to weep for Adonis ? The desire to
bewail a beautiful youth untimely dead, to contemplate
him as he lay on his funeral couch, exhausted, in the
flower of his age, his head languidly drooping, surrounded
with oranges and plants of forward growth, which they
watched 'as they opened and died ; to bury him with their
hands, to cut off their hair on his tomb, to weep and re
joice by turns, to, taste, in a word, every sensation of pass
ing joy and of sad revulsion that was connected with the
myth of Adonis.
Thus, far from the worship following always a mystic
legend, received as dogma, it was often the myth which was
subservient to the instincts of the multitude, ahd furnished
a covering for them. Besides, it should- be recollected that
the word faith had no meaning previous to Christianity,
and that in questions of feligious symbolism it is almost a

96 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
matter of indifference to the people whether they compre
hend it or not. The impression results from the whole,
and not. from an understanding of each detail. People fol
low with pleasure these dramas addressed to the eye, with
out troubling themselves with their metaphysical sense.
Every part of them is significant, it is true, but not imme
diately. Among the peasants who attend a midnight mass,
how many think of the mystery of the incarnation ? "Aris
totle," says Synesius, "is of opinion that the initiated
learned nothing definite, but received impressions — were
put in a certain, frame of mind." The teaching of the mys
teries, then, was a kind of indirect' teaching, analogous to
that which a simple man receives when he assists at the
offices, without knowing Latin, and without penetrating
the sense of all that he sees. It was like a sacrament'act-
ing by its own virtue, a pledge of salvation conferred by
sensible signs and consecrated formulas. Baptism, in the
earliest ages of the Church, although it was open to all,
nevertheless preserved the characteristics of an initiation.
For the rest, M. Lobeck has well shown that the conditions
imposed upon the initiated were so vague and illusory that
the mysteries had no longer either a privilege or a secret.
They were a genuine medley. To be admitted to them it
was enough to be an Athenian, or to have a sponsor at
Athens. Later, the doors were thrown wide open, and all
comers were initiated.
Without exaggerating the moral and philosophic side of
the mysteries, of which, it must be confessed, very little was
thought, without stopping either to consider what would
have seemed trifling or flat to us in these practices, we cannot
deny that they contributed powerfully to sustain the reli
gious and moral tradition of mankind. " For a long time,"
says M. Guigniaut, " the mysteries pacified souls through
those august ceremonies which, in the transparent history
of the great goddesses of the initiation, revealed the destiny

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 97
of man, and rendered him, through purification, worthy to
live under their empire and to share their immortality. It
is certain that the mysteries of Eleusis, in particular, exerted
a moral and religious influence; that they consoled the
present life, taught in their way the life to come, promised
rewards to the initiated, on certain conditions, not of purity
and piety only, but also of justice, and if they did not like
wise teach monotheism, which would have been a negation
of paganism, at least approached it as nearly as paganism
was permitted to do. They sustained, they cherished in the
soul, by their very mystery, by the purified worship of nature,
that sentiment of the infinite — of God, in short — which' lay
at the bottom of the popular credence, but which the An
thropomorphism of mythology tended incessantly to efface.
It is, however, by another title, I mean as having served
as a transition from paganism to the holier religion which
took its place, that the mysteries are specially worthy to fix
the attention of the philosopher and the critic. Deep re
searches would show that nearly everything in Christianity
that does not depend on the Gospel is mere baggage brought
from the pagan mysteries into the hostile camp. The
primitive Christian worship was nothing but a mystery.
The whole interior police of the Church, the degrees of ini
tiation, the command of silence — a crowd of phrases in the
ecclesiastical language — have no other origin. The revo
lution which overthrew paganism seems, at first glance, a
sharp, trenchant, absolute rupture with the past, and such,
in fact, it was, if we consider only the dogmatic rigidity
and the austere moral tone which characterized the new reli
gion ; but in respect of worship and outward observances,
the change was effected by an insensible transition, and the
popular faith saved its most familiar symbols from ship
wreck. Christianity introduced, at first, so little change
into the habits of private and social life, that with great
numbers in the fourth and fifth century it remains uncer-
7

98 THE RELIGIONS OF ATIQUITY.
tain whether they were pagans or Christians; many seem
even to have pursued an irresolute course between the two
worships. On its side, art, which formed an essential part
of the ancient religion, had to break with scarce one of its
traditions. Primitive Christian art is really nothing but pa
gan art in its decay, or in its lower departments. The Good
Shepherd of the catacombs in Rome, copied from the Aristeus
or from the Apollo Nomios, which figure in the same pos
ture on the pagan sarcophagi, still carries the flute of Pan, ,
in the midst of the four half-naked Seasons. On the Christian
tombs of the cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the
animals. Elsewhere the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, Mary as
Proserpine, receive the souls which Mercury, wearing the
broad-brimmed hat, and carrying in his hand the rod of the
soul-guide, brings to them, in presence of the three Fates.
, Pegasus, symbol of the apotheosis, Psyche, symbol of the
immortal soul, Heaven, personified by an old man, the
river Jordan, Victory, figure on a host of Christian monu
ments. Who can see without emotion those Roman
churches, built of the ruins of antique temples, as the cen
tos of Proba Falconia, from the verses of Virgil ? Thus
humanity does : picking up old, broken, pulverized frag
ments, it builds a new edifice, full of originality ; for it the
spirit is everything ; the materials are of small account.
We must, then, regard mystery as a great transformation
which the religions of antiquity underwent at the moment
when, the childish fancies of the first age being no longer
able to meet the new needs of the conscience, the human
mind desired a more dogmatical and a more serious reli
gion. The primitive polytheism, vague, indecisive, given
over to individual interpretation, no longer satisfied an
epoch of reflection. Epicurean incredulity, on one side,
made fine sport of these innocent divinities; on another
side, religious sentiments more elevated and delicate broke
forth, at the expense of the ancient simplicity. The aspi-

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 99
rations towards Monotheism and a religion of morality, as
pirations of which Christianity was the loftiest expression,
gained in every direction ; paganism itself could not escape
from them. I have but little admiration, I confess, of the at
tempt for which history has made Julian responsible. In
proportion as the primitive mythology seems lovely and
beautiful to me in its artlessness, does this neo-pagariism,
this religion of antiquarians and sophists, seem meaning
less and flat. The sense of beauty which was the basis of
the Hellenic religion seems to be lost. The monstrous
gods of the Orient, conceived out of all proportion, take the
place of the harmonious creations of Greece. A Deus Mag
nus Pant/ieus- — a God occult and nameless, threatens to ab
sorb everything. The worship ends in a bloody bull-
slaughter; the religious sentiment takes refuge in the sham
bles. To appease jealous and angry gods recourse is had
to blood. A profound terror seems to prompt all the vows
Which have been transmitted to us by the inscriptions.
Amid all this it. is an absolute impossibility to found a
moral teaching nearly or remotely resembling the Christian
sermon. It is from contemplating the ancient religion just at this
moment of decline, that people have in general so miscon
ceived it. It must be confessed that, at the epoch of Con
stantine or of Julian, paganism was a very indifferent reli
gion, and that all attempts to reform it ended in nothing
satisfactory. Criticism, however, cannot adopt unreserved
ly the sentence passed on the old worship. If it substan
tially accepts the judgment, it cannot but protest against the
unfairness of its motives. The polemic under which pagan
ism succumbed, was clumsy, violent, dishonest, like all
polemics. Strange fact ! It resembles' precisely the attack
by which the eighteenth century thought to make an end
of Christianity. No dogma would have held its own in
face of such assaults. Read the " Persiflage" of Hermias, the

100 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
writings of Tatian and, of Athenagoras against paganism :
one fancies he hears Voltaire regaling his readers with the
childishnesses of the Bible. Controversialist^ generally
thinking only of catching their adversary tripping, too often
yield to the temptation of ridiculing the doctrine they are
combating, that they may enjoy the advantage of discover
ing the absurdity which they themselves have invented:
a convenient proceeding, for there is nothing that cannot be
taken on the ridiculous side ; but a dangerous proceeding,
for it infallibly reacts on those who employ it! Some
Fathers of the Church used it with frightful prodigality.
Most of them, availing themselves of the system of Evhe-
merus, turned paganism badly interpreted into a weapon
against paganism ; they attacked -manfully the faney-bprn
gods and triumphed in the easy conflict with shadows;
Others embraced a system coarser still, the hypothesis of
demonology : the, gods were nothing better than demons ;
demons gave the oracles. " Devils," said Tertullian, *' take
the place of gods; they introduce themselves into the
statues, breathe the incense, drink the victims' blood."
Others again frankly striking hands with Lucretius and Epi
curus, declared the myths to be naught but frivolous fables,
invented to amuse, without aim and without meaning. It
is remarkable, nevertheless, and this ingenious observation
has not escaped M. Creuzer, that the Fathers who were
born in the East, educated often in a respect for paganism,
or in the schools of philosophy, preserved something of the
delicate sentiment of Greece. This work of demolition by
calumny and misrepresentation wounded them deeply, and
they showed themselves almost as severe against Evhemerus.
as the honest pagans themselves. Origen and St. Gregory
of Nazianzen, for example, frequently betray a remarkable
partiality for paganism, and anticipate on many points the
more delicate views of modern criticism.
Certainly we may believe that many of the reproaches

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 101
heaped by the Fathers of the Church on paganism, and in
particular on the mysteries, were not without foundation ;
but was it fair to take paganism thus, on its lowest plane
only, in its popular acceptation? The loftiest religious
ideas, in the hands of sensual people, degenerate of course
into sensualism and superstition. It is as if one were to
judge Catholicism by what is before his eyes at Naples or
at Loretto. The picture of the festivals in honour of Ceres
and of Adonis, as we find it in Aristophanes and Theocri
tus,, presents nothing really immoral, but Only something
light, and far enough from serious. Drunkenness is the
gravest abuse singled out there ; but whoever should see at
certain hours a pardon in pious Brittany might well think
also that the chief object of the meeting was to drink.
The feasts of the Martyrs in the primitive Church, gave
room for scenes quite as little edifying, against which the
Fathers roused themselves energetically. As to the sym
bols adopted by paganism, and which to our eyes would be
grossly obscene, we must say with M. Creuzer, " That which
civilized man modestly hides and carefully withdraws from
view, the natural man, simple and true, made in name and
shape a religious symbol consecrated by the public worship.
With that faith which puts God into nature, with the
freer manners of the Southern people, above all of the
Greeks, these distinctions of decent and indecent, of that
which was worthy or unworthy of the divine majesty,
could not be felt. Hence it comes that these people, with
an innocence that had become as strange to the Romans of
the empire, as to modern Europe, admitted into their
religions those sacred legends which we find scandalous,
those emblems which we accuse <of obscenity." We
must believe in fact, that such emblems suggested to the
ancients ideas wholly different from those which they in
spire in us, since they excited in them no sentiments but
those of sanctity and religious awe. What more revolting

102 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
to our habits than an obscene landmark at each cross-way
and at the corners of the roads ? And yet so little did this
shock the ancients, that we see Hipparchus causing moral
sentences to be engraved on the Hermes for the edification
of the passers-by.
Thus much it is necessary to say of the ridiculous ele
ment which was so conspicuous in the hellenic paganism.
Religions having to represent in the completest manner all
the aspects of the human mind, and the burlesque being
one of the aspects under which we conceive life, the bur
lesque is an essential element in all religions. Look at the
epochs and the countries that are eminently religious, the
middle ages, Italy, Spain. What irreverence ! What floods
of fables about the Virgin, the Saints, God himself! Those
who have closely examined the Italian worship know how
faint the line is which separates the serious from the comic,
and what an insensible border lies between devotion and
pleasantry. We are astonished to see on the monuments
of grave Etruria, the most dignified scenes turned into
caricature ; we do not understand how the people that con
demned Socrates on a suspicion of impiety, could allow
Aristophanes to give Bacchus a drubbing on the stage, and
to transform Hercules into a scullion. The Southern peo
ple, more familiar with their gods than the thoughtful
people of the North, feel the necessity, from time to time,
of laughing with them. The free and easy manners of the
Neapolitans towards their Saint Januarius have nothing in
them that should surprise us. Eighteen hundred years ago,
the inhabitants of Pompeii, when they wished to obtain
anything from their gods, laid down the conditions in
writing, and, to make the bargain efficient, threatened them
with blows of the stick.
Monotheism has become so fundamental an element in
our intellectual condition, that all our efforts to comprehend
the polytheism of antiquity must be nearly useless. At a

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 103
certain stage of its development, the human mind necessa
rily becomes monotheistic ; but this conception of divinity
is very far from being equally found by the cradle of all
the races. There are monotheistic as there are polytheistic
races ; and this difference is due to an original diversity in
their way of looking on nature. In the Arabian or Semitic
conception, nature is not alive. The desert is monotheistic.
Sublime in its uniform immensity, it revealed the very first
day the idea of the infinite, but not that thought of fruitful
activity which a nature incessantly creative has inspired in
the Indo-European mind. This is why Arabia has always
been the bulwark of monotheism. Nature plays no part
in the Semitic religions; they are all of the head, all meta
physical and psychological. The extreme simplicity of the
Semitic mind — without compass, without diversity^ without
plastic arts, without philosophy, without mythology, with
out political life, without progress — has no cause but this :
in monotheism there is no variety. Exclusively struck by
the unity of government which prevails in the world, the
Semites have seen in the development of things only the
accomplishment of the will of a superior being. God is;
God has made the heaven and the earth : behold their whole
philosophy ! Such is not the conception of that other race,
destined to exhaust every phase of life, which, from India
to Greece, from Greece to the extremities of the North and
West, has made nature animate and divine, from the living
statue of Homer to the living vessel of the Scandinavians.
For this race, the distinction of God from the not-God has
always remained fluctuating; engaged in the world, its
gods must share the vicissitudes of the world; they had a
history, a succession pf generations, dynasties, wars. Jupi
ter is now the king of gods and of men ; but his reign
will not outlast that of Cronos. Prometheus chained
has predicted that his art will be less powerful than
that of Time, and that one day he must yield to necessity.

104 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
The religion of antiquity was*! like the society of anti
quity, based on exclusiveness; it was a religion for the
freemen and the nation, not for the stranger or the slave.
The first condition demanded for admission to the mysteries
was a declaration that one was not a barbarian. Ancient
Greece showed itself more exclusive still. There, each pro
montory, each rivulet, each village, each mountain, had its
legend. The worship of the woman was not that of the
man ; the worship of the sailor was not that of the farmer ;
that of the farmer was not that of the soldier. Hercules
and the Dioscuri, in order to share in the Eleusinian games,
were obliged to get themselves adopted by the Athenians.
Rome prepared the grand idea of catholicity : all the gods
-became common to all civilized peoples ; but the barbarian
and the slave were still smitten with religious incapacity.-
and it was a startling novelty when St. Paul dared to say,
"There is no more Jew nor Greek, there is no more slave
nor master, there is no more man nor woman, for all are
one creature in Jesus Christ."
It would do violence to our most conservative ideas to
overlook the progress here; but equality is always pur
chased dearly, and we can conceive how the conservative
party of the fourth and fifth century, composed of men
well bred and attached to traditions of the past, should re
peat incessantly : " Oh ! how happy were our fathers ! Oh,
how our fathers were favoured in their time !" The grand,
liberal life of the fine epochs of antiquity became impossi
ble the day — bless the day, though ! — on which the slave
was regarded as a religious being, capable of worth. The
gods of Olympus were the freeman's gods alone; not a
wrinkle on their brow ; not a shade of sadness ; human
nature always taken at its noblest; no account made of
suffering. Now those who suffer wish their gods to suffer
with them, and for this reason; so long as there are sorrows
in the world, Christianity will have its justification for

THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY. 105
being. There is the secret of the divine paradox : Blessed
are they that mourn.
Far from me be the thought of attempting here one of
those parallels which compel us to be unjust to the past,
if we would not do wrong to the present. Paganism,
better, understood — thanks to this vast accumulation of
labours whereon France and Germany have so happily com
bined their efforts — ought to be in our hands neither a
weapon wielded by the polemic, nor mere food offered to
the curious. In an elevated mind the spectacle of such long
aberrations awakens neither disdain nor pity, but the con
viction of a great fact: humanity is religious, and the
necessary form of all religion is symbolism. That the sym
bol, from its very nature, is insufficient, and is condemned
to remain far below the idea that it represents ; that the
attempt to define the infinite and to exhibit it to the eye,
implies an impossibility, is too clear to be worth saying.
All expression is limitation, and the only language not un
worthy of things divine is silence. But human nature does
not resign itself to that. If thoughtful man, in presence
of the mystery of the supreme existence, comes, in spite of
himself, to propose this question : Would it not be better to
let our figures go, and to give up the idea of expressing
the ineffable ? It is certain at least, that humanity, given
over to its instincts, has not paused at such a scruple ; it
has preferred speaking of God imperfectly to not speaking
of him at all ; it has preferred tracing a fanciful picture of
the divine world, to resisting the invincible charm that
draws it towards the invisible realms.
Thus the immense labour, whose history we have tried
to sketch, comes to a conclusion at once consoling and reli
gious ; for if man by a spontaneous effort aspires to seize
the infinite cause, and insists on passing beyond nature, is
it not a noble indication that, by his origin and his destiny,
he transcends the narrow limit of finite things ? In view

106 THE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.
of these perpetual efforts to scale the heavens, we learn to
honour human nature; we persuade ourselves that this
nature is noble, and a thing to be proud of. Then, too, we
reassure ourselves against the menaces of the future. It
may be that all we love, all that in our eyes makes life
beautiful, the liberal culture of the mind, science, exalted
art, are destined to last but a generation ; but religion will
not die. It will be the eternal protest of the mind against
the systematic or the brutal materialism which would fain
imprison man in the lower region of common life. Civili
zation has its pauses — not religion.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.

IT is the property of great things that they can be sur
veyed from different points of view, and that they
grow with the human mind, so that each man, accord
ing to his degree of culture, and each age, as it more or
less deeply comprehends the past — finds, from different
motives, something in them to- admire. When the critics
of antiquity and those of the 17th century, ask us to admire
the beauties which they think they discover in Homer, the
puerility of their aesthetics amazes us ; we esteem Homer
as much as they did, but for quite other reasons. When
Bossuet and M. de Chateaubriand fancy that they admire
the Bible, when they admire its errors and its nonsense,*
learned Germany has a right to smile; nevertheless, the
admiration of Herder and Ewald for the Bible is no less
lively for being better grounded. The more we look at the
world and the past just as they are, conventionalities and
preconceived ideas aside, the more we shall find a true
beauty in them ; and in this sense we can say that know
ledge is the first condition of genuine admiration. Jerusa
lem has come out more brilliant and beautiful from the
labour of modern science, the aspect of which was so de-

* " To appreciate the beauties of the Vulgate," says M. de Maistre, "choose
a friend who knows no Hebrew, and you will see how a syllable, a word, some
light winged phrase, will make first-rate beauties dance before your eyes."
(Soirees de Saint- Petersburg, vii. Con.) There now is a convenient and
gentlemanly aesthetic ! Would you feel the beauties of Homer, choose a
friend who knows no Greek, and he will unveil to you in Mme. Daeier's
translation, a thousand first-rate beauties which Homer never thought ot

108 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
structure; the pious recitals in which our infancy was
cradled, have become noble truths, thanks to sound inters
•pretation ; and it is to us who see Israel in her real beauty,
it is to us critics that it honestly belongs to say, " Our feet
have stood in thy courts, 0 Jerusalem 1"
If we contemplate the development of the Hebrew
mind as "a whole, we are struck with that high character
of absolute perfection, which entitles its works to rank as
classics in the same line with the productions of Greece, of
Rome, and of the Latin races. Alone among all the peo
ples of the East, Israel has had the privilege of writing for
the whole world. The poetry of the Vedas is certainly ad
mirable, and yet this collection of the first songs of the
race to which we belong will never — as expression of our
religious sentiments — supersede the psalms which are pro
ducts of a race so different from ours. The literatures of
the East can,| as a general thing, be read and appreciated
only by the learned ; the literature of the Hebrews, on the
contrary, is the Bible, the book preeminently, the universal
reading; millions of men know no other poetry. Doubt
less, in accounting for this astonishing destiny, we must
allow for the religious revolutions, which, especially since
the 16th century, have caused the Hebrew books to be re
garded as the source of all revelation ; but, it may be
asserted, if these books had not contained something pro
foundly universal, they would never have come to such a
fortune. Proportion, measure, taste, were in the East the
exclusive privilege of the Hebrew people. Israel, like
Greece, had the faculty of perfectly disengaging its idea, of
exhibiting it in a small and finished frame ; thus it suc
ceeded in giving to its thought and feeling, a form that was
general, and acceptable to the whole race of man.
Thanks to this universal adoption, no history is more
popular than that of Israel ; and yet no history has waited
longer to be understood. It is the fate of literatures which

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 109
become the basis of a religious belief, to contract the
rigidity of the dogma, and to lose their real features by be
coming a conventional symbolism to which people resort
for arguments in all causes. From the history of the most
unmonarchical people that ever existed, Bossuet draws a
justification of the policy of Louis XIV. ; another argues
from it a theocracy ; a third has succeeded in discovering
republicanism. Germany, with that gift of historical in*
sight which seems especially assigned to her for the study
of primitive epochs, first perceived the truth, and treated
the history of the Jewish people like any other, not fol
lowing any preconceived theological views, but conforming
to the critical and grammatical study of texts. The work
of biblical. exegesis, constructed stone by stone, with a mar
vellous regularity and an incomparable persistency of
method, is unquestionably the masterpiece of German
genius, and the most perfect model that can be proposed in
other branches of philology. Already, many years before
the reformation, Germany had. made the knowledge of
Hebrew a kind of special domain, of which it has not since
been dispossessed. In the 17th and in the 18th century,
criticism, arrested in France by the narrow theological
spirit,* or misled by the obtuseness which characterized the
historical school of Voltaire, made marvellous progress
here, and after the generation of Michaelis, Eichhorn, Rosen-
mulier, de Wette, Winer, Gesenius, one might imagine
that there was nothing more to do in the department of
Hebraic studies.
M. Ewald, however, has proved, in these latter years, by
numerous writings, and above all, by his fine " History of

* This restraint is the more to be regretted, as the 11th century had a supe
rior man, Richard Simon, of the Oratoire, who, but for the obstacles thrown
in his way, would have created a sound exegesis in France a generation
earlier than Germany established it.

110 THE HTSTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
the People of Israel,"* that the duty of high criticism in
this ever new field was far from being fully discharged.
By the boldness of his views, his mental acuteness, his bril
liant imagination; his wonderful feeling for the religious
and poetic, M. Ewald has far surpassed all who before him
applied themselves to the history, and literature of the
Hebrew people. Some spots, it is true, dim these rare
merits ; his delicacy of perception sometimes degenerates
into subtlety ; he does not always stop" soon enough in the
path of conjecture ; the origin of the people of Israel, the
patriarchal epoch, the primitive fables, are treated too arbi
trarily by means of daring parallels with mythologies
wholly foreign to the Hebrew spirit. The picture of the
last ages of Jewish history, those which preceded and im
mediately prepared the way for Christianity, is also coloured
here and there by M. Ewald's peculiar ideas on the subject
of religion and philosophy, ideas whose singular originality,
at all events, cannot be challenged, and in which the author
thinks he can reconcile a sort of Christian fanaticism with
the most openly avowed rationalism.! The best portion of
M. Ewald's work is the account of the purely Hebraic
period from Solomon to the Maccabees. The history of
David and of Solomon, the part played by the prophets,
the different religious revolutions of the epoch of the kings,
the periods of the captivity, the character of the Hebrew
poetry, and especially of the poetry of the psalms, are mar
vellous expositions, which in many points could be amended
* History of the People of Israel, 4 vols., 8vo., 2d Ed, Gottingen, 1854.
f The Jahrbucher der liUischen Wissenschafl, an annual Magazine, published
by M. Ewald, and filled with his ideas, represents most clearly the singular part
he has taken in the political and religious questions of Germany. This part, in
which the scholar and the historian mingle in the strangest way with the
preacher and the sectary, would be inexplicable to one who did not remem
ber the powerful impression made on M. Ewald's mind by the study of the
prophets, an impression that peeps out naively in his writings and his
behaviour.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. Ill
possibly, but which in total effect and general conception
are ' not to be surpassed. Why does the learned professor
of Gottingen commit the fault of mixing with all these fine
and brilliant sketches, with passages full of enthusiasm, a
bitter polemic against persons whose opinions often differ
by the merest shade from his own ? Why, in particular,
does M. Ewald feel obliged to depreciate a man like Gese-
nius, who in point of philosophic insight and aesthetic sen
timent, is not in any degree comparable to himself, but
who, as a philologist and a grammarian, has never been
excelled ? M. Ewald, so superior to his rival in poetical
intelligence and mental elevation, had no need to deny to
him these solid qualities, in order to shine himself in the
first rank among the critics and the interpreters of our
century.

I.

A preliminary inquiry presides over all the problems
relating to the people of Israel ; how were the documents
that serve as the basis for the history of the Hebrews, and
especially the five oldest portions of their annals, which we
are in the habit of grouping together under the name of
the Pentateuch, drawn up as a compilation ? A theory
presented to the last generation as a bold paradox, accord
ing to which 'the Pentateuch was formed by collecting his
torical fragments of diverse authorship, is now adopted by
all the enlightened critics of Germany.* The distinction
* This assertion, opposed to ideas generally received in France, needs sup
ports which cannot be furnished here, but which may be found in/ M. Ewald's
work, and in Lengerke, Kenaan pref, ; de Wette, Introduction to the Old
Testament, § 150 seq. ; Sttehelin, Critical Investigations on the Pentateuch, ,
1843 ; Tuch, Commentary on Genesis, Halle, 1838. In French, M. S. Munk's
Palestine may be consulted (Paris, 1843, in Didot's collection Vnivers pitto-
resque),?. 132, &a where tho question is handled with nice critical judgment.

112 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
between the substance and the form, distinction so essential
in all primitive literature, is especially important in the
Hebraic literature, for none has been submitted to so many
handlings. It may be affirmed, for example, that in the
books of Exodus and Numbers, we have information alto
gether authentic and contemporaneous, on the condition and
the acts of the Israelites, in the desert of the peninsula of
Sinai. Must we conclude from this that the books of
Exodus and Numbers, as we possess them, date from that
epoch? Surely not. The definite reducti6n to form of
the books which contain the ancient history of Israel, pro
bably dPes not go back further than the eighth century
before our era ; by the side of ancient fragments, preserved
almost word for word, there may.be found more modern
pieces to which very different principles of criticism must
be applied.
The sagacious and learned philologists who, in Germany,
have devoted themselves to the discussion of this curious
problem, have very clearly seen latterly where they must
seek an analogy for the laws that have presided over the
successive transformations of the historical writings of the
Hebrews; it is in the historiography of Arabia. When,
in fact, we compare the different classes of Mussulman
historians, we recognise, that they all do little more than
reproduce an identical ground-work, whose first edition
appears in the " Chronicles" of Tabari. The work of Tabari
is itself but a collection of traditions arranged in series without
the least critical purpose, full of repetitions, of contradic
tions, of departures from the natural order of facts. In Ibn-
al-Athir, who marks a more advanced stage of composition,
the recital is continuous, the contradictions are removed,
the narrator chooses once for all the tradition which ap
pears to him the most probable and passes the others by in
silence ; more modern readings are inserted here and there ;
but at bottom it is all through the same history as in Tabari,

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 113
with some variations, and some mistakes too, when the
second editor has not perfectly understood the text he had
under his eye. Finally in Ibn Khaldoun, the edition has
passed once more, if I may venture to say so, through the
crucible. The author mingles his personal views with his
recital ; we see his opinions and the en(l be was pursuing
peep through. It is an elaborate and finished history
coloured by the prism of the author's ideas.
Hebrew historiography has passed through analogous
stages. Deuteronomy presents to us the history at its last
period, worked over with a rhetorical intention, the narra
tor proposing not merely to recount, but to edify. The
four preceding books disclose visibly the seams of older
fragments, set together in a connected text, but not assi
milated. We may differ as to the division of the parts, as
to the number and character of the successive editions, and
it must be confessed that M. Ewald, in aiming at an un
attainable exactness on all these points, has passed the
limits which severe criticism should impose on itself; but
we can no longer be in doubt in regard to the process
which brought the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua to
their final state. It is clear that a " Jefiovistie" editor, that
is one who in his narration used the name Jehovah, has
given the last form to this grand historic work, taking for
the basis of it an Elohistic writing — a writing, that is, in
which God is designated by the word Elohim — the essen
tial parts of which may even now be reconstructed* As
to the opinion which ascribes the editing of the Pentateuch

* We ought to remark that this system, long accepted in Germany, has
nothing in common with Dr. Donaldson's unhappy attempt at reinstating the
Iaschar, one of the books cited in the oldest annals of Israel It is sur
prising that such a work should in a recent article have been presented
as the last word of German exegesis, seeing that it was composed by a
doctor of the University of Cambridge, and is universally repudiated by
German critics

114 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
to Moses, it is outside of criticism, and we have nothing to
do with its discussion ; moreover this opinion seems to be
quite modern, and it is very certain that the ancient
Hebrews never thought of regarding their legislator as
a historian* The stories of the old times appeared to
them absolutely impersonal, they attached to them the
name Of no author.
Thus was formed the fundamental writing of the Hebrew
annals, what M. Ewald calls the " Book of Beginnings," in
train of which came, in successive groups, the annals of
the Judges, of the Kings, of the times of the captivity as
far as Alexander. No people can boast with confidence of
possessing so complete a body of history or archives so
regularly kept. In fact, the important thing to maintain
is that the free manipulations of the form never seriously
touched the substance, so that the fragments thus joined
together, whether tiie contents of them be historical or
legendary, have the value of original documents. The Pen
tateuch, according to all appearance, comprises information
borrowed from the archives of people the neighbours
of Israel ; such are the recitals of the war of the Iranian
Kings against the Kings of the Valley of Siddim, in which
Abraham figures as a stranger — "Abraham the Hebrew
who dwelt in the oak grove of Mambre the Amorite ;"—
the genealogies of the Edomites ; the curious synchronism
established between the foundation of Hebron, and that of
Tanis in Egypt. The very first passages, devoted to the
antediluvian, periods, wholly mythological as they appear,
are certainly documents which bring us nearest to the
origin of the human race.
It is impossible to understand Israel well, unless we

* The opinion that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch seems hardly
fixed prior to tbe Christian era. M. de Wette thinks it was not wholly
received even at this epoch.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 115
connect it with the group of peoples whereof it constitutes
a part, I mean the Semitic race, of which it is the highest
and purest branch. The substantial result of modern phi
lology has been to show, in the history of civilization, the
action of a double current, produced by two races pro
foundly distinct in manners, language, and spirit ; on one
side the Indo-European race, embracing the noble popula
tions of India, Persia, Caucasia — the whole of Europe; on
the other side, the race erroneously named the Semitic,*
comprising the native populations of Western and South
ern Asia from the Euphrates. To the Indo-European race
belong nearly all the great movements in the history of the
world, military, political, intellectual; to the Semitic race
belong the movements in religion. The Indo-European
race, distracted by the variety of the universe, never by
itself arrived at monotheism. The Semitic race,' on the
contrary, guided by its firm and sure sight, instantly
unmasked Divinity, and without reflection or reasoning
attained the purest form of religion that humanity has
known. Monotheism in the wodd has been the work of
Semitic apostles, in this sense, that previous to and apart
from the action of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islamism,
the worship of the only and the supreme God never was
clearly apprehended by ,the multitude. Now these three
grand .religious movements are three Semitic facts, three
branches of the same trunk, three versions, unequally fine,
of the same idea. vFrom Jerusalem to Sinai, from Sinai
to Mecca, the distance is but a few leagues.
When and how did the Semitic race arrive at this notion
of the divine unity which the world has admitted on the
faith of its teaching? I think it was by a primitive intui-
* This name designates here not the people described in Genesis as the
progeny of Sem, but the people who speak or who spoke the languages
wrongly called Semitic, namely, the Hebrews, the Phenicians, the Syrians,
the Arabs, the Abyssinians.

116 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
tion and from its earliest days. Monotheism is not in
vented ; India, which has thought with so much originality
and depth, has not to this day arrived at it ; the whole force
of the Greek mind would not have sufficed to bring hu
manity back to it without the cooperation of the Semitic
peoples. So it may be affirmed that these would never
nave mastered the doctrine of the divine unity if they had
not found it in the most imperious instincts of their mind
and heart. The first religions of the Indo-European race
appear to have been purely physical. They were vivid
impressions, as of the wind in the trees or the reeds, of
running waters, of the sea, which took a body in the imagi
nations of these childlike people. The Indo-European did
not reach the point of separating himself from the world
as quickly as the Semite did. For a long time, he adored
his own sensations, and, up to the very moment when the
Semitic religions initiated him into a more elevated idea of
Divinity, his worship was but an echo of nature. The Se
mitic race, on the contrary, reached, evidently without an.
effort, the notion of the . supreme God. This grand con
quest was not achieved as the result of progress or of
philosophic reflection ; it was one of its first perceptions.
Having much earlier detached its personality from the
universe, it almost immediately inferred from that the third
term, God, creator of the universe. In place of a nature
animated and alive in all its parts, its mind — if I may
venture to say so — pictured a nature, dry and unfruitful.
What a gulf between this rigid and simple conception of
a God isolated from the world and of a world fashioned
like a vessel in the hands of a potter, and the Indo-Euro
pean theogony, animating and deifying nature, regarding
life as a struggle, the universe as a perpetual change, and
in some sort transporting revolution and progress into the
administration of God.
The intolerance of the Semitic people is a necessary con

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 117
sequence of their monotheism. The Indo-European nations,
before their conversion to Semitic, that is to Jewish, Chris
tian, or Mussulman ideas, having never accepted their
religion as absolute truth, but as a sort of family or caste
inheritance, of necessity remained strangers to intolerance
and to proselytism ; it is only among these people there
fore that we find liberty of thought, the spirit of investiga
tion and of individual research. The Semites, on the
other hand, aspiring to realize a worship independent of
provinces and of countries, of (course declared all religions
bad that differed from their own. Thus intolerance is really
a product of the Semitic race, and a portion of the legacy
good and evil which it has bequeathed to the world. The
extraordinary phenomenon of the Mussulman conquest was
possible only in the bosom of a race incapable as that was
of seizing diversities, and whose whole creed was summed
up in a single phrase : God is God. The tolerance of the
Indo-Europeans certainly proceeded from a more elevated
sentiment of human destiny, and from a greater expansion
of mind ; but who will venture to say, that in revealing
the divine unity, and in finally suppressing local religions,
the Semitic race has not laid the foundation stone of the
unity and the progress of humanity ?
We understand now how this race, so eminently endow
ed for the creation and diffusion of religions, was destined
in the paths of secular existence, not to pass mediocrity.
A race, incomplete from its very simplicity, it has neither
plastic arts, nor rational science, nor philosophy, nor politi
cal life, nor military organization. The Semitic race has
never comprehended civilization in the sense which we
attach to the word. We find in its bosom neither great
organic empires nor public spirit, nothing that suggests the
Greek city, nothing that suggests the absolute monarchy of
Egypt, and of Persia. The questions of aristocracy, of de
mocracy, of feudalism, which comprise the whole secret oft

118 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
the history of the Indo-European peoples, have no meaning
for the Semites. The Semitic nobility is wholly patriarchal;
it does not date from a conquest, it has its source in the
blood. As to the supreme power, the Jew, like the Arab,
rigorously confines it to God. The military inferiority of
the Semites results from this total incapacity for discipline
and for organization. To. raise armies, they were obliged.
to have recourse to mercenaries: David did so; so did the
Phenicians, the Carthaginians,, the Chalifs, Even the Mus
sulman conquest was accomplished without organization
and without tactics ; the Chalif has nothing of the sove
reign, nothing of the military chief; he is a vice-prophet.
The most illustrious representative of the Semitic race in
our day, Abd-el-kader, is a sage, a man of religious medita
tions and strong passions, but in no degree a soldier. Nor
does history show to us any grand empire founded by
Semitic peoples : Judaism, Christianity, Islamism, — behold
their work — work always directed towards the same end,
to simplify the human mind, to banish polytheism, to write
at the head of the book of revelations that word, which has
rendered to human thought such grand service in effacing
the mythological and cosmogonic complications in which
profane antiquity lost itself: " In the beginning, God cre
ated the heavens and the earth."

H.

It is at about two thousand years before our era that the
gaze of the historian stops and rests with some assurance
on this predestined family. An emigration of wandering
Semites, with which the name of Thare, or Terach, is asso
ciated, quits the mountains of Armenia and journeys
towards the south. We must suppose that for a long time
there was in the mountains of the north a centre of Mono-

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 119
theistic aristocracy which remained faithful to its patriar
chal manners and its lofty worship. Even in leaving the
sanctuary the emigrant tribes regarded themselves as bound
to God by a special alliance and compact. Thus we see
' Abraham, Isaac, Jacob continuing in Canaan and in Egypt
their noble calling of shepherds, rich, haughty, heads of
large households, in possession of pure and simple religious
ideas, passing through different civilizations without con
founding themselves with them, and without accepting any
thing from them. Abraham, a distinctly historical and
real person, conducts the emigration into Palestine. He
was not the first of his race on that ground ; for, independ
ently of the Canaanites, he found there a Semitic and Mo
notheistic chief, libe himself, — Melchisedech, with whom he
entered into friendship. Still, Mesopotamia for a long
time yet continued the centre of the Terachite family, and
thither the aristocracy, faithful to the Semitic 4deas in re
gard to purity of blood, sent, even to the time of their
entry into Egypt, to seek wives for their sons.
The life of Israel at this epoch is that of an Arab douar,
with his prodigious development of individuality and of
poetry, but, on the other side, with his absolute want of
political ideas and of refined intellectual culture. We
hardly know what was the result of the earliest contact of
the Israelitish tribe with Egypt and the Canaanites. The
vehement antipathy to Canaan which breathes through the
whole Hebrew history is not a reason for maintaining that
no influence could have been exerted by Canaan on Israel.
Did not the course taken by the Hebrews, in not recog
nizing the Canaanites as their brethren, lead them to except
the Canaanites from the chosen race of Shem, in order to
throw them back into the infidel family of Ham, in contra
diction to the clear testimony of language ?* Fraternal ha-

* The Phenician language was almost pure Hebrew.

120 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
treds have nowhere been stronger than in the Jewish race,
the most contemptuous and the, most aristocratic of all.
Without admitting, with some scholars, that the Hebrews
and the Canaanites had, for a long period, a religion nearly
identical, we must acknowledge that it was not till a com
paratively modern period that the former reached that
spirit of exclusion which characterizes the Mosaic institu
tions. Many traits of the Phenician religion are recog
nized in the ancient Hebrew worship. At the patriarchal
epoch the descendants of Abraham are seen accepting as
sacred the places and objects which the Canaanites so re
garded, — trees, mountains, springs, betyles or beth-el, stones
to which divine virtues were attributed.
Profound darkness hides from us the first religious move
ment of Israel, that of which Moses was the high -priest and
the hero. Contrary as it would be to sound criticism to
refer to those remote times the complicated organization
which is described in the Pentateuch, an organization no
traces of which are found at the epoch of the Judges, nor
even at the period of David and Solomon, it would be
equally rash to deny that Israel, on its departure from
Egypt, was submitted to the action of a great religious
organizer. The descendants of Abraham seem to have
kept, in Egypt, all the originality of their Semitic genius
in constant communication with the other Terachite tribes
of Arabia Petraea. They were able, under the influence of
a lively antipathy to Egyptian idolatry, to plan one of
those monotheistic reactions so common among the Semi
tic peoples, and ordinarily so fruitful. Every religion is
moved to flee from its cradle. The movement we speak
of, which appears to have had its principal centre in the
tribe of Levi, was followed by a sort of hegyra, or emigra
tion, and by a heroic era, which, in the imagination of later
ages, assumed the proportions of epic history. Sinai, the
holy mountain of all the region in which the grand act

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 121
transpired, was the point about which the revelation clung.
A sacred name of the Deity, including the idea of a most
elevated Monotheism, two tables, on which were inscribed
ten precepts of the higher morality, a few aphorisms, which
formed, together with the ten precepts, the Law of Jeho
vah, some simple rites, suited to the life of a nomadic peo
ple, — such as the ark, the tabernacle, the passover, — were
probably the essential elements of this earliest institution,
which afterwards became complicated, while at the same
time the character of its founder went on increasing in
grandeur. M. Ewald most ingeniously proves* that the
glory of Moses underwent a long eclipse in Israel ; that his
name was almost unknown under the Judges and during
the first generations of the Kings, and tfiat the old founder
did not rise from his tomb with the extraordinary glory
that circles his brow, till a century or two before the fall of
the Kingdom of Juda.
Arab life in its full perfection ; such, in effect, is the
spectacle which Israel- still presents to us during the whole
period of the Judges, and previous to its organization as a
monarchy. Tribes without other bonds than the remem
brance of their fraternity and the predominance of one of
their number ; the simplest religion that ever existed ; a
poetry, vivid, young, startling, the echo of which has come
even to us, in the wild and admirable Song of Deborah ; no
institution, save that of a temporary chief judge, or suffetes,
and the power still less defined of the prophet or seer suppos
ed to be in communication with Divinity ; finally, the priest
hood regarded so exclusively the privilege of the tribe of
Levi, that individuals who relapsed into idolatry felt obliged
as their pledge to take a Levite to serve their idol. Nothing
yet designated Israel as a peculiar people. It may be that
among the neighbouring tribes of Palestine there were then

* VoL II., page 41, et seq.
6

122 THE. HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
hordes as advanced as they, and the, singular episode of
Balaam proves that prophecy, religion, and poetry had
among the tribes the same organization as in Israel.
It is towards the time of Eli and Samuel, about 1100
years before the Christian era, that the seal of divine elec
tion is all at once set on Israel. It is the moment when
the Israelite nation arrives at reflection, and from, the con
dition of a tribe, poor, simple, ignorant of the idea of ma
jesty, passes to the kingly estate, with a constituted power,
aspiring to become hereditary. Up to this time Israel had
lived in that patriarchal anarchy, excluding all regular
government, and just tempered by the plighted adhesion
of the members of the family, which is the habitual state
of the Arab tribes.* It became impossible to maintain such
an order of things in presence of the developments which
social life in the East took on. The people with loud cries
demanded "a king such as other nations had." Every
thing, in fact, indicates to us that this revolution was made
in imitation of the foreigner, perhaps, of the Philistine or
the Phenician, and in opposition to the wishes of the con
servative party, who represented it as a kind of infidelity
towards Jehovah. The account of it that has come to us is
evidently the work of an opponent.* Royalty is there
presented in the worst light, and is disdainfully ranked be
neath the ancient patriarchal forms. Ij is not impossible
that the account is from the very hand of Samuel. The
chapters of the book bearing his name, in which his poli
tical attitude is exhibited, have a character so personal that
we are tempted to believe that he himself was their author.
Certain it is that Samuel, taking away with one hand what
he had given with the other, never abandoned a systematic
teazing of the royalty he had inaugurated with repugnance,
and as a concession to the urgency of the multitude. The
* 1 Sam, ch. viii.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 123
royalty, untried and untraditional, was at first his sport.
At length David, the man destined to meet so many oppo
site needs, and to knit together the history of the Hebrew
people, by uniting ih his person the priest, the prophet,
and the king, appeared, and became the representative of
Israel's ideal in poetry, religion, intellect, and government.
Strange contrasts, at first glance, strike him who tries
to explain the character of David according to the purified
ideas of morality that we fashion for ourselves. How was
it that the man whom we find at different epochs in his
stormy career alternately serving the stranger against his
country, associated with brigands, stained with domestic
crimes, cruel and vengeful to atrocity, — how was it that he
has been able to pass in the tradition of Israel for a King
after God's own heart, even though he were the admirable
political and religious organizer, the author of those psalms
in which the most delicate sentiments of the heart have
found so fine an expression ? How was it that the morals
of a bandit could be united with real grandeur of soul,
with piety the most exquisite, with poetry the most feeling?
How could the man who sacrificed his most faithful ser
vant to an adulterous caprice, persuade himself with entire
good faith, that Jehovah was his special protector bound to
give him success, and to avenge him on his adversaries, as
if He existed for him alone? All these traits would be
inexplicable if we did not bear in mind the Semitic charac
ter of which David in his good as in his bad qualities
is the finished type? Essentially egotistical, the Semite
hardly recognized an obligation to any but himself; to pur
sue his revenge, to claim what he believed to be his right,
is a kind of duty in his eyes. Religion with him has a
very loose connexion with daily morality. Hence these
singular characteristics of the biblical history which pro
voke criticism, and in the face of which apology is as mis
placed as censure. The deeds of a most unscrupulous

124 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
policy will not hinder Solomon from being acknowledged
as the wisest of Kings. The odd mixture of sincerity and
of mendacity, of religious exaltation and of egotism which
strikes us in Mahomet, the readiness with which Mussulmans.
confess that in many cases the prophet obeyed passion
rather than duty, can be explained only by the sort of
laxity which renders the Orientals profoundly indifferent
to the choice of means when they can persuade themselves
that the end to be attained is the will of God. Our dis
interested and, so to speak, abstract way of judging actions,
is unknown to them.
It would be contrary to sound criticism therefore to dis
cuss ill-naturedly like Bayle and the Wolfenbiittel frag-
mentist, or derisively after the manner of Voltaire, such
acts in David's life as cannot be justified in good morality.
His behaviour towards Saul is decidedly equivocal. After
the death of Saul the throne belonged to his son Ishbosheth ;
all the tribes, with the exception of Judah, gathered about
him; treason and assassination soon deliver David from
this rival. Thanks to the favour of the priesthood and to
the powerful military institutions which he seems to have
borrowed from the Philistines with whom he had long
resided, perhaps also by means of foreign mercenaries,*
the new King carried out his ruling idea, the supremacy of
the tribe of Judah, a royalty powerful, hereditary in his
house, having its seat at Jerusalem. That future capital of
the religious world had up to this time been simply a for
tified borough; David made of it "a city whose houses
touched each other." At his death, the old King
had crushed all his adversaries, fulfilled all his pro
jects, and cpuld repeat proudly that war song of his
* This at any rate is the explanation given of the name Gari ( Carians ?)
and Grcthi — Pkthi (Cretans ? Philistines?) which David's body guards bore.
The Carians followed the trade of hirelings in all the ancient world, and the
Philistines, according to a very rational hypothesis, came from Crete.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 125
youthful days which amazes us by its bold and brutal
energy. " Jehovah said to my master, ' sit at my right hand till
I make thine enemies a footstool for thee.'
" Jehovah will stretch from Zion the sceptre of thy power ;
rule in the midst of thine enemies.
" Thy people have flocked to thy call in the splendour of
holy ornaments; the young men that surround thee are
like dew that comes from the bosom of the morning.
" Jehovah has sworn it, and he will not repent, thou art
priest for ever, after the fashion of Melchisedek ;
" The Lord is at thy right hand ; in the day of his wrath
he crushes Kings.
" He will reign over the nations, he will fill every place
with corpses ; he will crush heads over a vast space.
" He will refresh himself on his way with the water of
a torrent ; by that he will lift up again his head."
This profane royalty, opposed in many respects to the
true destiny of Israel, was continued through the entire
reign of Solomon. The throne of David, according to the
rules of strict descent, belonged to Adonias. Solomon
seized it through his father's partiality and an intrigue of
the harem directed by his mother Bethsabee, who was
always the favourite wife. The affair was decided by David's
" strong men," a small band of mercenaries of the roughest
stamp, who had been the sinews of the preceding reign.
The will of David preponderated, so completely had he
accustomed Israel to obey him. The wisest of Kings inau
gurated his reign after the Oriental fashion, by causing
Adonias and his party to be slaughtered. Adonias, had he
won, would no doubt have dealt likewise with Solomon's
party. However that may be, these disturbances of the
heirship had grave consequences, and dealt at legitimacy
in Israel a blow from which it never recovered.
If the idea of a conquering monarchy passed for a

126 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
moment through the brain of David accustomed to live
with his men of war and the Philistines, it was an idea.
that could not be realized, and it was very soon abandoned.
The Hebrew people were incapable of a grand military
organization, and in fact, under Solomon, all that great
apparatus of war is turned to the maintenance of peace. The
reign of Solomon remains the profane ideal of Israel. His
alliances with the whole East, without regard to differences
of religion, his superb seraglio, which contained as many
as seven .hundred queens and three hundred concubines,
the order and beauty of the appointments of, his palace,
the industrial and commercial prosperity of his time, re
vived in the imagination that taste for well-being and for
worldly delights to which Israel abandoned itself whenever
the goad of suffering ceased to push it towards higher
destinies. The Song of Songs is a charming expression of
the gay, happy, delicately sensual life of Israel, at one of those
moments when letting the divine thought slumber it gave
itself up to pleasure. A profane literature, common in part
to the neighbouring peoples of Palestine, superseded the
sacred poetry of the psalmists and the seers. Solomon
himself cultivated that worldly wisdom, strange almost to
the worship of Jehovah, which is not much better than the,
art of achieving temporal success. Works are ascribed to
him, and certain it is that he was a writer. Less a poet than
his father, and not gifted as he was with a true sentiment
of Israel's calling, he set himself to describing created
things "from the cedar to the hyssop;"* then, if we may
* By this phrase M. Ewald understands a cosmography similar to that of
the Arabian naturalist Kazwini, a description of all creatures beginning with
the largest and ending with the smallest. I incline to the belief that the
allusion is to moral lessons drawn from animals and plants analogous to those
in Proverbs (ch. xxx) or to those of the Physiohgus and of the Bestiaires
so popular in the middle age. The idea of a descriptive knowledge of nature
was unknown to the Semitic people prior to their contact with the Greek mind.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 127
believe the legend, he fell into scepticism, a disgust for
everything, and took refuge in a philosophy of despair;
" vanity of vanities ! — nothing new under the sun : —
To increase knowledge is to increase trouble. I wished to
search into all that passes under the heaven, and I have
seen that it was only vexation of spirit."
We feel how far we are from the pure ideal of Israel.
The calling of Israel was not philosophy, nor science, nor
art (music excepted), nor industry, nor commerce. In
opening these secular paths, Solomon in one sense caused
his people to deviate from their peculiarly religious destiny.
It would have been all over with the doctrine of the true
God if such tendencies had prevailed. Christianity and
the conversion of the world to monotheism being the essen
tial work of Israel, to which the rest must be referred,
whatever turned it aside from this superior end was but a
frivolous and dangerous distraction in its history. Now,
far from having advanced this grand work, we may say
that Solomon did everything to embarrass it. Had he
succeeded, Israel would have ceased to be the people of
God and would have become a worldly nation, like Tyre
and Sidon. The "prophets under him had little influence.
Drawn on by his relations with the most diverse people,
and by the desire to please his Egyptian, Sidonian, Moabite
wives, he reached a sort of tolerance for strange rites.
While the successor of David was passing his time playing
at riddles with Saba's infidel queen, there were seen on
the Mount of Olives, altars to Moloch and to Astarte.
What more inconsistent with the first duty of Israel?
Guardian of an idea about which the world was to raily,
changed to substitute in the human mind the worship of
the supreme God for that of national divinities, Israel
was bound to be intolerant, and to affirm boldly that all
worships except that of Jehovah was false and worthless.
The reign of Solomon, therefore, was in many respects a

128 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
break in the sacred career of Israel. The intellectual and
commercial development that he inaugurated had no con
tinuance. At the close of his life, the prophets whom he
had reduced to silence got the upper hand again, and
violently opposed him. His works, deemed profane, for
the most part perished ; his memory remained clouded, and
the liberality of thought which he had temporarily intro
duced left in Israel but a vague and brilliant recollec
tion. We see exhibited here the grand law of the whole his
tory of the Hebrew people, the struggle of two. opposing
necessities which seem almost to have drawn in contrary
ways this intelligent and passionate race ; on one side the
expansion of mind, eager to understand the world, to imi
tate other people, to leave the narrow inclosure in which the
Mosaic institutions confined Israel ; on the other side the
conservative thought, to which the salvation of the human
race was attached. The prophets are the representatives of
the exclusive tendency; the kings, of a sentiment more
open to ideas from without. Prophecy much more accord
ant with the genius and the vocation of the Hebrew people
must of necessity triumph, and hinder the secular royalty
from ever taking earnest root in Israel.
It is important to remark that the authority of the pro
phets, so hostile to royalty, is hardly less so to the priest
hood. The prophet* never comes from the tribe of Levi ;
he teaches not in the temple, but in the squares, in the
streets and market-places ; far from insisting on observances
after the manner of the priest, he preaches pure worship,

* I am sorry to be obliged to use the word prophet, which dates back only
to the Greek translators of the Bible, and might induce the belief that the
prediction of future events was the essential function of these inspired men.
It would be better, for the oldest periods, at least, to call them seers or to
retain the Semitic name of ndbi.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 129
the emptiness of outward practices when not connected
with the heart's adoration. The prophet holds his commis
sion from God alone, and stands for the interests of the
people against the kings and the priests, often in alliance
with the kings. Hence, a species of power which has.
nothing analogous in the history of any people, a sort of
inspired tribuneship devoted to the preservation of the old
ideas and the old rights. It cannot be denied that the gene
ral policy of the prophets appears to us austere and op
posed to progress ; but it was the true policy of Israel. At
first it sounds importunate, this voice, stern and monoto
nous, always predicting ruin, cursing the instincts which im
pelled the ancients towards the worship of nature. Often,
in that long strife, between the kings and the prophets, we
are tempted to decide, in favour of the kings. Samuel's op
position to Saul is commonly far from rational, and if the
prophets sometimes address just warnings to David, when
they would remind" the great king of the moral law he was
too prone to fo/get, it must be owned that frequently too
their reproaches disclose a very simple-minded policy, as
when, for example, they arraign as a capital crime the
census ordered by David, and wish to make the calamities
that followed look like a punishment for this, doubtless,
unpopular measure. Many of the kings introduced as mis
creants by the stern , authors of the book of Kings and of
Chronicles, were likely enough reasonable princes, tole
rant advocates of necessary alliances with the foreigner,
yielding to the exigencies of their time, and to a certain
tendency towards luxury and industry. The prophets, full
of the old Semitic spirit, ardent enemies of the plastic arts,
furious image-breakers, hostile to everything that involved
Israel in the world's movement, demanded that the kings
should persecute the worships which departed from Mono
theism, and reproved them for the judicious foreign alli
ances which they contracted, as if they were crimes. Never
9

130 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
was opposition more acrid, more violent, more anarchical ;
and, nevertheless, the opposition was substantially just.
From the moment we start from this principle that Israel
had but one duty, the preservation of Monotheism, the
direction of its course belonged of right to the prophets.
Israel could not rally humanity round one identical faith,
except as it scrupulously put aside all foreign influence ;
the preservation of Monotheism demanded neither breadth
nor variety of mind, but an inflexible tenacity.

III.

For a period of sixty years — ten centuries about, before
the Christian era — David and Solomon represented the
highest degree of glory and of temporal prosperity that
the Hebrews ever attained. Henceforth, all their dreams of
happiness will turn towards an ideal composed of David
and of Solomon, towards a king powerful and pacific, who
will reign from sea ,to sea, and to whom all kings will be
tributary. At what moment did that fruitful thought, out
of which the Messiah shall grow, make its appearance in
Israel ? Criticism is unable to tell. These ideas, pent up
in the depth of a nation's consciousness, have no beginning •
like all nature's fundamental works, they hide their origin
in mysterious darkness. Was the idea of a world's empire
born in Rome at a given moment ? No ! it was as old aa
Rome itself, and was in some sort sealed up in the first
stone of the Capitol. In the same way the faith in a Messiah,
vague, obscure, confused by eclipse and forgetfulness, re
poses in the most ancient deposits of Israel.
The unfitness of the Hebrews for a grand political career
discloses itself more and more. From the time of Reho-
boam they are almost always in vassalage first under
Egypt, then under Assyria, then under Persia, then under

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 131
the Greeks, finally under the Romans. A special cause
hastened the ruin of their temporal power. The tribe of
Juda, though it gained a preponderance through David's
victory, never succeeded in stifling the individuality of
the other tribes, and in founding the unity of the nation.
The tribes of Northern Palestine grouped round that of
Ephraim, longed to detach themselves, and endured, but
impatiently, the religious dependence in which Jerusalem
held them. The large outlays of Solomon, which weighed
heavily on the provinces and only benefited the capital,
completed the separation of the interests of North and
South. Ephraim, with its Mount Gerizim, the rival of Sion,
its holy city of Bethel, its numerous memorials of the
patriarchal age, was undeniably the most considerable of -
the communities that struggled against the absorbing
activity of Juda. The rivalry of these two principal fami
lies of the Israelites dates from the most remote epochs of
their history. In the time of the judges, Ephraim, by the
stay of the ark at Shilo, and by its territorial importance,
really held the leadership of the nation. The idea of an
Israelitish monarchy just missed at one moment of being
realized by Ephraim.* After the death of Saul, we see this
tribe collect about itself all the tribes of the North, oppose
Ishbosheth, unsuccessfully, to David, the skilful and fortu
nate champion of the pretensions of Juda, finally, after the
death of Solomon, make its secession tendencies triumph
through the schism of the kingdom of Israel, and the advent
of an Ephraimite dynasty. Among the overseers of the
workmen whom Solomon employed in the construction of
the terrace between Sion and Moria, he remarked a robust
youth of Ephraim, whose intelligent air struck him, and to
whom he gave an important office in his administration.
This was the man destined to strike a mortal blow at the
* See the story of Abimelech's attempt (Judges, ch. ix.).

132 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
house of David. Jeroboam, in the lifetime even of Solo
mon, raised the standard of revolt ; the financial embarrass
ments which followed the death of the great king, fur
nished him with an excellent occasion for completing a
separation that had become inevitable.
It cannot be said that the division of the ten tribes was,
in view of the general destiny of the Hebrew people, a
serious misfortune. Reduced to a space twenty leagues long
by fifteen wide, Juda, left to herself, is purified and exalted ;
her religious ideas are developed and woven closely toge
ther. The North, on the contrary, given over- to brutal
dynasties, and a prey to perpetual revolutions, was early
reduced to naught; the religious tradition became feeble
there. Harshly repulsed by the scornful Jews of Jerusa
lem-, when, after the captivity, they wished to cooperate
with them in rebuilding the temple, the Samaritans hardly
did more than copy loosely the institutions of Juda. They
took their revenge in Christianity. The Christ found most
of his disciples in the provinces of the ancient Kingdom of
the North, despised and with a bad name for orthodoxy ;
and in this sense it can be maintained that Samaria has
played as important a part as Jerusalem in the grand work
of Israel. This old fraction of the Hebrew people, which,
if it has not had the brilliant destiny of Juda, has almost
equalled it in perseverance and faith, is in our time on
the eve of extinction, and offers to the world the singular
spectacle of a religion at the point of death. Persecutions,
misery, and the proselytism of the more active sects, above
all the Protestant missions, menace its frail existence every
instant. In 1820 the Samaritans were still in number about
five hundred. Robinson, who visited Neapolis (the ancient
Sichem) in 1838, found but one hundred and fifty. In an
appeal which they addressed to the French government in
1842, they confess that they are reduced to forty families.
Their old priest, Salome, son of Tobias, who corresponded

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 133
with Bishop Gregory and. M. de Sacy, is still living; but
it does not seem as if the knowledge of the language and
the traditions of Samaria could survive him. At this
day, when all the world are looking for somebody to
protect in the East, who will think of these poor Samari
tans?* It is remarkable, however, that prophecy, in the King
dom of the North, was at first an element of political dis
turbance still more serious than in the South, and rendered
impossible there all law of hereditary succession, while at
Jerusalem the prestige of the house of David and the un
disputed privilege of the Levites maintained a sort of divine
right for the succession to the throne and to the priesthood.
Elias and his school represent this period of the prophetic
omnipotence, making and unmaking dynasties, really gov
erning in the name of kings who were under tutelage. The
finest pages of M. Ewald's book are those in which he ex
hibits the character and deeds of Elias. This giant of the
prophets, by his ascetic life, by the strange. costume he
wore, by his hidden retreat in the mountains, from which
he issued like a supernatural being, only to bear his menace
and straightway disappear, — contrasts strangely with the
simpler traits of the old prophets and with the less ascetic
school of the prophets of literature. A great revolution,
in fact, worked itself rapidly out in the germ of prophecy.
The prophets of the school of Elias and Elisha never wrote.
To the ancient prophet, who was a man of action, succeeded'
the prophetic writer, who aimed at power through the
beauty of language alone. These astonishing publicists
enrichedthe Hebrew scriptures, embracing up to that time
merely historical narrative, canticle, and parable, by a new
style, — by a kind of political literature fed by the incidents
?Seethe little work of M. TAbbd Barges, entitled The Samaritans- of
hapoli. Paris; 1855. ,. ,

134 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
of the day, and resembling nothing so much as the press
and the tribune of modern times.
In proportion as the secular future of Israel seemed de
stroyed past recovery, its religious destinies went on increas
ing. The closing periods of the Kingdom of Juda present
one of the most amazing religious movements in history.
These are the earliest origins of Christianity. The ancient
Hebrew religion, simple, severe, with no refined theology,
is scarcely more than a negation. Towards the time we
speak of, an exalted pietism, which led to the reforms of
Ezechias, and, above all, of Josias, introduced new elements
into Mosaism. The worship centres more and more in
Jerusalem ; prayer commences. The word " devotion/'
whicl had no equivalent in the ancient patriarchal religion,
begins to have a meaning. New editions of the Mosaic
code, conceived in the parenetic tone and kept in authority
by certain pious artifices', gained circulation.* Songs com
posed by literary men and marked by a rhetorical style
rekindle in souls the zeal for Mosaism. A loose manner,
prolix, but full of unction, the type of which we find
in the work of Jeremiah, characterizes these productions.
It is needless to add that each outbreak of piety was
accompanied by an outbreak of intolerance and perse
cution against all nonconformity with the purest Mono
theism. A profound modification, at the same time, appears in the
modes of feeling ; a spirit of sweetness, a delicate sentiment
of compassion for the weak, kindness to the poor and the
oppressed, shades of character unknown to antiquity, come
to light from all sides. ' The prophecies of Jeremiah and
of Deuteronomy are already, in this respect, Christian books.
Love, charity are born into the world. At the same time
the cherished idea of Israel, the expectation of a pattern

* See 2 Kings, ch. xxii., xxiii

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 135
king, who would bring the reign of God into Jerusalem
and fulfil the ancient oracles, assumed grand proportions.
It was for a long time believed that this perfect king was
on the point of coming; but when people saw Josias
almost realize the ideal of the theocratic sovereign and then
miserably perish, the hope was shaken. The very simple
system on which the social edifice of Israel reposed, the '
compact between God and the nation, by virtue of which
the nation, so long as it remained faithful to Jehovah, should
be happy and triumphant — this system, I say, was inevi
tably exposed to the rudest disappointments. The prophets
charged with the application of this strange principle must
have had more than one struggle to sustain it against stub
born facts. Often the epochs of most vivid piety were the
most unfortunate, and it may be said that the final cata
strophe surprised Israel in the midst of a period of very
great fervour. Hardened against deceptions, accustomed to
hoping against hope, Israel appealed from the letter to the
spirit. The idea of a spiritual Kingdom of God, and of a
law written not on stone, but in the heart, came to it as the
dawn of a new future.
While in 'the heart of Jerusalem people were agitating
these delicate questions, on which the religious future of
the world hung, in the East vast and mighty monarchies
were establishing themselves, which might destroy the
Kingdom of Juda without an effort. The Hebrews, with
such simple ideas as they had on the subject of political
and military organization, experienced a lively astonish
ment and terror when, for the first time, they found them
selves face to face with this terrible array of force ; with
this impious and brutal -materialism ; with this despotism
in which the king usurped the place of God. • The pro- ,
phets, blind in the senses, but clear-sighted in the spirit,
ceased not to repel the only policy that could save Israel,
to assault royalty, and to excite internal commotions by

136 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
their menaces and their puritanism.* On the ruins of
Jerusalem we see them persisting in their obstinacy, and
almost exulting in the disasters which fulfilled their pre
dictions. Ordinary policy would condemn them and hold
them responsible in great measure for the misfortunes of
their country ; but the religious function of the Jewish peo
ple must always be fatal to its political character. Israel
was doomed to share the fate of people devoted to an idea,
to march her martyrs through the disdains of the world,
waiting for the world to come back as a suppliant and beg
for a place in Jerusalem.

rv.

The captivity reached but a small number of the inhabi
tants of Palestine ; but it smote the head of the nation and
the whole class in whom resided the religious traditions,
so that the entire soul of Judsea was transported to Babylon.
Owing to this circumstance, the first productions of the
Hebrew genius bloomed on the banks of the Euphrates —
those touching psalms that reach the soul with their en
chantment, and penetrate it with sadness and with hope ;
those incomparable prophetic odes which have been ap
pended to the works of Isaiah, f There grew up thenceforth
in Babylon, or rather in the small towns grouped about the
great city, a second capital, as it were, of Judaism. They
who ' reinstated in Judasa the ancient institutions and
studies, men like Esdras and Nehemiah, come from there,
and are indignant, on their arrival, at the ignorance and the
corruption of language among their co-religionists in Pales-

* See, for example, Jeremiah, chap, xxxvi
f Ch.- xl-lxvi. The strongest proofs establish the fact that these fragments
are not from Isaiah, but belong rather to the time of the captivity.'

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 137
tine. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans
Babylon will become again the principal centre of the intel
lectual culture of Israel. So that the continuation of the
Jewish tradition has, we may say, been twice effected by
that city through the two great catastrophes which, seven
centuries apart, completely ruined Judaism at Jerusalem.
In the history of the human mind, I know no stranger
spectacle than that which Babylon witnessed the sixth cen
tury before the Christian era. That little group of exiles,
lost in a profane crowd, feeling at once its material feeble
ness and its intellectual superiority, seeing around it the
brutal reign of power and of pride, rises and reaches the
skies. From all those divine oracles still unaccomplished,
from that pile of_baffled hopes, from that struggle of faith
and imagination with the realities of existence, was ulti
mately born the Messiah. In the presence of triumphant
iniquity, Israel made its appeal to " the great day of the
Lord" and resolutely dashed into the future.
What saw he there, that nameless prophet,* who at this
decisive moment was the interpreter of Israel's thought ?
No dreams of the sick man, who at the height of his fever
sees another world displayed before him, and another sun
blaze, had ever such ecstasies. We can only indicate the
burden of these divine hymns in which the illustrious un
known saluted the new Jerusalem : — " Rise, shine, 0 Jeru
salem !" — " Voice that crieth in the desert, prepare the way
of the Lord, make smooth his paths!" — "How beautiful
on the mountains the feet of Him who announces salva
tion!" — "Skies shed your dew, and let the clouds pour
down justice" — " Who is this that cometh from Edom, who
arriveth from Bosra, his garments red with blood ?" Then,
in a dark and mysterious vision, that sublime apotheosis
of the man of sorrows, the first hymn to suffering that the
* The man whose- writings were added to the collection of Isaiah's, works.

138 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
world ever heard. Nowhere more brilliantly than in these
pages of which we speak, shines the special gift of Israel,
faith, the consciousness of its superiority surviving all its
defeats ; the certainty of the future, which gave to a hand
ful of captives the boldness to affirm that the world one
day would belong to them. " Lift your eyes, 0 Jerusalem,
look around and see these multitudes that come and gather ;
sons are brought to thee from distant countries, daughters
press to thy bosom; troops of camels, dromedaries from
Midian and from Epha, swarm upon thee ; here are some
from Saba, bringing gold and silver and- announcing the
praises of Jehovah. The flocks of Cedar will run to thee ;
the rams of the Nabateans will voluntarily offer themselves
for thy sacrifices. What are these that fly like clouds, like
doves, towards their shelter? The isles of the sea are
waiting ; the ships of Tarsus are ready to bring thee child
ren ; strangers will offer to build thy walls ; kings will make
themselves thy servants ; thy gates shall be open night and
day to let in the chosen of the nations, and the princes
brought to render thee homage. The sons of. those that
have humbled thee will come bending towards thee ; those
that despised thee will kiss the print of thy foot, a»d will
call thee City of God, holy Zion of Israel. Thou shalt
suck the milk of the nations, thou shalt draw milk from
the breasts of kings. No more shall iniquities be heard of
on the earth, nor disasters on thy borders ; peace shall
reign over thy walls ; glory shall sit at thy gates. Thou
shalt need neither sun to light thy days, nor moon to
brighten thy nights; thy sun shall never set, thy moon
shall never know decline ; for Jehovah will be thine eter
nal illumination, and the days of thy grief shall be passed
for ever."
From this moment Israel appears before us exclusively
possessed by its religious idea. None of the profane distrac
tions, by which it had, at moments, been hampered, will

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 139
.trouble it henceforth ; no more doubt, no more revolt, no
more temptation to idolatry ; Paganism inspires it now only
with the bitter and haughty derision of the Book of Wis
dom ; Judaism goes on gathering itself up and fortifying
itself more and more. The liberty, the simplicity of the
antique Hebrew^ genius, so unfamiliar with all theological
and casuistical scruples, gives place to the pettinesses of
rabbinism ; the scribe succeeds to the prophet ; a priest
hood, strongly organized, stifles all secular life ; the Syna
gogue becomes what later the Church will be, — a sort of
constituted authority against which all independent thought
dashes itself in pieces. Pietism is developed, and produces
a literature weak enough, as compared with the productions
of the classic era, but still full of charm. Some tender and
touching psalms— eternal nourishment of pious souls — and
the pretty romances of Tobias and of Judith, belong to this
period. Compare who will the honest Tobias with Job ;
like him, smitten witb- unmerited woes ; a world divides
them. Here, patience, virtue rewarded, sweet and consol
ing images ; there, revolt, obstinacy, dispute, and the proud
feeling of the Arab, who says in his misfortune, " God is
great," — a feeling which has nothing in common with the
wholly Christian virtue of resignation.
A great indifference to political life is the consequence
of the strict and severe zeal that marks the times at which
we have now arrived. Israel was not commissioned to
teach the world liberty ; therefore, since the captivity we
see it willingly accept a subordinate position, and turn to
profit the advantages that this situation gives it, without
seeming to suspect that it involved any shame. While
Greece, with resources very little greater than those of
Palestine, gained for liberty its first victory, Israel consent
ed to be nothing but a province of the great king, and
found itself well content. Here, it must be confessed, is
the bad side of Jewish history. Jealous only of their reli-

140 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
gious liberty, the Jews, without much pain, submitted to
regulations which showed any tolerance for their worship,
and gave to every despotism servants all the more devoted
as being restrained by no responsibility to the nation. The
Chaldean Empire, it is true, was odious to them, and they
hailed its ruin with shouts of joy, doubtless because that
military and altogether profane empire had nothing that
answered to their own nature. On the other hand, they
accepted as a boon the rule of the Persians, whose religion
was the least pagan of the pagan world, and by its serious
ness, its tendency to monotheism, its horror of figurative
representations, offered much that was analogous with the
Mosaic worship. Cyrus was received by them as an en
voy of Jehovah, and introduced with full privileges into
the chosen family of the people of God.
It cannot be denied that the Persians showed themselves
very liberal towards Israel. Zerobabel, whom they rees
tablished at the head of the nation, was of the house of
David, and it simply remained for the Jews to revive
through him their national dynasty; but such was their
political coldness, that after Zerobabel they allowed his
line to drag on in obscurity, and recognised no power save
that of the high priest, which became hereditary. ^ Israel
pursued its destiny with ever increasing speed ; its history
is no longer that of a state, but of a religion. It is the fate
of the peoples that have an intellectual or religious mission
to fulfil towards other nations, to buy this brilliant and
perilous vocation at the price of their nationality. The
Greek genius did not act powerfully on the world till an
epoch when Greece had no longer a political ,part to play.
It has been sufficiently shown that the first cause of the de
cline of Italy was the universal tendency of Italy ; that
primato which she, in faet, so long exercised, and which
effected this result; that wishing to be mistress everywhere,
she became nothing at home. Who knows that one day

THE HISTORY OF THF. PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 141
French ideas will not fill the world, when France shaU be
no more ? The nationalities which cling strongly to their
soil, which have no desire to make their ideas prevail out
side of themselves, are very persistent in their own domain,
but they have little effect on the general movement of the
world. To act on the world one must die to one's self.
The people that makes itself the missionary of a religious
thought has no other country henceforth than that thought ;
and it is in this sense that too much religion kills a people,
and is inconsistent with a purely rational establishment.
The Maccabees are admirable as heroes, but their heroism
does not excite in us the same emotions that Greek and
Roman patriotism does. Miltiades fights for others without
an after-thought of theology or of credence ; Judas Macca
beus fights for a faith, and not for a country ; or, at least,
country with him is subordinate to faith. So true is this,
that after the captivity the soil of Palestine becomes
almost a thing indifferent with the Jews. Their most
flourishing, most enlightened, most pious communities are
are spread over the regions most remote from the East.
One last trial, however, awaited Israel, and perhaps
the most dangerous of all. I mean the contagion of
the Greek civilization, which, from the time of Alex
ander, swept over all Asia. The first duty of the Jew
ish people | was isolation. This duty it was able to dis
charge without much difficulty in presence of Egypt,
of Phenicia, of Assyria. Persia had exerted a very
powerful influence over the cast of its imaginatipn;
but, thanks to a singular analogy -of institutions and
of genius, the free reception of this influence was not an
infidelity. The temptation was much graver before the
incomparable prestige which could not fail to bring under
the influence of the Greek mind the noblest portions of the
human race. Israel, at first, was very deeply tainted. The
Jewish colonies established in Egypt allowed themselves to

142 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
be captivated by the seductions of Hellenism, broke com
munion with Jerusalem, and almost entirely deserted the
family of Israel.* Palestine itself at first succumbed to the
influence of the Seleucidae ; a race-course and gymnasia
were seen at Jerusalem ; a powerful party, which counted
in its bosom nearly all the youth, favoured these novelties,
and, fascinated by the splendour of the Greek institutions,
already regarded with pity the worship and the austere
customs of their ancestors. But once more, this time, the
conservative spirit carried the day. Some stubborn old
men and a family of heroes saved the traditions about
which the world was soon to rally.
Ehe measure of the danger is given u« by that of the
hate. Woe to them who tried to oppose the free develop
ment of the religious needs of humanity ! The historical
memories most readily sacrificed are those of sovereigns
who, not knowing how to guess the future, or foolishly un
dertaking to arrest it, have become persecutors of religious
movements which were destined to triumph. Such were
Antiochus,. Herod, Diocletian, Julian, — all great princes,
in an earthly sense, whom the popular conscience has piti
lessly damned. This Antiochus Epiphanes, whose name is
irrevocably associated with that of Nero, was a humane, f -
enlightened prince, who doubtless wished only the progress
of the civilization and the arts of Greece. The rude means
that he employed were those which the Greeks and Romans
put in use, everywhere and always, to break in the civili
zations that differed from their own. Having resided long
in Rome as a hostage, Antiochus returned to Syria, his
head full of ideas of the Roman policy, and dreaming of

* It is remarkable that Philo and the Jews of Egypt have left no trace of
themselves in the vast depository of doctrines which compose the Talmud.
At this day the true Jews scarcely regard them as co-religionists.
f See the testimony of the Book of Maccabees even, I. ch. vi., verse ii.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 143
an Eastern empire, founded, like that of Rome, on the mix
ing of nationalities, and the extinction of provincial vari
eties. Judea was the first obstacle he was to encounter in
the execution of this project. The priesthood was at this
moment greatly enfeebled. The high priest Jesus, who,
following the fashion, adopted the name of Jason, forgot
himself so far as to send an ambassador to the games of
Hercules at Tyre ; the temple was given over to pillage ;
for an instant Olympian Jupiter had his altar there, and
bacchanals ran through the streets of Jerusalem. Then
began that heroic resistance which gave to the religion its
first martyrs. .The priests and a large portion of the popu
lation of Jerusalem had yielded ; but it was the peculiarity.
of the Jewish people, and the secret of their force, that they
kept their faith, independent of the priest, by lodging
it exclusively in the conscience of a small number of
heads of families attached to very simple ideas, and gov
erned by an invincible sense of their superiority. The
destiny of humanity was staked on the firmness of a few
families. In consequence of this firmness the Greek spirit
was reduced to powerlessness in Palestine, and deprived of
all cooperation really helpful to the first genesis of Chris
tianity. \
An influence far more efficacious, because excited with
out violence and through the effect of the moral similarity
of the two peoples, was that of Persia. Persia is the only
country that exercised on the Jewish people a truly pro
found religious influence. One of the most important
results of Oriental studies in these latter times has "been to
show the leading part which the institutions of the Avesta
played in all Western Asia, during the ages which pre
ceded and those which immediately followed the Christian
Era. We must thank Persia for all these new elements
which we find in Christianity as compared with Mosaism,
— elements- which sJ superficial examination had at first

144 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
referred to Greece. Babylon, which continued to be one
of the principal centres of Judaism, was the theatre of this
mingling, which was to have such grave consequences in
the history of the human mind, and whose first conse
quences were, for the Jews, a more complicated theory of
angels and demons; a spiritualism refined as compared
with the old Hebrew realism ; a taste for symbols which
borders close on the cabala and gnosticism ; ideas on the
terrestrial manifestations of Divinity altogether strange to
the Semitic peoples. The faith in immortality and ih the
resurrection of the body also takes more definite forms.
The Hebrews had never reached very distinct ideas on
this point. The immortality in which Israel believed more
than any other people is that of a race and of its work — ¦
not that of the individual. At last the Messianic formulas
become much more precise, and attach themselves to the
belief that the end of the world is near, and is to be accom
panied by a general renewal of all ' things.* A series of
compositions, written under the form of Apocalyptic
visions, and with reason regarded by M. Ewald as a sort
of new birth of prophecy, such as the book of Daniel, of
Henoch, the fourth book of Esdras, the Sibylline verses, f
were the fruit of this new taste, which, as compared with
the style of the poets of the noble epoch, represents a sort
of romanticism. Their form alone considered, these are
productions of an advanced decadence. Nevertheless, we
find in them sometimes a singular vigour of thought. The

* See an excellent work on the origin and formation of apocalyptic beliefs
among the Jews, recently published in M. Colani's Revue de Theologie (Oct.,
1855) by M. Michel Nicolas, Professor in the Theological Faculty of Montau-
ban. The demonstration of what I can here only indicate will be found
there. f There is no possible doubt of the comparatively modern date of the book
of Daniel. See the special works of MM. Lengerke, Hit?ig, Liicke, Ewald.
A portion of the Sibylline verses is of Jewish origin.

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 145
book of Daniel,1 especially, may be regarded as the oldest
attempt at a philosophy of history.' The revolutions that
overran the East; the cosmopolitan habits of the Jewish
people, and above all the intuition of the future which this
people always had, gave to it, in this respect, an immense
advantage over Greece. While- political history — I mean
the history of the internal strifes of the' city — has found in
Greece and Italy its most excellent interpreters, Israel has
the glory of being the first to contemplate humanity as a
whole^ tosee in the succession of empires something else
than a-fortuitous: succession, and to reduce to a formula
the development of human affairs; Perfect or imperfect,
as you please to think,- this system- of the philosophy of his
tory is at least the one that hsis lived the longest. It has
lasted from the period of' the Maccabees almost to our own
day. ;J§aint .Augustine, in " The City of God," and Bos
suet, in the "Universal History," 'have added nothing
essential to it.
A new: feet in Israel ; marked the fertile age. which pre
ceded the birth of the Christ, — -numerous sects were pro
duced, evincing a refinement of theological pretensions till
then unknown. : At the same time practices of special
devotion, towards: which the ancient Hebrews were in no
wise drawn, prevail, and, following the eternal law by
, which ; religions! are always impelled to • their development
by incidental causes;- wear5 away1 the ancient- foundation.
The synagogues, or places of religious assembling, of which
no teace is found before the 'Captivity, and the institution
of which is butomoderately in harmony With the Mosaic
spirit assume :greaii importance}" and' every where riiultiply.
Theinfluence of- Upper Asia* maikes itself felt more and
more ; i bat, open <m the side of the East, -Jerusalem remains
closed on* the side of~#reeee, and stubbornly repels aU
approachfof AetWesteM'phnmdpKy;5'' Onepartyy small ih
numbers, etoHghtenedjiand-too *easoaable to suceeed;^-the
10

146 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
Sadducees, — try hard to establish a kind of rational Mosa
ism. The unbelieving Herod causes the temple to be
rebuilt in the Greek style, and opposes to fanaticism a
policy wholly of the world, founded on the separation of
church and state, and on the equal toleration of the differ
ent sects. These timid remedies were powerless against
the mysterious malady which tormented Israel. The Pha
risees carried it. Now, who were the Pharisees? The
supporters of the genuine tradition ; the sons of those who
resisted during the captivity, who resisted under the Mac
cabees ; the ancestors of the Talmudists, and of those who
mounted the scaffolds in the middle age ; the natural ene
mies of all who aspired to enlarge the bosom of Israel.
Thus, to the end, the grand law is maintained, which
rules the history of Israel,— -the struggle between the
liberal and the conservative tendency ; a struggle in
which, happily for the world, the conservative tendency
has always had the upper hand. He who studies this his
tory by the light of our modern ideas, reflecting as they
do the ideas of Greece and Rome, is shocked at every step.
He must be for Saul against Samuel, for Ishbosheth against
David, for the kings against the prophets, for the Samari
tans against the Jews, for the Greek party against the Mac
cabees, for the Sadducees against the Pharisees ; and yet,
if Saul and Ishbosheth had prevailed Israel would have
been only a small forgotten state of the East, something
like Moab or Idumea. If the kings had succeeded in
stifling prophecy, Israel migh| perhaps have reached, in
secular affairs, the prosperity of Tyre or of Sidon ; but its
whole religious character would have been suppressed. If
the Maccabees had not come forward to resist the Seleu-
cidse, Judaea, would. have been a country like Bithynia or
Cappadocia, absorbed first by Greece, afterwards by Rome.
Grant that they were W arrow and retrogressive spirits, —
those stubborn Jews of Modin,— -spirits closed against all

THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 147
idea of progress ; not at all endowed with sentiment for
art ; incapable of comprehending anything of the brilliant
civilization of Greece. It cannot be denied, either, that
the Sadducees seem to, us in many respects superior to the
Pharisees. The whole history of Israel proves, by a strik
ing example, that victory belongs not on the earth to those
causes which seem most reasonable and most liberal ; it
belongs to those whom Jehovah has chosen to guide
humanity towards the unknown lands promised by the
divine oracles.
The moment had come when the large and the narrow
thought were to join in their last battle, and when the two
contrary tendencies which stirred in Israel were ready to
end in a disruption. On one side, in fact, the Jewish
nation had a mission essentially conservative ; on the
other, it boldly claimed the future. Wnen this future is
opened, it was easy to foresee that the synagogue would
obey its eternal maxim : hope ever, and ever resist. Hence
the false position of Israel- in presence of. Christianity, and
the origin of that irreconcilable hate which eighteen cen
turies have hardly softened. The Christ came out of its
bosom, and to remain faithful to its principle, Israel must
crucify him. • Christianity was its natural flower, and it
must fling it away. Chased from its mother's lap, this
child must grow up in spite of her, and march without her
to the destinies that awaited him. St. Paul, with the
energy of his wild genius, has described this situation, —
the most extraordinary that the religious history of the.
world has presented.
Let us pause on the threshold of the mysterious event
in which the whole life of Israel is summed up. Religions
neither die nor abdicate, and Judaism, having brought forth
its fruit, must continue through the ages its long and tena
cious existence. Only, the spirit'of life is henceforth gone
from it; its history is fair and curious still; but it is the

148 THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
history of a sect ; it is no morer eminently, the history of
religion. But if, finally, we put to ourselves this question,
Has Israel fulfilled its calling ? — has it, in the grand min
gling of nations, kept the post that was originally intrusted
to it ? — we reply, without hesitation, Yes. Israel has been
the stem on which the faith of the human race. has been
grafted. No people has taken its destiny so seriously as
Israel ; none has felt so vividly its joys and its. sorrows as
a nation ; none has lived more thoroughly for an idea.
Israel has vanquished time, and made use of all its oppress
ors. The day when a false report caused us to celebrate one
year too soon the taking of Sebastopol, an old Polish Jew,
who spends his days in the Imperial Library, absorbed in
reading the dusty manuscripts of. his nation, greeted me
with this quotation from Isaiah : " It is fallen, it is fallen,
Babylon." The victory of the allies, as he saw it, was but
the chastisement for violences practised on his co-religion
ists by the man whom he «alled the Nebuchadnezzar and
the Antiochus of our time. In that sad old man I seemed
to see before me the living genius of that indestructible
people. Over every ruin it has clapped its hands ; perse
cuted by all men, on all men it has been avenged. For
this it has needed but one quality, a quality, however,
which man gives npt to himself, — endurance. It is by this
that it has brought to pass the boldest predictions of its
prophets. The world that despised it has come round to
it; Jerusalem at this present hour is truly "a house of
prayer for all nations." Equally venerated by Jew, by
Christian, by Mussulman, it is the holy city, of four hun
dred millions of men, and the prophecy of. Zechariaji has
come true to the letter : " At that time ten men shall cling
to the skirt of one Jew, saying to him : We will go witji
thee, for we have heard it said that the Lord ii with thee."

THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE IN THE
HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION.

GENTLEME1J,— I am proud to ascend this chair—
the most ancient in the College of France— made
"illustrious in the sixteenth century by eminent
.men, and in our own generation occupied by a scholar of
the merit of M. Quatremere. In creating in the College
of France an asylum for liberal science, King Francis I.
laid down as the constitutional law of this grand founda
tion, the complete independence of criticism ; the disinte
rested search for truth ; impartial discussion, that knows no
rules save those of good taste and sincerity. Precisely this,
gentlemen, is the spirit which I would fain bring to the
instruction here. I know the difficulties that are insepa
rable from the chair which I have the honour to occupy. It
is the privilege and the peril of Semitic studies, that they
touch oh the most important problems in the history of
mankind. The free mind knows no limits ; but the human
race at large is far from having reached that stage of
serene contemplation in which it has! no need of beholding
God in this or that particular order of facts, for1 the very
reason -that ;it sees Him in everything. Liberty, gentle
men,, had it been well understood, would have allowed
these opposite claims to exist side by side.: I hope that,
t>y yourfaVour,' this cohrse will prove that they can. As
I shall bring to niy instructions no dogmatism; as I shall
confine myself always; to appeals to your reason, to the
statement of what I think most probable, leaving you full
liberty of judgment, whp can complain? Those only who

150 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
believe they have a monopoly of the truth ; but these must
renounce the claim to be the masters of the world. In our
day Galileo would not go down on his knees to retract
what he knew to be the truth.
You will permit me, in the fulfilment of my task, to descend
even to' the smallest details, and to be habitually technical
and austere. Science, gentlemen, reaches its holy end, which
is the discovery of truth, only on the condition of being spe
cific and rigorous. It is not every man's destiny to be a
chemist, a naturalist, a philologist, to shut himself up in labo
ratories, to pursue for years an experiment or a calculation. %
All men, nevertheless, share in the great philosophical
results, of chemistry, physics, and philology. To present
these results, disencumbered of the apparatus that has
served to bring them out, is a useful labour, and one that
science should not decline. Such, however, is not the
purpose of the College of France. All the apparatus of
the most special and minute science should be there dis
played. Laborious demonstrations, patient analyses, not
excluding, it is true, any general development, any legiti
mate digression— such is the programme of these courses.
It is the very laboratory of philological science, which is
open to the public in order that shape may be given to spe
cial vocations, and that people of the world may be able to
form an idea of the methods that are employed in arriving
at the truth.
To-day, gentlemen, I should depart, from usage, and'
should disappoint your expectation, were I to begin with
expositions of too technical a character. It would have
given me pleasure to recall here the memory of the illus
trious brother labourer whom I have the honour to succeed,
— M. Etienne Quatremere. But this duty having been
performed in this very place, and in a manner which
forbids my recurring to it, I shall devote this first lecture
to a colloquy with you on the general character of the

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 151
peoples whose language and literatures we shall study
together ; to the part which they have played in history ;
to the contribution which they have made to the common
work of civilization.
The most important result at which historical and philo
logical science has arrived in the last half century has "been
to show, in the general development of humanity, two ele
ments, as it were, which, mingled in unequal proportions,
have made the woof of the web of history. As early as
the sixteenth century, and almost as early as the middle
age, it was discovered that the Hebrews, the Phenicians,
-the Carthaginians, the Syrians, Babylon, from a certain
period, at least, the Arabs, the Abyssinians, spoke lan
guages wholly cognate. Eichhorn, in the last century,
proposed to call these languages Semitic, and this name,
inexact as it is, may as well be retained. In the first years
of our century a discovery, otherwise important, was made.
Thanks to the knowledge of Sanskrit, due to the English
scholars in Calcutta, the philologists of Germany, M. Bopp
in particular, laid down sure principles, by means of which
it was demonstrated that the ancient idioms of Brahmanic
India, the different dialects of Persia, the Armenian, many
dialects of the Caucasus, the Greek and Latin languages,
with their derivatives, the Slavic languages, the Germanic,
the Celtic, formed a vast whole, radically distinct from the
Semitic group, and this they called Indo-Germanic, or
Indo-European. The line of demarcation revealed b}' the comparative
study of languages was soon fortified by the study of litera
tures, institutions, manners, religions. When one is capa
ble of instituting delicate comparisons, he recognizes in the
ancient literatures of India, of Greece, of Persia, of the Ger
manic nations, common genders, rooted in a profound spi
ritual identity. The literature of the Hebrews and that of
the Arabs have likewise a close relation to each other ; on

152 THE SHARE , OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
the contrary, . they have -the least possible relatipn with.
those I have just enumerated,
We should look in, vain among the Semitic peoples^ for
an epopee or a tragedy ; we should seek in vain among
the Indo-European nations for anything analogous, to the
"Kasida" of the Arabs, ai?d that species of eloquence
which distinguishes the .Jewish prophets and the Koran.
The same may be said of institutions.. :JheJndp-EurQpean
nations had at their origin an old .system of law,, the remr
nants of which are found, again in the Brahmanas of India,
in the formulas of the Latins,, in the Celtic, Slavic, and
Germanic customs. Patriarchal life among the Hebrews^
and among the Arabs was subjected^, undoubtedly, to
entirely different, laws.
Finally, the comparison of religions has come in to
throw decisive light upon this: question. By the side of
comparative philology , there was founded,, a few years
ago, in Germany, a comparative mythology, which de
monstrated that, all the Indo-European nations had origi
nally, with a similar language, a similar religion, of which
each one, in departing, from the common cradle, has carried
away the scattered remnants. This religion is the worship
of the powers and phenomena of Nature,, tending by philo
sophical. development to a species of pantheism. ,. The reli
gious developments of the. Semi tic races obeyed entirely
different .laws*. .Judaism, Christianity, Islamism, show, a
dogmatic, absolute, severely monotheistic spirit, which
distinguishes them fundamentally, from the Indo-European
religions,- or* as. we call them, theJPagan beliefs. .
Here, then, are two. .entirely,.,, distinct individualities,
which, . between them, , Sx\\ , up, * % a : wanner,. .. alinpsjfc the
whole field of . history, and j which,, are,. as_ it, were, the .two
poles of mo vementfop- tiie- human race.,.JfjL say almost the
whole field.,of hisipryjifffoi; puteidejpf, these twp.grea.t indi
vidualities ,;there aref{yet ,^wp, or three, whichj are .already

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 153
traced clearly enough for science, and, the action of which
has been, extensive. I set aside China, which constitutes, a
world apart, and the Tartar races, which have acted -only
as natural scourges to destroy the work, of the others.
Egypt has played a. considerable part in the history of
the world. Now, Egyptis neither Semitic nor. Indo-Euro
pean; nor is Babylon purely Semitic. : There seetns to
have been in Babylon an original type, pf civilization ana
logous to that of Egypt. It may even be said, in general,
that before the entrance of the Indo-European and . the
Semitic nations on the scene of history, the, world, held
already, very,, old civilizations,, to which .ours owe,, ,if not
moral, at least industrial elements, and a. long experience
of material life. But all, this is still faintly outlined before
the. eyes of history; all this, is, moreover, obscured by
events, .such; as the mission of .Moses,,, the invention of
alphabetical writing, the conquests of Cyrus and of Alex
ander, the occupation of -the , worid by Greek .genius, Chris
tianity, the Roman Empire, Islamism,. the, Germanic. .con
quest, Charlemagne, the -revival of learning,, the Reforma
tion, philosophy,, the French Revolution, the , conquest of
the world hy modern -Europe. There is the great current
of history, a current formed by the, mingling of two rivers,
compared with which all other- confidents, are .but rivulets.
Let us eadeavpur to distinguish in. this complex, whole,, the
share of each pf these two great; races, which, by their, com
bined action, and -most frequently by, their antagonism,
have produced the, condition, of the,;wprld>pf which, we our
selves are the firjal results. ,.- .,
At the outset, an explaBatipn ;k necessary., TIn speaking
of the mingling of the;two; races,.!, |efer,, simply to, the
"blending of ideas, sor, if hI may.ventu-re -to, say sp,r,a;spjt,pf
^historic eoljabipration. , iThe,Jndp-I5urppieanand ti^Sjmjtic
^peoples are, even, in ,pujc days,, entirely . distinct, ,ti I do.npt
'apeak of, the Jews, wh^Qjii^CjUiiar^iaid, ;woii4ei$i| historic

154 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
destiny has given them, as it were, an exceptional place in
humanity ; and yet, if we except France, which has set up
in the world the principle of a purely ideal civilization,
discarding all notion of difference in races, the Jews almost
everywhere form still a society by themselves. The Arab
at least, and in a more general sense the Mussulman, are
further removed from us to-day than they have ever been.
The Mussulman (the Semitic mind is especially represented
in our days by Islam) and the European are face to face
like two beings of a different species, having nothing in
common in their manner of thinking and feeling. But the
march of humanity is advanced by the struggle of contrary
tendencies, by a sort of polarization in virtue of which
every idea has on earth its exclusive representatives. It is
in the aggregate that all these contradictions harmonize,
and that perfect peace results from the shock of elements
apparently hostile.
So much granted, if we ask what the Semitic peoples
have contributed to this organic and living whole which is
called civilization, we shall find, in the first place, tbatr in
polity, we owe them nothing at all. Political life is per
haps the most peculiar and native characteristic of the Indo-
European nations. These nations are the only ones that
have known hberty, that have reconciled the State with the
independence of the individual. To be sure, they are far
from having always equally well adjusted these two oppo
site necessities. But among them are never found those
great unitary despotisms, crushing all individuality, reduc
ing man to the condition of a kind of abstract nameless
function, as is the case in Egypt, China, and the Mussulman
and Tartar despotisms. Examine successively the small
municipal republics of Greece, and of Italy, the Germanic
feudalisms, the grand centralized organizations of which
Rome gave the first model, and whose ideal reappeared^ in
the French Revolution, you «find always- a rigorous mpBal

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 155
element, a powerful idea of the public good, sacrifice for a
general object. In Sparta, individuality was little protected •
the petty democracies of Athens and of Italy in the Middle
Ages were almost as ferocious as the most cruel tyrant ;
the Roman Empire became '(in part, however, through the
influence of the East) an intolerable despotism ; feudalism
in Germany resulted in regular brigandage; royalty in
France under Louis XIV. almost reached the excesses of
the dynasties of the Sassanidae or the Mongols ; the French
Revolution, while establishing with incomparable energy
the principle of unity in the State, often strongly com
promised liberty. But swift reactions have always saved
these nations from the consequences of their errors. Not
so in. the East. The East, especially the Semitic East, has
known no medium between the utter anarchy of the nomadic
Arabs, and bloody unmitigated despotism. The idea of the
commonweal, of the public welfare, is totally wanting among
these nations. Liberty, true and entire, such liberty as the
Anglo-Saxon peoples have realized, and grand State organ
izations such as the Roman Empire and France have created,
were equally unknown to them. The ancient Hebrews, the
Arabs, have been or are at times the freest of men, but on
condition of having the next day a chief who cuts off heads
at his own good pleasure. And when this happens, no
one complains of violated right : David seizes the sceptre
by means of an energetic condottiere which does not, hinder
his being a very religious man, a king after God's own
heart; Solomon ascends the throne and maintains himself
there by measures such as Sultans in all ages have used,
but this does not prevent his being called the wisest of
Kings. When the prophets storm against royalty, it is
not in the name of «a political right, it is in the name- of the
theocracy. Theocracy, anarchy, despotism, such, gentle
men, is a summary of the Semitic polity ; happily it is net
ours.' The political principle drawn from the' Hoty Scrip-

156 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
tures . (very badly , drawn, it is true) by Bossuet, is a. . detes
table. -principle.,. Jn polity, as in poetry, religion, philo
sophy, the duty of the Indo-European nations is to seek
after-, nice combinations, the, harmony of opposite, things,
the complexity so totally unknown among the, Semitic
nations whose organization has always been of a disheart
ening and fatal simplicity. ¦.,.. b,..j,,,,.; -':,!.
In art and poetry, what do we. owe to them ? t„ In art
nothing. These tribes have but little. of the artist; our
art comes entirely from Greece. . In poetry, nevertheless,
without being their tributaries, we have with them more
than one bond of union. The Psalms have become in
some ^respects one of pur sources of poetry., Hebrew
poetry has taken a place with us beside Greek,,poetry, not
as having furnished a distinct order of, poetry,, but as con- ^
stituting a poetic ideal,, a sort of Olympus where in con
sequence ; of an accepted prestige everything is suffused
with- a halo of light. Milton, Lamartine, Lamennais would
not -exist, or at least would not exist as they are, .but for the
psalms, »Here again, however, all the shades pf expression,
all the delicacy, all the depth is ourr,wbrk. .. The thing
essentially poetic is the destiny of man ; his melancholy
moods, his restless; search after causes, his just complaint
to heaven. There, was no necessityof going tp strangers
to.learn this. The eternal school here, is each man'ssoul.
tt! In science and philosophy we are exclusively Greek.
The investigation of causes,, knowledge foj: knowledge's own
sake, -is a, thing; of whicb there .is np. trace previous to
Greece, a thing that :we.,have, learned, frojn her alone.
Babylon possessed a, science, hut it. had not. that jpe-
eminentiy. scientific, principle^, the .absolute, fixedness of
natural , law... , «-; Egypt f bad] ^some , knowledge of geometry,
but it did ,npt:, originate tbe;^Eleineftts'.',.pf Euclid. .As
for the old.Semitic spirit, it is by its nature anti-philosophic,
-anti:scientifia.; , In "Job/', the investigation of causes ,js

IN THE HISTORY' OF CIVILIZATION. ,! 157
represented as almost ah ifnpiety. '* Iii "Ecclesiastes, '* * sci
ence is declared to be" a' Vanity. ' The author, prematurely
surfeited, boasts of having studied everything u'nder the
sun, and of having found nothing but vanity. Aristotle,
who was almost his cOnteniporary; and who might have
said with more reason that he had' exhausted the Universe,
never speaks of his weariness. J The wisdom of the Semitic
nations never got beyond' parables and proVefbs. We
Often hear of Arabian science ahd philosophy, and it is
true that during one or two centuries in the Middle Ages/
the Arabs were bur masters, hut only however until the
discovery of* the Greet originals. This Arabian science
and philosophy 'were' but a .poor translation of Greek
science and philosophy. ''A31' soon1 as' authentic1 Greece
arises, these miserable translation1^ ''become useless, "and
it is not without reason that' 'all 'the philologists of the
Renaissance undertake1 a veritable crusade: against them;
Moreover, on close exaniihatioh, we find that this Arabian
science had nothing of the Arab in it. Its foundation is
purely Greek; among those whoorigihated it, there is not
one real Semite, they were" Spaniards and Persians writing
in Arabic. The Jews' of the Middle' Ages' acted also as
simple interpreters of philosophy.' '' The Jewish' philosophy
bPMat epoch is unmodified Arabic. One' page of Roger
Bacou contains more of the true scientific spirit than does
all ihat' second-hand science, worthy of respect, certainly,
as a link of tradition, but destitute of'all noble originality.
" It we examifae the question with r^fefetict3 t6':'moral and
social ideas', we shalt find 'thaPthe' ^emffic iethic'sare
proasionally very loly find veif pW|f PJTlefcMe Itributed
to Iffioses i 'contains elevated' ide'asTi^i'4%WIf"THi3''Tf)rophets
are at times very'eloquent" tribunes ^Th^^Walists, Jesiis

158 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
the Semitic nature is in general hard, narrow, egotistical.
This race possesses noble passions, complete self-devotions,
matchless characters. But there is rarely that delicacy of
moral sense which seems to be the especial endowment of the
Germanic and Celtic races. Tender, profound, melancholy
sentiments, those dreams of the Infinite in which all the
faculties of the soul blend, that grand revelation of duty
which alone gives a solid basis to our faith and our hopes,
are the work of our race and of our climate. Here then
the task is divided. The moral, education of humanity is
not the exclusive merit of any race. The reason is quite
simple ; morals are not taught any more than poetry ;
fine aphorisms do not make the honest man ; each one
finds goodness in the loftiness of his nature, in the imme
diate revelation of his heart.
In industrial pursuits, inventions, external civilization,
we owe, certainly, much to. the Semitic peoples. Our race,
gentlemen, did not set out with a taste for comfort and for
business. It was a moral, brave, warlike race, jealous of
liberty and honour, loving nature, capable of sacrifice, pre
ferring many things to life. Trade, the arts of industry,
were practised for the first time on a grand scale by the
Semitic tribes, or at least by those speaking a Semitic lan
guage, the Phenicians. In the middle ages also, the Arabs
and the Jews were our instructors in commercial affairs.
All European luxury, from ancient times till the seventeenth
century, came from the East. I say luxury, and not art ;
the distance from one to the" other is infinite ; Greece, which
in point of art was immensely superior to the rest of man
kind, was not a country of luxury ; there the magnificence
of the great king's palace was spoken of with disdain, and
were it permitted to us to see the house of Pericles, we
should probably find it hardly habitable. I do not insist
on this point, for it would be necessary to consider whether
this Asiatic luxury, that of Babylon, for instance, is really

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 159
due to the Semites ; I doubt it, for my part. But one gift
they have incontestably made us, a gift of the highest order,
and one which ought to place the Phenicians, in the his
tory of progress, almost by the side of the Hebrews and the
Arabs, their brothers, — Writing. You know that the charac
ters we use at this day are, through a thousand transforma
tions, those that the Semites used first to express the sounds
of their language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, from
which all our European alphabets are derived, are nothing
else than the Phenician alphabet. Phonetics, that bright,
device for expressing each articulate sound by a sign, and
for reducing the articulate sounds to a small number (twenty-
two), is a Semitic invention. But for them, we should per
haps be still dragging along painfully with hieroglyphics.
In one sense we may say that the Phenicians, whose whole
literature has so unfortunately disappeared, have thus laid
down the essential condition of all vigorous and precise
exercise of thought.
But I am eager, gentlemen, to come at .the prime service
which the Semitic race has rendered to the world ; its
peculiar work, its providential mission, if I may so express
myself ? We owe to the Semitic race neither political life,
art, poetry, philosophy, nor science. What then do we owe
to, them ? We owe to them religion. The whole world, if
we except India, China, Japan, and tribes altogether savage,
has adopted the Semitic religions. The civilized world
comprises only Jews, Christians, and Mussulmans. The
Indo-European race ih particular, excepting the Brahmanic
family and the feeble relics df the Parsees, has gone over
completely to the Semitic faiths. . What has been the cause
of this strange phenomenon ? How happens it that the
nations who hold the supremacy of the world have re
nounced their own ereed to adopt that of the people they
have conquered ? .:
The primitive worship of the Indo-European race, gen-

160 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
tlemen, was charming- and profound, like- the imagination
Pf the nations -themselves. It was like aneeho of nature,
a sort of naturalistic hymn, in which - the idea of one sole
cause appears but occasionally' and uncertainly. - It was a
child's religion,'full of artlessness and poetry, but destined
to crumble at the first demand of thought. Persia first
effected its reform (that which is associated with the name
of Zoroaster) under -influences and at an epoch unknown
to us. Greece, in the time-' of Pisistratus/was already dis
satisfied with her religion,-" and was turning towards the
East. In the Romanperiod, the old' pagan 'worship had
become utterly ; insufficient. * It no - longer addressed the
imaginatiPn;it'spoke feebly to the moral sense. . Theold
"mythson the forces1 of nature had become changedinto
fables, not unfrequently amusing', and ingenious, but des
titute, of all' religious Value. It is precisely at this epoch
that'the civilized world finds itself face to-iface with the
Jewish faith. Based upon the clear and simple dogma of
the' divine -Unity',- discarding naturalism and pantheism by
the' marvellously terse phrase : " In' the beginning, God
created the heaven and the earth," possessing a- law, a
book,the depository7 of grand moral "'precepts' and of an
elevated religious 'poetry,1 Judaism had an incontestable
superiority, and it might? have been foreseen'tiien that some
'day the world would become Jewish, that is to say would
fotsake the 'old mythOlcigyfor Monotheism: An extraor-
'di4ary;!mb'vemeht! which- tobk place at this epochs in, the
"heart1 of " Judaism' itself "decided the victory. -By; the side
of 'its 'gfand:an8 iWeb'ml^faMe'qualities Judaism' contained
the principle' W'a ^narrow foi'ihalisrh* of an exclusive and
sebrHfttl faniaiicism^; this was i'^the^harisaiP'spirit which
"became1 later' thei; TalmMid' -s]Writr ; Hadf JuSaisnii heen
JmeteT^!FnaMeisni%'w^^ > But this
race had within itself a truly remarkable re^gibaW activity.
Mke'alf $re^n'oMe~^

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 161
elements ; it knew how to react on itself, and to develop at
need qualities the very opposite of its defects.
In the midst of the enormous ferment in which the
Jewish nation was plunged under the last Asmoneans, there
took place in Galilee the most wonderful moral event
which history has ever recorded. A matchless man — so
grand, that although here all must be judged from a purely
scientific point of view, I would not gainsay those who,
struck with the exceptional character of his work, call him
God — effected a reform in Judaism, a reform so radical, so
thorough, that it was in all respects a complete creation.
Having reached a higher religious plane than ever man
reached before, having attained the point of regarding him
self in his relation to God, as a son to his father, devoted to
his work with a total forgetfulness of all else, and a self-
renunciation never so sublimely practised before, the victim
at last of his idea, and deified by death, Jesus founded
the eternal religion of humanity, the religion of the soul,
stripped of everything sacerdotal, of creed, of external
ceremonies, accessible to every race, superior to all castes,
in a word absolute; "Woman, the hour cometh when
ye shall neither in this mountain, nof yet at Jerusalem,
worship the Father; but when the true worshippers shall
worship him in spirit and in truth." The vital centre
was established to which humanity must for centuries
refer its hopes, its consolations, its motives for well
doing. The most copious source of virtue that the
sympathetic touch of a sublime conscience ever caused
to well up in the heart of man was opened. The lofty
thought of Jesus, hardly comprehended by his disciples,
suffered many lapses. Christianity, notwithstanding, pre
vailed from the very first, and prevailed supremely over
other existing religions. These religions, which pretended
to no absolute value, which had no strong organizations,
and which represented no moral idea, offered but feeble
11

162 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
resistance. Some attempts which were made to reform
them, in accordance with the new needs of humanity, and
to introduce into them an earnest moral element — the
effort of Julian, for instance — failed completely. The
Empire, which saw justly its principle threatened by the
birth of a new power, the Church, resisted at first energeti
cally. It ended by adopting the faith it had opposed. All
the nations that were under Greek and Latin influence
became Christian ; the Germanic and Slavic peoples came
in a little later. Persia and India alone, of the Indo-Euro
pean race, thanks to their very strong religious institutions^
which are closely allied to their polity, preserved, though
much modified, the ancient worship of their forefathers.
The Brahmanic race, especially, rendered to the world a
scientific service of the highest kind, by preserving, with
a minute and touching excess of precaution, the oldest
hymns of their faith, the Vedas.
But after this incomparable victory the religious fecund
ity of the Semitic race was not exhausted. Christianity,
absorbed by Greek and Latin civilization, had become a
Western institution. The East, its cradle, was precisely
the land in which it encountered the most formidable
obstacles. Arabia in particular, in the seventh century,
could not make up its mind to become Christian. Hesi
tating between Judaism and Christianity, native supersti
tions and the remembrance of the old patriarchal faith,
recoiling from the mythologic elements which the Indo-
European race had introduced into the heart of Christian
ity, Arabia wished to return to the religion of Abraham ;
she founded Islamism. Islamism, in its turn, appeared
immensely superior amidst the debased religions of Asia.
With one breath it overturned Parsism, which had been
vigorous enough, under the Sassanidae, to triumph over
Christianity, and reduce it to the condition of an insignifi
cant sect. India, in its turn, .saw, but without being con-

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 163
verted, the divine unity proclaimed victoriously in the
midst of its obsolete pantheon. Islamism, in a word, won
over to Monotheism almost all the heathen whom Chris
tianity had not yet converted. It is finishing its mission in
our days by the conquest of Africa, which is becoming, at
this time, almost wholly Mussulman. With a few excep
tions, of secondary importance, the world has been thus
conquered entire by the monotheistic apostleship of the
Semites. Do we mean to say that the Indo-European nations, in
adopting the Semitic dogma, have completely given up
their own individuality? No, indeed. In adopting the
Semitic religion, we have modified it profoundly. Chris
tianity, as popularly understood, is, in reality, our work.
Primitive Christianity, consisting essentially of the apoca
lyptic belief in a Kingdom of God which was about to
come; Christianity, as it existed in the mind of a St.
James, of a Papias, was very different from our Chris
tianity, encumbered with metaphysics by the Greek Fa
thers, and with scholasticism by the Middle Ages, and
by the progress of modern times reduced to a teaching
of morality and charity. The victory of Christianity was
secured only when it broke completely its Jewish shell,
when it became again what it had been in the lofty pur
pose of its founder, a creation released from the narrow
trammels of the Semitic mind. This is so true, that the
Jews and Mussulmans feel only aversion to this religion,
the sister of their own, but which, in the hands of another
race, has clothed itself with an exquisite poetry, with a
delicious attire of romantic legends. Refined, sensitive,
imaginative souls, 3uch as the author of the "' Imitation,"
the mystics of the Middle Ages, and the saints in general,
professed a religion, which had, indeed, sprung from the
Semitic genius, but had been transformed from its very
foundation by the genius of modern nations, especially of

164 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
the Celts and Germans. That depth of sentimentalism,
that species of religious languor of a Francis d'Assisi, of a
Fra Angelico, were the precise opposite of the Semitic
genius, which is essentially hard and dry.
As regards the future, gentlemen, I see in it more and
more the triumph of the Indo-European genius. Since the
sixteenth century an immense event, until then undecided,
has been coming out with striking vigour. It is the defi
nitive victory of Europe, the accomplishment of this old
Semitic proverb ; " Let God increase Japhet, and let him
dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan (Cham ?) be his
servant." Till that time the Semitic spirit had been master on its
soil. The Mussulman East defeated the West ; had better
arms and a better political system ; sent it riches, know
ledge, civilization. Henceforward the parts are changed.
European genius rises with peerless grandeur; Islamism,
on the contrary, is slowly decomposing, — in our days it
is falling in with a crash. At the present time, the essen
tial condition of a diffused civilization is the destruction of
the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruction of the theo
cratic power of Islamism ; consequently the destruction of
Islamism itself;. for Islamism can exist only as an official
religion ; as soon as it shall be 'reduced to the state of a
free, personal religion, it will perish. Islamism is not
merely a state religion, as Catholicism was in France under
Louis XIV. — as it still is in Spain. It is religion exclud
ing the state ; it is an organization the type of which, in
Europe, the Pontifical States alone exhibited. There is
the endless strife, the strife which will cease only when the
last son of Ishmael shall have died of misery, or shall have
been driven by terror into the depths of the desert. Islam
completely negatives Europe ; Islam is fanaticism, such as
Spain under Philip IL and Italy under Pius V. have
scarcely known ; Islam is contempt for science, suppres

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 165
sion of civil society ; it is the appalling simplicity of the
Semitic spirit cramping the human intellect, closing it
against every delicate thought, every fine feeling, every
rational inquiry, to confront it with an eternal repetition :
God is God.
The future, gentlemen, belongs then to Europe, and to
Europe alone. Europe will eonquer the world, and spread
through it her religion, which is law, liberty, respect for man,
the belief that there is something divine in the heart of hu
manity. In all departments progress for the Indo-European
people will consist in departing farther and farther from
the Semitic spirit. Our religion will become less and less
Jewish ; more and more will it reject all political organi
zations as connected with the affairs of the soul. It will
become the religion of the heart, the innermost poetry of
every soul. In ethics we shall cultivate a refinement un
known to the austere natures of the Old Alliance ; we
shall become more and more Christian. In polity we shall
reconcile two things which the Semitic nations have always
ignored — liberty and a strong state organization. From
poetry we shall demand expression for that instinct of the
infinite which is at once our joy and our torment, — at all
events our greatness. From philosophy, instead of the
absolute of the scholastics, we shall demand delicate studies
on the general system of the universe. In everything we
shall seek after fine distinctions, subtlety instead of dog
matism, the relative in place of the absolute. There is the
future, as I anticipate it, if the future is to belong to pro
gress. Shall we attain a clearer view of the destiny of
man and his relations with the infinite ? Shall we know
more surely the law of the origin of beings, the nature of
conscience, what is life and personality ? Without relaps*
ing into credulity, and still persisting in its path of positive
philosophy, will the world recover its joy, its ardour, its
hope, its deeper thoughts? Will existence become again

166 THE SHARE OF THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
worth the possessing, and will the man who believes in
duty find in duty his reward ? This science to which we
consecrate our life — will it render back to us what we sacri
fice to it ? I know not. But this is certain, that in seek
ing out truth by scientific methods we shall have done our
duty. K truth be cheerless, we shall at least have the con
solation of having honestly discovered it ; we may say that
we deserved to find it more consoling, still, we will bear
this witness in our hearts, that we have been thoroughly
sincere. To tell the truth, I cannot dwell on such thoughts.
History demonstrates that there is in human nature a
transcendent instinct, that urges it towards a nobler aim.
The development of man is inexplicable on the hypothesis
that man is only a being with an already finished destiny,
virtue only a refined egotism, religion but a chimera. Let
us work on, then, gentlemen. Whatever the author of
" Ecclesiastes " may say in a moment of discouragement,
science is not " the meanest occupation that God has given
to the sons of men." It is the best. If all be vanity, he
who has consecrated his life to truth will be no more duped
than others. If all the good and the true be real, and we
are sure that they are, their seeker and lover will have
unquestionably breathed the finest spirit.
We shall not meet again, gentlemen. At my next lec
ture I shall plunge into Hebraic philology, where the
greater number of you will not follow me. But I pray
those who are young, and to whom I may be allowed to
offer a word of counsel, to favour me with their attention.
The impulse which is in you, and which has shown itself
more than once during this lecture in a manner so honour
able to me, is praiseworthy in its principle and of good
promise ; but do not let it degenerate into frivolous acti
vity. Direct your attention to solid studies ; believe that
the liberal thing par excellence is cultivation of mind, noble-

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 167
ness of heart, independence of judgment. Prepare for our
country generations ripe for all that makes the glory and
the ornament of hfe. Beware of rash enthusiasms, and
remember that liberty is won only by earnestness, respect
for ourselves and others, devotion to the common weal,
and to the special work that each of us in this world is
called upon to establish or to continue.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
THEY say that Angelico of Fiesole never painted the
heads of the Virgin or the Christ except on his
knees ; it would be well for criticism to imitate his
example, and only after having adored them, to face the
radiance of certain figures before which the ages have bent
low. The first duty of the philosopher is to swell the
grand chorus of humanity, in worship of the moral good
ness and beauty exhibited in all noble characters and
elevated symbols. The second, is the unwearied search for
truth, and the firm conviction that if the sacrifice of the
selfish instincts may be well pleasing to Divinity, it cannot
be so with the sacrifice of the scientific instincts. The timid
credulity, which, from fear of seeing the object of its faith
disappear, gives a body to every image, is as contrary to
the harmony and the good discipline of the human facul
ties, as the purely negative criticism which refuses to adore
the ideal type because it has discovered that the ideal is not
always conformed to the actual. It should be time it was
understood that criticism, far from excluding respect or
from implying, as timorous people suppose, the crime of
high treason against God and man, includes, on the con
trary, the purest act of worship. Least of all, can it be
afraid of appearing irreverent when it seeks to unveil the
true countenance of the sublime Master who said : " I am
the Truth !"
So profound an instinct impels man to search for truth,
at the price of his dearest beliefs ; this instinct constitutes
for noble natures so imperious a duty, that the criticism

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 169
of the beginnings of a religion is never the work of free
thinkers, but of the most enlightened followers of the
religion. The brancn of Christianity which grows most
vitally from the Bible is precisely that which has produced
the rational interpretation of the biblical texts ; the most
daring labours on the history of the founders of Christianity
have come from Christian theologians. When secular
knowledge began to handle these difficult subjects, it had
only to take up from its own point of view the labours
which sacred learning undertook, and which theology alone,
it must be said, had formerly the liberty of engaging in.
l£, in our day, the independent thinker hardly dares to
touch such formidable problems, what must have been, in
days past, the fate of the historian who, regardless of the
faith of eighteen centuries, permitted himself to cite 'before
his tribunal the man whose brow seems to us always sur
rounded with the halo of divinity ? Not in its infancy
can criticism think of an enterprise so audacious. The
day when it laid its hand on this last sanctuary it did but
finish a long series of assaults against received opinions,
and plant its standard on a citadel, all whose advanced
works it had already destroyed.
Study, in fact, the march of modern criticism since the
Renaissance, you will see it following steadily the line of
its inflexible progress, and filling one after another, by truer
images of the past, the places occupied by the superstitions
of rude science. A sadness seems to attend each one of
the steps that have been taken in this destined road ; but
really there is -not one of the gods dethroned by criticism
who does not also receive from criticism a more legitimate
title to adoration. The false Aristotle of the Arabs and of
tbe commentators of the middle ages, is the first to fall
under the blows of the hellenists of the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries,, and to give place to the authentic and
original Aristotle; then Plato, exalted momentarily — in

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 171
rationalism, to a rupture with tradition which at first it
repels.

I.

Criticism has two modes of attacking a marvellous nar
rative ; for as to accepting it as it stands, it cannot think of
it, since its essence is denial of the supernatural.* 1. It may
admit the substance of the narrative, but explain it by taking
into consideration the age, the persons who have transmitted
it to us, and the forms adopted at such and such an epoch
to express facts. 2. It may cast doubt on the narrative
itself, and may account for its formation without conceding ¦
its historical value. On the first supposition the task is to
explain the material of the history ; the reality of the material
is consequently assumed. On the second, without pro
nouncing on this reality, the phenomena of the narrative '
are analysed as simple psychological facts. It is regarded
as a poem created in all its parts by tradition, and neither
having nor requiring other cause than the instincts of man's /
spiritual nature. In biblical exegesis we call those who fol
low the first method rationalists, because, at the start, they
oppose themselves alone to the supernaturalists, and we
reserve for the partisans of the second the name oimythohgues.\

* An explanation of this word has become necessary, since writers have
fallen into the habit of designating by the word " Supernatural," the ideal
and moral element of life in opposition to the material and positive. In this
sense, we -cannot deny the supernatural without falling into a coarse sen
sualism, which is as far as anything can be from my thought ; for I believe,
on the contrary, that the intellectual and moral life alone has any worth, or
any genuine reality. By " Supernatural" I mean here " miraculous," that is
to say, the special interposition"!)? Deity in the physical arid" psychological,
order of the world, deranging the course of events with a view to a particular
government of humanity.
f It is necessary to state that the name rationalist is taken here in a

172 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
The first method of explanation, the exclusive use of
which could not fail to lead to singularly narrow views,
was the only one known to the ancients. Evhemerus has
bequeathed his name to that method of interpreting
myths which substitutes natural facts for marvellous tra
ditions. Protestant exegesis was in its early stage pure
Evhemerism. A man whose name does not occupy the
place it merits in the history of the human mind,
Eichhorn, was the first to apply to the Bible this system
of interpretation. The progress of history and philosophy
had brought him to the alternative of admitting the divine
intervention in the. primitive period of all nations or of
denying it in all. With every ancient people he observed,
the unexpected and uncomprehended was referred to Deity ;
the sages all lived in communication with superior beings.
Outside of Hebrew history, no one was inclined to believe
in the literal truth of such recitals. But clearly, added
Eichhorn, reason demands that we should treat the Hebrews
and the non-Hebrews in the same manner ; so that either
we must place all nations during their infancy under the
action of higher beings, or we must believe in such action
on none of them. To admit a primitive supernaturalism
common to all nations, is to create a world of fables. It
simply remains for us to conceive the ancient narrations
according to the spirit of the time which has bequeathed
them to us. Doubtless, if they were written with the
precision of our age, we should be forced to see in them
either a real intervention of Deity or a falsehood invented
for the purpose of making men believe in such an in
tervention ; but coming from an uncritical epoch, those
purely conventional sense, to designate the interpreters who first applied the
Evhemerist criticism to the Bible. The true rationalists, in our view, are
neither the exegetists who were first dignified by the title nor the mytho-
logues, but those who apply or who shall apply to Jewish and to Christian
history a criticism freed from all dogmatic prejudice.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 173
simple documents express themselves without art, and in
conformity with the opinions received at the period of their
composition. To get at the trutk we have only to "trans
late the language of the ancients into our own. So long
as the human mind had not yet penetrated the real cause
of physical phenomena, it derived everything from super
natural forces: high thoughts, noble resolutions, useful
inventions, and above all vivid dreams came from a god.
And it was not the people alone who embraced these facile
explanations ; superior men had on their part no doubt on
this matter, and boasted with full conviction of relations
with Deity.
Under the marvellous narratives of the Bible we njlust,
therefore, said Eichhorn, look for natural and simple facts,
expressed after the fashion of childish people. Thus, the
smoke and flame of Sinai were nothing but a fire that
Moses kindled on the mountain to excite the imagina
tion of the people, coincident with which was a violent
storm ; the fiery column was a torch carried in front of
the caravan ; the shining aspect of the face of the law
giver was occasioned by his great heat ; and he, who did
not know its cause, saw in it, as did the people, something
divine. To have subjected the body of the Hebrew Scriptures to
the same method of interpretation with the other produc
tions of the human mind, was an immense step, however
defective this mode of interpretation as yet was. Time
was necessary to embolden men to subject to similar treat
ment the writings of the New Testament, composed at a
period nearer to our own, and held in more peculiar vene
ration. Eichhorn,, like all reformers, paused on the first
step, and very timidly applied the rationalistic method to
the evangelical facts. Scarcely did he venttTre to propose a
natural sense for some few recitals in. the history of the
Apostles, such as the conversion of St. Paulj the miracle

174 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
of the Pentecost, the angelic apparitions. It was in 1800
that Dr. Paulus put out under full sail on this new sea,
and laid the first basis for a critical history of Jesus. With
great delicacy Paulus distinguished the actual fact in the
narrative — the objective element — from the narrator's judg
ment of the fact^-the subjective element. The fact is the
substance that serves as a foundation for the recital — the
judgment on the fact is the view which the spectator or
the narrator takes of it, his own explanation of it, — in a
word, the reflection of the fact in his mind. The Gospels,
according to Paulus, are histories, written by credulous
men, under the action of a vivid imagination. The evan
gelists are historians after the pattern of those artless wit
nesses who, in telling us the simplest incident, cannot help
presenting us with additions out of their own head. To
arrive at the truth, we must place ourselves at the point of
view of the epoch, and separate the real facts from the
embellishments which credulous faith and a taste for the
marvellous have added to it. Paulus holds firmly to the
historical verity of the narratives. He takes pains to
introduce into the evangelical history a rigorous chain
of dates and events ; but these events have nothing about
them that renders necessary a supernatural intervention.
With him, Jesus is not the Son of God in the sense of the
Church, but a wise and virtuous man ; they are not mira
cles he wrought, but deeds, sometimes of kindness and phi
lanthropy, sometimes of medical skill, sometimes of chance
and good fortune.
A few examples will convey an idea of the prevailingly
subtle and forced character of this often ingenious exegesis.
We will take first the gospel narrative of the birth of John
the Baptist. This recital contains two supernatural and
consequently inadmissible incidents-: the apparition of the
angel and the sudden dumbness of Zachariah. The inter
preters we are speaking of explain the apparition of the

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 175
angel by the usual laws of angelophany. With some it
was a man who said to the father of John the Baptist what
he attributed to a celestial messenger ; with others, it was
a flash that struck his imagination ; with others, it was a
dream; with others, an ecstasy or hallucination induced by
the mental state in which he found himself, and by the
religious function which he was discharging. His mind
being excited by the dim light of the sanctuary, he thinks,
as he prays, on the object of his most ardent wishes ; he
expects to be heard, and he is consequently disposed to
see a sign in everything that may occur. The smoke of
the incense, illuminated by the lamps, takes a shape ; the
priest fancies that he sees a celestial being, who terrifies him
at first, but from whose mouth he very soon thinks he hears
consoling promises. At the first faint suggestion of a
doubt the scrupulous Zachariah regards himself as guilty
of incredulity, and thinks he is reprimanded by the envoy
of God. The dumbness admits of a double explanation :
either a sudden apoplexy actually paralyses the tongue of
Zachariah, which he considers a punishment for his doubts ;
or else, according to a Jewish superstition, he forbids him
self the use of the speech which he accuses himself of hav
ing misused. All the features of the recital were thus
accepted as real, but explained without miracle. The new
interpreters did not for a moment think of asking if the
narrative in question might not be a fiction, conceived in
imitation of the occurrences which the Old Testament asso
ciates with the birth of all great men.
Again, for example, we will take the gospel story of the
fast which Jesus prolonged for forty days. If we are to
believe the rationalists, forty was a round number signify
ing many days ; or perhaps the abstinence was not com
plete, and did not exclude herbs and roots. One of them
remarks that Jesus is, said to have eaten nothing, but not
that he drank nothing. Now, he adds, we have seen an

176 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
enthusiast sustain himself forty-five days by water and tea,
with no other nourishment.
The other marvellous facts in the life of Jesus were ex
plained in a similar way. The heavenly light of the shep
herds of Bethlehem was neither more nor less than a lantern
which was flashed, in their eyes. The star of the magians
was a comet, and when it is said that the star went with
them on their journey allusion must be made to the light
that was carried before them through the night. When
they tell of Jesus as walking on the sea they mean to say
that he rejoined his disciples by swimming, or by walking
along the shore. Another time he calmed the tempest by
seizing the tiller with a firm hand. The multiplication of
the loaves is explained by secret magazines, or by provi
sions which the auditors had in their pockets. The rich
had too much, the poor had too little, or had none at all :
Jesus, like a true philanthropist, advised them to make
common stock of the viands, and there was enough for
everybody. The angels of the resurrection were simply
the white linen cloths, which the pious women took for
celestial beings. The ascension likewise was reduced to
the proportions of a natural fact, by the hypothesis of a
mist, under cover of which Jesus adroitly vanished, and
came safely to the other side of the mountain.
A very narrow exegesis this, to be sure — very little cal
culated to save the dignity of the character of Jesus ; an
exegesis made up of subtleties, founded on the mechanical
use of a few incidents — ecstasy, lightning, storm, cloud, &c.
An exegesis quite inconsistent, too, viewed in a theologi
cal light; for if the sacred biographers deserve no faith in
respect to incidents, why hold so strongly to their veracity
in respect to the substance of the recital? Errors of detail
are no more compatible with the- inspiration of the Holy
Ghost than impostures are. The insufficiency of such a
shabby method of interpretation was not long in making

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 177
itself felt. Eichhorn himself, the father of biblical Evhe
merism, "recognized the necessity of a larger ' exegesis for
some portions of the Old Testament books, and particu
larly for the traditions relating to the creation and the fall
of man. After trying diverse natural explanations Of these
traditions, and maintaining, like a scrupulous theologian,
that it would be unworthy pf the Deity to allow the inser
tion of a mythical fragment in a revealed book, he con
fessed the childishness of similar attempts, and in the nar
rative just mentioned saw no more than the translation
into my thus of this philosophical thoUght: the desire for
a better state is the source of all the evil in the world.

II.

The so-called rationalistic interpretation may have satis
fied the first bold desire of the human mind on its taking
possession of a long forbidden domain ; but experience
could not but disclose very soon the inexcusable defects,
the dryness, the coarseness of it. Never was better real
ized the ingenious allegory of the daughters of Minos, who
were changed into bats for having seriously criticised the
vulgar credences. There is as much simplicity and cre
dulity, and much less poetry, in clumsily discussing a
legend in its details, as in accepting it, once for all, as it is.
We are right in treating as barbarians the scribes of the
seventeenth century, who, in copying the lives of the
Saints, admitted some miracles and rejected others as too
hard to believe. It is clear that on this principle all should
have been rejected, and to a mean criticism, which does
violence to texts in order to be but half rational, we prefer,
as a matter of taste, M. de Montalembert's method with
Saint Elizabeth, where the fables are collected indiscrimi-
natingly, so that it is sometimes doubtful whether the
12

178 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
author believes the whole or believes nothing. Here we
are at least free to suppose that it was the author's delibe
rate intention not to seem nice, and the book thus com
posed preserves an incontestable value as a work of art.
Such also was the fine and poetical manner of Plato ; this
is the secret of the inimitable charm which the half-believ
ing, half-skeptical use of the popular myths gives to his
philosophy.* But only the narrow mind will accept one
portion of the miraculous recitals and reject the other.
Nothing could be less philosophical than to allow some
thing to the impossible, and to apply a literal criticism to
recitals conceived outside of all reality.
The study of comparative mythology was productive of
new ideas all over Germany. Heyne, Wolff, Niebuhr, and
soon Ottfried Mulier unveiled Greek and Latin antiquity.
India opened her treasures, furnishing inestimable docu
ments, without which the history of the human mind would
for ever have been incomplete. Heyne had announced
this fine principle: "From the myths the whole history

* Phedrus — Tell me, Socrates, was it not somewhere hereabouts, on the
banks of the Uyssus, that Boreas carried off the young Orithyia ? Soc. — So
they say. . . . But tell me, pray, do you believe that fabulous adventure ? —
If I had doubts about it, like the scholars, I should not be greatly troubled
I might be ingenious, and say that the north wind made her fall from a
neighbouring rock, when she was playing with Pharmaceus, and that this
mode of death gave rise to the belief that she was ravished by Boreas. . . .
For my part, my dear Phedrus, I find such explanations very subtle, but they
demand, I confess, too much labour and nicety, and they put a man in a very
false position ; for he must then be content to explain in the same way the
Hippocentaurs, afterwards the Chimera, and I see coming along Pegasus, the
Gorgons, a numberless crowd of other monsters, some more hideous than
others, who, if we attach no faith to them, and yet would bring them back
to the realm of probability, demand an ingenuity almost as grotesque as
they are themselves, and a great waste of time besides. 1 have no leisure
for it ; I therefore give up the study of these stories altogether, and keeping
within the limits of the vulgar belief, I am occupied not with these useless
things, but with myself. — Works, Cousin's Translation, Vol. vi., pp. 7-9.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 179
and philosophy of the ancients is drawn."* Gabler,
Bauer, Vater, De Wette, applied to sacred history the
critical principles so delicately followed in -profane history,
and in 1802 Bauer issued a " Hebraic Mythology of the
Old and the New Testament." The oldest history of all
nations, said Bauer, is mythical. Why should the history
of Moses be the sole exception, when a single glance at the
books of the Bible proves that they contain legends similar
to those of other nations? Here the new school gained an
easy triumph ; for where can we find mythological recitals
more characteristic than those of the temptation of Eve,
of Noah and the Ark, of Babel, etc.? In 1805 Wecklein,
Professor of Theology at Munster, taught that the transla
tion of Henoch and of Elias had no more ground in fact
than that of Ganymede ; that the apparition of the angel
to Agar was of the same order as that of Apollo to Dio
mede; that Jehovah succours Gideon and Samson as Jupi
ter succours the Trojans. The new explanation very soon
became a complete theory. There were in the Bible myths,
historical, philosophical, poetical, and before long the
history of the Hebrews disclosed all the features of that
primitive age in which the human mind, without calcu
lation or artifice, endeavoured to express its ideas under
cover of fable. What absurdity, said the critics of the
new school to the rationalists, to curtail the marvellous
element in the Pentateuch, for example, while it is per
fectly plain that the writer, in a great many places,
believed he was narrating miracles I It is claiming to
understand his words better than he did himself. Such
stories should not, therefore, be treated as historical ; they
are legendary and traditional. Tradition, says De Wette,
has no discernment. Its tendency is not historical ; it is

* On the general theory of the myth, see Ottfried Muller's excellent work,
"Introduction to a Scientific Mythology.'' Gottingen. 1825.

180 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
patriotic and poetic. The finer the stories are, the more
honourable to the nation ; the more marVellous, the better
they are received ; and if there remain here and there a gap,
the imagination is quick to fill it up. Singular fact,: under
stood only in Germany, this system was proposed by theo
logians as the only way of defending the Bible against the
objections of its adversaries.
Just as the Evhemerist interpretation had been applied
to the narratives of the Old Testament before it was direct
ed to those of the New, so some time elapsed before the
mythological Exegetists allowed themselves to touch the
Saint of Saints. But the course of things wag fatal. Bauer,
without treating the Gospel as a mythical history from
beginning to end, already found in it detached myths, and
averred that the stories of the infancy of Jesus, for example,
could not receive any other explanation. They came, said
he, from the natural proneness to invent marvellous anec
dotes about the youth of celebrated men — anecdotes which
find a ready credence in after times. Besides, the Evan
gelists could not possibly have had historical documents
touching these first years, since Jesus had not as yet exci
ted attention. Almost all the interpreters admitted art
lessly that the recitals of the Evangelists merited confi
dence only when they treated the last years of the life of
Jesus, and the more timid confined themselves to the
admission that the chapters of the infancy in Matthew and
Luke were apocryphal interpolations. Thus, the mytho
logical explanation, allowed at first on the threshold of the
Old Testament, stood now on the threshold of the new ¦
but it was sternly forbidden to go further.
These barriers were not slow in falling. The last inci
dents in the life of Jesus, especially the ascension, seemed
to be stamped with the same character as those of the
infancy, and apparently called for the same explanation.
Thus the edifice was breached at both ends, and, to bor-

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 181
row one theologian's expression, the evangelical history
was entered by the triumphal gate of the mythus, and the
exit was by a similar portal ; but, for the whole interme
diate space, one must content himself with the crooked and
painful path of the natural explanation.
The contentment was not of long duration. Gabler
thought he saw myths in all the miraculous facts of the
public life. In fact, said he, from the moment the idea
of the myth was introduced into the Gospels, no line of
separation could be longer traced, and from beginning
to end, the myth penetrated by force into the very heart ef
the Evangelical history. Why stop at the baptism of Jesus,
when that scene is itself described in a manner clearly
legendary ? And if the ascension be placed in the rank
of myths, why not concede the same character to the resur
rection, to the apparition of Gethsemane, ete ? In this way,
defying the limits which some would fain have imposed,
the myth invaded the history of Jesus at all points.
After this victory, however, the mythological school pre
sented numerous varieties. By the side of the mythical
explanation many still admitted the Evhemerist explanation,
or mingled the two in different proportions. The search
for history in the Gospels was not abandoned. The wiser
declared that it was hardly possible to distinguish what
portion they should make over to fact, and what portion to
symbol. Criticism, they said, has no instrument sharp
enough to divide these two elements, one from the other;
at most we reach a sort of probability, and can say: here
there is more of historical reality ; there the mythical and
poetical predominate.
Germany never pauses on the road of speculation; it almost
always goes beyond bounds in the application of its theo
ries. To the eclectic mythologists succeeded the absolute
mythologists who were eager to explain all the facts of the
gospels as pure myths, and renounced the attempt to ex-

182 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
tract from them a historical residuum. Dr. David Frederic
Strauss has made for himself a European reputation bj
presenting this system with a vast array of knowledge and
of reasonings in his celebrated book, the "Life of Jesus."*
" The ancient interpretation of the Church," he says in the
preface to his first edition, " started with two suppositions :
the first, that the Gospels contain history ; the second, that
this history is a supernatural history. Rationalism rejecting
the second of these propositions, attached itself only the more
strongly to the first, namely, that in these books history is to
be found — but a natural history. Knowledge cannot thus
stop half way ; the other supposition must be dropped also ; it
must be ascertained if, and to what point, we arejn the gos
pels on historic ground ; that is the natural course of things ;
and, from this point of view, the appearance of a work
like the present is not only justified, but is even a necessity."
In this, Strauss is plainly right. One must ignore totally
the history of German theology who would heap, as has
been done, on the name of a single man, the curses that
recoil on all the intellectual labour which he sums up.
To declaim against all these inevitable phenomena, to
make their partialities and incompleteness an excuse for
denying what legitimacy they have, is to attack the pre
destined laws of reason, the inevitable march of the human
mind. Strauss is one of the rings of modern science. The
prolegomena to Homer by Wolff led of necessity to the Life
of Jesus. To be sure, the Homeric question since Wolff, like
the evangelical question since Strauss, has made great pro
gress; but the very errors into which these two great
critics have fallen should be regarded as fruitful of good and
as preparatory to the discovery of the truth.
* Life of Jesus, or Critical Examination of his History, by Dr. D. F. Strauss,
trans, by M. E Littre, 2d ed. 2 vols. Paris, 1853.
The English translation is in three volumes by Miss Evans, London, 1846.
John Chapman.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 183
Of all the thinkers of Germany Strauss is perhaps the
least appreciated in France. Most people know him only
through the abuse of his adversaries, and from the report
that a visionary of that name had denied the existence of
Christ, for it is in terms as absurd as these that the Life of
Jesus has been summarily spoken of. On the other hand,
those who regarded Strauss as a historian freed from all /
prejudice that was injurious to science, misunderstood his
true character. Strauss — we mustsay it, surprising as this
double assertion may sound — Strauss is at once a theolo
gian (many think a timid theologian) and a philosopher
of the school of Hegel.
Yes, it must never be forgotten, in reading the Life of ,
Jesus, this book is a book of theology, a book of sacred|
exegesis, a book of the same order as those of Michaelis,
Eichhorn, Paulus, who openly gave out that they did not
leave the region of theology. We have not here the free
and easy attractions of independent science, we have a
system of hermeneutics which with pedantic stiffness op
poses another system. In France where the line between
theology and profane science is much more strongly marked,
where each of these two orders of study lives by itself,
without thought of the other, we cannot comprehend so
singular a phenomenon. Voltaire, had he lived in Germany,
would have been professor in a theological faculty. The
celebrated Gesenius, the boldest of rationalists, at Halle
some years ago explained the Hebrew literature amid the
applause of more than eight hundred auditors, all future
ministers of the holy gospel. Strauss himself has been a
professor of theology, and might have officially taught his
system in a sacred chair. Let us hear him express the
scruples of his timid conscience, on this point. The
author, he says in the preface to his first edition, "knows
that the internal essence of the Christian belief is wholly
independent of his critical researches. The supernatural

184 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
birth of the Christ, his miracles, his resurrection, and his
ascension, remain eternal verities, whatever doubts may rest
on the reality of these things viewed as historical facts.
This assurance alone can give repose and dignity to our
criticism, and distinguish it from the naturalistic explana
tions of the last generation ; explanations which, proposing
to overthrow religious truth and historical fact together,
were necessarily smitten with a character of frivolity.
* * * * Some, however, may feel wounded in their faith
by researches of this nature. If this were the case with,
theologians, they would have in their science a remedy for
similar wounds, which cannot be spared them so long as
they are not willing to remain behind the development of
our epoch. For the laity, the subject, it is true, is not
adequately prepared. The present work therefore has
been so framed as at least to .indicate more than once to the
less instructed, that it was not intended for their use, and if,
by an imprudent curiosity, or an excess of anti-heretical zeal,
they allow themselves to go on and read it, they must bear
the penalty in their own conscience, as Schleiermacher said
on a similar occasion ; for they cannot escape the conviction
that they do not understand that whereof they would affirm."
Strauss, who is put forward in France as a kind of
\ Anti-Christ, is really then a theologian ; let us add, at the
[risk of appearing paradoxical, that this theologian is a
disciple of Hegel. The "Life of Jesus" is, at bottom,
merely the philosophy of the chief of the contemporaneous
German school applied to the evangelical narratives ; the
christology of the theologian is but a symbolical trans
lation of the abstract theses of the philosopher. God is
not an infinite Being, inaccessible, dwelling outside of the
finite and above it ; he penetrates it, in such a manner that
finite nature, that is to say the world and the human mind,
are nothing more than an alienation ' that he makes from
himself, from which- he again retires to withdraw into. his

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 185
unity. Man has no actuality as a finite spirit; God on
his part has no actuality as an infinite spirit shut up in his
infinity. The true and actual existence of spirit is neither
God in himself nor man in himself ; it* is the God- Man.
The moment humanity is mature enough to take for its
religion this truth, that God is man, and that man is by
race divine^ there must arise an individual who shall be
known as the present God* This God-Man, including in
one sole being the divine essence and the human per
sonality really has the divine spirit for its father, and a
human mother. Man, divine in essence, he is sinless and
perfect ; he rules nature, he works miracles, and still,
through his humanity, he is dependent on nature, subject to
suffering and to death. Opposed to men who are submitted
to their finite nature, he must meet a violent death at the
hand of sinners ; but he can ascend from this abyss and
resume the path that leads unto himself. The death of
the God-Man being merely the ceasing of his alienation, is
in fact an elevation and a return to God : consequently his
death is necessarily followed by resurrection and ascension.
This theoretical Christ, one may readily surmise, is not
the historical Christ, who bore the name of Jesus. The
mind of humanity, and that alone, includes all the attri
butes of the hegelian Christ* There never existed an indi
vidual formed, by special privilege, of the divine and the
human essence, ruling nature, working miracles, raised
bodily from the dead ; there never existed an individual
more exclusively God than any who bad existed before
him, or who will exist after him. By no such process is
the idea realized; it does not lavish all its wealth on a
single specimen, to be miserly towards the rest. Is not
the unity of the divine and of the human natures con
ceived as incarnated in humanity — real in an infinitely
higher, sense than if it were limited to an individual ? Is
not a continuous incarnation of God truer than an incar-

186 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
nation confined to a point of time? Lodged in an indi
vidual, the properties and functions of the Christ are
inconsistent with each other; they are fecdnciled in the
idea of the race. Humanity is the union of two natures
— tbe God made man ; that is to say, the infinite spirit,
which has gone out of itself into the finite nature", and the
finite spirit, which is conscious of its infinity. This is the
child of the visible mother and the invisible father — of
spirit and of nature. This it is that works miracles ; for in
the course of human history spirit more and more brings
matter under subjection. This is sinless; for the march
of its development is beyond reproach. Stain attaches
to the individual ; it never touches the race or its history.
This it is that dies, revives, and ascends to heaven ;
for in rejecting the finite, which limits it as a spirit
individual, national, and planetary, it blends with the
infinite spirit.
And yet the hegelian Christology, in placing its ideal
above the historical Jesus, endeavours to give the divine
founder his due. At the head of every great performance
of humanity are found individuals endowed with lofty
faculties, who are usually designated as geniuses, but who,
when religious creations are in question, deserve a holier
name. Jesus was of this number. No man. having had,
and no man needing to have, a more vivid sense of his
connection with his Heavenly Father, it will never be pos
sible to surpass him in the matter of religion, whatever pro
gress may be made in other branches of intellectual culture.
Religious faith, no doubt, has perfected itself since his time,
by becoming disengaged from many a superstition, and
from belief in the supernatural ; but this progress bears no
comparison with the gigantic stride that Jesus caused hu
manity to take in the career of its religious development.
Never did the unity of God and of man show itself in the
past, never will it show itself in the future, with a power

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 187
capable of thus transfiguring a whole life. Setting aside,
therefore, the notions of impeccability and of absolute perfec
tion, which no actual person can satisfy, we conceive of the
Christ, says Strauss, as the being in whose consciousness
the unity of the divine and of the human was exhibited for
the first time, with an energy that left but an infinitely
small weight to opposing qualities ; a being in this sense
unique and peerless in the history of the world, although
the religious idea acquired and promulgated by him has
not, in its details, eluded the law of progressive develop
ment. This is strange language, surely, to our ears, and calcu- /
lated to satisfy neither the theologian nor the critic. The '
misapprehensions to which the work of Strauss has given
rise may, to a certain point, be explained by defects in the f
¦author's method. There is no accusation — not even the
ridiculous one sometimes brought, of denying the existence
of the Christ— -that, however destitute of serious founda
tion, may not find some pretext in the abstract tone of the
"Life of Jesus." Lacking all feeling for history and fact,
Strauss never leaves the questions of myth and symbol.
One would say that for him the primitive events of Chris
tianity occurred outside of actual existence and of nature.
Strauss saw clearly that the composition of the Gospels
offered a large field for criticism, and that all the recitals
of the Evangelists cannot be accepted as true ; the contra
dictions of the four texts are sufficient proof of that. Would /
a historian conclude from this that the evangelical narra-f
tives answered to no reality ? Surely not. But Strauss,
swayed by his theological and philosophical ideas, exclu
sively .preoccupied by the necessity of substituting one
system of exegesis for another, makes no account of fine
distinctions. The historical reality of some of the facts
narrated by the Evangelists being doubtful, all realistic
exegesis is, compromised in his view, and he thinks it

I

188 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
necessary to replace it by a theory which, without being
burdened with the same difficulties, may be applied with
an inflexible rigour from one end of the sacred, text to the
other. We perceive now why the book of Strauss, in spite of
its somewhat exaggerated fame, has been laid aside, and
has satisfied nobody. The historian finds it too void of
facts; the critic finds it too uniform in its processes; the
theologian finds it based on a theory subversive of Chris
tianity. We say it boldly — no one exclusive system will
have the glory of solving this difficult problem of the ori
gin of Christianity. No unique method is competent to
explain the complex phenomena of the human mind. All
primitive histories and religious legends .present the real
and the ideal mingled in different proportions, and though
India could shape in pure mythology poems of two hundred
thousand stanzas, we shall hardly believe that Judaea could
have done the same. The Jewish people, in fact, has
always, in power of imagination, been inferior to the
Indo-Europeans, and at the era of the Christ it was sur
rounded, and as it were penetrated, by the historical spirit.
I persist in the belief that with the epochs and the coun
tries which are not wholly mythological the marvellous is
less often a pure creation of the human mind than a fanci
ful way of representing real facts. In the state of reflection
we see things by the full light of reason ; credulous igno
rance, on the other hand, sees them by the radiance of the
moon, rendered shapeless by the deceitful and uncertain
gleam. Timid credulity in this twilight changes real ob
jects into phantoms ; but hallucination alone creates beings
out of nothing, and with no external cause. In the same
way the legends of countries half open to rational culture
have been much oftener formed by dimness of perception,
by vagueness of tradition, by magnified rumours, by lapse
of time between the fact and the recital, by the desire to

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 189
glorify heroes, than by pure creation, as was the case with
nearly the whole structure of the Indo-European mytholo
gies; or, rather, all processes have contributed in infinite
simal proportions to the tissue of those wonderful embroi
deries, which put all scientific categories at fault, and at the
formation of which the most wayward fancy has presided.
It is not without many restrictions, therefore, that the word
myth can be applied to the evangelical narratives. This
word, which is perfectly applicable to India and primitive
Greece, which is already incorrect as applied to the ancient
traditions of the Hebrews and of the Semitic peoples in
general, does not give the true colour of events in an
epoch as advanced as that of Jesus was in the way of a cer
tain kind of reflection.* For my part, I should prefer the /
words legend and legendary narratives, which, while they ¦.
concede a large influence to the working of opinion, allow
the action and the personal character of Jesus to stand out
in their completeness.
It would be unjust to Strauss to pretend that he wished .
to explain everything by the myth, for by the side of the
pure myths he recognizes historical myths, legends, additions
of scribes, and gives detailed directions for distinguishing (
the historical from the fabulous !f Still the reaction against
Evhemerism evidently carried him too far. The contra
dictions of the Evangelists touching the incidents of a
narrative seem to him an objection to the historical truth
of the narrative. Now there are facts, for which this
divergence supposes a basis of reality. Such, for exam
ple, are the three denials of Saint Peter, told by the
* See, in the '' Life of Jesus," the closing dissertation, and especially §§
cxlvii. and following, vol. ii., part 2d.
f This point has been fully developed by M. Colani in the " Revue de The-
ologie et de Philosophie Chretienne," January and March, 1856 (Paris and
Geneva). M. Colani's two articles form indisputably the best estimate that
has been made of Strauss's book in France.

190 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
four Evangelists in different ways, but always characteris
tically.
i A reproach not less grave, which touches Strauss's book
I in its very principle, is that it has underestimated the im
portance of the personal character of Jesus. On reading
the book, it seems as if the religious revolution which bears
the name of Christ had been accomplished without a Christ.
It cannot be denied, indeed, that the process by which he
explains the formation of nearly all Evangelical stories has
a certain weight, and that some of the traits in the life of
Jesus do owe their existence to reasoning like this : — the
Messiah must be the son of David : now Jesus is the Mes
siah ; therefore, Jesus is the son of David : therefore,
there must be a genealogy to connect him with the royal
line. The Messiah must be born in Bethlehem : now Jesus
is the Messiah ; therefore, there must be circumstances
which make it necessary that he who spent nearly his
whole life in Galilee, and probably had his birth there, •
should be born in Bethlehem. The Messianic ideal, in its
main features, was traced over the life and character of the
prophets and great men of the ancient law ; it was there
fore inevitable that the life of Jesus should reproduce, in
many points, these consecrated patterns.* Thus the birth
of Samuel, related at the beginning of the Book of Kings,
and that of Samson, very similar,f became the model of all
the births of illustrious men : a sterility long deplored, an
angelic apparition or annunciation, some priestly spectacle,
a psalm, then an infant dedicated to God and reserved for
grand destinies ; such was the outline sharply cut. Thence
the whole recital, in the third Gospel, of the birth of John
* This explains the oft repeated phrase : iva ir\nowdn h ypmpii. Grammar
has been needlessly tortured to prove that Ua in this phrase must be trans
lated by "so that" (it was), instead of " in order that" (it might be). (See
"Lire of Jesus," by Kuhn, translated by M. Fr. Nettement, pp. 292, 894.
f See Judges, ch xiii.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 191
the Baptist ; thence many of the incidents attending the
birth of Jesus — among others, the canticle sung by Mary,
evidently an imitation of Anne's; thence, finally, in the
apocryphal Gospels, which tediously overdo this copying
process, a complete scenic apparatus in similar style round
the birth of Mary*
But to explain the whole evangelical legend by this sin
gle method is to estimate very imperfectly the wealth of the
human mind. Frequently, reversing the process, it was
the individual peculiarity of Jesus that modified the Mes
sianic idea. Many of the features given as Messianic traits
by the Evangelists, and by Saint Matthew especially, in
the first and second chapters, for instance, far from belong
ing to an ideal accepted by the Jews, and clearly cut, are
but artificial resemblances, simple ornaments of style, which
find their explanation in the arbitrary way of quoting scrip
ture which the Talmud and St. Paul so abundantly exem
plify. In the case I allude to, an actual fact in the life of
Jesus has induced the application of a biblical text where,
till then, an allusion to the Messiah had never been dreamed
of. When, for example, an incident of the Passion sug
gests to the evangelists the citation of the following verse
of a psalm : " They have divided my vestments, and they
have cast lots for my robe." Should we say that the wish
to make out a fulfilment of prophecy had led to the
invention of the incident? It was much more probably a
real incident that led to the citation. At this distance, and
deprived of historical monuments, we ought to abandon the
attempt to distinguish nicely the reciprocal action and
reaction, of the personal character of Jesus and of the
* See the " Gospel of the Nativity of the Holy Mary," ch. iii. This com
position, more modern and elaborate, assigns the moral reason for the legend.
It is "to show that the child born is a gift of God, and not the fruit of an
unregulated passion." The name Anne, given to the mother of Mary, is, no
doubt, a reminiscence of Anne, the mother of Samuel.

192 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
ideal portrait of him which -was drawn before he came.
Supposing even that everything was effected by the un
ceasing balancing of these two syllogisms : The Messiah must
do this : now Jesus is the Messiah : therefore Jesus did this : —
Jesus did this ; now Jesus is the Messiah ; therefore the Messiah
must do it : — Syllogisms founded on the constant minor
premiss ; Jesus is the Messiah ; we should no less have to
explain this minor jaremiss. "No doubt,", says M. Colani
very forcibly, " the apostles once believing in the Messianic
character of Jesus, may have added to his actual image
[some lineaments borrowed from prophecy ; but how came
: they to believe in his messianic character ? Strauss has
never explained this. What he leaves of the gospels is
insufficient as ground for the apostles' faith, and it is
useless to ascribe to them a disposition to be content with the
minimum of proof; the proofs must needs have been very
strong to overcome the crushing doubts occasioned by the
death on the cross. In other words, the person of Jesus
must have singularly surpassed ordinary proportions, a
large part of the evangelical narratives must be true."
Much as the apologists who attribute to the first disciples
of Jesus a degree of reflexion and rational discernment
which did not belong to their time, are wanting in the
essential principles of criticism, Strauss shows himself
equally wanting as a philosophical historian when he
omits to explain how Jesus, to the eyes of his contem
poraries, came to realize sufficiently the messianic ideal.
That this realization was not searchingly scrutinized, that
many of the traits in which proof of the identity of Jesus
with the Messiah was afterwards discovered, were not yet
recognized as messianic traits, that the general credulity
left an open field for wonderful statements and miraculous
stories, we admit; but this is a result that could only
proceed from the action of a powerful individuality ; it is
the advent of a new doctrine, the impulse it gave, the

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 193
spirit of sacrifice and of devotion it inspired. We venture
to affirm that if France, better endowed than Germany
with practical perception and less inclined to substitute in
history, the action of ideas for the play of passion and
the force of individual character, had undertaken to write
scientifically the life of the Christ, it would have employed
a more rigorous method ; and avoiding the error of trans
ferring the problem as Strauss has done to the domain of
abstract speculation, would have come much nearer the
truth.

ni.

The book of Strauss made an immense noise in Ger
many. Numerous adversaries, Protestant and Catholic,
among whom are to be named Hug, Neander, Tholuck,
Ullmann, stepped forward to defend the historical truth of
the evangelical facts against the author of the " Life of
Jesus."* All or nearly all tried to prove, on one side, that
* The history of this controversy has been well presented by M. Colani
(" Revue de Theologie," March 1856). I can do no better than refer the
reader to that. M. Colani felt no call to speak of tlie work of Dr. Sepp,
partly translated t>y M. Ch. St. Foi (Paris 1854). This work, in fact, has
very little scientific value, but it is interesting as making us acquainted with
a kind of Christian cabbala which the German apologists have set up
against the researches of rational criticism. Never was the superannuated
system, which pretends to discover Christianity in all mythologies, pushed to
wilder excesses. One fancies he is dreaming, when he sees a man, otherwise
very spiritual, drawing calculations of the Messiah's coming from the point
ing of the magnetic needle, and the laws of electricity, placing the seat of
prophecy in the ganglionic system, seeking what he calls "the Tear of God" in
the mysteries of Indian, Chinese, Etruscan, Babylonish, chronologies, and say
ing gravely : " Chronology, taken altogether, is like a harp with many strings.
As soon as we touch one, we hear the sympathetic tones resound in the
chronological systems of other nations, as if a single hand had arranged them
on the same key. . . . The mind which constructed this vast edifice of num-
13

194 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
the myth was impossible at the epoch when Christianity
appeared ; on the other side, that the labour necessary for
the formation of the myth could not have been performed
between the death of Jesus and the date of the composition
of his history,; thus, all dealt their blows at, the really
1 weak points in Strauss's 'book. The use of the word myth
was open, as we have said, to grave objections. Moreover,
Strauss's method of dealing with the age and the compo
sition of the Gospels was always uncertain and defective.
vit is a capital point in his theory that our four Gospels
/cannot in their actual form be assigned to an earlier period
than the end of the second century. The oldest witnesses
of the second century say no more than that an apostle or an
apostolic man wrote a gospel, but do not establish the fact
that these primitive gospels were identical, with those we
now follow. We must, according to Strauss, admit that the
/legendary elements in the, Life of Jesus remained in a fluid
state about a century and a half, and did not begin to crys
tallize in great masses till the disciples of the eye-witnesses
had themselves disappeared. It is easy to see what scope
this interval furnishes to the mythological school, for the
elaboration of a complete cycle of marvels.
The question of the precise age of the Gospels and their
mode of composition is so delicate,* that I wish to avoid
bers, is the divine revelation whose remains have been preserved in the
sacerdotal tradition of the several nations ; unless we prefer to say that these
instinctively learned the science furnished us by our whole solar system, and
which reveals to us, in- the spherical order of the planets, these prophetic
numbers which point to the Messiah." Vol. it pp. 417, 473, etc. This M.
Sepp calls mathematical and astronomical proof that would certainly con
vince the Jews, if they were not blind to the truth, that Jesus is the Messiah ;
and this is the book that has been offered as a mighty hammer under which
rationalism crumbles to dust.
* The most recent work on this point is that of M. Ewald, in the " Jahr-
biicher der Biblischen Wissenschaft," 1850-54. See also. the remarks pf M-
Bunsen, " Hippolytus and his Age," i., pp. 35, 48, and 199, edit. 2d. "We

THE .CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 195
treating of it, here. Let it suffice for me tP say, that the
more I have reflected on it the more I have been led to
believe that the four texts received as canonical bring us
very near to the age of the Christ, if not in their last edi
tion, at least in the documents that compose them. Pure
products of the Palestinian Christianity, exempt from all
,hellenic influence, full, of the vivid and frank sentiment
.of Jerusalem, the Gospels are, in my opinion, an immedi
ate echo, of the reports of the first Christian generation.
The popular travail which gave theni. birth, accomplished
as it was without , any distinct consciousness, and. from
many sides at once, could not have a great unity. Here
was one genealogy, there another; here a marvellous story,
. there another. The fundamental type alone preserved
through all these crosses, its identity of feature. The
literary form was more fluctuating still, and as, that went
on in all phases epic and religious, it had but a secondary
importance. Not till the very end of the creative period —
not till the moment when the preservation of the traditions
was alone thought of — do we see fhem deposited in four
perfectly distinct texts. ' To these texts the considerations
of authenticity and integrity, which before had no rigorous
sense, can now be applied.
The travail of the legend, however, does not stop here.
Every creation destined to captivate the admiration or the
faith of the human race passes through two very distinct
phases : the fertile epoch, to which are traced, in the depth
pf the popular mind, the grand features of the poem ; and
the epoch of manipulation, of adjustment, pf verbal ampli
fication, in which, the faculty of invention being spent,
nothing more is. done than to develop, the . old narratives
after conventional methods. The first age, in the. order, pf
wait for tbe more finished labours on evangelical history which the same
scholar promises. .

196 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
traditions that occupy us now, is that which produced the
four canonical Gospels, all stamped with one and the same
character of sobriety, simplicity, grandeur, and artless
truth. The second is the period of the apocryphal Gos
pels — artificial compositions, in which the exhausted vein
swells out with commonplaces and forced means of expan
sion, such as angelic apparitions, canticles, sketches from
the Old Testament. Nothing more resembles the machi
nery of the factitious epopees, made up in the ages of deca
dence. The apocryphal gospels are to the canonical gospels
what the Ante Homerica and the Post Homerica are to Ho
mer — what the Pouranas in Indian literature are to the
older mythological poems. It is a way of freshening up
primitive narratives by recasting in a new narrative all the
features of the original text, adding what might probably '
have occurred, developing the situation through joiner's
process, making, if I may be allowed the word, a mono
graph of each small detail, — all done without genius, with
out even a variation from a set theme. It is, in one word,
a calmly considered literary composition, having as its basis
a natural and spontaneous work.
At bottom these two periods in the life of the legend
correspond to the two ages of every religion. The primi
tive age, when the new credence issues from the popular
instincts as the ray proceeds from the sun, the age of sim
ple faith, without after- thought, without cavil or refutation
of cavil ; the age of reflection, when objection and apology
appear, when tbe demands of reason begin to make them
selves heard, when the marvel, formerly pliant, harmonious,
a pure reflection of the moral sentiments of humanity, be
comes timid, mean, sometimes immoral. In the primitive
supernaturalism there was something so strong, so lofty,
that the sternest rationalism cannot help now and then
regretting its loss ; but reflection is too far advanced, ima
gination too cold, to indulge thenceforward in such magni-

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 197
ficent bursts. As to the timid compromise which tries to
cut down the supernatural in order to reconcile it with an
intellectual . state whose principles involve the denial of
miracle, it only succeeds in rasping the most imperious
instincts of the scientific epoch, without reviving the old
marvellous poetry, which belongs exclusively to certain
ages and to certain conditions of the human mind.
The history of religions presents some facts which, with
out being perfectly analogous 'to the preceding — for Jesus
is unique in everything, and nothing can be compared with
him — may yet throw a little light on the processes we have
just been describing. The legend of the Bouddha Cakya-
Mouni is the one which, in its mode of formation, most
resembles that of the Christ, as Buddhism is the religion
which, in the law of its development, most resembles Chris
tianity. Cakya-Mouni is a reformer whose real existence
cannot be doubted, although his life presents traits of an
ideal perfection only ; Cakya-Mouni is conceived without
stain, born painlessly at the foot of a tree, welcomed at his
birth by holy personages ; Cakya-Mouni leaves the world,
is tempted by the devil, surrounds himself with disciples,
performs miracles without number.* His reform, almost
exterminated in India, has a vast career outside of that
country. He writes nothing himself, but three of his disci
ples reduce to writing his doctrine and his story. Both,
however, remain floating and susceptible of increase, till
the grand council of Patalipoutra. This council even does
not stand in the way of a further revision, which is defi
nitively closed by another council, held about 400 years
after the founder's death. The enthusiast Chaitahya, who,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century of our era, excited

* See the "Introduction to the History of Indian Bouddhism," by M.
Eugene Buruouf, vol. i., p. 195, aud the " Lalitavistara," or Life of Bouddha,
translated by M Edward Foucaux. (Paris, 1848.)

198 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
in certain parts Of India, a great religious movement, also
became the subject of a marvellous biography, completely
finished, and saw himself regarded as an incarnation of Bha-
gavan* Finally, the legend of Krischna has resemblances
apparently no less striking with that of the Messiah. His
infancy is menaced by a massacre quite similar to that of
Herod ; his childhood, in the midst of shepherds, is but a
series of miracles ; he dies pinned to a fatal tree by an
arrow.f But perhaps these instances suggest external resemblances
rather than analogies of formative process.^ It is certain'
that, as compared with the Bhagavata-Pourana, the gospel
presents a singularly historical character, or, if you please,
quite a uniform movement. The miracles of the gospel
are generally conceived according to natural analogies, and
do not so outrageously set at defiance the laws of physics
as do the marvels in the Indo-European mythologies.
Their creating motive is wholly moral ; the invention of
facts and circumstances is not audacious, and is confined to
a timid copy of Old Testament commonplaces. The only
episode in the history of Christ that has an epic Character —
the descent into hell — is not mentioned in the canonical
gospels^ Indicated for the first time in one of the epistles
of Saint Peter (I. ch. 3, v. 19-22), this circumstance re-
* Seethe " Chaitanya Chandrodaya," published in the "Bibliotheca Indica"
of the Calcutta Society, Numbers 41, 48, 80, and "Wilson's Essay on the reli
gious sects of the Hindoos, in the Asiatic Researches of the Calcutta Society,
vol. xvi., p. J. 09, &c.
f See the " Bhagavat Dasam Askand," translated by M. Pavie. (Paris,
1852.) X We will add that a theory proposed at the beginning of the studies oii
India, and since abandoned, according to which the legend of Krischna con
tained passages borrowed from " The Gospel pf the Infancy," a gospel very
popular throughout the East, and no doubt carried into India by the Mani-
chsean sects, seems to find favour again in the eyes of the most sagacious phi
lologists of Germany. ( 1

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 199
ceived its first great developments in later compositions,
especially in the gospel of Nicodemus, a singular work,
which seems to have owed its origin to the metaphors by
which the fathers of the fourth century were pleased to ex
press the triumph of Christ over death.*
Legend, then, and not myth, is the proper word for the
stories of the earliest Christian period. The evangelical ,
ideal was the result of a transfiguration, not of a creation.
Is it said that the Jewish people, having already run,
through all the degrees of a literary development, were
no longer intellectually in condition to produce legendary
tales? StraUss replied, and reasonably, that, in fact, the
Hebrew people never had a clear notion of positive history
— that their most recent historical books, those of the Mac
cabees, those even of Josephus, whose authors were acquaint
ed with hellenic culture, are not free from marvellous reci-/
tals; that the Mischna, later than the Gospels, hardly
seems a product ef the human intellect, it is so full of
fables ; that there is no history till the unreality of mira- ¦
cles is understood. If the rational education which the
clear perception -of this unreality presumes is wanting in
many men of our day, how much more rare it must have
been in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and in general
among the masses over the whole Eoman Empire ! Beli
gious exaltation finds everything credible, and under the
impulse of powerful enthusiasm, a new creative faculty has
been seen to start up in the most exhausted people. Be
sides, humanity is not simultaneous in its development.
In all places situated under the same meridian the sun at
the same season is not visible at the same moment ; they
who live in the mountain tops see it sooner than they who
dwell in the valleys. So the period of reflection, of criti-

* See the work of M. Alfred Maury on the age of this Gospel, in vol. 20
of the " Memoirs of the Antiquarian Society of France." (Paris, 1850.)

200 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS,
cism, of history, does not dawn on all nations at the same
hour. Our nineteenth century certainly is not much ad
dicted to mythology ; and yet even to-day, in some por
tions of the race where the state of spontaneity continues,
myths are produced as in the olden times. Among the
Arabs, Napoleon has already a fabulous legend fully deve
loped. When the traces of La Perouse were discovered it
was seen that he had become with the natives a subject for
strange and fantastic traditions. I know of no myths more
distinctly marked than those which still break out every
day among certain tribes in the; South of Africa, under the
influence of Christian preaching.* It is not the date of a
century that constitutes the intellectual state of humanity ;
it is the tradition of civilization ; it is the numberless agen
cies, which sometimes, after an interval of ages, and at
different points of space, reproduce states more or less
analogous to those that have already been passed through.
True, this analogy is never perfect, and there is an impro
priety in applying the same name to the intellectual pro
ductions of the age of Jesus and to those of the primitive
epochs of Greece and of India ; but as soon as we have
noted the inexactness of our classification we have a
right to call into notice the common traits, which, in spite
of marked differences, have ever characterized the artless
creations of the human mind.
After all, the hypothesis of Strauss which at first pre-
| sented itself as an assailant of the most sacred dogmas,
left a great deal to mystery. The mythological school,
while rejecting miracle and the supernatural order, retained
a kind of psychological miracle. At least the God did not
show himself in full daylight, but like the winged insect,
under a web, which hid his slow development. It was

* See the work of an English missionary, Robert Moffat, " Twenty-three
Tears' Residence in the South of Africa."

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 201
known that nature alone had been at work beneath this
veil, but none of her acts had been visible, ; the imagination
was free to surround with respect and admiration the cradle
of the nascent God. There was something divine, as in
the origin of all great poems whose generation is unknown,
and which, born in the depths of humanity, show them
selves completely formed in the broad sunshine.
Strauss is essentially a moderate man ; young Germany
says, timid.* When the journals informed us in 1848 that
the author of the " Life of Jesus," being called to play a
political part, attached himself to the reactionary right
wing, people asked if they were to regard this as the sign
of a conversion, such as radical revolutions always provoke.
It was really the natural unfolding of his character. In
theology, Strauss is a liberal of the extreme left, not a
radical. On a certain day the divine right, in thoroughly
revolutionary fashion, was burned up : — but something like
it was preserved. Strauss then was doomed to be left
behind, as the saying is ; he has been ; a few years have
sufficed to heap upon him three or four layers of ultra
hegeiians, who have run paradox into the ground and have
treated the author of the " Life of Jesus" as a timid orthodox
man, with the air of a believer in the Holy Ghost.
The great defect in the intellectual development of Ger
many is the abuse of reflection; I mean the deliberate
application, to the present condition of the human mind,

* We must, however, distinguish here two periods in the life of Strauss :
one previous to the revolution of Zurich (1839) during which he exhibited
a, great deal of moderation and fairness, in the midst of attacks often unjust
and bitter, listening to objections with perfect sincerity, and modifying his
system as the truth seemed to require ; the other after the disgraceful uproar
of which he was the innocent occasion, when we feel the reaction agaiiist
the violence and the tirades of his enemies. The polemical intent is no
longer dissembled, and he withdraws the concessions he had made, especially
in regard to the personal attitude of Jesus.

202 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
of laws recognized in the past. The philosophy of history
in noting the necessary march of systems, the laws accord
ing to which they Succeed each other, and the way in which
they oscillate towards the truth when they but pursue their
natural course, has brought to light a speculative truth of
the first order, — a truth, however, which becomes exceed
ingly dangerous the moment we attempt to draw from
it inferences bearing on present occurrences. For to admit
previous to examination, that any light and superficial
mind that comes along and picks up the heritage of a man
of genius is to be preferred before him, for the simple
reason that he comes after him, is to award too high a place
to mediocrity. Yet, this is the fault that Germany often
commits. After the appearance of a great work in philo
sophy or science we are sure of seeing a whole swarm of
critics hatched from it, who pretend to outstrip it, and who
frequently do nothing but falsify it, or run directly counter
to it. The law of progress, we repeat, is applicable to sys
tems only when the production of the systems is perfectly
Spontaneous, and while their authors, without thinking of
outstripping one another, attend solely to intrinsic considera
tions of truth. To neglect this important condition, is to
make over the development of the human mind to chance,1
or to the caprices of a few rash and presumptuous minds.
" Revelation," Strauss had said, " is neither an inspiration
from without, nor an isolated experience within ; it is simply
one and the same thing with the history of the human race.
The appearance of Jesus Christ is no longer to be regarded as
the introduction of a new and divine principle ; it is a shoot
sprung from the deepest marrow of divinely endowed huma
nity."* The new school, on the contrary, if we may group
under this name the writings, very dissimilar but showing
* Strauss, "Die Christliche Glaubenslehre," (Tubingen, 1840) vol,
i. p. 68.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 203
many featutes in common',-— bfWeisse, Wilke, Bruno Bauer,
— claims that it can explain the phenomena of Christianity
by simple and natural means, and reduce the formation of
the legend respecting" Jesus to the proportions of very
ordinary fact. Strauss had attributed everything to the
slow arid secret action of unconscious tradition. The new
school sees in the gospels, the work of an individual deli
berate invention of the evangelist Mark.* " The hypothesis
Of StraUSs," skys M. Bruno Bauer, is puzzling, for it is
tautological. To explain the evangelical history by tra-
dition, is to assume the necessity of explaining the tradi
tion itself, and of finding an early basis for that. Strauss's
method is awkward and orthodox, and cannot be otherwise.
In Strauss's book, criticism has offered its last battle to
theology on theologic ground. Whenever two adversaries
are thus at swords' points, the conquered always makes the
conqueror yield something."
Strauss supposed that the New Testament was based on
the Old, and that the Jews, in the time of Christ, had a /
complete Christology, a fixed messianic1 type- on which the1
character of the Christ might have been modelled trait by
trait. M. Bauer, on the contrary, supposes that all the acts\
which exhibit Jesus to Us as accomplishiftg the messianic \
ideal, and the ideal itself as well, were inventions of the
primitive Christians. The Jews, according to him, had at
this period no ideal of the Christ sharply defined ; the
history of Jesus, therefore, was not an ideal creation con
structed after traditional types: In a word, the gospels
are Christian productions, not Jewish as Strauss would
have it. It was not Judaism that lent to Christianity the
messianic ideal ', quite the other way ; it was the appear
ance arid the development of the Christian principle, the
* Critik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker und des Johannea
(Leipzig) vols. i. and ii. 1841. VoL iii. 1842.

204 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
battle between the Church and the synagogue which made
the Jews familiar with the idea of the Messiah and made
that faith the basis of their religious system.*
As for the historical Christ, who does not see, says
M. Bauer, that everything related of him belongs to the
ideal, and is in no wise implicated in the actual world ? If
there was a man to whom we can attribute the extraor
dinary .revolution that shook the world eighteen hundred
years ago, we may at any rate affirm that he could
not have been shut up in the narrow outlines of the evan
gelical Christ The evangelical Christ, as a historical fact,
eludes us  . He is not born as a man, he does not
live as a man, he does not die as a man. It is labour lost to
criticise his actions, or to apologize for them ; for since he
takes his position outside of human conditions, he can
have little respect for the laws of human nature ; more
than that, this nature must be boldly repudiated by him.
Hence the contrast between the human and the divine
which constitutes the basis of the evangelical morality,
and the trace of which (he thinks the fatal trace) M. Bauer
endeavours to follow into the whole history of the Chris
tian faith.
We have no wish to aid in giving a more serious impres
sion of M. Bauer's worls than it deserves. In vain would
One seek there the noble dignity and calmness which are
the beauty of Strauss's book. Blasphemy is intelligible and
almost excusable in ages when, science being bound, the
thinker avenges himself for the shackles he submits to
wear, by an ironical respect and a secret rage. But we do
not believe that the persecutions M. Bauer has suffered
are sufficient to entitle him to be as declamatory as he
is sometimes. The complete independence of criticism is,
however, the best cure for similar flights. When the historian
* Opus eit., vol. i. p. 416.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 205
of Jesus shall be as free in his judgments as the historian
of Bouddha or of Mahomet, he will not dream of insult
ing those who do not think as he does. M. Eugene Bur-
nouf never flew into a passion with the authors of the
fabulous life of Cakya-Mouni, nor have any of the modern
historians of Islamism cherished a very violent spite against
Aboulfeda and the Mussulman authors who, in the spirit
of true believers, have written the biography of their pro
phet.

TV.
Has Israelitish tradition anything to tell us about Jesus?
Nothing authentic certainly ; and not the least surprising
of the peculiarities of that mysterious history is the abso
lute silence of contemporary documents, as well sacred as
profane, touching an event which afterwards assumed colos
sal proportions* The appearance of Christianity seems
to have been a fact scarcely felt in the heart of Judaism ;
it made no noise, provoked no reaction, and left no memory.
The Talmud, which takes up the whole intellectual move
ment of Judaism, at the era we speak of, preserves not
one certain and appreciable trace even of the indirect influ
ence of the Christ.f But, in the middle age, when the
Church assumed an attitude of formidable hostility to the
synagogue, it was necessary to have an understanding in
regard to this strange co-religionist who had reached such
peerless fame. Hence a legend grotesque and, for ob-

* The passages in the historian Josephus, relating to Jesus and the first
Christians, are, in the opinion of the best critics, interpolated, or at least
have been retouched by a Christian hand.
f To understand the singularity of this fact, think how deeply the appear
ance of Protestantism affected Catholicism. Since the Reformation, hardly a
Catholic writer fails to betray the powerful action of that great convulsion.

206 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
vious reasons, ungracious.* If the Church smote with
anathema the innovators who dared under her very eyes
form religious societies, even when those societies did , not
threaten her own existence, what must the synagogue
say of him, who to the crime of heresy added, that of being
its chief persecutor?
When modern criticism was introduced among the Is
raelites, the enlightened Jews must have been more eager
than ever to construct a historical theory of the origins of
Christianity, and the person of Jesus. In some aspects,'
they might seem to be better judges than the Christians, in
others they were open to objection; and in fact, if we
except the illustrious Moses Mendelssohn, and a few inde
pendent philosophers who belong rather to humanity at
large than to a limited sect, the thinkers of the Israelitish
religion cannot put by the charge of partiality, often even
of a certain ill humour against the founder of Christianity.
Not only are they less inclined than we to idealize Jesus, —
that of course ; bnt too often they take pleasure in looking
up detached traits of the evangelical doctrine in the books
of the Old Testament, f An exceedingly cheap style of
criticism, for they might show me one after another, in
Moses and the prophets, all the maxims of the Gospel, and
still I should maintain that in the doctrine of Christ there
is a new spirit, and on it an original seal. If a religion
consisted of a certain number of dogmatic propositions and
a morality couched in a few aphorisms, it would perhaps be
true to say that Christianity is nothing more than Judaism.
But the fundamental principles of morality being for the

* Seethe " Bjbliotheca Judaica Anti-Christiana" of Rossi. Parma, 1S00.
8vo. pp. G1.94, 114, 121.
\ See especially a work published in several successive numbers of the
"Archives Israelites" (1849) by the learned (1!) Dukes, on this question:
"What has Christianity borrowed from Judaism ?

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 207
rnost part simple and universal, there is no discovery to
be made in this order of truths ; originality here reduces
itself , to a greater or less delicacy of sentiment. Now, set
face to face the Gospel and the sentences of the rabbins
who were contemporaries of Jesus, collected in the Pirlce
avoth, and then compare the impression made by the two
books ! Success, moreover, is here a decisive criterion :
the Gospel has converted the world, while it is> very doubt
ful if the sentences of the rabbins would of themselves
have effected just that.
The book of M. Salvador, " Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine"
(Paris, 1838), is the highest expression of Jewish criticism
on the life of Jesus. The subject is more largely conceived,
the form is more flowing and fine, than in the writings of
Strauss and of the German scholars. It is no more a
painful theological controversy ; it is an attempt to explain
the origin of Christianity, like any other grand fact in the
human mind, on the ground of disinterested science. Un
happily, the author, who deserves a distinguished rank as a
philosopher and a writer, does not quite meet our wishes
as regards erudition and historical criticism. M. Salvador
has thoroughly studied Judaism only, and still he shows
no acquaintance with the immense exegetical labours of
Germany, on the books of the Old and New Testaments, —
labours that have caused so complete a revolution in the
science of Hebraic antiquities. Though he has fairly mas
tered the Bible, Philo, the Talmud, he makes little use of
the Jewish or the Christian apocrypha, or of the earliest
Christian authors.
When we pass from the reading of Strauss to that of
Salvador, we are struck by the contrast between the Ger
man criticism — subtle, winged, always suspicious of fact>*-
and the other over-confident criticism, which accepts all the
narratives of the past without discussion. M. Salvador
lacks feeling for the delicate laws which preside at the

208 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
formation of great legends — laws which must have been
studied in very different applications in order to be under
stood in their true character. For him the Gospel is
history, with some elements of the marvellous mingled
with it. He treats it very much as Bollin and the old
school treated Titus Livius, discussing as real facts the
incidents of the birth of Jesus, the flight into Egypt, etc.
The story of the Passion is the only one in which he
admits an artificial arrangement, and in which he recog
nizes an intention to set forth the ideal sufferings which,
according to the messianic interpretation, had excited the
lamentations of the prophets. This portion of the evange
lical representations, he says, " has far less the character
of history than of poetry and drama, which, at their conve
nience," neglect the conditions of time and space, and sacri
fice all secondary personages, be they real or invented, to
the dominant idea of the subject, and to the chief charac
ter." Then he shows how two of the principal actors in
the Passion, Pilate and Barabbas, have been defamed to
meet the necessities of the legend.* Here M. Salvador
has grazed the mythical explanation, but without perceiv
ing it, and under the guidance, moreover, of an interested
purpose, which he does not conceal — that of relieving his
co-religionists of the disgraceful part which the Evangelists
make them /play in the Passion. With this exception, M.
Salvador regards himself as standing in the full light of
history. If he does not think that Jesus left documents
from his own hand on his life and teaching (he would
not; however, be much surprised if he had f), he admits
at least an oral tradition from the first disciples, that has a
fixed value. If Strauss doubts far too much, it is certain
that M. Salvador doubts far too little. The primeval facts
of great religious phenomena take place, all of them, in the
* Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine, vol. ii. ch. 9. \ Ib. i. p. 169.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 209
region of intellectual spontaneity, and leave no trace of
themselves. Religions no more recall their infancy than
does the individual man his. For the living being con
sciousness does not begin till he is grown and matured;
that is to say, when the primitive facts have for ever dis
appeared. The question of the origin of Christian doctrines M. Sal- !
vador has treated in a manner on the whole satisfactory.
All the antecedents of Christianity disclose themselves to
his eyes in Judaism, as modified by the East after the cap
tivity, and by Greece after Alexander. Judaism is, as it
were, the egg in which the new religion was formed and
nourished at first, before it came into the full light and
lived its own life. Greece could act on Jesus only by the
indirect influence that it had exerted on Judaism — an influ
ence that must not be .exaggerated so far as Palestinian
Judaism is concerned. There is hardly one considerable
element in primitive Christianity that is not found in Philo,
among the Essenes, or in the orthodox doctrine of the Sy
nagogue. The fundamental idea of the nascent sect — refer
ence to Abraham of the whole race of Adam, an idea
which contained the secret of Christian proselytism, and
subsequently the whole destiny of the church — is found in
the " Treatise on Nobility," in which Philo, like a philoso
pher and a Christian, develops, from the earliest times, this
truth : that nobility proceeds from individual virtue, and
not from Abraham's blood.
The question of theurgic arts and of miracles in gene
ral of the miracle of the resurrection in particular, the part
of Simon the magician, with other episodes besides, are
treated by M. Salvador with great delicacy and sense. The
criticism of the narrative of the Passion is particularly re
markable for the . precision which the author brings to it,
for the boldness of the views which he displays, and the
singular controversy which is attached to them. In his

210 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
work on the "Institutions of Moses and of the Hebrew
People," M. Salvador had already essayed an apology for
the Jewish council that condemned Jesus. In his judg
ment, the Sanhedrim did no more than apply the existing
laws : Jesus sought his own death, and regarding him sim
ply as a citizen, as the Jews necessarily did, he deserved it.
" The interest of the sacred purity of history compels us to
repeat, in every form of statement, that the Christian school
can by no means be accepted when it reduces the action of
the supreme council of the Jews, in this solemn debate, to
a question of base jealousyj-to an affair of the courts ; when
it heaps ignominy on the Jewish nation, to which it owed
its birth, and whose finest ornaments it appropriated under
pretext of the wilful course of their ancestors in pronounc
ing on Jesus a sentence which' had been predicted and pro
voked by the Master's whole theory respecting the fulfil
ment of the Scriptures. Herein the whole school of Naza
rene or Galilean Christianity has given to the world the
ineffaceable proof of its being a sect and a party ; it has
proved that its mission, even in its most legitimate, its hap
piest state, offered nothing but a specialty ; it has proved,
finally, that the universal judgment of events and of men,
the reign of the God of the prophets, the God of truth, the
just God, belongs exclusively neither to the period of its
trials and of its rule, be that longer or shorter, nor to the
essence of its nature."*
The scandal which some rigid minds affected to take
when M. Cousin, in one of his most ingenious fancies, ven
tured on the defence of the tribunal which condemned
Socrates, maintained that Anytus was a worthy citizen, the
Areopagus an equitable and moderate tribunal, and that if
any cause of astonishment existed, it was that Socrates was
accused so late, and was condemned by so small a majority •

* Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine, ii., pp. 168-169.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 211
this scandal, I say, was nothing in comparison with that
excited by M. Salvador when he pleaded for Caiaphas and
the Sanhedrim, so long condemned by the conscience of
Christendom. It was a-propos of this that the elder M.
Dupin undertook, in the " Gazette des Tribunaux," to
revise the trial of Jesus.* Under the pen of the liberal
advocate nothing was wanting to ground a veritable pro
ceeding in error : agents sent to provoke the accused, fraud,
brigade grise, individual liberty violated without a warrant,
sequestration of persons, captious interrogations, union of
the functions of accuser and of judge in the same man,
encroachment of the executive on the judiciary. For our
selves, God preserve us from pronouncing on such a ques- ,1
tion any other opinion than that of Jesus himself: It was
necessary that the Son of Man should die. Without that he
would not have presented the ideal of the sage, hateful to
the superstitious, as to the politicians, and paying for his
moral beauty with his life. A vulgar death to crown the
life of Jesus ! What blasphemy ! As to seeking what
passed in the breast of those who condemned him, that
were a question useless and sterile, even were it not inso
luble. Who knows if he himself be deserving of love or
of hate ? Who can correctly analyze what passes in the
depth of his own heart ? He that says, as Caiaphas said :
It is expedient that one man should die for the people, is cer
tainly a detestable politician ; and yet, alas ! he may be an
honest man. More than once history has decided in favour
of persecutors and of persecuted at once, and doubtless in
the life eternal the persecuted will thank the persecutors
for having procured for them, through suffering, the seal
of perfection. • "Jesus devant Caiph et Pilate." (Paris, 1828.)

212 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.

But if, renouncing the habits of mind which make us
familiar with marvels, we reflect now on the destiny of the
revealers whom the religious consciousness has raised above
humanity, we shall be struck with astonishment, and we
shall understand why they — objects of a love and a hate
equally fanatical — reach so late their true place in history,
the place which, in the eyes of criticism, they deserve. A
thousand motives of respect and timidity hinder the free
exercise of rational discussion in their case, and render
their condition before science rather unfavorable than other
wise. They seem to be put under the ban of humanity,
and the silence that is kept in regard to them often deceives
as to the importance of the part they played. A history
of philosophy, in which Plato should occupy a volume,
should, it seems to me, devote two to Jesus, and yet there
is more than one history of philosophy in which this last
name is not once mentioned. Such is the fate of every
man who has been consecrated by religion. How much
the body of Hebrew literature, for instance, has suffered in
the eyes of science and of taste, in becoming the Bible !
Whether from ill-humour or from lack of faith, scientific
and literary criticism has some difficulty in regarding as a
portion of its domain the works that have been thus set
apart for the benefit of theology. Could tbe author of that
charming little poem called the Song of Songs ever suspect
that one day he would be taken from the company of Ana-
creon, to be set up as an inspired bard who sang of no love
but the divine ? It is time science accustomed herself to
take her own, wherever she finds it. The old philosophy,
which seemed to concede to theologians that religions con
stitute an order by themselves, with which science has no,
concern, was led to look on them as hostile towers, erected

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 213
by a rival power. It would have been more respectful if
it had been more audacious ; for how could reason be severe
or contemptuous towards any product of the human mind
a moment after it had recognized itself in all those products
without distinction or invidious comparison ?
When the critics shall have resolutely placed themselves
at this point of view, Jesus will appear to them the most
extraordinary of all the problems of history, and they will
be held excusable who, struck by the depth of the mystery, )
have proclaimed him God ; for these at least have compre- ¦
hended, if they have not explained, hifn. Strange destiny,
well calculated to bring the marvels of the world of spirits
within our fingers' reach, — that of an obscure man, — even
orthodoxy does not forbid our calling him so, — author of
the grandest revolution that ever changed the face of huma
nity, become the link between two leaves of history, loved
furiously, furiously attacked, so that there is not one round
of the moral ladder on which he has not been placed. Na
tive of a small district, very exclusive in its nationality,
very provincial in thought, he has become the universal
ideal. Athens and Rome adopted him, the Barbarians fell
at his feet, and even to-day rationalism dares not look at
him closely except on its knees. Yes, whatever he may
have been, his fortune has been more astonishing than
himself! Let those who limit the resources of the human mind by
the narrow boundaries of vulgar good sense — let those who
have no conception of the daring originality of the spontane
ous creations of conscience — beware how they address them
selves to such a problem, or be content to apply to it the
convenient solution of the supernatural. To comprehend
Jesus we must be hardened to miracle ; we must raise our
selves above our age of reflection and tedious analysis, if we
would contemplate the faculties of the soul in that state of
fresh and unconscious liberty, in which, disdaining our

214 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. .
painful combinations, they reach their object without a
thought of themselves. That was the age of psychological
miracles. To have recourse to a supernatural intervention
for an explanation of facts which have become impossible
in the actual condition of the world, is proof that the hid
den* forces of spontaneity are overlooked. The more we
penetrate into the roots of the human mind, the more, shall
we understand that in all orders the miraculous is but the
unexplained ; that to produce the phenomena of primitive
humanity there was no need of a God always intermeddling
with the movement* of things, and that these phenomena
are the regular development of laws immutable as reason
and perfection.
Of course we must despair of ever arriving at the com
plete understanding of surprising phenomena, which the
lack of documents, far more than their mysterious charac
ter, will hide from us beneath an eternal obscurity. In the
solution of problems of this high order both the supernatu
ral hypothesis and the over-simple natural hypothesis —
those of the eighteenth century v for example — which reduce
everything to the proportions of an ordinary fact of impos
ture or credulity, must equally be repelled. Should one
offer to me a definite account of Jesus, which would leave
nothing more to ask, I should reject it ; its very clearness
would be the best proof of its insufficiency. The essential
thing here is not an explanation of everything; but a con
viction that with more knowledge everything might be
explained. Now this is what the comparative study of religions
and of literatures abundantly demonstrates to the mind
initiated in the processes of criticism. The East has never
known the purely intellectual grandeur which- can dispense
with miracles. It makes small account of a sage who is
not a thaumaturgist. When the Arabians had adopted
Aristotle as the great master of science, they constructed

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 215
for him a- legend as miraculous as that of a prophet. They
pretended that he had been transported to heaven on a
pillar of fire, etc. The East has never attained to a perfect
clearness of consciousness ;* it has always looked at nature
with the eyes of a child. The child instinctively mixes its j
impressions with its narratives ; it has not learned how to
separate things from the judgment it has passed on them/
and from its personal view of them ; it does not recite facts,
but imaginations that have been suggested to it by facts, or
rather, it tells itself. Every fable thatsmiles capriciously is
accepted ; it improvises strange ones itself, and then turns
them into assertions. Such was the state of the human
mind in^the artless ages. The legend was born of itself, I
and without premeditated deceit ; no sooner was it born
than it was welcomed, it went on growing like a snow- /
ball ; no criticism was near to control it. We should say, '
in fact, that miracle did not then present itself as super- '
natural. Miracle was the habitual order, or rather there
were no laws, nor was there a nature for men who were
strangers to our ideas of experimental science, who saw ,¦
everywhere the immediate action of free agents. The idea
of natural laws appeared later, and is accessible only to
cultivated intellects. Even now, the simple have an ex
treme facility in acknowledging a miracle. It is not then
at the dawn of the human mind alone that the imagina
tion lets itself be caught by the fascinations of the mar
vellous; the legendary productiveness lasts till the
advent of the scientific age, only diminishing in power

* China, gifted with its great and positive instinct for the finite, must
always be excepted when the East is spoken of. This people is the least
supernaturalistic of all, and that perhaps is the cause of its mediocrity. It is
good, not to dream all the time like India, but to have had a dream in child
hood. The perfume of it lingers, and a tradition of poetry, so to speak,
which beguiles the 'age when imagination is np more.

216 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
as it is overruled more and more by regard for reali
ties.* The application of these principles to Palestine may
easily be foreseen. The Jewish people, especially after the
captivity in Babylon, was possessed of the ideal of a Mes
siah, at first vague, indecisive, at moments evanescent, but
always reappearing with more vigour and more clearness
of characterization. It anticipated him at first as the
Saviour who should restore their temple and their country,
as a model King composed of the souvenirs of David and
Solomon, who should make Israel the centre of the world.
Afterwards when cruel humiliations compel this astonishing
little nation to recognize its material weakness, thctype of
the liberator is combined with that of the suffering and
devoted prophet. He is no longer merely the perfect King
surrounded with a halo of glory and wisdom : he is the
man of sorrows dying and triumphing by his death.
Do we comprehend the influence which such an image,
brooded over for ages, and gathering up all their aspirations,
must have exercised over the ardent faith of a people who
had no life now save in the future ? If it be true, as ancient
physiology believed, that the mother impresses on the child
she bears, the stamp of her desire and thought, what might
not an ideal so persistent produce in Israel's fruitful womb?
That long gestation of six or seven centuries could not fail
to bear its fruit. And in fact, when the Roman dominion
had at last succeeded in provoking the Jewish nation
to the state of frenzy in which extraordinary phenomena
are produced, the signs of the time broke forth on all sides.
The intellectual condition of the Jews at this epoch cannot
be described, except after very close study of the original
* See the fine analyses of faith in miracles given by M. Littre" in the
preface to the second edition of his translation of the " Life of Jesus," and in the
" Revue des Deux Mondes," February 15, 1856.

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. - 217
sources. The marvels of the Gospel are the soberest
good-sense by the side of the Jewish Apocrypha and the
Talmud. Can we be surprised that in the midst of so
strange a movement, something like the prodigies of the
primitive days of humanity should have reappeared, one
of those deep manifestations whose beginning escapes the
observation which does not rise above vulgar experience ?
Let us draw a veil over these mysteries which even
reason dares not sound. Not in a few pages can we attempt
a solution of the most obscure problem of history. Be
sides, the critical sense is not inoculated in an hour ; he
who has not cultivated it by a long scientific and intel
lectual discipline will always find adverse arguments to
oppose to the more delicate inductions. To raise and cul
tivate minds, to make familiar the grand results of natural
and philological science, is the only means of making the
new ideas of criticism understood and accepted. To those
who have not the necessary preparation, these ideas can
only appear false and dangerous subtleties.
Let me give an example : The four canonical gospels
often tell the same fact with very considerable variations in
details. This is explicable ori all the rationalistic hypo
theses; for it need not be more difficult of explanation
in the gospels than in the historical or legendary narratives
of other religions, which often present contradictions more
violent still. But it is not so easy on the supernatural
theory of inspiration. There is no " almost" with the
Holy Spirit ; a thii^g cannot have taken place in two ways
at the same time. Here then, to the view of independent
criticism is a decisive objection. And yet we cannot bring
the orthodox believer fairly to allow it. If the circum
stances of the different narratives are not absolutely irre
concilable, he will say that one of the texts has preserved
certain details omitted by the other, and he will set the
diverse circumstances end to end at the risk of composing

218 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
an altogether incoherent recital. If the incidents are de
cidedly contradictory, he will say that the fact narrated is
double or triple, although in the eyes of sound criticism
the several narrators have plainly the same event in view.
Thus, the accounts in John and in the -synoptics (by this
collective name, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are designated)
of the last entry of Jesus into Jerusalem being irrecon
cilable, the harmonists supposed that he entered twice, in
immediate succession, and with circumstances almost iden
tical. In the same way, the three denials of Saint Peter,
differently narrated by the four evangelists, constitute in
the view of the orthodox eight or nine separate denials,
while Jesus predicted but three. The incidents of the
resurrection give room for similar difficulties, for which
similar solutions are offered. What is to be said of such an
exegesis? That it involves a metaphysical impossibility ?
No. It would be labour thrown away to silence the man
who would maintain that ; but whoever has the critical
sense in the least degree developed will repel it as contrary
to the rules of interpretation which would be followed in
any other case. We must set the same value on the
replies which the apologists make to the difficulties drawn
from the silence which all the gospels, but the fourth espe
cially, keep in regard to capital circumstances or to whole
episodes. This they say is merely a negative argument
from which no conclusion can be drawn. But would they
reason thus in any secular matter, and are not these the
sort of arguments on which a true criticism often bases its
most solid inductions ?*

* The conclusion of inadmissible which the theologians oppose to the
negative argument, is wholly characteristic of the scholastic and legal habits
which they substitute for delicacy of mind, the only faculty that can discover
truth in history. For example — are we concerned to establish the rela
tively modern age of institutions or prescriptions whose high antiquity the
theologian is compelled to maintain, criticism draws a. very solid induction

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 219
To ask orthodoxy to apply to the sacred books the same
criticism it applies to profane literature is to ask what it
cannot grant ; on the other hand, to decline combat on this
ground is to withdraw from the discussion. This is the
reason why all controversy between persons who believe
in the supernatural and persons who do not is smitten with
barrenness. We must say of miracles what Schleiermacher
said of angels : — It cannot be proved that no such beings
exist ; nevertheless, the whple conception is one that could
not be born in our time ; it belongs exclusively to the pri
mitive idea of the world. Not from one line of reasoning,
but from the whole mass of modern sciences, comes this
immense result. Nothing is supernatural.* Since being
began, everything that has taken place in the world of
phenomena has been(the regular development of the laws
of being, laws which constitute but one order of govern
ment — nature — whether physical or moral. Whoever says
above or outside of nature, in the order of facts, utters a contra
diction, as one would who should say super-divine in the order
of substances. " In rejecting miracles," says M. Littre, f
very aptly, " the modern age has not acted from deliberate
purpose ; for it received the tradition of them with that of
its ancestors — always dear and carefully kept^— but without
wishing to reject them, without trying to, and by the single
fact of the development with which it was bursting. An
from the silence of all historical documents anterior to a certain epoch. How
do you know, the theologian may reply, that these institutions did not exist
without being mentioned ? No doubt : but what proof is there that instituted
mysteries did not exist in the Homeric age; except that the Iliad and Odyssey
say nothing about them ? What proof is there that our political and judicial
institutions did not exist under the Merovingians, except that tbe historians
of theperiod make no mention of them? The same with all historical results
expressed under the negative form.
* I am under necessity, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, of refer
ring here to the explanation of this word given in the note on p. 171.
f Preface to the "Life of Jesiis,'-1 2d ed., p. 5.

220 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
experience which nothing has ever occurred to contradict
has taught it that every miraculous story had its origin
in vivid imagination, in complaisant credulity, in igno
rance of natural laws. With all the research that has been
made, no miracle has ever been wrought where it could be
observed and proved."
As human affairs obey laws more difficult to seize than
those of inanimate nature, the notion of supernatural inter
vention is defended there more successfully. Long after
•people have ceased to believe in natural miracles Jesus wiU
be a psychological miracle. They will not be able to take
in the fact that the. contemporary of Hillel and Shammai
was their spiritual brother; that the same seed produced
side by side the Talmud and the Gospel, the most singular
monument of intellectual aberration and the highest crea
tion of the moral sense. One epoch, provided it pass com?
mon mediocrity, may give birth to the most opposite phe
nomena. Did not the same revolution proclaim at once
the formula of civil rights which seems destined to be the
law of the future, and terrify the world- hj scenes of horr
ror? In these grand crises of the human mind we must
be ready for everything. Only the productions of calm
and tranquil periods are consistent with themselves. The
appearance of the Christ would be inconceivable in the
midst of logic and regularity ; it is perfectly natural in the
strange storm that swept over the human mind in Judaea
at the period we are speaking of. A more extended view
of the philosophy of history would satisfy us that the real
causes that produced Jesus must be sought for, not outside
of humanity, but in the heart of the moral world ; that the
laws whieh resulted in Jesus were not exceptional and
transitory, but the permanent laws of the human conscience
applied at one of those extraordinary junctures in which
sublimities and follies appear simultaneously ; very much
as geology, after long recourse tq causes explanatory of the

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 221
revolutions of the globe different from those that are in
action to-day, cpmes back to proclaim that the actual laws
were sufficient to effect the revolutions. Let the same
conditions return, the same phenomena will reappear ; and
in spite of the seeming exhaustion of the creative forces of
humanity, we shall see once more a new spirit get birth
spontaneously, without, perhaps, becoming personified so
exclusively in this or that individual.
Strauss, then, does but enunciate one of the narrowest
principles of the modern mind when he pronounces unhis-
torical, at least in the letter, every narrative in which the
laws of nature are violated, and when he proclaims that the
absolute cause never interferes by exceptional acts with
the chain of finite causes. Let us not look for the dignity
of Jesus in the region of chimeras. "What!" says Strauss,
" take a deeper interest in a few cures wrought in Galilee
than ih the miracles of moral existence and the history of
the world, in the perpetually increasing dominion of man
over nature, in the irresistible power of thought, incessantly
forcing matter to bend beneath it ? What particular interest
then can attach to one isolated fact, which has no other value
than that it represents in symbol this eternal movement ?"
Strange ! what constituted the grandeur of Jesus in the
eyes of his contemporaries and first adorers, is for us a
stain on his image, a feature by which this image is deprived
of its universality, and made to take the particular hue of
his age and country. Who is not pained to see the won
der-worker by the side of the sublime moralist ? to find in
the Gospels, on the same page with the Sermon on the
Mount or the discourse at the Supper, stories of men pos
sessed, which, if invented in our time, would meet nothing
but incredulity or a smile ?
Rigorously to separate the historical from the evangelical
Christ — rthe real personage who bore the name of Jesus
from the ideal personage of the Gospel — is a thing impos-

222 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
sible. But when we affirm that Jesus passed his youth in
Galilee ; that he received no hellenic education ; that he
made a few journeys to Jerusalem, where his imagination
was vividly impressed, and where he entered into commu
nication with the soul of his people ; that he preached a
doctrine hardly orthodox when judged by the Judaism of
the Scribes, a doctrine bearing, perhaps, the stamp of some
provincial peculiarity (Galilee had a bad repute for ortho
doxy as well as for the purity of its speech); that the strict
Jews opposed him strenuously, because his lofty moral
tone disturbed and distanced them ; that they succeeded in
getting him put to death, as the sequel to an almost tri
umphal entry decreed to him by his compatriots, who with
him had visited Jerusalem for the feast of Passover ; we
certainly say nothing that the severest historian must not
accept. We may admit that legend worked over the life
of Jesus as in the case of all poems, resolving the real hero
into an ideal type, and yet not deny the lofty personality
of the sublime and truly divine founder of the Christian
faith. Strauss himself grants that beneath the legend there
is history ; but he did not say it out loud, because his the
ological habits showed him an easier system of interpreta
tion in the full adoption of the mythological hypothesis.
We will leave without answer questions which criticism
[cannot be forbidden to raise, but which, doubtless, it will
fnever satisfactorily meet. How far were the doctrine and
the moral character which the Gospel attributes to Christ
historically the doctrine and the moral character of Jesus ?
Was Jesus actually a heaven-sent original man, or a Jew
ish sectary, like John the Baptist ? Was he conscious of
what he was and of what he was to become ? Does not Jesus
seem to us devoid of human frailties simply because we
look at him from a distance and through the mist of legend ?
Is it not because we lack the means to criticise him that he
appears to us in history as the solitary sinless person ? If

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 223
we could touch him as we can Socrates, should we not find
some little earthly clay on his feet too? Here, as in all other
religious creations, the admirable, the celestial, the divine,
will revert by right to humanity, will they not ? There is,
I am aware, a criticism which is distrustful of individuals,
and guards itself against allowing to them too large a place ;
it thinks it is the popular mass that almost always creates
the beauty of the men who are raised to the honours of
apotheosis ; it is afraid of misplacing its admiration when
the question is pf persons about whom knowledge can
affirm nothing; it remembers that a great • disproportion
may ordinarily be. observed between the parts actually
played by personages with whom the foundations of reli
gion are associated, and their destinies after death : — St.
Peter, a fisherman of Galilee, has ruled the world for a
thousand years ; Mary, a humble woman of Nazareth, has
ascended through the successive and continually enhancing
hyperbole of generations, till she has reached the bosom of
the Trinity ! Nevertheless, — we say it boldly, — it is never ,
chance that singles out an individual to be idealized. The
portion of the Gospels that includes the most of historic
incident is that which tells of the Passion and the death;
now this is especially the portion in which Jesus appears
with most grandeur. There is no man who, in reading
these admirable pages, where the world has found suCh
high moral teaching, does not feel the immediate reflection
of a great soul, and does not place the touching and august
sufferer of Calvary among those whom death has consecrat
ed. Without doubt the web with which humanity covers
over certain characters almost conceals the primitive real
ity ; but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that there
are works which speak louder than any documents, and
that if history is obliged to measure the glory of indivi
duals by the trail of splendour or of beneficence which they
have left on the world, it can find no exaggeration in the

224 THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.
incomparable brilliancy with which the religious conscious
ness of the human race has surrounded the brow of Jesus.
i) The philosopher as well as the theologian must therefore
recognize the two natures in Jesus, — separate the human
from the divine, and not, in his adoration, confound the
real with the ideal hero.- The Christ — that is, the charac
ter which comes out in the New Testament — must be
unhesitatingly adored; for all sublimity partakes of the
divine, and the Christ of the Gospel is the most beautiful
incarnation of God, in the fairest of forms — a noble man.
He is really the Son of God and the Son of Man — God in
man. They were not deceived, those great interpreters of
Christianity, who imagined him born without an earthly
father, and attributed his generation to no natural inter
course, but to a virgin's womb and a celestial influence.
Admirable symbol, which hides beneath its veil the true
explanation of the ideal Christ ! As to the man of Galilee,
whom the reflections of divinity almost conceal from our
view, what matters it if he does escape us ? Assuredly the
historian should desire the solution of such a problem ; but
'• at bottom the needs of the religious and the good man have
little concern in it. Ah ! what matters it to us what passed
. in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago? How does it
concern us that Jesus was born in such or such a village —
that he had such or such ancestors— that he suffered on
such or such a day of the holy week ? Let us leave such
questions to the researches of the curious. Would the Home
ric poems be finer if it were proved that the deeds that are
sung there were all veritable facts ? Would the Gospel be
more beautiful if it were true that at a certain point of
space and of time a man had realized to the letter the
features it presents to us? The portrait of a sublime cha
racter gains nothing by its conformity with an actual hero.
I The Jesus who is truly admirable is beyond historical criti
I cism ; he has his throne in the conscience ; he will never

THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS. 225
be displaced except by a higher ideal ; he is king for a long
time yet. What do I say? His beauty is eternal — his
reign will never have an end. The Church has been left
behind; it has outgrown itself; the Christ has never been
outgrown. So long as one noble heart shall aspire to moral
beauty, so long as one elevated soul shall treniole with joy
before the manifestation of the divine, the Christ will secure
worshippers through the- truly immortal part of his being.
For let us not deceive oursel-veS, and let us not stretch too
much the limits1 of the imperishable. In the very Christ
of the Gospels one part will die; the- local and national
forih— the Jew, the Galilean; but one part will abide ; the
great master of morality, the persecuted saint, he who said
to men : Ye are sons of the same Heavenly Father^ The
wonder- worker and the prophet will die; the Irian and the
sage will endure ; or, rather, the eternal beauty will live
for ever in this sublime name, as in all those whom huma
nity has chosen to keep it in mind of its own nature, and
to transport it by the view of its own image. Behold there
the hving, God ! This is the adorabfe One' !
15

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
ALL beginnings are obscure; religious beginnings
even more than others. Products of the sponta
neous instincts of human nature, religions no more
recal their infancy than the adult recals the history of his
childish years and the successive phases in the unfolding
of his consciousness; mysterious chrysalids, they never
come to full daylight till their forms reach their perfect
maturity. It is with the beginning of religions as with the
beginning of humanity. Science demonstrates that on a cer- :
tain day by virtue of natural laws which so far had pre
sided over the development of things, without deviation
or external intervention, the thinking being appeared
endowed with all his faculties, and in all his essential
elements perfect ; and yet, to try to explain the advent of :
man on the earth by the laws that- have governed the
phenomena of our globe since the creative power of nature
ceased, would be to open the door to imaginations so ex
travagant that no serious mind would dwell on them for an
instant. It is undeniable again, that on a certain day, man,
by the natural and spontaneous expansion of his faculties,
improvised language; and yet no image borrowed from
the actual state of the human mind can aid us in con
ceiving this strange fact,Vhich has become wholly impos
sible in our circle of reflection. So we must give up the
attempt to explain by processes accessible to experience the
primitive facts of religions, facts which have no analogies
since humanity has lost its religious productiveness. In
view of the impotence of reflecting reason to lay the foun-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 227
dation of belief and to nurture its strength, how should we
be able to appreciate the hidden force which ever and anon
penetrates and quickens the vitals of humanity? The
theory of the supernaturalist offers perhaps fewer difficul
ties than the frivolous solutions of men who address them
selves to the problems of the origin of a religion without
having sounded the mysteries of the instinctive conscious
ness ; and if, before this theory can be rejected, it were
necessary to arrive at a rational opinion on so many really
divine facts, few men would have the right to disbelieve in
the supernatural.
Does it follow, however, that science must abandon its
effort to explain the formation of the globe, because the
phenomena that have brought it to the condition in which
we find it, are no longer reproduced on a grand scale ?
Must it despair of explaining the appearance of life and of
living species because the existing epochs have ceased to be
creative? Must it give no account of the origin of
language, because languages are no more born ; of the genesis
of religions because religions are no longer produced ?
Surely not. It is the work of science, work infinitely deli
cate and often dangerous, to guess at the* primaeval by the
faint traces it has left. Reflection has not removed us so
completely from the creative age that we cannot revive in
ourselves the feeling of spontaneous life. History, miserly
as she is of her unrevealed epochs, is nevertheless not
wholly dumb ; she~permits us, if not to attack questions of
origin directly, at least to draw lines about them. Then
too, since nothing is absolute in human affairs, and since
there are no two facts in the past that come rigorously
within the same category, we have intermediate shafles
to represent to us phenomena which are inaccessible to
immediate study. In the slow gradations of the actual con
dition of the globe, geology finds data for an explanation
of previous revolutions. The linguist, while working at

228 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
the phenomena of developing speech as they go on under
his eyes, is led to the discovery of the laws that presided over
the formation of language, The historian in the dearth of
primaeval facts which marked the advent of religious can
study the degeneracies, the abortive attempts, the demi4-
religions,— if I may venture to say so — that show plainly,
although on a reduced scale, the processes by which the
ground-work of the unreflecting epochs was produced.
The birth of Islamism is, in this regard, a unique and
truly inappreciable fact. Islamism was the last religious
creation of humanity, and in many respects the least
original. Instead of the mystery in which other religions
wrapped their cradle, this was born in the full light of
history ; its roots are even with the ground. The life of
its founder is as well known to uS as that of the reformers
of the XYIth century. We can follow year by year the fluc
tuations of his thought, bis contradictions, his weaknesses;
Elsewhere religious beginnings are lost in dream ; the toil
of the most untrammelled criticism can hardly detect the
reality beneath the deceitful appearances of myth and
legend. Islamism, on the contrary, appearing in a centre
of advanced reflection, is absolutely destitute of the super
natural. Mahomet, Omar,- Ali are neither seers, nor illu-
minati, nor magicians. Each of them knows perfectly
well what he is about, neither of them is his own dupe ;
each presents himself for exariiination, naked and with all
the frailties of humanity about him*
Thanks to the excellent labours of MM. Weil* and
Oaussiri de PefCevaljf we may say that the problem of the
*»" Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre." Stuttgard,
1843; "Historisch-kritische Einieitung in den Koran." Bielefeld, 1844;
"Biblische Legeridon der Mttselmamiet," Frankfort, 1845; " Geschlehte de*
Chalifen." Mataheirn, vol. i. 1848; vol. ii. 1848; vol iii.- 1851. >
f "Essai sur l'histoire' deS.Arabes avant l'lslamisme pendant l'epoque de
Mauomet et jusqu'sl la reduction de toutes les tribus sous IaloiMusulmane.''
Paris, 3 vols. 1848.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 229
origin of Islamism has in our day reached a solution all but
complete. M. Caussin de Perceval especially has intro
duced into the question an element of first-rate importance
by the new information he has supplied, on the subject of
Mahomet's antecedents and precursors, a delicate matter
which had hardly been noticed before. This admirable
work will remain a model of that exact, solid erudition
removed from all conjecture whieh characterizes the French
school. The tact and penetration of M. Weil assure a
distinguished rank to his labours on Islamism. In respect
of choiceness and wealth of original material, however, his
work is inferior to that of our learned fellow countryman,
and he is open to reproach for placing too much confidence
in Turkish and- Persian authorities, which are of , very
little value in the present question. America and England
have also given attention to Mahomet.* A well known
writer of romance, Washington Irving, has told the story
of his life in an interesting way, without evincing any very
elevated historical feeling. This book, however, marks a
real progress, when we think of M. Charles Forster's two
thick volumes published in 1829, greatly relished by cler
gymen^ the aim of which was to prove that Mahomet was
simply " the little horn of the he-goat which figures in the
eighth chapter of Daniel, and that the Pope was the great
horn." On this ingenious parallel, M. Forster founded a
complete philosophy of history, wherein the Pope repre
sents the corruption of Christendom in the West, and Maho-

* " Lives of Mahomet and his Successors." New York, 1850.
f " Mahometism Unveiled ; an inquiry in which that arch-heresy, its
diffusion and continuance are examined on a new prin6iple, tending to con
firm the evidences and aM the propagation pf the Christian Faifh." This is .
the same Mr. Charles Forster, author pf a mystification on the Sinaitio
inscriptions, in which he claims to have recovered the primitive language and
writing, the original text of Exodus, &c.

230 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
met the corruption of Christendom in the East ; striking
resemblances between Mahometanism and the papacy result !
It would be a curious history, that of the ideas which
Christian nations have entertained of Mahomet from the
time when the mendacious Turpin told of the golden idol
Mahom, which was adored at Cadiz, and which Charle
magne dared not destroy, for fear of a legion of demons that
were shut up in it, to the day when criticism has honestly
accorded to the father of Islamism his title of prophet.
The virgin faith of the first half of the middle age, which
had but the vaguest notions respecting the worships outside
of Christendom, painted Maphomet, Baphomet, Bafum
(whence Bafumery, Mahomery, Mummery, designations of
all superstitious and unclean rites), as a false god to whom
human sacrifices were offered. In the twelfth century Ma
homet began to pass for a false prophet, and there was
serious thought of unmasking his imposture. The transla
tion of the Koran, done by order of Peter the Venerable,
the polemical works of the Dominicans and of Raymond
Lully, the information furnished by William of Tyre and
Matthew Paris, helped to spread more wholesome ideas
respecting Islamism and its founder. To the idol Mahom
succeeds the heresiarch Mahomet, placed by Dante in a very
honourable region of his Inferno (xxviii. 31), — among the
sowers of discord, with Fra Dolcino and Bertrand de Born.
This already indicated a revolution in men's minds. In
periods of truly artless faith the believer is unconscious of
the existence of religions differing from his own, or, if he
is aware of their existence, they look to him so impure and
ridiculous that their supporters can be, in his eyes, only
mad or stubborn.
What a shock the mind experiences the day it discovers
that by the side of the dogma which was supposed to be
unique there are others which also claim to have come
from heaven ! The word of the " Three Impostors," which

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 231
seized so Strongly the whole thirteenth century, and of
which the popular imagination made a Isook, expresses
this first incredulity that sprang from , the study of the
Arabian philosophy and from a tolerably exact acquaint
ance with Islamism.* The name of Mahomet thus became
almost the synonym of impious, and when Orcagna, in his
Hell, at the Campo Santo of Pisa, would represent by the
side of the heretics the contemners of religion, the three per
sonages he chooses are Mahomet, Averroes, and the Anti-
Christ. The middle age never went half-way in its hatreds.
Mahomet was, all at once, a sorcerer, an infamous de
bauchee, a camel-stealer, a cardinal who, failing to get
elected pope, invented a new religion to avenge himself on
his colleagues. His biography became such a repertory of
all imaginable crimes that the histories of Baphomet, like
those of Pilate, were a theme for obscene anecdote.f The
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries showed scarcely more
justice. Bibliander, Hottinger, Maracci do not yet venture
to touch the Coran except to refute it.J
At last Prideaux and Bayle looked at Mahomet as histo
rians, and no more as controversialists; but the want of
authentic documents confined them to the discussion of the
puerile fables, which up to that time had borne the brunt

* I have treated this at length in my essay on Averroes and Averroism, p.
222, &c.
\ See the " Romance of Mahomet," published by MM. Reinaud and Fr.
Michel, Paris, 1831, and Edel. du Meril, "Popular Latin Poems of the Middle
Ages," 1847, p. 367.
J We may estimate the force of their arguments by this one, which I take
from the celebrated theologian Genebrard : " "Wherefore, 0 Mahomet, didst
thou not write thy law or thine Alcoran in Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew, lan
guages which are known all over the Roman Empire, and by all men of
learning ? He replies, but coldly and in Huguenot fashion, that his Alcoran
or institution was not designed for the Romans or the men of learning,
because they would not be converted by it. But this is not the reason ; he
was a beast, and knew no Hebrew, Greek, or Latin."

232 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
of popular curiosity and theological rage. The honour of
the first attempb at a biography of Mahomet belongs to
Gagnier. This scholar was moved to ask information of
Abulfeda, and it was a fortunate thing. It is doubtful if
criticism would, in the eighteenth century, have been skil
ful enough to make the necessary distinctions, as to history
cal value, between the recitals of the Arabic historians and
the legends that flowered from the Persian imagination.
This capital discrimination, which M. Caussi-n de Perceval
alone has closely observed, is, in truth, the knot of all the
problems relating to the origins of Islamism. Compiled
from Arabic sources, such as the biographies of Ibn-Hi-
scham and of Abulfeda, the life of Mahomet is simple and
natural, almost without miracles. Compiled from Turkish
and Persian authorities, the same legend appears a mass pf
absurd fables in the worst possible style. Although before
the Abbasides the traditions relating to the life of Mahomet
were not arranged at all, the compilers of that era already
relied on written sources whose authors went back for their
authorities as far as the companions of the prophet. Around
the -mosque that was attached to Mahomet's house ran a
bench, on which men without family or abiding-place took
up their abode, living by the generosity of the prophet, and
often eating with him. These men, who were called benchers,
were supposed to know a great many particulars touching
the person of Mahomet, and their recollections became the
source of innumerable hearsays. The Mussulman faith
itself was bewildered by the multitude of documents ob
tained in this way. Six only were recognized as legitimate
spurces of tradition, and the indefatigable Bokhari confesses
that ,of the two hundred thousand memoranda he had col
lected, seven thousand two hundred and twenty-five only
seemed to him of incontestable authenticity. European
criticism might, assuredly, without incurring the reproach
of rashness, institute a more rigorous sifting still. It must,

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 233
nevertheless, be confessed, that these early narratives pre
sent to us few traits of the prophet's real physiognomy, and
are not distinguished very sharply from the collections of
pious legends invented simply for the edification of readers.
The genuine monument of the primitive history of Islam
ism, the' Coran, remains yet absolutely unassailable ; and
this monument alone, independently of the recitals of histo
rians, would suffice to reveal Mahomet to us.
I see in no literature a mode of composition that conveys
an exact idea of the process by which the Coran was
formed. It is neither a book written consecutively, nor a
vague and indeterminate text coming by slow stages to a
definite reading, nor a compilation of instructions by the
Master, made from the recollections of his disciples. It is
a collection of Mahomet's preachings, and, if I may venture
to say so, his orders for the day, still bearing the date of
the place where they appeared and the trace of the circum
stances which called them out. Each of these pieces^ was
written from the prophet's recitation,* on skins, on shoul
der-blades of sheep, camels' bones, polished stones, palm-
leaves, or was kept in memory by the principal disciples,
who were called bearers of the Coran. Not tjll the Caliphate
of Abou Bekr, after the battle of Yem&ma, in which a great
number of the old Mussulmans perished, was there any
thought of " putting together the Coran between two ais,"
and of setting end to end the detached and often contra
dictory fragments. It is indubitable that this compilation,
at which Zeyd-ben-Thabet, the most trusted of Mahomet's
secretaries presided, was executed in perfectly good faith.
No attempt at arrangement or reconciliation was made ; the
longest pieces were placed at the head; at the end were
collected the shorter chapters (suratas), which contained
* The word Goran means recitation, and suggests no idea analogous to that
of the book (Kitab) of the Jews and Christians. '

234 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
but a few lines, and the original copy was intrusted to the
keeping of Hafsa, the daughter of Omar, one of Mahomet's
widows. 'A second revisal was made under the Caliphate
of Othman. Some changes in spelling and dialect had been
introduced into the copies of the different provinces. Oth
man appointed a commission, always presided over by
Zeyd, to fix definitively the text according to the dialect of
Mecca. Then, by a proceeding very characteristic of Ori
ental criticism, he caused all the other copies to be collected
together and burned, by way of cutting short discussion.
It is in this way that the Coran has come to us without
essential variations. Certainly such a mode of composition
is calculated to awaken some misgivings. The integrity of a
work for a long time intrusted to the keeping of memory
seems to us ill-secured. Might not alterations and interpo
lations have crept into these successive revisions? Some
heretical Mussulmans have, on this point, anticipated the
suspicions of modern criticism. In our own time, M.
Weil maintains that Othmari's edition was not purely
literary, as the Arabs would have it, that politics had an
interest in it, with an eye to defeat the pretensions of Ali.
Notwithstanding all this, the Coran presents itself to us
with so little arrangement, in such complete disorder, with
contradictions so glaring ; each of the fragments that com
pose it has so decided an expression, that, taken altogether,
its authenticity is beyond cavil. We have then, in studying
Islamism, the immense advantage of possessing its original
pieces, pieces strongly suspected doubtless and expressino-
far less the actual facts than the needs of the moment, but
on this very account precious to the critic who knows how
to interpret, them. To this strange spectacle of a religion
born in daylight, with full consciousness of itself, I would
for a moment invite the attention of thinking men.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 235

I.

Criticism as a general thing must abandon the hope of
knowing anything certain about the character and the life
of religious founders. In their case, the veil of legend
has completely covered that of history. Were they hand
some or ugly,common or sublime ? No one will ever know.
The books that are ascribed to them, the discourses that
are put in their mouths, are ordinarily compositions of
more modern date, and tell us not so much what they
were as what their disciples fancied them to be. The
beauty of their characters, even, is not their own ; it belongs
to the humanity which makes them in its image. Trans
formed by this incessantly creative force, the ugliesj cater
pillar may become the most beautiful butterfly.
Not so with Mahomet. Legend has done its work on him
feebly and without originality. Mahomet is a real historical
personage — we may feel of him all over. The book which
has come to us bearing his name, represents nearly word
for word the discourses that he made. His life is a biography
like any other, without prodigies, without exaggerations.
Ibn-Hischam, and in general the oldest of his historians,
are sensible writers. In tone it is very like the Lives of
the Saints, written in a devout but reasonable style ; and
we could easily cite twenty legends of saints, that of Saint
Francis d'Assisi for example, which have become infinitely
more mythical than that of the founder of Islamism.
Mahomet declined being a wonderworker, he would be
simply a prophet, and a prophet without miracles. He
repeats incessantly, that he is a man like any other, mortal
like any other, exposed to sin, and needing like another
man the mercy of God. In his last days, wishing to set
his conscience at rest, he mounts a stand : " Mussulmans," he
said, " if I have struck one of you, here is my back ; let him

23,6 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
strike me. Have I outraged any one, let him return on me
injury for injury; have I deprived any of his possessions,
all I have is at his disposal." A man got up and claimed
a debt of three drachmas. " Better shame in this world
than in the next," said the prophet, and he paid it on the
spot This extreme moderation, this exquisite good-taste with
which Mahomet took up his prophetic task, were imposed
on him by the temper of his nation. Nothing could be
more incorrect than the notion that the Arabs, before
Islamism, were a gross, ignorant, superstitious nation ; on
the contrary, we must call them a nation refined, sceptical,
incredulous. There is a curious episode belonging to the
first period of Mahomet's mission which very well explains
the icy indifference which he encountered all about him,
and the extreme reserve which he was bidden to maintain
in the use ,of the marvellous. He was seated in the square
of the Caaba at a short distance from a circle formed by a
number of Koreisch chiefs, all opposed to his doctrine.
One of them, Otba, son of Rehia, approaches him, takes a
place by his side, and speaking in the name of the rest says,
— Son of my friend, thou art a man distinguished by thy
qualities and thy birth. Although thou causest disturbance
in thy country, divisions in families, although thou dost
outrage our gods, taxest our ancestors and sages with
impiety and error, we would deal discreetly with thee.
Hear the propositions I have to make to thee and consider
if it does not become thee, to accept one of them. — Speak,
said Mahomet, I listen — Son of my friend, resumed Otba,
if thine object be to acquire riches, we will contribute to
make thee a fortune larger than that of any of the Koreisch.
If thou aspirest to honours, we will make thee our chief,
and we will take no resolution without thine advice. If the
spirit that haunts thee clings to thee and sways thee so that
thou canst, not withdraw thyself from its influence, we

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 237
will call in skilful physicians and pay them- to cure thee. —
I am neither greedy of property, nor ambitious of dignities,
nor possessed by an evil spirit, replies Mahomet, I am
Sent by Allah,, who has revealed to me a book and has
ordered me to announce to you the rewards and punish
ments that await you.— -Yery well, Mahomet, said the
Koreisch to him, sinGe thou dost not agree to our proposi
tions arid pretemdest to be sent by Allah, give us clear
proofs of thy qualification. Our valley is narrow and
sterile, prevail on God to enlarge it, to push back these
mountain chains that shut us in, to cause rivers like those
of Syria and of Irak to flow through it, or else to bring
from the tomb some of our ancestors, and among them
Oossay, son of Kilah, whose word had such authority ; let
¦these illustrious dead, revived, acknowledge thee as a pro
phet, and we also will recognize thee. — God, replies Maho
met, has not sent me to you for that; he has sent me
irierely to preach his law. — At least, resumed the Koreisch,
ask thy Lord to cause one of his angels to appear, and
avouch thy veracity and bid us believe thee. Ask him
likewise to publicly ratify the choice he has made of thy
person, by relieving thee of the necessity of seeking thy
daily subsistence by trade like the rest of thy fellow-country
men. — No, says Mahomet, I will make none of these re
quests ; my duty is only to preach. — Yery well ; your Lord
may cause the sky to fall on us, as you- pretend that he
can ; for We will not believe thee."
It is clear a Bouddha, a son of God, a high-flown magi- •
<3iah, were too high for the temperarhent of this people.
The extreme delicacy of the Arab mind^ the frank, plain-
way in which he takes his stand on fact'the license of mo
rals and of beliefs that prevailed at the epoch of Islamism,
forbade grand airs to the new pro-phet. Arabia' is' corn-
pletely destitute of the element that engenders mysticisrii
and mythology; for it is an abuse of terms to apply the

238 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS- OF ISLAM.
name of Arab philosophy to a philosophy which never had
a root in the Arab peninsula, and the appearance of which
was a reaction of the Persian against the Arabic genius.
This philosophy was writen in Arabic, that is all'; it is
Arabic neither in tendency nor spirit. The Semitic nations
— those at least who remained faithful to the patriarchal
life and to the ancient spirit — never included in God vari
ety, plurality, sex; the word Goddess would be the most
horrible barbarism in Hebrew. Hence the trait so charac
teristic, that they have never had a mythology or an epic.
The clear and simple way in which they conceive of God
as separated from the- world, neither begetting nor begotten,
having no peers, excluded those grand embroideries, those
divine poems, in which India, Persia, Greece have shown
their fancy. Mythology representing pantheism in religion,
is possible only in the imagination of a people which allows
the outlines of God, of humanity, and of the universe, to
float loosely in the air. Now, the spirit furthest removed
from pantheism is assuredly the Semitic spirit. Arabia,
especially, had lost, perhaps never had, the gift of inventing
the supernatural. In all the moallakdt* and in the vast
repository of ante-Islamic poetry, we hardly find a religious
thought. This people had no sense for holy things; but
as compensation, it had a very lively sentiment of things
finite, and of the passions of the human heart.
This is the reason why the Mussulman legend outside of
Persia has remained so poor, and why the mythical element
•is so absolutely wanting in it. No doubt the life of Maho
met, like that of all great founders, collected fables ; but
these fables found no sanction except with the Schiites,

* They call moallalcdt or suspended the pieces of verse which had taken the
prize in the poetical tourneys, and were suspended by gold nails to the door
of the Caaba. Seven of them are extant, to which two or three other poems
of the same character are attached.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 239
ruled by the towering imagination of Persia. Far from
clinging to the base of Islamism, they should be regarded
merely as loose scorise, tolerated rather than consecrated,
and quite analogous to the low-toned mythology of the
apocryphal books, which the church, has neither frankly
adopted nor sternly banished. How could the popular
imagination help surrounding with some prodigies an exist
ence so extraordinary? How could the story -tellers fail
to be tempted by the infancy particularly, theihe so pro
mising for legend? By their account, the night on which
the prophet was born the palace of Chosroes was over
thrown by an earthquake, the sacred fire of the magians
went out, the lake of Sawa dried up, the Tigris overflowed
its banks, and all the idols in the world fell on their faces
to the ground. These traditions, however, never attained
the dignity of a consecrated legend, and, altogether, the
stories of Mahomet's infancy, in spite of* a few blemishes,
remain a charming page of grace and nature. For the
better appreciation of this sobriety, I will here give a sam
ple of the manner in which India celebrates the birth of its
heroes. When the creatures learn that Bouddha is to be born,
all the birds of the Himalaya wing their way to the palace
of Kapila, and stand singing and flapping their wings on
the terraces, the balustrades, the arches, the galleries, the
roofs of the palace ; the ponds are covered with the lotus ;
in the houses, the butter, the oil, the honey, the sugar,
however profusely used, remain undiminished; drums,
harps, lutes, cymbals give forth musical sounds without
being touched ; gods and hermits hasten from all the ten
horizons to wait on Bouddha. The Bouddha descends
accompanied by hundreds of millions of divinities. At the
moment of his descent the three thousand thousand regions
of the world are illuminated with an immense splendour,
eclipsing that of the gods. Not a creature feels fear or

240 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
suffering; all experience an infinite content, and have none
but affectionate and tender thoughts. Hundreds of millions
of gods with hands, shoulders, heads, bear up the car of
Bouddha-. A hundred thousand apsaras lead the ehanting
choirs in the van, in the rear, on the right hand, on the left
hand, and sing the praises of Bouddha. At the moment
of his leaving his mother's womb all the flowers open- their
Cups; ypung trees spring from the soil and unfold their
buds ; scented waters flow in all directions ; from the sides
Of the Himalaya the young lions run joyfully to the town
of Kapila, and stop at the gates without harming a person.
Five hundred young elephants, white as snow, come, and
with their trunks touch the feet of the king, the father of
Bouddha; the sons of the gods, adorned with girdles, ap
pear in the apartment of the women, coming and going
from either side ; the wives of the nagas, exposing half of
their bodies, show themselves waving in the air ; fen thou
sand daughters of the gods, with fans of the peacock's tail
in their hands, are seen against the blue of the sky ; ten
thousand full urns appear making the circuit of the great
city of Kapila ; a hundred thousand daughters of the gods,
with shells, drurils, tambourines about their necks, stand
motionless ; all the winds hold their breath ;; all the rivers
and brooks stop their flow ; sun, moon, and stars cease to
move ; a light of a hundred thousand colours, causing hap
piness in body and soul, is diffused abroad ; fire does not
burn ; from the galleries, palace, terraces, gateways, arches,
are Suspended pearls and precious stones ; the crows, vul
tures, wolves, jackals cease their cries; none but sweet
arid Soothing sounds are heard ; all the gods of the woods
of Salas, thrusting their bodies half-way out from the foli
age, show themselves bending motionless; parasols, great
arid small, are displayed in the air on every side. The
queen, meantime, walks hi the garden of Loumbini ; a tree
b'erids arid salutes her ; the queeri seizes a branch, and look-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 241
ing graciously towards heaven, yawns and stands motion
less ; the Bouddha issues from her right side without
wounding her ; a white lotus pierces the sod and opens to
receive him ; a parasol descends from heaven to cover him ;
a river of cold water and a river of hot water flow to him
for his bath, etc.*
This may be called breaking into legend bravely ; no
haggling over miracle. Arabia had become, intellectually,
too refined to manufacture a supernatural legend in that
style. The only time that Mahomet allowed himself to
indulge- in an imitation of the gorgeous fancies of other
religions, in the night ride to Jerusalem, on a fantastic
beast, the affair turned out very ill ; the story was greeted
with a storm of merriment. Many of his disciples swore
off, and the prophet made haste to withdraw his trouble
some idea by declaring that this marvellous journey, given
out at first as real, was only a dream. The whole Arabic
legend of Mahomet, as it is read in Aboulfeda,f for example,
is limited to a few stories of very staid invention. They try
to associate him with the illustrious men of his time, and of
the generation that preceded him. They represent his mis
sion as prophesied by venerated personages. When he wan
dered among the solitudes in the neighbourhood of Mecca,
absorbed in thought, he heard voices which said to him —
" Hail, Apostle of God !" He turned, and saw nothing but
trees and rocks. On his flight from Mecca he took refuge
in a cavern ; his enemies were about pushing in, when they
perceived a nest in which a dove had deposited her eggs,
and a spider's web which closed the passage. His camel
was inspired, and when the chiefs of the tribes proffering
hospitality approached to take the bridle of his beast, he

* We select these traits from a thousand in the " Lalitavistara," or legend
of Bouddha, translated by M. Edward Foueaux. Paris, 1848.
f See the translation that M. Noel Desvergers has given of it. Paris, 1837.
16

242 -MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
said : " Let her go on ; the hand of God guides her." His
sabre, too, wrought miracles. At the close of a battle he
was sitting apart, at the foot of a tree, on his knees his
weapon, the hilt of which was of silver. A hostile Bedouin
saw him, approached, and pretending to be attracted by a
simple movement of curiosity, said tp him : "Allow me to
examine your sabre." Mahomet hands it to him without
misgiving. The Arab takes it, draws it from the sheath,
and is about to strike ; but the sabre refuses to obey.
All the prodigies of his life are as transparent as this, for
himself he could invent nothing very new in this line.
The angel Gabriel defrayed the whole expense of his
miracles ; he seems to have known no other agency. The
battle of Bedr alone furnishes a few examples of the high
style of marvel improvised on the spot. A legion of angels
fights for the Mussulmans. An Arab who had stationed
himself on the surrounding mountains saw a cloud ap
proach him, and from the bosom of the cloud he heard the
neighing of steeds and a voice that said, " On, Hayzoum,"
that is the name of the Angel Gabriel's horse. One Mus
sulman tells how, pursuing a Meecan sword in hand, he
saw the head of the fugitive fall to the ground before his
sabre touched him ; he concludes that the hand of a celes
tial minister had anticipated his own. Others averred that
they had clearly distinguished the angels by their white
turbans, one end whereof floated over the shoulder, while
Gabriel, their chief, had his forehead bound about with
a yellow scarf. Knowing into what state of excitement
the Arabs throw themselves before and during a battle,
and considering that this day was the first outburst of
Mussulman enthusiasm, far from being astonished that
such stories found credence, we are surprised that the brain
of the combatants of Bedr gave birth to marvels as sober
as these.
At a much more recent period and under the influence

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 243
of races strange to Arabia, the legend of Mahomet became
mixed, I know, with wonderful circumstances, which bring
it much nearer to the grand mythological legends of the
high East. Persia, though subdued by Islamism, never
yielded to the action of the Semitic spirit. In spite of the
language and of the religion which were impo'sed on it, it
knew how to make good its claims as an Indo-European
nation, and to create for itself in the bosom of Islamism a
philosophy, an epic, a .mythology. Open the " Hyat ul-
Koloub," a collection of Schiite traditions ; you will there
read that, the night when Mahomet came into the world,
seventy thousand palaces of ruby and seventy thousand
palaces" of pearl were built in paradise* and were called
palaces of the nativity. The prophet is , born already
circumcised ; midwives of extraordinary beauty are unex
pectedly present ; a light whose splendour illuminates all
Arabia issues with him from his mother's womb. The
instant he is born he throws himself on his knees, raises his
eyes to heaven, and cries : " God alone is God and I am his
prophet." God clothes his apostle with the spirit of divine
contentment and with the robe of sanctity, fastened by the
girdle of the love of God. He is shod with respectful awe,
crowned with majesty, and in his hand holds the sceptre of
religious authority. At theage of three years two angels
open his side, take out his heart, wring out the black drops
of sin, and put in the light of prophecy. Mahomet saw
behind him as well as before; his saliva sweetened the
water of the sea; the drops of his sweat were like pearls.
His body cast no shadow by sunlight or moonlight ; no
insect came near his person. There is nothing Arab in
these exaggerations ; they are all stamped with the Persian
taste ; we should completely mistake the character of the
legend of Mahomet, if we looked for it in such grotesque
narratives as these, which do no more harm to the purity
of the primitive Arab tradition than the flat amplifications

244 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
of the apocryphal gospels do to the incomparable beauty
of the canonical books.
The legendary elements of early Islamism have thus
remained always in the state of scattered and unauthorized
tradition. In place of a mysterious being suspended between
heaven and earth, without father or brother, we have
simply an Arab stained with all the defects of his national
character. In place of that lofty and inaccessible rigour
of supernaturalism which makes the God-Man say, "My
mother, and my brethren, are those who hear the word of
God and do it," we have here all the amiable weaknesses of
the human heart. At the battle of Autas, a captive girl
whom the Mussulmans were rudely dragging away, ex
claimed, " Respect me, I am nearly related to your chief."
They brought her to Mahomet. " Prophet of God," she
said to him, " I am thy foster-sister ; I am SchaymS, daughter
of HalimS, thy nurse, of the tribe of Benou-Sild." " What
proof can you give me of that ?" demanded Mahomet.
" A bite that you gave me on the shoulder," she replied,
" one day when I was carrying you on my back," and she
showed the scar. The sight recalling to Mahomet the
remembrance of his early childhood, and of the care that
he had received in a poor family of Bedouins, moved him
to tenderness. Tears wet his eyes. " Yes," said he to
SchaymS, " thou art my sister ;" and stripping off his mantle
he made her sit on it. Then he resumed : "If thou wilt
remain henceforth with me thou shalt live tranquil and
honoured among my people ; if thou desirest rather to go
back to thy tribe I will put thee in condition to pass thy
days in ease." Schayma" said that she preferred the desert
home. And Mahomet sent her away loaded with gifts.
There is no concealment of his infirmities and humilia
tions. He begins by being a commission merchant in
Syria, where he does a good business. No remarkable
sign distinguishes him., He has his sirname like any other (

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 245
man ; he is called el-Amin, the trusty. In his early youth
he fought with the Koreisch against the Hawazin, and the
Koreisch were cut to pieces as completely as if he had not
been there. In a race his camel is distanced by the camel
of a Bedouin, and he feels a lively chagrin thereat. Arabia
has not felt obliged to exalt her prophet at the expense of
humanity, or to withdraw his affections from tribe, family,
and others yet humbler. The Mussulman historians tell us
that he loved his horse and his camel, that he dried their
sweat with his sleeve. When his cat was hungry or thirsty
he rose to let her in, and he was attentive in his care of an
old cock that he kept in his house as protection against
the evil eye. At home he appears to us like a very
respectable father of a family. Often taking by the hand
Hasan and Hosein, offspring of the marriage of Ali and
his daughter Fatima, he made them leap and dance, repeat
ing to them childish phrases which have been preserved in
the legend.* When he saw them, in the very midst of a
preaehing, he went to embrace them, placed them near him
on a chair, and after a few words of apology, on the score
of their innoeence, resumed his discourse. After the con
version to Islamism of Benou-Temim, one of their prin
cipal chiefs, Cays, son of Achim, being at Medina, came
into Mahomet's house one day, and found him holding on
his knees a little girl whom he covered with kisses. " What
sheep is this you are smelling of?" he asked. "It is my
child," Mahomet answered. " Good lord !" replied Cays,
" I have had a great many little girls like that : I buried
them all alive without smelling one of them." " Wretch !"
cried Mahomet. "God must have taken every senti
ment of humanity out of thy heart ; thou knowest

* I need not say that I am far from attaching historical value to these
stories ; I merely insist on the character which the Arabs have assigned to
their prophet, and on the general eomplexioa of the legend.

246 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
nothing of the sweetest joy it is given to man to expe
rience." His biographers take no more care than he took him
self to hide his ruling passion. " Two things in the world,"
said he, "have had a charm for me — women and per
fumes ; but I find pure felicity only in prayer." This was
the only point on which he deviated from his own laws and
claimed his privilege as a prophet. Contrary to all his
prescriptions, he had fifteen wives, some say twenty-five.
In such a household, passages of a most delicate nature
could not fail to arise. Add that the keenest jealousy
seems to have been one of the traits of his character. A
verse in the Coran expressly forbids his wives to marry
again after his death. In his last sickness, he said to
Aischa : " Would you not be content to die before me and
to know that it was I that wrapped you in the shroud,
that prayed over you, that laid you away in the tomb?" "I
should like that well enough," replied Aischa, " if I had not
an idea that on your return from my funeral you would
come here and console yourself for my loss with some
other of your wives." That sally often made the prophet
smile. The episode of his marriage with Maria, the Copte, is
one of the most singular. A Coptic woman, - a slave, a
Christian, found herself preferred for many nights to the
noble daughters of Abou-Bekr and of Omar, of the purest
Koreisch blood. This choice raised a regular mutiny in
the harem, on^ occasion of which God made the following
revelation : " 0 apostle of God, wherefore, with a view to
pleasing thy wives, wouldst thou abstain from that which
God allows ? The Lord is good and pitiful ; he annuls ill
considered oaths. He is thy master ; he has knowledge
and wisdom." Thus authorized to punish the rebels, the
prophet repudiated them for one month, which he devoted
wholly to Maria. It was only on the active urgency of

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 247

/

AbourBekr and of Omar that he consented to take back
their daughters after he had admonished them by this other
verse : " If you make opposition to the prophet, know that
God declares for him. He will simply have to repudiate
. all of you, and the Lord will give him better wives than
you are — good Mussulmans, pious, submissive, devoted."
The scandal was much more serious on occasion of the
marriage of Mahomet with Zeynab. She was already
married to Zeyd, the adopted son of the prophet. One
day when the latter came to visit Zeyd he found Zeynab
alone, and clad in light vestments which hardly concealed
the beauty of her form. His emotion found vent in words :
"Praise to God who disposes of hearts." He then went
away ; but the meaning of the exclamation did not escape
Zeynab, who reported it to Zeyd. He ran straightway to
tell Mahomet that he was ready to put away his wife. The
prophet at first opposed his intention ; but Zeyd insisted.
" Zeynab, said he, proud of her rank, assumed towards him
a tone of haughtiness which destroyed the happiness of
their union. In spite of the custom that forbade Arabs
marrying the wives of their adopted sons, Zeynab a few
months after this took rank among the wives of the
prophet. A verse or two of the Coran silenced the mur
murs of the rigid Mussulmans, and the accommodating
Zeyd saw his name written in the holy book.
On the whole," Mahomet seems to us a gentle man,
sensible, faithful, free from hate. His affections were sin
cere ; his character in general was disposed to benevolence.
When his hand was pressed in greeting, he responded
cordially to the grasp, and never was first to withdraw his
hand. He saluted little children, and showed a great ten
derness of heart for women and weak persons. " Paradise,"
he said, " lies at mothers' feet." Neither ambitious thoughts
nor religious raptures dried up in him the springs of per
sonal feeling. Nothing could be more unlike that am-

248 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
bitious and heartless machiavellism which in stern Alexan
drine verse explains its plans to Zopyrus —
" Je dois regir en dieu l'univers prevenu ;
Mon empire est detruit, si l'homme est reconnu."
On the contrary, the man is, at home, always unveiled. .
He had preserved the sobriety of the Arab manners ; no
air of majesty about him. His bed was a plain cloak,
and hid pillow a skin filled with date leaves. He was seen
milking his own ewes ; and to adjust his robes and his sandals,
he seated himself on the ground. His whole demeanour
belies the character of adventurer and desperado, that is
commonly ascribed to him. He shows himself habitually
feeble, irresolute, distrustful of himself. M. Weil goes so
far as to call him poltroon ; it is certain that in general he
advanced timidly, and almost always resisted the eager
ness of his companions. His precautions in battle were
quite unworthy of a prophet. He put on two coats of
mail, and wore on his head a casque with a vizor that com
pletely covered his face. At the rout of Ohod, his bear
ing was as unbecoming as envoy of God as it could be ;
thrown down in a ditch he owed his life purely to the
devotion of the Ansar, who covered him with tbeir bodies,
and he picked himself up all stained with blood and mire.
His extreme caution peeps out at every step. He listened
willingly to advice, and paid great deference to it. Often
he evidently yielded to the pressure of public opinion, and
allowed himself to be drawn into steps which his prudence
censured. His disciples, having a much higher opinion of
his prophetic gifts than he had, and believing in him
far more than he believed in himself, could not understand
these hesitancies and calculations.
All the energy that was displayed in the foundation
of the new religion belonged to Omar. Omar is truly the
Saint Paul of Islamism, the sharp and decisive sword.
There can be no doubt that the reserved nature. of Maho-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 249
met would have compromised the success of his work if he
had not lighted on this impetuous disciple, always ready to
draw the sword against those who did not without ex
amination accept the religion whose most ardent persecu
tor he himself had been. The conversion of Omar was the
decisive point in the progress of Islamism. Until then
the Mussulmans had practised their religion in secret, and
in public had not dared avow their faith. Omar's audacity,
his ostentation in confessing himself a Mussulman, the
terror he inspired, gave them courage to appear in open
daylight. It seems that Mahomet had never looked beyond
the horizon of Arabia, nor dreamed that his religion could
be congenial to others than Arabs. The conquering prin
ciple of Islamism, the idea that the world ought to become
Mussulman, is Omar's thought. He it is, who, after the
death of Mahomet, ruling in reality under the name of the
feeble Abou-Bekr, at the moment when the prophet's
work, hardly sketched, is about falling in pieces, stops the
desertion of the Arab tribes and gives to the new religion
its final character of fixity. If the heat of an impetuous
temperament, clinging with frenzy to a dogma, can be
called faith, Omar was really the,, most energetic of be
lievers. Never did man believe so fiercely ; never did
man spend so much rage in the name of the indubitable.
We frequently see a need for hating, bring to religion such
complete, decisive characters ; for of all pretexts for hatred,
religion is the one which men feel most security in adopting.
The rdle of prophet has always its thorns, and in the face
of fellow-countrymen thus disposed to find fault with him,
Mahomet must have had painful passages to traverse. He
got over them generally with a good deal of adroitness,
avoiding all overdoing of his part, and taking care not to
venture too far. It might seem surprising that an envoy
of God should be defeated, should see his anticipations
baffled, should carry off half victories. In the grand super-

250 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
natural legends things are very differently managed ; there
all is sharply cut, absolute, as is fitting when God takes
part. It was too late to take things on so high a key ; for
this reason, in the life of this last of the prophets, every
thing goes half-way and little by little, in an altogether
human and historical fashion. He is beaten, he is deceived,
he recoils, he corrects himself, he contradicts himself. Mus
sulmans acknowledge as many as two hundred and twenty-
five contradictions in the Coran ; that is to say, two hun
dred and twenty-five passages which later were repealed to
meet a different policy.
To ¦ the features in Mahomet's life which to our eyes
would be unpardonable spots on his morality, let us refrain
from applying an oVer rigorous criticism. s It is evident
that most of these acts did not make on his contemporaries,
and do not make on Oriental historians, the same impres
sion they make on us. Still, it must be confessed that, on
the admission of Mussulmans, Mahomet, in many cases,
wrought evil with full consciousness, knowing perfectly
well that he was obeying his own will, and not the inspira
tion of God. He permits brigandage ; he commands assas
sinations ; he lies and allows lying in the strategy of war.
A crowd of cases could be quoted in which he palters with
morality in the interest of policy. One of the most singu
lar, surely, is that when he promises in advance to Othman
plenary indulgence for all the sins he may commit till the
day of his, death, as compensation for a great pecuniary
sacrifice. He was especially pitiless towards people that
laughed. The only woman on whom he exercised severity
at the taking of Mecca was the musician Ferlena, who was
in the habit of singing the satirical verses that were com
posed against him. Yery characteristic, too, is his conduct
to one of his secretaries. This man, who wrote the Coran
under the prophet's dictation, knew too much about the
working of his inspiration for a very lively interchange of

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 251
•
confidence. Mahomet did not like him ; he accused him
of altering words and perverting ideas, so that the secre
tary, troubled by sinister presentiments, took flight and
abjured Islamism. On the taking of Mecca, he fell again
into the hands of the Mussulmans. With great difficulty
his pardon was extorted from Mahomet, and when the
apostate had retired, he angrily expressed his discontent
that they had not delivered him from that man.
There would likewise be some injustice in judging rigor
ously, and in accordance with our moral ideas, those acts
of Mahomet which, in our time, would be called cheats. It
is impossible to imagine to what an extent conviction, and
even nobleness of character, may be associated in the Mus
sulman with a certain degree of imposture. Did not the
chief of the sect of Wahhabites, Abd-el-Wahhab, a true
deist, the Socinus of Islamism, inspire his soldiers with the
blindest confidence, by giving them, before the battle, a
passport, signed by his own hand, and addressed to the
treasurer of paradise, desiring him to admit them at sight
and without question ? All the founders of the Khouan,
or religious orders of Algeria, combine the double charac
ter of ascetics and of audacious charlatans. Sidi-ATssa, the
most extraordinary of these modern prophets, Sidi-A'issa,
whose legend has reached almost the proportions of that of
Mahomet, was a mere juggler and exhibitor of beasts, who
was skilled in turning his trade to profit, and nobody who
has travelled -in Algeria will believe that the Aissaoua are
dupes of their own tricks.
Assuredly, it would be bad taste to compare Mahomet
with impostors of this low sta*mp. We must, however,
confess, that if the first condition of being a prophet is that
a man shall cheat himself, Mahomet does not deserve that
title. His whole life displays a thoughtfulness, a design, a
policy, which scarcely belong to the character of an enthu
siast haunted by divine visions. Never was head clearer

252 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
than his ; never was man more master of his thought. We
should state the question narrowly and superficially were
we to ask if Mahomet believed in his oxon mission: for, in
one sense, faith alone is capable of sustaining an innovator
in the struggle he maintains for his chosen idea ; in another
sense, it is absolutely impossible to admit that a man with
a tolerably clear conscience could believe that he had the
seal of prophecy between his two shoulders, and that he
received from the angel Gabriel the inspiration that came
from his passions and from his premeditated designs. M.
Weil and Mr. Washington Irving suppose, not without
reason, that in the first phase of his prophetic career a truly
holy enthusiasm filled his breast, and that the period of
policies came later, when the struggle and the sense of diffi
culties to be overcome had rubbed off the first delicacy of
his inspiration. The last chapters of the Coran, so glowing
in poetry, must be the expression of his artless conviction,
while the first chapters, loaded with disputes, with contra
dictions, with abuse, must be the work of his practical and
reflecting age. It cannot be denied that the earliest mani
festations of his prophetic genius were stamped with a grand
character of saintliness. He was seen alone in prayer among
the desert valleys in the environs of Mecca. Ali, son of
Abou-Talib, without the knowledge of his father and un
cles, sometimes went with him and prayed with him, imi
tating his gestures and his attitudes. One day Abou-Talib
surprised them thus engaged. " What are you about ?" he
said to them ; " what sort of religion are you practising
here?" "The religion of God, of his angels, of his pro
phets," replied Mahomet* "the religion of Abraham."
How grand he is, too, in the first trials of his apostolate !
One evening, after a day passed in preaching, he entered
his house without having met a single individual, man or
woman, free or slave, that did not load him with insults
and repel his exhortations with scorn. Beaten down, dis-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 253
couraged, he wrapped himself in his mantle and threw him
self on a mat. Then it was that Gabriel revealed to him
the beautiful chapter : " 0 thou that envelopest thyself in
a cloak, arise and preach !" Still, this perfume of sanctity
appears at rare intervals only in his period of activity.
Perhaps he recognized that moral sentiment and purity of
soul are not sufficient in the struggle with passion and
interest, and that the religious thought, from the moment
it aspires to make proselytes, is obliged to borrow the often
indelicate allurements of its adversaries. It seems, at least,
that after having believed unreservedly in his prophetic
gift, he afterwards lost his spontaneous faith, and neverthe
less continued walking, guided by reflection and will, not
so great as he had been ; very much as Jean d'Arc resumed
her womanhood as soon as she had lost her first ingenuous
ness. Man is too feeble to carry a divine mission long, and
they only are immaculate whom God has early relieved of
the burden of an apostolate.
A stranger question, perhaps, and yet one that criticism
is forced to raise : To what point did the disciples of Maho
met believe in the prophetic mission of their master ? It
may seem strange to challenge the absolute conviction of
men whom the impulse of their faith drove at the first
bound to the very ends of the earth. Important distinc
tions, however, must be made here. In the circle of the
primitive believers, among the Mohadjir and the Ansa\r,*
faith was, we must allow, all but absolute ; but if we leave
this small group, which did not number more than a few
thousand men, we find Mahomet surrounded, through all
the rest of Arabia, with the most undisguised incredulity.
The antipathy of the Meccans towards their fellow-country-

* The Mohadjir were Meccans who attended Mahomet in his flight ; the
Ansa-r were inhabitants of Medina who welcomed him and became his defend
ers against his own fellow-citizens.

254 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
man was never completely overcome. The epicureanism
which prevailed among the wealthy Koreisch, the light,
libertine spirit of the poets then in vogue, left no room for
any profound conviction. As to the other tribes, it is cer
tain that they embraced Islamism solely as a form, asking
no questions about the doctrines they were expected to
believe, and attaching no importance to them. They saw
no great inconvenience in pronouncing the formula of
Islam, except that of forgetting it when the prophet was
gone. When Khalid appeared among the Djadhima and
called on them to adopt the faith of the prophet, the good
people knew so # little what it was all about that they
thought he was talking of Sabeism, and flung down their
arms, crying : " We are Sabeans !" The fierce Thakif de
vised a singular compromise to avoid the shame of conver
sion : they consented to submit to the new law on condi
tion that they might keep their idol Lit three years. This
condition being refused, they asked to be allowed to keep
LSt one year, — six months, — one month. Their pride
insisted on a concession. They finally brought themselves
down to request an exemption from prayer. No less curious
is the conversion of the Temimites. Their ambassadors
presented themselves haughtily, and approaching the cham
bers of the prophet and his women, cried : " Come out,
Mahomet ; we have come to propose to you a match for
glory.* We have brought our poet and orator!" Maho
met came out, and a ring was made round the players."
The orator Otarid and the poet Zibrican exalted — one in
rhymed prose, the other in verse — the advantages of their
tribe. Cays and Hassan, sons of Thabet, answering with

* The poetical tournaments were called matches of glory, or Moufakhara,
in which each tribe was represented by a poet charged to make good its title
to preeminence. Victory rested with the tribe whose poet chose the strongest
and most felicitous expressions.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 255
improvisations in the same metre and with the same rhyme,
maintainetl so energetically the superiority of the Mussul
mans that the Temimites confessed themselves beaten.
" Mahomet is truly a man favoured of heaven," said they ;
" his orator and poet have vanquished ours." And they
became Mussulmans. All the conversions were of this
kind. Conditions were made ; something was given and
something was received. The old Amir, son of Tofayle,
having come to visit Mahomet, said to him : " What will
be my rank if I embrace Islamism ?" " That of other Mus
sulmans," replied Mahomet; "thou wilt have the same
rights and the same duties as the rest." " This equality
does not satisfy me. Declare me your successor in the
command of the nation, and I give in my adherence to
your beliefs." " It is not for me to dispose of the command
when I am dead ; God will give it to whom he pleases to
appoint." " Yery well ; let us divide the power now ;
reign thou over the cities, over the Arabs who have fixed
abodes ; let me reign over the Bedouins." When Maho
met declined assenting to these conditions, Amir refused to
become a Mussulman. ,
After the death of Mahomet especially, one may see how
feeble was the conviction that gathered round him the
different Arab tribes ; an apostasy en masse had well nigh
occurred. Some said that Mahomet, if he had really been
sent by God, would not have died ; others pretended that
his religion was to last only during his lifetime. Hardly
had the rumour of his approaching end got abroad than
a host of prophets appeared all over Arabia; each tribe
wanted to have its own — like the Koreisch ; the example was
contagious. Almost all these prophets, however, were but
intriguing subalterns, wholly unable to take the initiative
in religion. Addressing themselves to the tribes that were
simple and far less refined than the Meccans, they had
at command a few tricks of legerdemain which they showed

256 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
in proof of their divine mission. One of them, Moseilama,
ran about the country exhibiting a phial with a narrow
throat, into which he had introduced an egg by a process
which he had learned of a Persian juggler. He recited
also rhymed phrases which he gave out as verses of a
second Coran. Who would believe it ? This vile impos
tor for several years kept in check all the Mussulman forces
banded around Abou-Bekr, and held the destiny of Maho
met in the balance. He found a formidable rival in the
prophetess Sedjah, who had succeeded in collecting a
powerful army of Temimites. Moseilama, hard pressed
in Hadjr, saw no other means of disarming his fair rival
than to propose to her a conference, which was eagerly
accepted. From that conference the prophet and prophetess
issued, man and wife. After three days given to Hymen,
Sedjah went back to her camp, where her soldiers earnestly
questioned her on the results of her interview with
Moseilama. — I recognized in him, she replied, a true pro
phet and I have married him. — Does Moseilama present
us with a nuptial gift? asked the Temimites. — He said
nothing about that, Sedjah answered. — It would be a shame
to thee and to us, they rejoined, that he should marry our
prophetess without making us a present. Go back to him
and claim for us a gift. — Sedjah went, presented herself
at the gate of Hadjr, and finding it barricaded, sent a
summons to her husband, who appeared on the wall. A
herald made him acquainted with the demand of the Temi
mites. — Yery good, responded Moseilama, you shall be
satisfied, I charge you to publish the following procla
mation : " Moseilama, prophet of God, grants absolution to
the Behou-Temim from the first and second of the five
prayers which his brother Mahomet imposed on them." —
The Temimites took the dispensation seriously, and it is
contended that since then they have omitted the morning
and the evening prayer.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 257
From these recitals we may judge how little depth the
religious movement had among the Arabs.* Outside'of a
very meagre company the movement had absolutely no
dogmatic power. There is a story that after a victory
Omar ordered that each soldier's share of booty should be
riieasured by the portion of the Coran that he knew by
heart. When the test was applied it was discovered that
the bravest of the Bedouins could recite correctly no
more than the opening statement: "In the name of God
kind and merciful," which made the assistants laugh a
good deal. These strong and simple natures understood
nothing of mysticism. In another quarter, the Mussulman
faith had found, in the rich and haughty families of Mecca,
a centre of resistance over which it could not completely
triumph. Abou-Sofyan, the chief of this opposition, never
frankly; assumed the bearing of a genuine believer. At
his first interview with Mahomet, after the taking of Mecca
Mahomet said to him: — Well! do you confess now that
there is no God but Allah? — Oh yes, replied Abou-Sofyan.
— Will you not admit also that I am the messenger of
Allah? — Excuse my frankness, returned Abou-Sofyan, but
on that point I still retain some doubt. — A great many
pointed anecdotes testify to the tone of light scepticism
and raillery which the same personage always preserved in
regard to the new faith. A crowd of Meccans shared his
sentiments. There was at Mecca a large class of men,
witty, rich, fed on the ancient Arabic poetry, who were
radically incredulous. These men had too much good
taste and sagacity to make a very lively opposition to the

* The undevout character of the nomadic Arab has struck all travellers.
See, in particular, M d'Escayrac de Lature, "Le Desert et le Soudan,"
p. 340 etc. Certain portions of Arabia did not become Mussulman till the
beginning , of this century in consequence of the Wahhabite movement.
Religions generally find it easier to make conquests abroad than in the land
of their origin. 17

258 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
young sect; they embraced Islamism, retaining all the
time their profane usages. It is the party of the Mounafi-
Icoun or make-believe Mussulmans that play so conspicuous
a part in the Coran. At the battle of Honayn, where the
Mussulmans were put to rout, these false brethren did not
dissemble their malignant joy. — By my faith, said Calada,
I think that Mahomet is at the end of his magic this time.
Look at them, exclaimed Abou-Sofyan, they will run till
the sea stops them. — Mahomet knew very well how far to ,
rely on their sentiments ; but like a skilful politician, he
was satisfied with an outward submission, and even con
trived that in the division of spoils they should be more
favoured than the faithful, whom he was sure of.
The entire first century of Islamism was but a struggle
between the two parties which the preaching of Mahomet
raised up ; on one side, the faithful group of the Mohad
jir and the Ansar ; on the other side, the opposing party,
represented by the family of the Omeyyades, or of Abou-
Sofyan. The party of the true Mussulmans had all its
strength in Omar ; but after his assassination— that is to
say, twelve years after the death of the prophet — the oppos
ing party triumphed by the election of Othman, nephew
of Abou-Sofyan, Mahomet's most dangerous enemy. The
whole Khalifate qf Othman was a reaction against the pro
phet's friends, who were excluded from the administration
of affairs and violently persecuted. They never recovered
supremacy after that. The provinces could not endure
that the little aristocracy of the Mohadjir and the AnsUr
clustered together in Mecca and ;Medina should claim for
itself alone the right to elect the Khalif. Ali, the genuine
representative of the primitive tradition of Islamism, was
all his life an impracticable man, and his election was never
cordially acquiesced in by the provinces. From all quar
ters hands were outstretched to the Omeyyade familv,
which had become Syrian in habits and interests. Now,

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 259
the orthodoxy of the Omeyyades was gravely suspected.
They drank wine, they practised the pagan rites, made no
account of tradition, of the Mussulman manners, or of the
sacred character of the friends of Mahomet. This explains
the astonishing spectacle presented by the first generation
of the Hegyra, which was completely occupied in extermi
nating the primitive Mussulmans, the true fathers of Islam
ism. Ali, the saintliest of men, the adopted son of the pro
phet; Ali, whom Mahomet had proclaimed his vicar, is
pitilessly butchered. Hoseim and Hassan, his sons, whom
Mahomet had held on his knees and covered with kisses,
are butchered. Ibn-Zobeir, the first-born of the Mohadjir,
who received as his first nutriment the saliva of the apestle
of God, is butchered. The primitive believers, collected
about the Caaba, continue the Arab life there, passing the
day talking in the square and marching in procession round
the black stone ; but they have lost their power utterly,
and the Omeyyades never heed them till they think they
can force them into their sanctuaries. It was a strange
scandal, that last siege of Mecca, when the Mussulmans of
Syria were seen setting fire to the coverings of the Caaba,
and making it crumble under the dint of their cross-bows.
It is said that when the first stone was hurled against the
holy building the roll of thunder was heard ; the Syrian
soldiers trembled ; " On, on !" shouted their chief; " I know
the clim'ate of this country ; storms are very frequent at
this season." At the same time seizing the cords of the
balista, he worked them himself.
From all sides, then, we come to this singular result:
that the Mussulman movement was started almost without
religious faith ; that, setting aside a small number of faith
ful disciples, Mahomet really wrought very little conviction
in Arabia, and that he never succeeded in breaking down
the opposition represented by the Omeyyade party. This
party, at first repressed b}' the energy of Omar, after the

260 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
death of that terrible believer decidedly carries all before
it, and causes Othman to be elected ; this party opposes an
invincible resistance to Ali, and at last sacrifices him to its
hate ; this party, finally, triumphs by the accession of the
Omeyyades, and goes on to slaughter, even in the Caaba,
the last remnant of the primitive and pure generation.
Hence, also, the indefiniteness in which all the dogmas of
the Mussulman faith were floating as late as the twelfth
century ; hence that bold philosophy which proclaimed
without evasion the sovereign rights of reason ; hence
those numerous sects sometimes bordering on open and
avowed infidelity: Karmathians, Fatimites, Ismaelites, Dru
ses, Haschischins, Zendiks, secret sects with double faces,
allying fanaticism with incredulity, license with religious
enthusiasm, the audacity of the free thinker with the super
stition of the initiate. Not till the twelfth century did
Islamism really triumph over the undisciplined elements
which fermented in its bosom, and then it triumphed by
the accession of the Ascharite theology, more severe in its
methods, and by the violent extermination of philosophy.
Since that epoch not a doubt has sprung up, not a protest
has been raised in the Mussulman world. The labour
incident to the creation of religions is laid entirely on the
first generation of believers, who furnish the necessary
ground of support for the credence of the future. The
faith is the work of time, and the cement of religious
edifices becomes hard with age.

H.

Human nature, taken as a whole, being neither all good
nor all bad, neither quite holy nor quite profane, the
offence, to criticism is the same, whether the religious move
ments of humanity are traced back to the play of passion

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 261
and of individual interest, or to the exclusive action of
higher motives. A revolution as thorough as Islamism
could not have been the fruit of an adroit combination, and
Mahomet is no more to be explained on the theory of im
posture and deceit than on that of illumination and enthu
siasm. To the eyes of the logician, who places himself at
an abstract point of view, and opposes truth and falsehood
to one another as absolute categories, there is no middle
term between the impostor and the prophet. But to the
eye of the critic, who places himself in the shifting and
intangible centre of reality, nothing that proceeds from
man is pure ; everything carries its original stain by the
side of its seal of beauty. Who can indicate the line that
separates, in his own moral sensations, the lovely from the
hateful, ugliness from beauty, the angelic vision from the
satanic, or even, on a certain plane, joy from grief? Reli
gions being the most complete works of human nature,
those which express it most harmoniously share in the con
tradictions of this nature, and exclude simple and absolute
judgments. To think of applying strictly to these capri
cious phenomena the scholastic categories, to judge them by
the plummet of the casuist, drawing a deep line between
the wisdom and the folly, is to misconceive their nature.
All goes on like a mirage in those Walpurgis nights, those
grand Sabbaths of all the passions and instincts. The holy
and the infamous, the charming and the hideous, the apos
tle and the juggler, heaven and hell, grasp handsj like the
visions of a troubled sleep, when all the images hidden in
the folds of fancy one after the other take form.
I have dwelt at length on the native infirmity of Islam
ism ; it would be unjust not to add that no religion and no
institution could stand the test to which we can subject this
one. What prophet could hold his own against criticism,
if criticism followed him into his closet, as ours does ?
Happy they whom mystery covers, and who fight en-

262 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
trenched behind the cloud! Perhaps, too, our age has
over-worked the term spontaneity in explaining pheno
mena which neither the experience of the present nor
the testimonies of history will enable us to comprehend.
Through reaction against a school that exaggerated the
creating power of the reflecting faculties, that regarded
language, religions, and moral beliefs, the primitive poesy,
as the fruit of deliberate invention, we, it seems, are too
much inclined to believe that all idea of composition is to
be excluded from the primitive poems, and all idea of im
posture from the formation of the grand legends. Instead
of saying that languages, beliefs, and popular poems made
themselves, it would be more correct to say that nobody
saw them made. The spontaneous is, perhaps, simply the
obscure ; for here is the only religion whose beginnings are
clear and historical, and in these beginnings we find a great
deal of reflection, of deliberation, of combination. God
forbid that in any case I should do injury to the majesty
of the past ! When criticism applies itself for the first time
to a fact or to a book which has captivated the minds of
many generations, it is almost always discovered that admi
ration has been misleading ; a thousand artifices are seen, a
thousand retouches, a thousand dashes which destroy the
grand impression of beauty or of sanctity that had seduced
the uncritical ages. What a day in the fortunes of Homer
that was when the unlucky Scholia of Yenice came to show
us the pencil-marks of Zenodotus and Aristarchus, and to
introduce us, as it were, to the committee by whom was
elaborated the poem which down to that time had seemed
the most direct emanation, the most limpid jet of personal
genius ! Must we say that criticism has destroyed Homer ?
We might as well say that progress in philosophy and in
aesthetics has destroyed antiquity, because it has demon
strated the nothingness of certain charms, long excessively
relished, of which antiquity was perfectly innocent. As

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 263
well might we say that exegesis has destroyed the Bible, •
because in place of the blunders of the vulgate it has dis
closed to us a literature sparkling with originality.
Criticism displaces admiration, but does not destroy it.
Admiration is an act essentially synthetic ; not by dissect
ing a lovely body do we discover its. loveliness ; not by
microscopic examination of the events of history and the
works of the human mind do we learn their high cha
racter. It may be affirmed that if we were to see the origin
of the great transactions of the past as near as the mise
rable agitations of the present, all prestige would vanish,
and there would remain nothing to adore ; but should we
not also seek the eternal beauty in this lower region of
individual inconstancy and feebleness ? Things are beauti
ful only through that which humanity sees in them, through
the feelings it attaches to them, the symbols it draws from
them. It is this that calls forth those absolute tones which
have no existence in fact. The reality is complex, mixed
of good and evil, at once admirable . and censurable, —
deserving of love and of hate. But that which carries
away the homage of humanity is simple, spotless, ad
mirable altogether. The critic exclusively occupied with
the truth, having no fears of consequences, since he knows
that the results of his researches do not penetrate to the
regions where illusion is necessary, has it in charge to
correct the mistakes with which humanity scarcely troubles
itself. He does not exaggerate the importance of this com
mission. Indeed what matters it if humanity in its admira
tion does commit errors in history, if it does make the men
it has adopted more beautiful and pure than they, actually
were? Its homage is no less meritorious for that, for
being paid to the beauty it supposes them to have and has
itself given to them. From the strictly historical point of
view the scholar alone has a right to admire ; but from the
moral point of view the ideal belongs to all. Sentiments

264 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
have their value apart from the reality of the object that
excites them, and it is doubtful if humanity ever shares
the scruples of the learned who will admire nothing till
they know exactly what it is.
After having done justice to the portion of clay in the
work of the founder of Islamism, I ought now to indicate
wherein this work was holy and legitimate, that is to say,
wherein it answered to the deepest instincts of human
nature, aud in particular to the needs of Arabia in the
seventh century.
Hitherto, Islamism has appeared in history as an at
tempt perfectly original and unprecedented. It was an
almost prescribed ceremony to introduce Mahomet as the
founder of the civilization, of the monotheism, and. even
(for an error so grave as this has been indefinitely repeated)
of the literature of the Arabs. Now, it may be said that
the Arab genius, far from beginning with Mahomet, finds
in him its last expression. I. know not in the whole history
of civilization a picture more gracious, more attractive,
more animated than that of Arab life before Islamism
as it is exhibited to us in the Moallakdt, and above all
in that admirable type of Antar ; boundless freedom of the
individual, complete absence of law and of force, an ex
alted sentiment, life wandering and chivalrous, fancy,
gaiety, archness, light and sensuous poetry, refinement of
tone. Now, this delicate flowering of the Arab life ended
precisely on the advent of Islamism. The last poets of
the grand school go out resisting fo the utmost the newly
born religion. Twenty years after Mahomet, Arabia is
humbled, outstripped by its conquered provinces. A hun
dred years after, the Arab genius is completely effaced ;
Persia triumphs through the accession of the Abassides;
Arabia disappears for ever from the world's stage, and while
her language and her religion are carrying civilization
from Malacca to Morocco, from Timbuctoo to Samarcand,

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 265
she, forgotten, driven back into her deserts, relapses into
what she was in the time of Ishmael. Thus in the life of
races there is one early, sudden resplendence of conscience,
a divine moment, when, prepared by a slow interior evolu
tion, they come to the light, produce their master-piece,
then fade out as if this grand effort had exhausted their
fertility. Mahomet is no more the founder of monotheism r than
of civilization and literature among the Arabs. The con
clusion from numberless facts noted for the first time by M.
Caussin de Perceval, is that Mahomet only followed the
religious movement of his time instead of leading it.
Monotheism, the worship of Allah the supreme (Allah
taala), seems to have been always the basis of the Arab
religion. The Semitic race never conceived of the govern
ment of the universe, otherwise than as an absolute mon
archy. Its theodicy has made no progress since the Book
of Job ; the sublimities and the aberrations of polytheism
have always been foreign to it. Some superstitions stained
with idolatry, which varied from tribe to tribe, had never
theless spoiled the purity of the patriarchal religion among
the Arabs, and in presence of religions more powerfully
organized, all the enlightened minds of Arabia were as
piring after a better worship. A people hardly arrives
at a conception of the insufficiency of its religious system
till it has foreign relations, and the epochs of religious
creation ordinarily follow the epochs when races have
intermingled. Now, in the sixth century, Arabia, till
then inaccessible, is opened at every point ; Greeks, Syrians,
Persians, Abyssinians, pour into it all at Once, The
Syrians carry thither writing ; the Abyssinians and the
Persians rule by turns in Yemen and Bahren. Many
tribes acknowledged the sovereignty of the Greek, Empe
rors, and received from them a local governor. Perhaps
the most singular episode in the ante-Islamic history is

266 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
that of the prince-poet Imroulcays who came to seek an
asylum in Constantinople, engaged in an amorous intrigue
with the daughter of Justinian, sang her praises in Arabic
verse, and died poisoned by the secret orders of the Court
of Byzantium. The diversity of religions fostered like
wise in Arabia a singular activity of ideas. Whole tribes
had embraced Judaism; Christianity numbered consi
derable churches at Nedjran, in the kingdoms of Hira and
of Ghassan. Everywhere, religion was the subject of dis
cussion. A curious monument of these controversies is pre
served for us in the dispute of Gregentius, Bishop of Zhefar,
with the Jew Herban. Finally, a kind of vague tolerance
and jumble of all the Semitic religions got established ; the
ideas of the one God, of paradise, of resurrection, of pro
phets, of sacred books, insinuated themselves by slow
degrees even among the pagan tribes. The Caaba became
the pantheon of all worships ; when Mahomet expelled the
images from the holy house, among the banished gods was
a Byzantine virgin painted on a column, holding her child
in her arms.
This great religious travail betrayed itself outwardly by
significant facts which announced an approaching birth.
A crowd of men dissatisfied with the ancient worship set
out on the search for a better religion, trying one after
another the different faiths that were extant, and in despair
of success, creating each for himself a religion in harmony
with their own moral deeds. Every religious phenomenon
is thus preceded by a sort of vague unrest and anticipation
which, in a few privileged souls, manifests itself in pre
sentiment and desire. Islamism had its John the Baptist
and its aged Simeon. It was the same in the case of
Buddhism. At the sight of the marvellous apparitions
which accompanied the birth of the Bouddha, an anchoret
of the Himalaya, possessing the fire transcendent sciences,
comes to Kapila, through the air, takes the child in his

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 267
arms, and recognizes in it the thirty -two signs of the grand
man, and the eighty marks of the Bouddha. Some years
before the preaching of Mahomet, while the Koreischites
were celebrating the feast of one of their idols, four men
more enlightened than the rest of their nation met apart
from the crowd and communicated to each other their
thoughts. "Our fellow countrymen," said they among them
selves, " are walking in a false way ; they have strayed from
the religion of Abraham. What is this pretended divinity
to which they sacrifice victims, and round which they make
solemn 'processions ? Let us seek for the truth, and to find
it, let us quit our country if we must, and explore strange
lands." The four personages who formed this project were
Waraca, son of Naufal, Othman, son of Howayrith, Obey-
dallah, son of Djahsch, and Zeyd, son of- Amr.
Waraca, in his frequent intercourse with the Christians
and the Jews, had picked up instruction superior to that
of his fellow-citizens. Adopting a very prevalent belief
he was persuaded that a messenger from God was soon
to appear on the earth, and that this messenger was to come
from the Arab nation. He had acquired a knowledge of
the Hebrew Scripture, and read the holy books. Khadidja,
his cousin, having related to him her husband's first vision, \
he declared that Mahomet was the prophet of the Arabs,
and predicted the persecutions that he should endure. Soon
after he died, having caught but a slight glimpse of the
dawn of Islamism.
Othman, son of Howayrith, set off on his travels, ques
tioning all from whom he hoped to gain information. Some
pious Christians excited in him a taste for the faith of Jesus
Christ. He presented himself at the Court of the Emperor
of Constantinople,, and there received baptism. Obeydallah,
son of Djahsch, after fruitless efforts to get at the religion
of Abraham, remained in uncertainty and doubt, till the
moment that Mahomet began his preaching. At first he

268 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
thought he recognized in Islamism the true religion he
was in search of; but very soon he abandoned it, to devote
himself finally to Christianity. As to Zeyd, son of Amr,
he repaired every day to the Caaba and prayed God to
enlighten him. He was seen, his back leaning against the
wall of the temple, absorbed in pious meditation, which he
came out of, crying, " Lord ! if I knew in what way thou
wouldest be served and adored, I would obey thy will;
but I do not know." Then he prostrated himself on his
face, to the earth. Adopting neither the ideas of the Jews
nor those of the Christians, Zeyd made a religion for him
self, trying to conform to what he believed to have been
the worship of Abraham. He rendered homage to the
unity of God, publicly attacked false divinities, - and de
claimed energetically against superstitious practices. Per
secuted by his fellow-citizens, he took flight and travelled
over Mesopotamia and Syria, everywhere consulting the
men who were devoted to religious studies in the hope of
recovering the religion of the patriarchs. A learned Christian
monk to whom he had attached himself, inform'ed him, they
say, of the appearance of an Arab prophet who preached the
religion of Abraham in Mecca. Zeyd made haste on his
way to go and hear the apostle ; but> he was stopped on the
road by a band of robbers, pillaged, and put to death.
Thus, in all quarters there was the presentiment of a
great religious renovation; in all quarters people were
saying that Arabia's time was come. Prophecy is the
form that all the great revolutions among the Semitic peo
ple assume, and, to tell the truth, prophecy is but the
necessary consequence of the monotheistic system. Primi
tive people, ever thinking themselves in immediate rela
tions with Deity, and viewing the great events of the phy
sical and moral order as effected by the direct action of
higher beings, have had but two conceptions of God's influ
ence on the government of the universe ; either the divine

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 269
force takes flesh in a human form, — this is the Indian Ava
tar, — or God chooses for his organ a privileged mortal,—
this is the Nabi, or Semitic prophet. Indeed, the Semitic
system so widens the distance from God to man that the
communication from one to the other can be effected only
by an interpreter, remaining always perfectly distinct from
the being who inspires him. To say that Arabia was to
enter on an era of great things was consequently to say
that it was to have its prophet, like the other Semitic fami
lies. Many individuals, anticipating the fulness of time,
believed, or pretended to believe, that they were the pro
phet announced. Mahomet grew up in the midst of this
movement. His journeys into Syria, his intercourse with
the Christian monks, and perhaps the personal influence of
his uncle Waraca, so well versed in the Jewish and the
Christian Scriptures, bad early initiated him into all the
religious perplexities of his age. He could neither read
nor write, but the biblical histories had reached him
through the narratives which had made a lively impres
sion on his mind, and which, dwelling in his memory as
vague recollections, left full liberty to his imagination.
The reproach that has been cast on Mahomet of liaving
altered the biblical narratives is wholly misdirected. Ma
homet took these recitals as they were given to him, and
the narrative portion of the Coran is simply the reproduc
tion of rabbinical traditions and of the apocryphal gospels.
The "Gospel of the Infancy," in particular, which was
very early translated into Arabic, and which has been
preserved only in that language, had acquired an immense
importance among the Christians of the remote regions of
the East, and had almost obliterated the canonical gospels.
It is certain that the stories we speak of were among Maho
met's most potent means of influence. Nadhr, son of H&-
rith, undertook sometimes to compete with him. He had
resided in Persia, and knew the legends of the ancient

270 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
kings of that country. When Mahomet, collecting about
him a circle of hearers, presented to them features in the
life of the patriarchs and prophets, examples of the divine
vengeance as having fallen on impious nations, Nadhr took
up the word after him, and said : " Hear now something
that is much better worth listening to than those matters
which Mahomet has been entertaining you with." Then
he recounted the most astonishing incidents -in the heroic
history of Persia, the marvellous exploits of the heroes
Roustem and Isfendiar, adding: "Are the narratives' of
Mahomet finer than mine ? He retails to you old legends
that he has collected from the lips of men wiser than he,
just as I have gathered up in my voyages and committed
to writing the stories I have told you." %
Long before Islamism the Arabs had adopted the tra
ditions of the Jews and Christians to explain their own
origin. The legend by which the Arabs connected them
selves with Ishmael has often been regarded as possessing
a historical value, and furnishing a powerful confirmation
of the Biblical narratives. This, in the eyes of a severe
criticism, is inadmissible. It cannot be doubted that the
biblical reputations of Abraham, Job, David, Solomon,
began with the Arabs towards the fifth century. The
Jews (book people) had till then kept the archives of the
Semitic race, and the Arabs willingly confessed their supe
riority in erudition. The book of the Jews spoke of the
Arabs, attributed to thein a genealogy ; nothing more was
necessary to induce them to accept it with confidence;
such is the prestige of written texts among artless people,
always eager to attach themselves to the beginnings of
more civilized people. They say that at the period when
Mahomet began to attract attention, the Meccans had an
idea of sending deputies to Medina to ask the rabbins
of that city what they were to think of the new prophet.
The deputies depicted the person of Mahomet to the doc-.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 271'
tors, gave them some exposition of his discourses, and
added : " You are wise men who read books ; what think
yo.u of this man ?" The doctors replied : " Ask him :
Who were certain young people in times past, whose
story is a marvel? What personage is there who hath
reached the limits of the earth, East and West? What
is the soul ? If he answers these three questions in such
and such a way, he is verily a prophet. If he answers
otherwise, or if he cannot answer, he is an impostor." Maho-
inet resolved the first enigma by the story of the Seven
Sleepers which was popular in all the East ; the second
by Dhoul-Carnayn, a fabulous conqueror who is no
other than the legendary Alexander of the Pseudo-Cal-
listhenes ; when it came to the third he made, alas ! per
haps all the reply one can make; "The soul is a thing
the knowledge of which is reserved to God. To man
is granted the possession of a very feeble glimmer of know
ledge." The dogmatic portion of Islamism supposes still less of
genius than the legendary portion. Mahomet was com
pletely destitute of invention in this sense. A stranger to
the refinements of mysticism, he could establish none but
a very simple religion, limited on all sides by common
sense, timid like everything born of reflection, narrow
like everything in which the tsentiment of the real pre
dominates. The dogma of Islamism, at least previous to
the comparatively modern invasion of theological sub
tleties, hardly goes beyond the simplest positions of natural
religion. No pretension to the transcendental, none of
those bold paradoxes of supernaturalism in which the
fancy of the races endowed with the sense of the infinite
disports itself with so much originality, no priesthood, no1
worship beyond the act of prayer. All the ceremonies
of the Caaba, the circuits in procession, pilgrimage, the
omra, the sacrifices in the valley of Mina, the thronging to

272 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
mount Arafat, were established in all their details long
before Mahomet.
Pilgrimage especially had from time immemorial been
an essential element of Arab life ; it was what the Olympic
games were to Greece, the national assemblage, at once
religious, commercial, poetic. The valley of Mecca had
thus become the central point of Arabia, and in spite of
the division and the rivalry of the tribes, the supremacy
of the family that guarded the Caaba was implicitly ac
knowledged. It was a serious movement, and one that
made almost an era in the history of the Arabs, when a
bolt was put on the sacred house. From that time author
ity attached to the possession of the keys of the Caaba.
The Koreisch Cossay having intoxicated the Khosaite
Abou-Ghobschan, keeper of the keys, bought them of him,
says the legend, for a bottle of wine, and thus founded the
metropolitan authority of his tribe. From this moment
begins the grand movement for the organization of the
Arab nation. Until then, people had only ventured to set
up tents in the sacred valley ; Cossay gathered the Ko
reisch there, reconstructed the Caaba, and was the true
founder of the City of Mecca. All the most important in
stitutions date from Cossay ; the nadwa, or central coun
cil sitting at Mecca ; the liwa, or flag ; the rifada, or alms
designed to pay the pilgrims' expenses ; the sicaya, or
superintendence of the waters, a most important office in a
country like the Hedjaz ; the nasaa, or intercalation of
complementary days in the calendar ; the hidjaba, or keep
ing of the keys of the Caaba. These functions, which in
cluded the whole political and religious institution of
Arabia, were exclusively reserved to the Koreisch. Thus
by the middle of the fifth century the germ of centralization
in Arabia is already planted, and the point whence the
religious and political organization of this country was to
start, is indicated in advance. Cossay, in one sense, esta-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 273
blished much more than Mahomet He was even regarded
as a sort of prophet,, and his will passed for an article of
religion. Hascheinyin the first half of the sixth century, completed >
the work of Cossay, and extended, in a surprising manner
the commercial relations of his tribe ; he established two
caravans, one in the winter to Yemen, the other in the sum
mer to Syria., Abd-el-Mottalib, son of Haschem, and grand
father of Mahomet, continued the traditional work of the
Koreisch oligarchy by the • discovery of the well of
Zemzem, the fountain which,.according to Arab legend, God
caused to gush up in the desert to quench .Ishmael's thirst.
The well of Zemzem, independently of the tradition: that
was attached to it, was a very important point in a valley
arid, and as much frequented as that of Mecca, and assured
preeminence to the family that appropriated it. The tribe
of Koreisch found itself, in- this way, raised, like the tribe
of Judah among the Hebrews, to the rank of ¦ a privileged
tribe destined to accomplish the unity of the nation. Maho
met then did but crown the work of his ancestors ; in
politics as in religion he invented nothing, but he carried
out with energy the aspirations of his age. It remains to
inquire what auxiliaries he found in the eternal instincts of
human nature, and how he was able to give to his work an
immoveable basis while relying on the frailties of the
heart. Independent of all dogmatic belief there are in man reli
gious needs from which incredulity itself cannot withdraw us.
It is astonishing sometimes that a religion can live so long
after the structure of its dogma has been undermined by
criticism ; but, in reality^ a religion is neither founded nor
overthrown by arguments ; it has its ground of being in
the most imperious needs of our nature, the need of loving,
the need of sufferirig, the need of believing. This is the
reason why woman is the essential element in all religious
18 .

274 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
foundations. Christianity has literally been founded by
women* Islamism, which is not precisely a holy religion*
but rather a natural, serious, liberal religion, a religion of
¦men, in a word, has, I confess, nothing comparable to the
admirable types of Magdalen, of Thecla ; nevertheless, this
cold and reasonable religion had seduction enough to
fascinate the devout sex. Nothing is more incorrect than
the idea generally diffused in the West touching the con?
dition assigned to woman by Islamism ; the Arab women;
in the time of Mahomet, in no wise resembled the stupid
creatures that people the harem of the Ottomans. In gene
ral, the Arabs, it is true, had a poor opinion of the moral
qualities of women, because the characteristics of woman
are exactly the opposite of those which the Arabs regard
as peculiar to the perfect man. We read in the Kitabr
el-AgMni that a chief of the tribe of Jaschkor, named
Moschamradj, having in an excursion against the Temi
mites, carried off a young girl of noble family, the uncle
of the young girl, Cays, son of Acim, went to reclaim her
of Moschamradj, offering him at the same time a ransom.
Moschamradj having given to the captive her choice to
remain with him or to be sent back to her family, the girl,
who was enamoured of her ravisher, preferred him to her
kindred. Cays went home, so stupefied and indignant at
the weakness of a sex capable of making such a choice,
that on coming to his tribe he caused to be buried alive two
daughters of tender age that he had, and swore that he
would treat likewise all the daughters that might be born
to him in the future. These simple and loyal natures could
not comprehend the passion that raises woman above the
exclusive affection for the tribe ; they could not regard her

* See the fine studies of M. Saint-Mark-Girardin on the part taken by
women in the beginning of Christianity in his " Essais de litterature et de
morale," t. ii.

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 275
otherwise than as a subordinate creaturej1 without indivi
duality. There were women who were mistresses of them
selves, enjoyed their own property, chose their own hus
band, and had the right to dismiss him when they thought
good. Many were distinguished for their poetical talent,
and for their literary tastes. Had not one woman, the
beautiful El-KhansEt, striven gloriously with the most
celebrated poets of the great century? Others made
their houses the resorts of literary men and people of wit.
Mahomet, in raising still higher the condition of a sex
whose charms touched him so keenly, was not rewarded
by ingratitude. The sympathy of women contributed not
a little to console him, in the early period of his mission,
for the affronts he received ; they saw him persecuted, and
they loved him. The first century of Islamism presents
many examples of truly remarkable women. Next to
Omar and Ali, the two principal figures of this epoch are
those of two women, Aischa and Fatima. A halo of sanc
tity burns about Khadidja, and it is indeed a highly honour
able testimony in Mahomet's favour, that, by a fact unique
in the history of prophecy, his divine mission should have
been first recognized by her who must have been best
acquainted with his weaknesses. When at the outset of
his preaching, accused of imposture and battling with scoff
ers, he came to confide to her his troubles, she consoled
him with tender words and rebuilt his shattered faith.
Khadidja, therefore, was never confounded in the memory
of Mahomet with the other wives who succeeded her. The
story goes, that one of these latter, jealous of so much con
stancy, ihaving one day asked the prophet if Allah had not
given him something that would make him forget the old
Khadidja, he answered : " No ; when I was poor she made
me rich ; when others accused me of falsehood she believed
in me ; when I was cursed by my nation she remained
faithful to me, and the more I suffered the more she loved

2:76 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
*
me.'' i- Later, when one .of his. wives wished to gain his
good: graces, she began by eulogizing Khadidja.
;. The touchstone of a religion, next to its women, are its
martyrsi The faGt is that -persecution is the first of religious
delights. It is so sweet to the heart of man to suffer for his
faith, that -the sweetness of it has sometimes been sufficient
to make believers. The consciousness of Christendom un
derstood this marvellously well when it created those admi
rable legends that tell of so many conversions wrought by
tha charm of suffering. Islamism, though it always re
mained a stranger, to this depth of sentiment, also reached,
now and then,- very, lofty traits in its stories of martyrs.
The slave Belai should have his place among the touching
heroes of the " Golden Legend." In the Mussulman's eyes
they are the true martyrs who have perished fighting for
true- religion. Although there is in this a confusion of ideas
which we cannot applaud, the soldier's death and the" mar
tyr's producing in us entirely different sensations, the Mus
sulman genius has succeeded in surrounding its dead with
a very noble poetry. That was a beautiful and grand
scene, for example, that was exhibited at the funeral obse
quies after the battle of Ohod. " Bury them without wash
ing off their gore!" cried Mahomet; "they shall appear
on the day of resurrection with their bloody wounds,
which will exhale the odour of musk, and I will bear
witness that they have died martyrs to the faith." The
standard-bearer Djafir had his two hands cut off, and fell
pierced with ninety, wounds, all received in front.. Maho
met carries this news to his widow. He takes the young
son of the martyr • on -his- knees and strokes his head in a
way that tells the whole story to the mother. " His two
hands have been. cut off," said he, "but in exchange God
will give him two wings of. emerald, with which he is now
flying whithersoever he will among the angels of paradise."
The conversions, are also in general managed with great

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS QF!; ISLAM. 277
skill;- Almost all of them remind us of St. PanTs. The
persecutor becomes the apostle ; the victim, worked up to
the paroxysm of his rage, -receives, the final- blow- that
stretches, him, full length, at the feet of -triumphant .grace;
The legend of the: conversion of Omar is, in this regard,-
an incomparable page of religious psychology. Omar had
been' the bitterest enemy of the Mussulmans;-- The1 terrible
fury that was his characteristic had made him the-bugbea]?
of the timid believers, and driven them to their hiding-
places. One day, in: a moment of transport, he went out
with the fixed intention of killing : Mahomet. On the way
he meets, Noaym, one of his kindred, who seeing -him
thus, sabre in hand, asks him whither he is going, and what
he .proposes to do. Omar discloses his design. " Thou art
carried away by passion," says. Noaym to him, "-why dost
thou not rather turn thy thoughts towards the correction
of the persons of thine own family, who have,' unknown
to thee, abjured the faith of their fathers?" : " And;these
members of my family, who are they ?" says Omar.
" Thy brother*in-law, Said, arid thy sister, Fa tima," replies
Noaym. Omar flies to the house of his sister. -•; Said and
Fatima were at that moment receiving > secret instructions
from a disciple, who was reading to them a chapter- from
the Coran, written on a leaf of parchment.: At the noise
of Omar's, steps the catechist hides himself in a^dark Con
ner. = Fatima slips the leaf under her robe "What's that
I heard you reciting in a low voice?" said Omar j coming in;
"Nothing; thou art\ deceived." .," You were reading
something, and I have, heard that you are connected; with
the sect of Mahomet." Saying these^words, Omar throws-
himself on his brother-in-law;: Fatima, would cover shim.
with her body, and both: exclaim : " Yes, we are: Mussul
mans!. We believe in God and his prophet- Murderous,
if thou wilt." Omar, striking blindly, smote, and severely
wounded- hia, sisterj Fatima. ¦ At the sight i of a woriiante

278 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
blood shed by his hands, the impetuous ydung man was all
at once softened. " Show me the writing that you were
reading," said he, with an apparent calmness. "I am
afraid," replied Fatima, " that thou wilt tear it in pieces."
Omar swore to return it uninjured. Hardly had he read
the first lines : " How beautiful that is 1" he exclaimed.
" How sublime ! Show me where the prophet is ; I go on
the instant to give myself up to him." Mahomet was at
that moment in a house situated on the hill of Safa, with
forty of his disciples, to whom he was unfolding his doc
trines. There is a knock at the door. One of the Mussul
mans looks out of the window. " It is Omar, with a sabre
by his side," he said, with terror. The consternation was
general. Mahomet bids them open the door ; he advances
towards Omar, takes him by his cloak, and drawing him
into the middle of the circle, says to him : " What motive
brings thee, son of Khattab ? Wilt thou persist in thine
impiety till the chastisement of heaven falls upon thee ?"
" I come," Omar responded, " to declare myself a believer
in God and his prophet." The whole assembly returned
thanks to heaven for this unhoped for conversion.
On quitting the faithful, Omar went directly to the house
of a certain Djemil, who passed for the greatest gossip in
Mecca. "Djehail," said he, "hear a piece of news. I am
a Mussulman ; I have adopted the religion of Mahomet."
Dje'mil made haste to the square of the Caaba, where the
Koreisch were assembled in conference. He arrived, bawl
ing at the top of his voice : " The son of Khattab is per
verted!" "Thou liest!" said Omar, who followed him
closely ; "I am not perverted, I am a Mussulman. I con
fess that there is no God but Allah, and that Mahomet is
his prophelb." His provocations in the end made the mis
creants furious, and they threw themselves upon him.
Omar bore the onset, and beating back his assailants, " by
God," he shouted, " if there were only three hundred Mus-

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 279
sulmans of us, we soon should see who would remain
masters of the tem'ple !" This is the same man who later
could not understand how people could transact business
with infidels ; and who, issuing, sabre in hand, from the
house where he had just seen Mahomet expire, declared
that he would break the head of anybody«who should dare
. to say that the prophet could die.
Finally, by his marvellous acquaintance with Arab
aesthetics, Mahomet created for himself an omnipotent en
gine of power over a people infinitely sensitive to the
charm of fine language. The Coran was the sign of a
literary revolution, as well as of a revolution in religion ;
it signalizes among the Arabs the transition from the versi
fied style to prose, from poetry to eloquence, crisis so im
portant in the intellectual life of a people. At the begin-
. ning of the seventh century the grand poetic age of Arabia
was passing away ; traCes of fatigue showed themselves in
all quarters ; the ideas of literary criticism appeared as a
sign of ill omen for genius. Antar, that Arab nature so
frank, so unspoiled, begins his Moallakat, very much as a
poet of the decadence might, with these words : " What
theme have not the poets sung ?" An immense astonish
ment greeted Mahomet when he appeared in the midst of
an exhausted literature, with his vivid and earnest recita
tions. The first time that Otba, son of Rebia, heard this
energetic language, sonorous, full of rhythm, though unver-
sified, he went back to his friends quite astonished.
" What is the matter?" they asked. " By my faith !" he
replied, " Mahomet has used towards me speech such as I
never heard. It is neither poetry, nor prose, nor the lan
guage of the magician, but it is penetrating." Mahomet
did not like the exceedingly refined prosody of Arab
poetry ; he committed faults of quantity when he quoted
verses, and. God himself took the responsibility of excus
ing him from it in the Coran. " We have not taught our

280 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
prophet versification." He repeats on all occasions that
he is ", neither a poet nor a magician. The common people,
in fact, were continually tempted to confound him with
these two classes of men ; and it is true that his rhymed
and sententious style had some, resemblance to that of the
magicians. It is» impossible for us, forsooth, to comprehend
the charm that the Coran exerted immediately on its ap
pearance. The. book seems to us declamatory, monotonous,
tedious ; the continuous reading of it is almost insupporta
ble ; but it must be remembered that Arabia, having never
possessed an idea of the plastic arts, or of high beauties of
composition, makes perfection of form consist exclusively
in the details of style. Language in its view is something
divine ; the most precious gift that God has made to the
Arab race. The most certain sign of its pre-eminence is
the Arab language itself, with its learned grammar, its
infinite wealth, its subtle delicacy.* It cannot- be doubted
that Mahomet owed his chief success to the originality -of
his language, and to the novel turn he gave to Arab elo
quence. The most important conversions, that of the poet
Lebid, for example, are wrought through the effect of cer
tain fragments of the Coran ; and to those who demanded
a "sign"f of him Mahomet, offers no other response than
the perfect purity of bis Arab speech,, and the fascination
of the new style of which he had the- secret.
Thus, Islamism, with a completeness of which it would
be hard to find another example, sums up the ideas, moral,
religious, aesthetic, in a word, the spiritual life of one great

* The Arabs fancy that their language alone has a grammar, and that all
other idioms are but vulgar dialects. The-Soheick 'Rifaa, in the narrative of
his travels in France, takes great pains to destroy this prejudice of chis fel
low-countrymen,, and assures them, that the French language, also, has rules,
refinements, and an academy.
f The word aiat, which designates the verses of the Coran, means' " sign"
or " miracle."

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 281
family of imankind. We need not ask from it either the
loftiness of spirituality which India and, Germany alone
have been acquainted with, or the feeling of proportion
and of perfect beauty which Greece has bequeathed : to the
Latin races, or that gift of fascination, strange, mysterious,
truly divine, which has united all civilized mankind,, with
out distinction of race, in the veneration, of one solitary
ideal originating in Judea. It would be pushing aesthetic
Pantheism to excess, were we to put all the products of
human nature on a footing of equality, and to place the
pagoda and the great temple on the same step of beauty's
ladder, because they are the result of an equally; original
and spontaneous conception. Human nature, it is true, is
always- beautiful, . but it is not always equally beautiful.
There is always the same descant, there are the same
concords and discords in the earthly and the divine .in-
. stincts, but there is not the same fulness nor the same sono- -
rousness. Islamism is evidently the product: of an infe
rior, and so to speak, a meagre combination of human
elements. For this reason, its conquests have all been on
the average plaae of human nature. The savage races
have been incapable of rising to it, and on the other side,
it has not satisfied people who carried in themselves the
seed of a stronger civilization. Persia, -the* only Indo-
European country in which Islamism- has obtained abso
lute dominion, did not adopt it without very essential
modifications made to accommodate it to her mystical
and .mythological tendencies. 'Its excessive simplicity has
everywhere been an obstacle to the truly fruitful develop
ment of -knowledge, of lofty poetry, of delicate morality.
But, if we ask ourselves, what would be the destinies
of Islamism in presence of a civilization- essentially inva
sive, and called, it would seem, to universal sway, as far
as the infinite diversity of the human species will permit
such a thing, we must admit, that thus far, nothing justi-

282 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
fies us in forming precise notions on this point. On one
side, it is certain, that if Islamism ever happens — I do not
say to disappear, for religions never die — but to lose the
high intellectual and moral guidance of an important part
of the world, it will succumb, not beneath the assault of
another religion, but beneath the iSlows of the modern
sciences with their habits of rational and critical inquiry.
On another side, it should be borne in mind, that Islamism,
very unlike those lofty towers which stiffen against the
storm, and fall all at once, has in its very flexibility, hidden
forces of resistance. The Christian nations, in order to
effect their religious reforms, have been obliged violently
to break their unity, and to set themselves in open revolt
against the central authority. Islamism, which has neither
Pope, nor councils, nor bishops divinely instituted, nor
well-appointed clergy ; Islamism, which has never sounded
the formidable abyss of infallibility, need be less afraid,
perhaps, of the uprising of rationalism. Indeed, what is
there for criticism to attack ? The legend of Mahomet ?
That legend has scarcely more sanction than the pious
beliefs which one who is in the bosom of Catholicism
may reject without being a heretic. Strauss clearly has
no occupation here. Would it assail the dogma ? Re
duced to its essential points, Islamism adds nothing to
natural religion save the prophetic character of Mahomet,
and a certain conception of Fatalism, which is less an
article of faith than a general turn of mind susceptible
of being directed to a purpose. Would it impugn its
morality ? There is a choice of four sects equally ortho
dox, amsng which its moral sense preserves a fair share
of liberty. As to the worship, disengaged from a few
incidental superstitions, it can, for simplicity, be compared
only to that of the most refined of the Protestant sects.
Did we not see at the beginning of this century, in the
very country of Mahomet, a sectary start the vast political

MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM. 283
and religious movement of the Wahhabites, by proclaim
ing that the true worship to be tendered to God, consists in
. bowing prostrate before the idea of his existence ; that the
invocation of any intercessor beside him, is an act of idol
atry ; and that the most meritorious work would be to pull
down the tomb of the Prophet, and the mausoleums of the
Imams ?
Symptoms of a nature much more serious disclosed them
selves, I am aware, in Egypt and in Turkey. There, the
contact with European science and morality has produced
a licence of belief sometimes barely disguised. The sin
cere believers, who are conscious of the danger, do not'
conceal their fears, and denPunce the books of European
science as containing sad errors, subversive of all religious
faith. For all that, I persist in believing, that if the East
can surmount its apathy, and clear the bounds which thus
far it has been unable to pass, in the matter of rational spe
culation, Islamism will not oppose a very serious obstacle to
the progress of the modern mind. The want of theological
centralization has always left a certain religious liberty to the
Mussulman nations. Whatever M. Forster may say about
it, the Khalifate has never resembled the Papacy. The
Khalifate has been strong only in so far as it has represented
the first conquering idea of Islamism. When the temporal
power passed to the Emir-al-Omra, and the Khalifate
became simply a religious power, it fell with the most
deplorable abasement. The idea of a power purely spiri
tual is too fine for the East. All the branches of Christi
anity even have not been able to reach it ; the Greco-Slavic
branch has never comprehended it ; the Germanic family has
shaken it off and outgrown it ; the Latin nations alone have
accepted it. Now, experience has demonstrated, that the
simple faith of all people is not sufficient to preserve a reli
gion, if a constituted hierarchy and a spiritual chief do not
keep watch and ward over it. Was it faith that was want-

284 MAHOMET AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM.
t
ing in the Anglo-Saxon people when the will of Henry
YIIL handed them over, without their knowing it, one day
to schism, the next to heresy? Mussulman orthodoxy not
being defended by a permanent self-regulating body- which
recruits itself, and governs itself, is, then, quite vulnerable.
It is superfluous to add, that if ever a movement of reform
were manifest in Islamism, Europe could participate in it
only through its most general influence. < It would, with a
very ill grace, think of regulating the' faith of other people.
While pursuing actively the propagation of its creed, which
is civilization, it must leave to the nations the delicate task
of accommodating their religious traditions to their new
needs*, and must respect the most absolute -right of nations,
as of individuals, — the right of presiding themselves, in
the most perfect freedom, over the changes in their own
inferior being.

JOHN CALYIN.
JULES BONNET, already known by, some
i admirable works- on the history of the Refor-
i mation, and especially by, a biography of
Olympia Morata, full of interest, has just published, in
two volumes, a collection of, Calvin's, French Letters.*
This-;~ precious correspondence had not been completely
gathered together before. "On the point of return
ing, to . God," says Theodore Beza, "John Calvin, always
having the -interests of the Church at heart, placed in my
hands his treasure, to wit, a, vast heap of papers, desiring
that- they should be given to the light in case they con
tained anything that might be profitable to the churches,"
This wish of the dying apostle was but imperfectly ful
filled: in the sixteenth century. The struggles which en
gaged all the energies of being, the disasters and the mas
sacres which followed immediately on the Reformer's
death, still more, the scruples of respectful admirers
anxious to show all courtesy to his contemporaries, and at
the same time to do justice to a memory which they held
dear, all conspired, it seemed, to ppstpone the task which
Calvin bequeathed to his friends. We have no longer
cause to regret this, since a young and diligent historian
has,- with- the piety of a disciple and the impartial exact
ness of a scholar, collected these relics of the cradle of his
faith. M. Bonnet's work leaves but one thing to be de-
* Letters of John Calvin, now first collected and published from the origi
nal manuscripts. French Letters, .vol. 2. Paris.

286 JOHN CALVIN.
sired, a collection of the Latin letters, to complete, at the
earliest moment, the two volumes dedicated to the French
correspondence. Would it not have been better to unite
both classes of letters in one series, and to present the
Reformer's correspondence in rigorous chronological order?
We incline to think it would. I am aware of the reasons
that led. the editors to pursue another plan ; they thought
that the French letters might have a literary or religious :
interest for people who would not read the Latin let
ters ; but the ingenuous reader will hardly acknowledge1
such a motive as that. Calvin's collected letters are pri
marily a document of history ; to prize these for their
literary interest is to undervalue them, and to use them as
a book of edification is to mistake their purport.
Is the character of Calvin, as illustrated by these new
readings, perceptibly different from that which history and
the portions of his correspondence already published draw
for us? It would be going too far to claim that it is. Cal
vin was one of those absolute men, cast complete in one
mould, who is taken in wholly at a single glance ; one
letter, one action suffices for a judgment of him. There
were no folds in that inflexible soul which never knew
doubt or hesitation. The natures that keep startling secrets
for history to disclose, and present themselves under novel
aspects with each posthumous revelation, are the flexible
and rich natures which, being superior to their deeds, their
destiny, their opinions even, are but half manifested to the
world, and have always left one side in mystery that they
might communicate freely with the Infinite. God, who
gives the world over to the strong and violent, almost
always refuses to them the subtle gifts which alone lead to
the truth in speculative matters. Truth is completely in
volved in nice distinctions. Now, the man who would
exert a powerful influence on the world must not regard
nice distinctions ; he must believe that he alone is wholly

JOHN CALVIN. 287
right, and that they who differ from him are wholly wrong.
Delicate and unimpassioned minds, critical of themselves,
see the weak aspects of their own cause, and are now and
then tempted to agree with their adversaries. The pas
sionate man, on the contrary, absolute in his opinions,
boldly identifies his cause with God's, and proceeds with
the audacity naturally inspired by such a persuasion. The
world belongs to him, and justly, for it is solely by the im
pulse of these firm minds that the world moves on ; but
the niceties of thought are refused him; the truth in its
purified form he never beholds ; his own dupe, he dies
without attaining to wisdom.
Calvin, more than anybody, had that inflexible austerity
which must ever characterize the man of action. I doubt
if a more finished type could be found of the ambitious
man, eager to make his thought prevail, because he thinks
it true. Careless of wealth, of titles, of honours, indifferent
to pomp, modest in his life, apparently humble, sacrificing
everything to the desire of making others like himself, I
hardly know of a man, save Ignatius Loyola, who could
match him in these terrible transports ; but Loyola threw
into them a Spanish ardour and a sweep of imagination that
had their beauty ; to the last he remained an old reader of
the Amadis, after the fashion of worldly chivalry cultivat
ing the chivalry of the spirit, while Calvin has all the as
perities of passion with none of its enthusiasm. He might
be called an interpreter under oath, asserting his divine
ri°ht to distinguish the Christian from the anti-Christian.
His correspondence, lofty, grave, stoical, is utterly wanting
in charm ; it has no life — one never catches in it a sponta
neous emotion, or a whisper from the heart. His style,
likewise, is firm and nervous, but dry, dead, involved,
often obscure, doubtless because the terrors and restraints
of the time compelled him to hint at his meaning. His
Latin letters, they say, disclose the tenderest side of him ;

288 JOHN CALVIN.
and precisely for this reason, among others, it is to be re
gretted that M. Bonnet did not enable us to read the two
correspondences in connexion. In this I see nothing but
severity — an austere conviction, a peevish temper that saw
sin everywhere, that regarded life as an expiation. For
one single moment, on occasion of the birth of his child,
he tries to smile, but it is only to be most strangely out of
tune, and- to relapse quickly into his sadness. " It grieves
me that I cannot be with you, at least half a day, to smile
with you, while they try to make the little infant smile,
under penalty j however, of enduring its weeping and wail
ing. For that key-note is the first struck at the beginning
of this life, that we may laugh in good earnest when we go
out of it."
It is surprising that a man who appears to us in. his life
and writings so unsympathetic, should have been the cen
tre of an immense movement in his generation, and that
this harsh and severe tone should have exerted so great an
influence, on the minds of his contemporaries. How was it,
for example, that one of the most distinguished women of
her time, Renee of France, in her Court at Ferrara, sur
rounded by the flower of European wits, was captivated
by that stern master, and by him drawn into a course that
must have been so thickly strewn with thorns ? This kind
of austere seduction is exercised by those only who work
with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympa
thetic ardour which was one of the secrets of Luther's suc
cess, lacking the charm and the perilous languishing ten
derness of Francis of Sales, Calvin succeeded, in an age
and in a country which called for a reaction towards Chris
tianity, simply because he was the most Christian man of
his generation. His very moroseness was a condition of his
success ; for seriously religious people are more readily
won by severity than by, indulgence ; they prefer the narrow
ways to the broad and easy ones, and the surest means of

JOHN CALVIN. 289
gaining their allegiance is to ask of them a great deal and
seem to concede to them nothing. Need I add that in re
gard to the essential qualities of uprightness, honesty, sin
cerity, the correspondence published by M. Bonnet com
pletely clears the reformer of the calumnies invented by
hate and partisan feeling ? Two letters manufactured by
an unskilful forger to soil his memory, and reproduced
through a tacit understanding, it would seem, by the super
ficial historians who succeeded Yoltaire, are here impe
riously remanded to the rank of apocryphal pieces. Were
M. Bonnet's reasoning on this point less peremptory than
it is, it would receive decisive confirmation in the new
researches of Mr. Charles Read on the same topic, re
searches, based on a comparison of these pretended auto
graphs of Calvin with the pieces known to be from his own
hand.* From the character and position of Calvin in
tolerance resulted as a matter of course. Whenever men
allow themselves to be ruled by an opinion which they
hold to be the complete and absolute truth, so plain that
only blindness or guilt refuse to embrace it, they necessarily
become bigots. At first sight there is a strange contra
diction in Calvin's heated demand for liberty to him and
his, and his refusal of liberty to others. But in point of
fact, that is all very simple ; he did not believe like the
Catholics, but his belief was as arbitrary as theirs. Liberty
of belief, the right of every individual to make his creed
for himself, which is popularly but erroneously considered
to be the essence of early Protestantism, was hardly antici
pated in the sixteenth century. No doubt, the appeal from
Church to Scripture which/ was the soul of the Reforma
tion, must finally turn to the profit of criticism, and in this
way, tbe first reformers are truly the fathers of free thought.
But they neither understood this nor wished it. The
* Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society, 4th year, 1st series.
19

290 JOHN CALVIN.
Catholics have said justly, of the French Revolution:
"Raised against us it has, with God's help, wrought for
us ;" the philosophers can say the same of the Reformation.
History offers numerous examples of this flat contradic
tion between the doctrines of a party and the secret ten
dencies which the party represents. In the dispute of the
Jesuits with the Jansenists, the Jesuits maintained a doc
trine more consonant with reason and more favourable to
liberty than their adversaries ; and yet Jansenism was in
essence a liberal movement, round which the most sincere
and enlightened men might, we conceive, have rallied.
That violent zeal, which forces the man of conviction to
procure the salvation of souls by main force and in utter
disregard of liberty, breaks out in the whole of Calvin's
correspondence. Writing to the Regent of England dur
ing the minority of Edward YL : "As I understand, sire,
you have two sorts of insurgents against the King and the
State of the realm; one sort are fantastical people who
would like to throw all into confusion under pretext of
the Gospel ; the others are people stubborn in their attach
ment to the superstitions of the Romish Antichrist. The
whole body of them richly deserve to be suppressed by the
sword which is intrusted to you, seeing that they defy not
only the King, but God who has seated him on his royal
throne, and has commissioned you to protect his people as
well as his majesty." The model he proposes to him. and
later to the King of England, is the holy King Josias,
whom God commended " for having abolished and har
rowed out everything that served only to feed superstition."
The example he warns them against is that of the Kings
who, " having beaten down the idolaters, but not having
completely eradicated them," are blamed because they did
not level the chapels and places of foolish devotion. Like
the Catholics, Calvin claims toleration, not in the name of
liberty, but in the name of truth. When he engages the

JOHN CALVIN. 291
civil magistrates to lay heavy hands on, "the incorrigibles
who despise spiritual penalties, and on the professors of
new doctrines," it never for a moment occurs to him that
the same principle might be turned against his own party ;
and wishing to exculpate himself from the murder of
SCrvetus, he writes, without wincing, this terrible title ;
" A defence of the orthodox faith. ... in which it is proved
that heretics may rightfully be coerced by the sword."
Such violences astonished nobody at that time; they
were in some sort a common right ; Bolsec thrust out of
Geneva; Gruet, beheaded; Gentilis, " barely escaping the
scaffold, for a time, by retracting his opinions ;" Servetus
undergoing his atrocious punishment under the very eyes
of Farel, are no isolated facts. Bitterness and menace flow
naturally from Calvin's pen. " Knowing in part what kind
of a man he was," writes he to Madame de Cany touching
some unknown person, " could I have had my way, I
would gladly have seen him rot in a ditch, and his coming
delighted me as much as if he had cleft my heart with
a dagger. ... Be assured, Madame, had he not got away
so quickly, in the discharge of my duty, it would not have
been my fault if he escaped the flames." Here we recog
nize the terrible frankness of the man who wrote touching
Servetus : " Should he come, and my authority hold, I
will not suffer him to go away alive," the man who him
self furnished the inquisition of Yienna with proofs against
that unfortunate man, and sent to the archbishop of Lyons
leaves from the book which was to serve to kindle his
funeral pile.*
Death,, even, failed to appease him. Three years after
the execution of Gruet, somebody discovered in a garret
an autograph work, in which the rebellious canon poured
*. See the fine study of M. E. Saisset on Servetus, in the Revue des Deux
Mondes, February and March, 1848.

292 JOHN CALVIN.
out. in, wrath and despair, the thoughts which in better
times he might have been permitted to express calmly and
wisely. Calvin, not deeming this writing sufficiently pun
ished in the death of its author, caused it to be burned by
the hands of the executioner, and drew up the condemna
tion of it himself. In place of the pity called for by the
ravings of an exasperated man, who avenged his confine
ment by violent speech, there is nothing but rage at
what he calls "blasphemies so execrable that no human
creature could hear them without a shudder." This un
happy man, devoted by a fatality to death, guilty of having
said badly in the sixteenth century what in the nineteenth
century is said handsomely, is to him " the adherent of an
infected and worse than diabolical sect, .... belching out
execrations that should make a man's hair stand on end;
infections stinking enough to poison a whole country, so that
all people of conscience ought to ask God's pardon for the
blasphemy that has been heaped on his name among them."
The severities of Calvin in matters of private morality,
astonish and wound us, perhaps, more even than those
which orthodoxy exacted from him. Too sternly bent on
cheapening human liberty, and completely absorbed in the
reformation of morals, he perverted utterly the idea of the
State, and made of Geneva a sort of theocratical republic,
governed by the clergy, who carried their inquisition into
every department of life. A Spiritual State was established
at Geneva in the sixteenth century, as in the Italy of our
own time, a visitation from house to house was annually made
to inquire into the faith of the inhabitants, to separate the
ignorant. and the obdurate from the company of the faith
ful. The pen of the .reformer directs the bitterest ironies
against the set of libertines, who made a fruitless resistance
to his vigorous rule. " There have been a few complaints
and menaces from debauched persons, who cannot endure
chastisement. Even the wife of the man who is to visit

JOHN CALVIN. 293
you (Amedee Perrin), and who wrote you from Berne,
lifted herself up rather haughtily. But she was obliged to
get away into the fields, not finding the town healthy for
her. The others lower their heads instead of raising
their- horns. One there is (Gruet), who will probably have
a pretty heavy scot to pay. I opine it will be a matter of
life with-him. The young people think that I press them
too hard, but if the reins were not held with a firm hand
their case would be the more pitiable. We must secure
their welfare, spite of their distaste for it." And again :
"True it is, that Satan has plenty of matches hereabouts ;
but the flame goes out hke a trodden spark. The capital
punishment inflicted on one of their companions (Gruet) has
made them draw in their horns considerably. As to your
guest (Amedee Perrin), I cannot tell how he will carry him
self when he comes back. His wife, however, has played
the deyiless to such a degree that she was obliged to get
away into the country.. He has been absent now about
two months. He must bear himself meekly on his return."
Let us make haste to say that it would be the height of
injustice to judge the character of Calvin by these rigours.
Moderation and tolerance, prime virtues in critical ages like
ours, could not exist in an age ruled by ardent and abso
lute convictions. Persuaded that sound belief was the
supreme good, in comparison with which earthly existence
was of. small account, and assured of having exclusive pos
session of the truth, each party must be inexorable towards
the rest. A terrible reciprocity was the result. The man
who holds his existence cheap, and is ready to give it up
for his faith, is sorely tempted to . make light of others'
existence too. Human life, which temperate epochs are
justly so saving of, is sacrificed with frightful prodigality.
The abominable excesses of 1793 can be explained only as
they.befel in one of those crises, in which human life sank,
if I may say so,, to the lowest price. A sort of frenzy pos-

294 JOHN CALVIN.
sesses men's minds. They take and give death with equal
indifference. Let us imagine, if we can, the state of exal
tation in which the fervent disciple of the Reformation
lived, when from Paris, from Lyons, and from Chambery,
the news came of the tortures endured by his coreligionists.
History has not dwelt enough on the atrocity of these per
secutions, and the resignation, the courage, the serenity of
those who suffered them. There are pages worthy of the
first centuries of the church, and I have no doubt that a
simple, close recital of these sublime conflicts, composed of
the fragments and letters of the period, would equal the
ancient martyrology in beauty. The voice of Calvin in
these moments of trial rises to a fulness, a loftiness, truly
admirable. His letters to the martyrs of Lyons, of Cham
bery, to the prisoners of the Chatelet, sound like an echb
of the heroic times of Christendom ; like pages from the
writings of Tertullian or Cyprian. I confess, that until M.
Bonnet introduced me into this bloody circle of martyrs, I
had understood neither the holiness of the victims, nor the
ferocity of their executioners. Other persecutions doubt
less have been more murderous. Philip II. shed more
blood. What persecutor would not turn pale by the side
of the Duke of Alva ? But at least it was faith that lighted
the piles and prepared the scaffolds in Spain and in the
Low Countries. These hecatombs, offered up to truth, or
what was deemed such, have their grandeur, and we need
but half pity those who went down in this ' tremendous
struggle, when each one fought for his God. Faith sacri
ficed them as faith sustained them. But the odious and
horrible thing is that Sardanapalus, as Francis I. is called
in Calvin's correspondence, should become the avenger of
a faith he did not hold, in order to serve the interest of his
policy, or secure quiet for his lusts. The absolute faith of
Spain throws a kind of poetry over the flame of its funeral
pyres. We form a high idea of human nobleness, as we

. JOHN CALVIN. 295
see the barbarian, in the full impetuosity of his instincts,
choose faith before life, and take or give death for an
abstract opinion. But when we see in the land of indif
ference, in the full light of civilization, noble women burned,
children tortured, tongues cut out, wretches by thirties *
" soaking and languishing at the bottom of the ditches of
the ChStelet " waiting their punishment, and the king, as
proof of his zeal, declaring " that he was not satisfied with
^is Court of Parliament in Paris, and chiding his counsel
lors as heedless and lazy, because they did not make the
fires fast enough," the only sentiment is indignation, and
we are surprised into doubting the moral worth of a coun-
' try which could allow and provoke this execrable sporting
with life.
We mnst not be surprised, then, that Calvin appears to
us so severe, so harsh in his conviction, so intolerant of the
conviction of others. How can one cherish a half belief
in that for which he is proscribed ? What faith so trem
bling that it would not become fanatical under torture ?
The joy of suffering for faith is so great that more than
once passionate natures have embraced opinions for the
luxury of dying for them. In this sense, persecution is an
essential condition of all religious- achievements. It has a
marvellous effect in fixing ideas and banishing doubts, and
we may be allowed to think that what people, wrongly in
my judgment, call the scepticism of our time, would yield
to the vigorous remedy. We are timid, undecided ; we
scarcely believe in our own ideas ; perhaps, if it was our
lot to be persecuted for them, we should end by believing
in them. Let us not wish that we might be, for then we
should become intolerant and persecutors in our turn. •
That this austerity of character, in which lay Calvin's
strength, is prejudicial to the growth of intellect, and ex
cludes the flexibility of the free soul, that is in every way
drawn on by the disinterested love of beauty and truth, is

296 JOHN CALVIN.
incontestable. But executive power is bought at no less
price ; largeness of mind founds nothing ; it is the narrow
thought that unites men. Founders generally exhibit
limited and unlovely spirits. We are surprised at first, on
running over these letters of Calvin, to find in them the
correspondence of a statesman and an administrator, bur
dened with details of business, rather than of a thinker or
an ascetic. His theology even does not soar ; free enough
from" scholasticism, a legist more than a. theologian, in
working out his reform, he is swayed not by speculative
considerations, but by views pf practical morality. His
long professions of faith scarcely furnish a few lines which
could be profitably taken up by the thought of our time ;
the creed has lost all its grandeur ; their philosophy is fee
ble ; imagination, poetry, all have disappeared. But how
unjust to stop there! Of what consequence is it that Cal
vin was ordinary as a philosopher and theologian, if this
very inferiority was a condition of his doing his work ?
Would a solitary and passionless thinker have succeeded
as he did in lifting the incubus of the middle age, and in
boldly rolling back ten centuries in the history of Chris
tianity ? Would Calvinism, again, without its powerful
aristocratic organization, without the rigorous discipline to
which it subjected the individual conscience, have victori
ously resisted such furious attacks, and preserved an im
perishable leaven in France ? Force ordinarily is obtained
only at the price of great sacrifices of liberty, and we may
well believe that, apart from his sombre and austere cha
racter, the attempt of Calvin would have been, like somany
others, merely an abortive effort to escape from the enor
mous pressure which Catholicism had at last begun to
exert on the human mind.
M. Bonnet's excellent work will rank among the most
important documents to be consulted by the historian of the
revolutions of the sixteenth century. In spite of his own

JOHN CALVIN. 297
lively and avowed convictions, M. Bonnet confesses the
stains which disfigure the life of the Reformer, and blames
his intolerance, while excusing it, as he should, by the
temper of his age. Let us welcome, then, as a good omen
the learned editor's promise, made in his preface, to give us
a history of Calvin, based on original: and authentic papers.
Nothing less than the prospect of this great work will
make us wait patiently for the fulfilment of another en
gagement which M. Bonnet has contracted with the public.
I mean a life of Renee of France. For my part, I regret
that postponement which will for a long time yet forbid
our knowing, as well as she deserves, one of the most en
lightened women of her age, and one of the noblest souls
of all ages. I know the reasons which have led M. Bon
net to give priority to tiie stern Reformer ; guided by the
purest and most unselfish considerations, he would first of
ail make converts, and he chooses what he deems duty
before taste and success. But looking at it even with ' a
view to making converts, he must allow me to combat his
resolution ; the Duchess of Ferrara is an apostle better
suited to our generation than Calvin. The fascination of
women is felt even in theology ; they are privileged to
have an opinion in these matters, and the passion which
they put into them gives them an added charm. Renee
o'f France, spending the whole day reading treatises on
the mass and predestination, artlessly seeking for the truth
about all that, and enduring the most heroic suffering for
her conviction, is the poem of Calvinism. The book in
which M. Bonnet shall present this fine Spectacle will be" a
fascinating book ; I wish no other proof of that' than the
episode of Olympia Morata, already published, ' arid the
interest with which M. Bonnet invests that learned victim
of persecution, while I dare not hope that even with his
talent and affection he will succeed in making of Calvin a
person whom we can love.

CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES.
PROTESTANTISM is destined to share in the law
common to all things human ; I mean, to live and
grow without ever attaining a fixed point and a
permanent state. This is its privilege, or, as some will
have it, its curse. If we can believe that there exists on
earth a complete system of revealed- truths, given once for
all, it is clear that Bossuet is right, when, in his haughty
" History of the Variations," he puts forward this perpetual
mobility, as the infallible sign of error. But if, on tne
other hand, it be our opinion, that no religious or philoso
phical system can pretend to an exclusive and absolute
value, we must, evidently, praise the one that possesses
such store of flexibility, that it can accommodate itself to
the movement of humanity, undergo modifications with
it, and with it, pursue issues ever new, and ends, as yet,
unseen. This tendency of Protestantism towards a more and
more purified religious idea has hitherto been exhibited
under two very distinct aspects, according to the different
genius of the two great divisions of the Reformation. On
one side, Germany, applying to theology its intellectual
depth, its lofty imagination, its marvellous aptitude for
critical research, reached, at the end of the last century
and beginning of this, one of the grandest and most poeti
cal forms of religion that can be conceived. It lasted but a
moment ; but what a moment in the history of the human
mind was that, when Kant, Fichte, Herder, were Chris-

CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT. 299
tians ; when Klopstock drew the image of the modern
Christ ; when rose that marvellous edifice of biblical exe
gesis, master-piece of searching criticism, and elevated
rationalism ! Never were so many and such great things
included under the name of Christianity; but vagueness
and indecision, the essential condition of poetry in religion,
condemned this fair apparition to last but a day, and to
leave no deposit for the future. The discord among the
diverse elements that had for a moment existed harmo
niously in its bosom, quickly came to light. Pure religious
sentiment resulted in a strict pietism, rationalism, and cri
ticism, in negative and sharp formulas quite analogous to
those of our eighteenth century. Catholicism, always on
the watch to profit by every weakness, invaded the terri
tory at every point.
The English race, on its part, in Europe and in America,
devoted itself to the solution of the grand problem thrown
out by the Reformation, and after its fashion, went in pur
suit of a formula of Christianity, which might be accepted
by the modern mind. For this task, it brought neither
the power of intellect, nor the high poetic faculty, nor the
liberty of criticism, nor the vast and profound knowledge
which, in our age, Germany alone has applied to religious
questions. Great intellectual uprightness, admirable sim
plicity of heart, an exquisite moral sentiment, were the
endowments with which this grave and strong race sought
for the Christ. Unitarianism, the result of a compromise
very similar to that which the Deacon Arius attempted in
the fourth century, was the highest conclusion of its theo
logy ; excellent practical applications, a temper truly
evangelical, in the best sense usually given to the word,
make amends for the want of poetry and depth in its work.
We may say, without hesitation, that the most admirable
lessons in morals and social philosophy that the wprld ever
yet listened to, have come from this quarter. Administered

300 , CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
by sound, solid natures, strangers, on one side, to artistic
refinements and caprices, on the other, to. the scholar's
requirements and scruples; the honest and sensible school
we are speaking of, has proved once more the diversity
of the spirit's gifts, and has shown what a gulf separates the
views of genius from the practical wisdom which, labours
efficiently for the welfare of the human race.
Channing, whose name, new among us, already attracts
so much sympathy and precocious admiration, was unde
niably the most complete representative of that wholly
American experiment of religion without mystery, of
rationalism without criticism, of intellectual culture with
out high poetry, which seems to be the ideal to which the
religion of the United States aspires. If he is not the
founder, Channing is certainly the saint of the Unitarians.
The reports which come to us from America show that the
persuasion of his sanctity is growing from day to day, and
almost bordering on legend. A sudden fascination has
attracted a certain number of choice spirits in France and
England to his writings. One cannot help, then, applaud
ing the thought which has led one of the most distin
guished publicists and scholars, M. Laboulaye, to lend his
name to the introduction among us of these excellent
works. M. Laboulaye's remarkable essays, published in
'the " Journal des Debats," had already called attention in
France to the name of Channing, and animated enlightened
minds with the desire to know more intimately the master
whose renown fills all America. The volume of transla
tions which we announce*- meets this desire ; it includes
the best part of Channing's. works, his writings on society.
On the first appearance of a religious phenomenon, really

* " Oiluvres sociales de "W. E. Channing," translated from the English, pre
ceded by an Essay on the Life and Doctrines of Channing, and by an Intro
duction by M. E. Laboulaye, Member of the Institute.

IN THE UNITED STATES. 301
peculiar to our time, and which seems sure of a great
future, it is well to study with the sympathy that good and
fine things deserve, but without decided partiality, the
aspect of this illustrious reformer, and to ask what part his
ideas may be called to play among us.

William Ellery Channing* was born at Newport, in the
State of Rhode Island, April 7, 1780, of a respectable
family, in comfortable circumstances. We cannot say that
his education was very distinguished, nor that the circle in
which he grew up was particularly well suited to develop
a mind of great speculative reach. Newport was a com
mercial town and a fashionable resort, and the very details
into which his biographer artlessly enters, in order to set
off the society that was found there, give us a very poor
idea of it. < " Rich merchants," he says, " retired sea-cap
tains, and others drawn thither by considerations of health,
formed a refined and even a gay society. The presence of
English and French officers, during the War of Independ
ence, gave a final polish to manners; we must add, too,
that through the influence of French liberalism, and the
license of speech so common among sea-faring people,
impiety was widely diffused throughout almost all classes."
It is hard to understand how, in the midst of merchants
and retired officers, far from the great centres of instruc
tion, one of those powerful and lofty individualities could
be formed, to which we give the name of genius. From
the start, then, we perceive where Channing must one day
be deficient ; I mean in that mental refinement which
* The biographical details which follow are taken from the " Memoirs of
Channing " (New York), a collection full of interest, and introducing us to
the very depth of Channing's son!

302 'CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
comes from contact with an aristocracy of intellect, and
which intercourse with the people is better calculated per
haps to develop than the society of the middle class.
For a man devoted especially to intellectual labours, this
would be indeed an irreparable loss ; but for a man des
tined, like Channing, to an altogether practical mission, it
was possibly an advantage. It must be acknowledged that
the qualities of subtlety and flexibility which are acquired
by a varied culture of the intellectual powers would only
impede the sweeping movement of an apostle. By force
of seeing the different sides of things, we become unde
cided. The good no longer fires with enthusiasm, for we
see it balanced by an almost equivalent infusion of evil.
Evil always disgusts, but no longer goads as it should ; for
we get accustomed to regarding it as a necessity, and some
times even as the condition of good. The apostle must
not perceive all these nice shades of thought. The virtu
ous and right-minded Channing owed perhaps to his sober
and somewhat frigid education the advantage of preserving
all his life the energy of his moral tendencies, and the
absolute bent of his convictions. He enjoyed that happy
privilege of healthy minds, of walking on the edge of the
abyss without being seized with giddiness, and of survey
ing the world at an angle so small that they are not terri
fied by its immensity. In speculation he never went
beyond the Scotch school, whose wise moderation he car
ried into his theology. He had little acquaintance with
Germany, and he but half understood it. His literary
ideas and his scientific knowledge were those of an in
structed and cultivated man, not specially gifted with pene
tration or originality.
On the other hand, on all questions of social, moral,
political order, he meditated very early and with a great
deal of force. The idea of communism, the first, and con
sequently the falsest that meets the mind when it begins to

IN THE UNITED STATES. 303
reflect on the reform of human society, crossed his mind
for a moment; he was even tempted to join himself as
minister to a company of emigrants whose principle was
a community of goods. His childhood and youth were
tormented by great disquiets which- are strangely in con
trast with the profound calmness of the rest of his life.
Forty years after this period of trial, he recurred to it
gently, and spoke of it in the following terms : " I lived
alone, devoting my nights to the building of plans and
projects, and having nobody under my roof except in the
hour when I was teaching ; then I worked as I have never
done since. Having no single human being to whom I
could impart my thoughts, and avoiding ordinary society,
I passed through mental and moral combats, through trou
bles of heart and mind so vivid and absorbing that they
deprived me of sleep and sensibly injured my constitution.
I was reduced almost to a skeleton ; still, I recal with
pleasure those days of loneliness and sadness. If I ever
aspired with my whole soul towards purity and truth,
it was then. In the midst of rude conflicts, this grand
question rose within me : Shall I obey the highest or the
lowest principles of my nature ? Shall I be the victim of
worldly passions, or the child and the servant of God ?
I remember that this great conflict went on in me, and
none of those who were about me so much as suspected
what I passed through."
His reflections on religion led him very early into a
profound discontent with the established church, and a
strong antipathy to the absolute and terrible doctrines of
Calvinism. His indignation at this "vulgar and .frightful
theology" as he calls it, breaks out on every page of his
writings. His whole theology henceforth is summed up in
this one word : " God is good." The austere views of
religion which people regard as favourable to piety, seemed
to him a cruel severity which spreads a melancholy veil

,304 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
over God, over the present life, over the life to come, and
by its sadness leads fatally to the superstitions of paganism.
"English- theology," he wrote, about 1801, "seems to me,
altogether, of very little value. To me an established
church, appears to be the grave of intelligence. To impose
a fixed invariable creed is to build prison walls round the
soul. . . . The timidity, the coldness, the dulness which
generally mark all books of theology is principally to be
attributed to- the cause we speak of." And some years
after ; " I know that Calvinism is embraced by many excel
lent men ; but I know too that on some hearts it has the
saddest effects, that it spreads impenetrable darkness over
them, that it begets a spirit of servility and fear, that
it chills the best affections, that it checks the most virtuous
efforts, that it overthrows sometimes the seat of reason.
The influence of this system on sensitive minds is alwaj'S
to be dreaded. If people could believe it, they would find
in it grounds of discouragement that would run even to
madness. If I and all my dear friends, and all my race
have come from the hands of God totally depraved, irre
sistibly drawn towards evil and detesting good ; if but
a portion of the human race can be saved from this
miserable condition, and the remainder must be condemned
to endless torments and eternal flames by the Being who .
gave us a perverse and depraved nature, then in my judg
ment,- there remains nothing but to lament in anguish of
heart ; existence is a curse, and the Creator is, I dare not
say what. 0 merciful Father, I cannot speak of thee in
the terms which this system suggests. No, thou hast given
me too many proofs of thy kindness, to allow such a
reproach to pass my lips. Thou hast created me to be
happy ; thou hast called me to virtue and to piety, because
in virtue and piety happiness consists, and thou dost not
expect from me what thou hast not made me capable of
accomplishing."

IN THE UNITED STATES. 305
k The religious condition to which Channing thus found
himself led, was a doctrine very similar to that of the
Arians and Pelagians. He did not regard man as wholly
corrupted by sin ; he did not see in the Christ the incar
nate God, descended to the earth to bear the burden of our
transgressions, and purchase our justification by his own
sufferings; but neither did he regard man as being in
a normal condition, and as advancing naturally towards
goodness. In Jesus Christ he did not see merely a person
of superior religious genius who by means of a delicate
temperament and under the stimulus . of the national
enthusiasm had attained to the inost perfect union with
God. He rather fell in with those who consider the human
race to be actually degenerated by an abuse of free will.
In Jesus Christ he recognized a sublime being, who had
wrought a crisis in the condition of humanity, had renewed
the moral sense, and touched with saving power the foun
tains of good that were hidden in the depths of the heart
of man. .
These doctrines had many points in common with those
of Unitarianism, which already counted several churches in
America. Channing ¦ attached himself to the Unitarians,
and at the age of twenty-three accepted the office of pastor,
which he filled the rest of his life, in the church in Federal
street Boston ; but he never carried into it a sectarian or
partisan spirit. His aversion to every official establishment
in religion, made him fear that even the broadest of the
sects might be too narrow. There is scarcely one of his
sermons in which he does not revert to this fundamental
thought. "I beg you to remember," he says, " that in this
discourse I am speaking in my own name. I give you the
opinions of no sect. I give you my own. I alone am
responsible for what I say ; let none listen to me to know
what others think. I belong, it is true, to that class of
Christians who believe that there is but one God, the Father,
20

306 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
and that Jesus Christ is not this only God ; but my adhe- 1
sion to this sect is very far from being complete, and I do
not seek to draw new converts to it. I care little for what
other men believe. I listen attentively to their arguments,
their conclusions I am free to accept or to reject. It is
true, I bear joyfully the name Unitarian, because people
try to cry it down, and I have not learned the religion of
Christ to shrink before the reproaches of men. Were this
name more honoured than it is, I might be glad to discard
it, for I fear the chains that a party imposes. I wish to
belong not to a sect, but to the brotherhood of free minds,
that love the truth and that follow Christ on earth and in
heaven. I wish to escape from the narrow inclosure of a
particular church, that I may live under the open sky, in
day-light, with a wide view all about me, seeing with my
own eyes, hearing with my own ears, and following the
truth humbly but resolutely, however steep or solitary .
the path in which it leads. I am not, therefore, the mouth
piece of a sect; I speak for .myself alone, and I thank God
that I live in an age and amid circumstances which make
it a duty to open my whole soul with frankness and
simplicity." The real originality of Channing lies in this idea of a
pure Christianity, disengaged from all sectarian bonds ; iu
his abhorrence of all spiritual despotism, even in its most
liberal construction ; in his hatred of what he calls " a
degrading uniformity of opinion." No one has used
stronger language in condemning an official and prescribed
faith ; nobody has better comprehended that a truth which.
a man has not drawn from his own heart, and which he
applies to himself as a sort of external remedy, is ineffica
cious, and destitute of moral worth. Channing has an anti
pathy to the word Belief. In the submission demanded for
faith, he sees a remnant of the old system which rested on
fear, and.on the oppression of individual consciences by con-

IN THE UNITED STATES. 307
stituted authority. He thinks it is better to rouse a few bad
passions than to perpetuate slavery and lethargy ^ Unity,
as the Church from its origin has understood it, seems to
him henceforth impossible of attainment. Unity in variety
is, in his view, the law of the future Church ; and he nursed
the beautiful dream that the Catholicity, imposed by a
clergy which was distinct from all faithful men and women,
and which kept a monopoly of things religious, would be
superseded hereafter by the universal communion of Chris
tians, animated by pure love.
This free and lofty tolerance is the most pleasing side of
Channing, and it inspires him with the noblest sentiments.
Let us make haste to quote him : " Your principal duty in
the domain of credence," said he, "may be summed up in
two precepts : Respect those who differ from you ; respect
yourselves. Honour men of different sects. Do not fancy
that you have the exclusive privilege of truth and good
ness. Never regard the church of Christ as shut up in the
limits of a human invention, but as comprising all sects.
Honour all men! At the same time, respect yourselves.
Never allow your opinions to be treated with contempt;
but since you impose them on nobody, show that you revere
them as the truth, and that you look for respect and cour
tesy from those who talk with you on this subject. Put
yourselves always on a footing of equality with every sect,
and encourage none, by your timidity, to assume towards
you a tone of dictation, of superiority, or of scorn."
One singular consequence of this unlimited breadth, of
this exclusion of all exclusiveness, was that he became par
ticularly tolerant of the most intolerant of all religious asso
ciations. All ab6ut him he saw Catholicism calumniated,
half persecuted ; he loved it. The lively sympathy which
he conceived for the writings of Fenelon, the influence of
the beautiful memories which Cheverus left in the United
States, and especially the advantage which Catholicism, in

-308 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
his view, possessed, in not being an official religion in his
own country, gave this bent to his thoughts. He believed
in the future of Catholic extension in England, and particu
larly in the Oxford movement, because in it he saw a
reaction of.the individual conscience against the established
Church. He was indignant at the theologians who were
alarmed by the progress of Catholicism, and yet held them
selves to be as infallible as the pope. " Do: they not per
ceive," he said,, " that if men must choose between two
infallibilities, they will choose the pope as being the most
ancient, and as being sustained by the greatest number' of
voices ? This system could not have lasted so long and pre
vailed so extensively, did it not have some deep founda*
tion in our nature. The ideas and the words ' church' and
' antiquity,' have a powerful charm. In their weakness,
their ignorance, and their sloth, men love the shelter of a
vast organization which time has consecrated. How strong
and confident we become when we are sustained by the
multitude, by a great name, or by the authority of ages.
It is not surprising that the Roman Church should revive
at this juncture, when a sickly fear of innovation reacts
against the spirit of reform, and drags men back towards
the past. This Oxford movement has great chances of
spreading, because it seems to be less the work of the policy
or ambition of the clergy than of a genuine fanaticism."
Such was Channing, during forty years, in his Federal
street Pulpit. Absorbed by the exclusive idea of good, he
saw little outside of this supreme object. He visited Europe,
did not understand it, and did not try to understand it.
His life, externally, was simple and pleasant. In France,
where, every exceptional calling devoted to things divine,
is outlawed from the common rights, and implies celibacy,
an apostle, a saint, living as all other people live would, be,
a strange spectacle. Vulgarity has such empire among us
that no young girl would have consented to marry Chan-

IN THE UNITED STATES. 309
ning. No incident crossed this calm and serene existence.
The indefatigable optimism which was the whole of his
religion, never left him for a moment. " The earth," he
said, "becomes younger with years; man improves with
age." The last summer he passed on earth, some one in
his presence asked what age-might be' considered as the hap
piest period of life ; he smiled and answered, abPut the age
of sixty! That was his age then. He died -shortly after,
in October, 1842, without pain or sadness, at sunsetting,
the hour he had always loved and held in sacred observ
ance. He averred that as he advanced in life he had been
more and more happy. "Life," he wrote, " seems to me a
gift which acquires a greater value every day. : I have not
found it a cup foaming and sparkling on the surface, but
growing insipid as it is drained. In truth, I detest that
worn out comparison. . . . Life is a blessing to us. Could
I see others as happy as I am myself, what a world ours
would be ! But the world is good, in spite of the clouds
that rest on it. The longer I live, the more I See the light
piercing through the clouds. I am sure that the sun is
above them."

H.
Channing became a writer without premeditation. His
works display no literary ambition ; there is not one of
them that exhibits the smallest pretension to art or style.
Channing is a minister of the Gospel and a preacher ; his
works are simply sermons, spiritual letters, or articles
inserted in the "Christian Examiner," a religious journal.
The idea of writing a book did not come to him till very
late, and happily he did not carry it out. The plan of this
book was neither new nor original. It would have been an
essay, like so many others, on man and human nature, the
perpetual theme of the Anglo Scotch philosophy. lam

310 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
strongly inclined to think that Channing's essay would
have been no exception to the weariness of books of this
sort. ' Excellent, no doubt, for certain stages of intellec
tual culture, but teaching nothing, and possessing little
value, now that history and general considerations on
the development of the human race have almost banished
that miserable philosophy from memory.
If Channing is not a writer, no more is he a man of
science or a philosopher. He lacks information ; his his
torical knowledge is all at second or third hand. He has
not that delicate feeling for shades of thought which we
call criticism, without which there is no insight into the past,
and consequently np extended understanding of human
affairs. It is surprising to see how destitute the English in
general are of that gift of historical intuition, so richly
bestowed on Germany, so largely possessed by some minds
in France, provided the matter in hand does not involve
an antiquity too remote, or an intellectual state differing too
much from our own. At this very hour* antiquities are
taught at Oxford as they were taught among us in Rollin's
time, perhaps not so well. In certain departments of
political history this ordinary penetration may produce
works that are respectable and true enough; but in the
history of literature, religion, philosophy, which is destined
to become more and more the great history, and to throw
into the shade what formerly bore the name, quite another
power of divination is needed, and such is the importance
obtained by researches of this class, in our day, that one
who has not this quality can no longer be a thinker or
a philosopher. Happily one can very well be an honest
man without' it. This is what Channing preeminently is.
This he is to a degree that amounts almost to genius,
and is worth at least a thousand times as much as talent.
Like all men born for the practice of virtue rather than for
speculation, he has few ideas, and his ideas are very simple.

IN THE UNITED STATES. 311
. He believes in revelation, in the supernatural, in miracles,
in prophecy, in the Bible. He undertakes^ to prove the
divineness of Christianity by arguments which differ in no
, respect from those of the old school. This puritan who
haggles so vehemently about his faith, is at bottom very
credulous respecting everything historical, the fault of his
not being broken in to the intellectual gymnastics which
are supplied by long exercise on the problems of the human
mind. At the same time that he lacks critical power, Channing
lacks also high originality of sentiment. When we com
pare this excellent soul, this saint of contemporaneous
America, with those who, like him, in the past, have been
possessed with a zeal for the glory of God or the good of
their brother man*, the first feeling is one of sadness and
chill. Instead of the splendid theology of the antique
ages, instead of the grand intoxication of a Francis d'Assisi,
who speaks so powerfully to the imagination, we find our
selves in presence of a respectable gentleman, very sedate,
very well dressed ; enthusiastic and inspired after his fashion,
but without the glory of the marvellous ; devoted, but
without grandeur; noble and pure, but without poetry,
unless it be poetry of a domestic and private character.
Far from us those paradoxes of incomplete minds which,
because they have understood the beauty of the past, would
like to reconstruct a vanished world with archaeological
regrets, as if the first condition of serious admiration were
not the power of looking at everything in its natural
medium, that is to say, in its epoch. The dazzling fantasies
of the ancient religions would be simply chimerical in our
day. Dreams are not reproduced by an act of will, and
we cannot justly blame modern men because they have not
the qualities which, in artless eras, were due to ignorance
and simplicity. It would be as unjust to reproach Chan
ning with the humbleness of his theology, seeing that this

312 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
very humbleness is, in matters of abstract speculation,, a
condition of reasonableness. Fundamentally, his theology
is all that theology can be in the nineteenth century, and
in America, level, simple, sensible, practical; a theology
on Franklin's pattern, with no great reach of metaphysics,
and no transcendental aims. They who prize a religion
for its simplicity and its transparency, must be enchanted
with this. Certain it is that if the modern mind is right in
wishing a religion which, without excluding the super
natural, diminishes it to the smallest possible amount, the
religion of Channing is the most perfect and the purest
that has ever appeared.
But is that all, forsooth? and when the creed shall be
reduced to a belief in God and in Christ, what shall we
have gained ? Will scepticism rest satisfied ? Will the
formula of the universe be more complete and lucid?
Will the destiny of man and of humanity be less impene
trable? Does Channing escape the objections of incre
dulity better than the Catholic theologians? Alas! No.
He admits the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and does not
admit his divinity; he admits the Bible, and does not
admit hell. He displays all the oaptiousness of a scholastic
in establishing against the Trinitarians the sense in which
Christ is the son of God, and the sense in which he is not
Now, if we grant that he had a real and miraculous exist
ence from first to last, why not frankly call him divine ?
The one demands no greater effort of faith than the other.
In truth, in this path, it is the first step only which costs ;
there is no use in haggling over the supernatural ; faith is
all of one piece ; and the sacrifice once made, it is. not
deoent to take back in detail, the rights which, once for all,
have been fully conceded.
There, in my opinion, would be Channing's narrow and
contradictory side. What sort of a Rationalist is he, who
admits miracle, prophecy, a revelation ? What is the use

IN THE UNITED STATES. 313
of telling me that this revelation must be judged by reason,
and that in case of collision, reason must be preferred ?
Every stopping-place in Ratiorialism is arbitrary. The
fact of this revelation which • is assumed at the start as
demonstrated, is, moreover, the very fundamental point
to be established; and, in view of the demands of modern
criticism, this cannot be called an easy task. Here we
are, then, -brought back to the diversity of opinions, the
cure for which is sought in the theory of a revelation.
Now, on the supposition that there is one absolute state
ment of the truth, how can we hope to arrive at it by
individual efforts ? How push confidence in our private
judgment to the extent of claiming infallibility for our
selves, and of believing that we shall find the fixed point
which nobody thus far has discovered?
I am aware that I am here urging against Channing the
objection which the Catholic theologian urges against Pro
testantism generally. It is no other, in fact, than the argu
ment of the Catholic controversialists ; a very weak argu
ment, or rather, no argument at all, as addressed to that
broad Protestantism, which is nothing but Spiritualism
attaching itself to. the grand tradition of the Christ, it has
always seemed to me unanswerable by that fraction of the
Reformed Church, which aspires to possess the apparent
vigour of Catholicism without its chains. When Protest
antism - results in anything short of a purely rational
religion, it seems to me illogical. That this inconsequence
may be pardonable, and often honourable, I am the first to
concede; but it must be avowed, that if » Protestantism
aims merely at substituting one set of dogmatiCbeliefs for
another, it has no longer an excuse for living ; Catholicism,
in that ease, is by far the more respectable of the two.
Channing never reached a perfectly clear statement of his
own thought on this poirit. If, on one side, he preaches the
most entire liberty of belief, on the other, he stops very far

314 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
short of pure criticism. If he rouses himSelf energetically
against the Established Church, he never abandons the
hope of finding the true form of the evangelical doctrine.
If he bids men search for themselves, it does not enter
his imagination that independent search can carry any
body outside of Christianity. And yet, if we grant the
fact of a revelation made at a particular moment in his
tory, if we grant truths divinely manifested, and conse
quently binding on the conscience of him who thinks
them revealed, where is the difficulty in recognizing an
outward establishment, a Church teaching by supernatural
illumination ? It is neither feasier nor harder to accept
a miracle wrought eighteen hundred years ago, than a
miracle which is perpetuated in our own generation.
Catholicism has some right to say to Channing — "You
are no more liberal than I, and you submit to an authority
much less obvious : you submit to the Bible ; I submit
to the Church." I own,' that, for my part, I would rather
accept the authority of the Church than that of the Bible.
The Church is more human, more living ; immovable
as it is supposed to be, it yields more readily to the needs
of each epoch. If I may venture to say so, it is more
easily brought to listen to reason, than a book whieh has
been shut for eighteen centuries.
Channing never saw quite clearly that the distant, if
you please, but inevitable consequence of admitting a reve
lation is the admission of an authority to interpret it, the
admission of Catholicism, in other words. The political
institution of religion, as understood by the nations born of
Rome, is very justly repugnant to him. But from the fact
that such a system leads fatally to sloth and indifference,
have we a right to conclude that the less uneasy religion
of the southern nations (and France is becoming a southern
nation more and more) has not also its poetry ? Because
these people, instead of apprehending religion as an endless

IN THE UNITED STATES. 315
/pursuit, go to it merely for repose — because, averse to
trouble, they relish at their leisure a religion that is offered
to them ready made, is that a reason for excluding them
from the kingdom of God? Who knows that they are
not wiser, after all, than they who seek after theological
truth ? If they do not debate the problem, is it not be
cause they have a vague and instinctive feeling that it is
insoluble ? The Catholic, taking the dogma as time has
fashioned it, and without searching into its depths, is, in
one sense, nearer a high philosophy than the Protestant,
who is incessantly in quest of a pretended primitive formula
of Christianity. If it were possible to give a proper direc
tion to the very source of opinion in the Church, the
Catholic method of leaving the dogma to be shaped by the
current of prevailing ideas, and by a kind of tacit under
standing among believers, would be a good deal more pro
found than the appeal to a fixed revelation in which people
feel bound to find one faith for all ages.
As a matter of course, the soul, deeply penetrated with
the sanctity of religious things, will cry out against this
external religion, remnant of Roman paganism, which
commands not faith but respect. I shall always remember
tenderly the deep horror expressed to me by an Anierican
missionary, who had just attended an official ceremony at
the Madeleine. That profane pomp, those uniforms in the
holy place, those places marked as in a theatre, all that dis
traction which assuredly was not of God, that crowd in
which nobody thought of praying, all left on him the im
pression of a frightful paganism. A laudable sentiment
this, to be sure, and I hasten to say that my sympathies are
all with earnestness and delicacy of conscience. But, on
the other hand, it cannot be denied that paganism has very
deep roots among certain races, and exacts a certain mea
sure of concession. If an abstract, purely monotheistic
religion were the best for all men, no religion would be

316 C&ANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
comparable to Islamism. By its varied mysteries, and
especially by its worship of the Yirgin and the saints,
Catholicism meets that need of outward demonstration and
of plastic art which is so strong in the south of Europe.
Besides, it is in the nature of an official religion to make a
less imperious demand on belief, precisely because it stands
only as an institution to which one can adjust himself
without yielding to it an absolute faith, just as obedience
to. the laws of the state does not necessarily involve a
belief that they are the best in the world. Hence it hap
pens that at bottom countries rigorously»Protestant, where
religion is taken up as a very serious matter, are almost as
intolerant, for the free thinker at least, as Catholic coun
tries ; hence, finally, comes the singular fact, that -Catholic
countries, above all, have been familiar with unbelief.
Was ever a country less cramped by its religion than the
Italy of the Middle Ages, and of the renaissance before
the Reformation ? The philosophy of the eighteenth cen
tury could have had its birth only in a Catholic country.*
These two things rank together,' and are associated by a
host of secret analogies, which we have no space here to
enumerate. Impartial -criticism, while it comprehends and applauds
the scruples of the American school, is not, therefore,
obliged to share them entirely. It knows that everything
on earth borders on good and on evil ; on one side it sees
religious indifference resulting from the official system, on
the other it sees individual aberrations resulting from the
* The opinion that the philosophy of the eighteenth century had its origin
in the Reformation is erroneous. If this philosophy has antecedents, we
must look for them in the pagan Italy of 1500. Now, the Reformation is
just a reaction against the Italian unbelief of that period. Need I add,
however, that in a more general sense the Reformation claims a brilliant
share in the work of liberating tho human mind, and that every true liberal
fairly derives from it a branch of his ancestry.

IN THE UNITED STATES. 317
theological mania. No doubt, if, there were an absolute,
truth which would reward the efforts made to get at it, it
would be a duty to preach to all men research and exami
nation ; but, honestly, can we hope to be happier than so
many others, and to enjoy alone the privilege of recover
ing the veritable creed of the religion of Christ ? , How far
is it good for a country to indulge this passion for theologi
cal research? Northern Germany, I know, thanks to its
complete religious liberty, and to its marvellous aptitude
for: all matters in the domain of thought, has perhaps illus
trated the finest page in the history of the human soul.
But does it appear that England and the United States,
where each man makes theology a personal affair, possess
an intellectual culture superior to that of France, where no
man busies himself with theology ? Is the habitual read
ing of the Bible, which is a legitimate consequence of the
' Protestant system, such a great benefit in itself— and is the
Catholic. Church so very guilty for having set a seal on the
book, and hidden it from sight? Not by any means ; "and
I am tempted to say, that the most magnificent stroke of
policy on the part of that great institution was th-e putting
itself alive and active, in the place. of a dumb authority.
The Hebrew literature doubtless is an admirable literature,
but only for scholars and critics who can study it in the
original, and restore the true sense to each of the curious
fragments, which compose it. As for those who admire it
on trust, they generally admire in it what is not there ;
the, real originality of the books of the Old and the New
Testament escapes them. What shall we say of the illite
rate people, who, with no preparation, plunge, into that
obscure antiquity ? Imagine what mental chaos the habi
tual reading of a book like the Apocalypse, or even like
the Book of Kings, must cause with simple and.uninstruct>
ed people ! We are acquainted with the strange aberra
tions which, at the period of the English revolution, pro-

318 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
ceeded from this unwholesome meditation. In America,
the source of such extravagances is not yet dried up. No
doubt it is much pleasanter to see people reading the Bible
than reading nothing, as is the case in Catholic countries ;
but we must also grant that the book might be better
chosen. A sad* spectacle is that of an intelligent nation
bestowing its leisure hours on a monument of another age,
and looking all the time for creeds in a book where there
are none.
Channing's efforts to escape from this pressure of the
Bible sometimes engage him in singular struggles against
the received texts. Hell, in the orthodox sense, is revolt
ing to his gentle nature. Hell, according to him, is only
in the conscience, even as heaven has no locality and is
nothing else than union with God and with all great and
good beings. I accede 'cheerfully ; but how childish to set
about counting the number of times hell is mentioned in
the Bible, to note with satisfaction that it is spoken of but
five or six times, and that a " good " translation might even
find a way of getting rid altogether of- the offensive .word ?
That which is revealed is revealed wholly, if at all; and,
if a single word has proceeded from God, it is not for man
to soften it down to suit the progress of his reason. In
history the same perplexities recur. Channing is led to fash
ion a primitive Christianity, wholly ideal, to which it is our
simple duty to return. " The religion," he says,. " which
was given for the elevation of man. has been used to make
him abject. The religion which was given to create a gene
rous hope in us, has been made an instrument of servile
intimidation and of torture. The religion revealed by
God to enrich the human soul, has been employed to shut
it up in the narrow inclosure of a sect, to found an inqui
sition, to kindle the piles of martyrs. The religion given
to render thought and conscience free, has served, by a
criminal perversion, to bruise them both in order to subject

IN THE UNITED STATES. 319
them to the priests and to purely human creeds." This
Protestant theory of an age of gold in Christendofn, fol
lowed by an age of iron, in which the primitive thought
became obscured, has little to recommend it. Christianity
-nev^er was either so perfect as the Protestants suppose it at
its beginning, or so degraded as they paint it at its decline.
No one generation, in its long career, can be taken as its
ideal age, as there is no one in which it has wholly failed
in its mission. A critical history of the earliest periods of
Christianity would exhibit the singular illusions which
men have entertained respecting this primitive age — as yet
so little known, because it has hardly been studied, save in
a party spirit, and with the intention of finding in it argu
ments for or against dogmas, the germs whereof were then
hardly existing.
In general, Channing lacks what America has lacked
hitherto — high intellectual culture, critical knowledge. He
is not perfectly versed in the questions that interest the
human mind ; he does not know the general results of the
acquisitions of his time. As a spiritual religion, his is not
so good as that of Northern Germany ; as a grand institu
tion, it is not so good as Catholicism ; it demands too many
sacrifices from criticism, and it does not demand enough
from those who experience the need of believing. That
the tendency of modern times is to eall for a religion of
this sort, formed from the common residue of all the faiths,
after the elimination of the doctrinal peculiarities of each
one, numerous facts lead us to believe. The whole of Asia,
for two or three centuries past, seems, by the simplification
of its old symbols, to have arrived at Deism. India, tired
of wandering in the labyrinth of endless sects, comes to the
same result. Rammohun Roy, the most illustrious repre
sentative of the Brahmanic race in our age, died a Unita
rian of Channing's stamp. Voltaire, translated into Gu-
zarati, does service now in the controversy of Zoroaster's

320 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
last disciples, who are pure Deists, with the Protestant mis
sionaries, Beneath the revolutionary movements of China
is hidden, evidently, an appeal to Monotheism against the
degradation with which the old worships of the celestial.
empire seem to be smitten., - Is this an indication that we .
are to regard Deism as the final term in the evolutions of
humanity ? That might be, if the human mind did not
include, by the side of reason, instincts far more. capricious.
Religion is not philosophy alone — it is art ; we must not,
therefore,, ask it to be too reasonable,. That indestructible
grain of fancy will derange what appears to be the most
rational combinations. The need of believing in something
extraordinary is innate in man. A religion that is too sim
ple will not satisfy him ever. The day after the strictest
barriers have been put up, the caprices, the particular, cre
dences, the shabby practices, will resume their rights.
Faith will have the impossible ; it is satisfied with nothing,
cheaper. Even to this day, every year, the Hindous walk
over glowing coals to attest the virginity of Draupadi, the
common wife of the five sons of Kourou.

HI.

The true mission of Channing was evidently altogether
moral. His theology, like every attempt. at resolving an
insoluble problem, is open on all sides to attack ; his moral
ity may be praised without reserve,; in this he is, for us,
original and new. In fact, nothing in our European organ
ization gives us the least idea of such an apostleship. In
our view, the zeal for converts, which makes the apostle or
the missionary, is nothing without a positive and compli
cated religion, loaded with dogmas and observances. Here
we have a Yincent de Paul, minus the devotion ; a Cheve-
rus minus the priesthood. One should read the biography

IN -THE UNITED STATES. 321
which Channing himself has given us of Rev, Dr. Tuck-
erman, his. master and guide in this,path ofcharity, to form
an adequate conception of this new form of laical sanctity,
as the United States seem destined to reveal it to the world.
Channing's eminently English nature, his gentlemanly deli
cacy, his optimism, too, which made the sight of evil a real
torture to ; him, rendered his charitable ministry all the
more meritorious. "My spirit seeks the good, the perfect,
and the beautiful," he wrote. "1 cannot, without a sort
of agony, bring vividly before my imagination what man
suffers through his own crimes and the cruelties of his
brothers. The utmost perfection of art, expended on horri
ble or purely tragical subjects, cannot reconcile me to the
subjects. It is only from a sense of duty that I read in
the papers the recital of crimes and miseries. . . ; . You
see I have little of the stuff for a reformer in my composi
tion." Really I know nothing in our time that suggests these
beautiful and fioble moral discourses, and this lofty way of
taking up. social questions. The problems which have
exercised the human mind among us, and the solution of
which is not yet arrived at, are all resolved in Channing's
mind, by charity, by respect for man, by the conviction
that human nature is good, and that in its free develop
ment it tends to good.- Never did man more firmly believe
in progress, in the beneficent influences of knowledge and
civilization on aU classes. Channing is a democrat in this
sense, that he acknowledges no nobility but that of virtue
and work, that he sees no salvation \for humanity save
in the intellectual cultivation of; the masses of the/people,
and their adoption into the bosom of the. great civilized
family.. "I am a leveller," he wrote in 1831, "but I would
fain accomplish my mission by raising those who are in the
lowest rank, by rescuing the labourers fifcm the poverty
which degrades, and from the ignorance which brutalizes
21

322 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
them. If I understand the meaning of Christianity and
philanthropy, there is no precept more clear than that."
In politics, Channing has little penetration. He is liberal,
and what is very rare, liberal from motives of religion.
The revolution of 1830 gave him lively joy. He heard
the news at Newport, and repaired immediately to Boston,
to exchange congratulations with the friends of constitu
tional liberty,, and to impart from the pulpit the hopes that
filled his heart. Greatly astonished was he to find but
a feeble echo of his enthusiasm,' and he cursed more vehe
mently than ever the torpor of opinion caused by worldly
interests. The coldness of the young men particularly, sur
prised and afflicted him. Going back to the processions and
the bonfires of his youth he did not understand how the
free men of America could see with indifference the reap
pearance of Lafayette, the calm firmness of the people and
the future of liberty which seemed to be opening for Europe.
One evening towards this period, he met a person of his
acquaintance: "Well, sir," he said in a tone of sarcasm
which was not habitual with him, " are you also too old,
too wise, like the young men from college, to have any
enthusiasm to show in honour of the heroes of the Poly
technic School'?" " Sir," replied his interlocutor, " you
seem to me the only young man I know." " Always young
for liberty," responded Channing in a ringing voice, and
grasping warmly the hand of his friend.
Noble sentiments these, at which one should never blush.
And .yet, Channing's political and social ideas, simple, excel
lent, pure as they are, are no more exempt from criticism than
his religious ideas. Would a people who should fill out
Channing's ideal be really a complete people after the model
of a high civilization as we conceive it ? It may be doubted.
It would be an honest people, orderly, composed of good
and happy individuals ; it would not be a 'great people.
Human society is more complex than Channing supposes.

IN THE UNITED STATES. 323
In face of calamities like those of the middle ages, we
allow ourselves to think that the essential thing would be
to render life as little as possible unhappy ; in face oi5 moral
laxity like that we behold, we easily fancy that the work
of social reform might consist in giving to the world a
little honesty ; but these are limited views, conceived under
the pressure of momentary necessities. Man is not placed
on the earth merely to be happy; nor is he placed here
merely to be honest ; he is here to accomplish great things
through society, to arrive at nobleness, at sanctity, ' as
Christianity called it, and to outgrow the vulgarity in
which the existence of almost all individuals drags on.
The least inconvenience in Channing's world would be
that people would die of weariness there ; genius would
be useless; great art, would be impossible. The Scotch
puritan of the seventeenth century best represents to us
the dream of the Unitarians, a sort of ideal after the
fashion of Israel, where everybody should know the
Bible, reason out his faith, discuss public affairs; where
drunkenness should be unknown, where no one should
hear an oath. But what very precious gift has the Scot
land of 'the seventeenth century enriched the world with?
Would not God have been better adored if, at the risk of a
few jarring words, more great and beautiful things had
been produced? Italy, its precise opposite, is certainly the ,
country in which Channing's ideal has been most faintly
realized; in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, pagan,
immoral, made over to all the transports of passion and
genius; next, dejected, superstitious, hopeless; now, som
bre, irritable, destitute of wisdom. And yet, if we must
see Italy sink with its past, or America with its future,
which would leave the greatest void in the heart of huma
nity ? What is the whole of America as compared with
one ray of that infinite glory with which towns of second
and third rank in Italy — Florence, Pisa, Siena, Perugia —

324 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
are all aglow ? Before they can hold a rank in the scale
of human grandeur comparable to these cities, New York
and Boston have a great deal to; do, and I dPubtif they
succeed in approaching it through total abstinence societies,
and the propagation of the pure Unitarian doctrine.
Convinced- with good reason that the perfection of human
society consists solely in the improvement of the individual,
Channing fastens passionately on details which do- honour
to the delicacy of his conscience, but: the minuteness of
which provokes a, smile. He saw justly that intemperance
was the principal cause of the misery and the coarseness of
the lower classes, whence he concluded that to cure intem
perance would be to attack social evil at its root ; a ; great
portion of his life and effort was in fact devoted to this
certainly very praiseworthy labour. But really, would a
people that drank nothing but water, be the greater for it ?
Would it illustrate a more: beautiful plage inhuman history?
Would it reach a higher standard of art, of thought ? This
habit of attaching a social importance to a thing which we
can only regard as pertaining to individual morality plainly
shows the gulf which divides American thought from ours,
and how difficult it will be for the old and the new world,
pursuing such different views, ever to meet on the same
policy or the same faith.
Of the two modes of conceiving human progress,^-as
the result- of the gradual elevationof the mass of humanity,
and consequently of the lower classes, towards a better
condition — or as accomplished by an aristocracy which
supposes beneath it. a vast abasement-— Ghanning very
decidedly attached himself to the first Woe to him who
would not follow his example, but would desert? for out
grown prejudices the henceforth incontrovertible cause of
modern democracy \ But taking this side,- we should not
be blind to the dangers of the path; which democratic
nations are treading,' nor unjust to the entirely different

IN THE UNITED STATES. 825
way in which the past has understood civilization. If we
could once for all make up our minds to sacrifice some
few in viewofthe necessities of the common work; if we
admitted, as antiquity did, that society is composed essen
tially of some thousands of individuals living a full life,
while the rest existed: merely to- procure this life for this
small number, the problem would be infinitely simplified,
and would be susceptible of a very much higher solution*
We should not have to reckon a crowd of humiliating
details which democracy is compelled to think of. The
loftiness of a civilization is usually in inverse ratio to the
number of those who share in it; intellectual culture ceases
to rise the moment it is anxious to spread; the crowd
pouringinto cultivated society almost always depresses its
level. These are reflections which it is permitted to make
without incurring the reproach of denying the most irre
sistible tendencies of the present age; we will add even
that the peculiar character of France, a character which
here we mean neither to praise nor to disparage, does not
allow us to suppose that theideas of Channing could be
applied there, unless very greatly restricted. - - -
These ideas, in fact, suppose, or at least aim at creating
an enlightened population, rather than a grand culture.
Now, in regard to intelligence, France is a country essen
tially aristocratic. The moral temper of France combines
extremes; a common people generally below the average,
and by the side of this common people an aristocracy
of intellect to which, probably, $o other can be compared.
Nowhere do we find at once so much, mind and so little
taste : for liberal things. ^Education,- as Channing under
stands it, would, among us, be too strong for some, too
weak for others. In religion, Channing's ¦ ideas;' and I
mean no reproach to them when 1 say it, seem to me no
better adapted to; ou? country. France is almost destitute
of religious spontaneity. Had France been 'Capable of

326 CHANGING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT
originating a religious movement of its own, it would have
become -Prqtestant Never will circumstances be as favour
able as they were in the sixteenth century ; never will
more heroism be displayed. Well I France, we must
say it with regret, rejected Protestantism as uncongenial
to its nature. France is the most orthodox country in the
world, for it is the most indifferent to religion. To innovate
in theology, is to believe in theology. Now, France bas
too much mind ever to: be a theological country. Heresy
has no business there : the only great heresiarch it has
produced, Calvin, met with no success till he had passed
its frontiers. It is greatly to be feared, that the miserable
abortiveness of all the attempts which have been proposed
more recently to modify the forms and the spirit of Catho
licism among us, is an indication of the fate reserved for
undertakings of the same kind in the future.
In religion, as in everything, France desires the univer
sal, and cares little for the delicate and the, distinguished.
Precisely because of its profound piety it loves not the
small sects, the separatists, the religions of chapels and
cliques, which the English race so greatly delights in.
Religious controversy is bad taste in France - it does not
comprehend how people can dispute on such small matters.
The argument against Protestantism which the theologians
draw from its perpetual divisions, and from the new sects
which it produces without ceasing, as if this were not really
a sign of life and of religious activity, as if uniformity of
belief were not almost always caused by mental abasement
this argument, I say, is considered in France quite decisive.
This is the reason why, after every effort made to stir its
indifference^France falls back more heavily than ever into
Catholicism or incredulity. This country is absolute in
everything : it must have sharply cut theses which give
it room to plant its rhetoric and satisfy its taste for general
declamation. The wise men see and desire something

IN THE UNITED STATES. 327
better : but the wise men are not of their country. The
philosophy of the eighteenth century, which is something
eminently French, is in one sense profoundly Catholic
through its universal tendency, its lack of criticism, its
indifference to fine distinctions, and its claim to substi
tute another infallibility for theological infallibility.
We cannot hope, then, it seems to me, that the ideas of
Channing are destined to gather a very large company of
adherents among us. He understood this himself. His
letters to MM. Sismondi and de Gerando betray a constant
mindfulness of France, and in the midst of sentiments
expressing a lively sympathy, let but little hope stream out.
" I wish," he wrote to the latter, " to put a question to yOu,
to which you will reply, I hope, with perfect frankness.
Are the religious views unfolded in my volume in any
respect applicable to the needs and to the condition of
France ? I am not sorry to read in your letter that the
English Sects do not succeed in extending themselves
among you. They can give but a poor form of religion.
For some time past England has made little progress in
the higher truths. Her missionaries, if people listened to
them, would force France backward three centuries. I
think that religion, when it shall revive among you, will
appear in a diviner form. I think that France, after so
many efforts after progress, will not resume the worm-
eaten theology of the ages of antiquity." — " I neither hope
nor. desire," he writes to M. Sisiriondi, " that Christianity
should revive in France under its ancient forms. Some
thing better is needed  One of the greatest
means of restoring Christianity is to break the habit, almost
¦universal in France, of identifying it with Catholicism, or
with the old Protestantism. Another method is to show
how entirely it is in harmony with the spirit of liberty, of
philanthropy," of progress, and to make it appear that th#se
principles demand the aid of Christianity for their full

328 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT.
development. The identity of this religion with the most
extended benevolence needs especially to be understood.
Unless Christianity fulfils all these conditions, I cannot
desire its success." — " Whence shall come our safety ?" he
says again, " That is the question that incessantly arises
in my mind. Will the world receive the impulse of new
reformers, or of new institutions? Will the work be
accomplished by a silent force acting in the bosom of the
masses, or will great convulsions, overturning the actual
state of things, be necessary, as at the fall of the Roman
empire, to introduce a reform worthy of the name ? Some
times I fear that this latter method will get the lead, so
profound seems to me the corruption of the Church and
of society."
These doubts respecting the religious future of the Old
World were never dissipated for him. He comprehended
that his liberal and untraditional Christianity was good for
a young territory where another plan of humanity, if I
may venture to say so, was starting, but would be inappli
cable to our old civilization, in whicri everybody is anti
quarian in his way. He remained faithful to America.
There, indeed, his ideas seem to us to have an immense
future. The United , States are perhaps destined to exhi
bit for the first time, before the eyes of the world, a reh "
gion, enlightened, purely individual, creating honest people.
and totally free from metaphysical pretensions. The name
of Channing will no doubt be attached to this foundation.
not as that of the chief of a school, he would have been
the first to refuse that honour, but as that of one of the
men in whom the new spirit first found complete and
attractive expression.
If the problem of the universe were to be resolved by
rectitude of heart, simplicity, moderation of mind, Chan
ning would have resolved it ; but other qualities are neces
sary for that, and Channing, who received them perhaps

IN THE UNITED STATES. 329
from nature, as far as nature gives them, did not find him
self in the intellectual atmosphere which develops them, .
and makes them bear fruit. We will say, first and fore-
tnost, that nothing is worth so much as honesty, goodness,
true piety, those essential endowments of beautiful souls.
" When God formed the heart of man, he put into it, first
of all, goodness, as the proper characteristic of . the. divine
nature, and as a mark of that beneficent hand from which
we proceed."* Goodness, however, , is not adequate to
solve the problem of things. Its part is exceedingly lovely,
to console this life, but not to extract its secret.. For' this,
knowledge and genius are as necessary as elevation of
heari and purity of soul. A world without knowledge
and without genius is as incomplete as a world without
goodness. The second condition is pretty much all that
Channing comprehended, and here too he sinned in regard
ing things as being much more simple than they really are.
God forbid that I should seem to discourage the noble
spirits who, justly impressed with the imperfection of our
social state, desire its reform, and pray for a religion better
suited to their needs ! Should their efforts have no other
result than' the improvement and consolation of a few
chosen souls, would they not be sufficiently rewarded ?
But I dare not hope that their influence will be wide or
really social. Henceforth there seems to be no room for
new and original speculations in the domain of theology, ,
nor does the religious condition of humanity appear to be
susceptible of very considerable change. Bouddhism, it is
true, seems likely to disappear, and Islamism will be eter
nal only in the Arab race; but it is hard to beHeve that
the balance of the three great branches of Christianity,
which the centuries have founded — the Latin, or Catholic
Church, the Greek, or Orthodox Church, Protestantism —
* Bossuet.

330 CHANNING AND THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT.
is in the future to be disturbed in any- marked degree.
Will the relations of philosophy and Christianity, however,
be altered ? Will either of these two forms of human
thought succeed in absorbing the other ? Or will a last
ing peace reconcile their conflicting pretensions ? We
have no expectation of this either. Philosophy will always
belong to a minority, inappreciable in numbers, but the
suppression of which would inevitably involve the destruc
tion, at the same time, of civilization. To sustain these
rival powers as they front each other, not to discourage
• those who wish to reconcile them, and yet not to be too
confident of the reconciliation of enemies who will fall out
the next day, is the only course that can he laid down by
strictly critical minds in our time. It would be unjust to
reproach the past with not having practised a tolerance
which is the result, good or bad, of the intellectual state
that we are passing throhgh, but no less certain is it that
liberty is the only religious code of modern times, and we
can hardlvconceive how humanity, after being accustomed
to^ regard its beliefs as purely relative, should again fall
into the habit of taking them for absolute truth.

M. FEUERBACH AND THE NEW HEGELIAN
SCHOOL.
* *
\
EYERY considerable movement on the field of human
opinions is worthy of interest even when we
attach no great value to the mass of ideas that
causes it. On this plea, the man who is devoted to critical
researches cannot decline to notice the labours of the New
Hegelian School on Christianity, although these labours
do not always bear a strictly scientific character, and al
though the fancy of the humourist has often more share in
them than the severe method of the historian.
The repugnance of the new German school to Chris
tianity dates from Goethe, Pagan by nature, and especially
by literary method. Goethe could have little relish for the
aesthetics which substituted the slave's coarse frock for the
freeman's toga, the sickly virgin for the antique Yenus,
the meagre image of a crucified man torn by four nails, for
the ideal perfection of the human form represented by the
gods of Greece. Inaccessible to fear and to grief, Jupiter
was truly the god of this great man, and we are not sur
prised to see him place the colossal head of this god before
his bed, where the rising sun could fall on it, in order
that in the morning he might address to it his prayer.
, No less decidedly did Hegel pronounce in favour of the
religious ideal of the Hellenes and against the intrusion of
the Syrian or Galilean elements. The legend of the Christ
seems to him to haveheen conceived on the same plan with
the Alexandrine biography of Pythagoras ; it has a place,
he thinks, in the sphere of the most vulgar realism, but

332 M. FEUERBACH AND THE
• none in a world of poetry : it is a niixture of shabby mys
ticism and of pale chimeras, such as we find among fantasy
tical people who have no fine imagination. The Old and
New Testaments have no aesthetic value in his eyes.
It is the theme that so often roused the spirit of Henri
Heise. The learned school of pure Germanisls (MM.
Gervinus, Lassen, etc.) who, to borrow the ingenious expres
sion of Ozanam, cannot pardon Christian gentleness for
having spoiled their bellicose ancestors for themy'has been
full of the same feeling. But M. Louis Feuerbach* is,
without doubt, the most forward, if not the most correct
expression of the antipathy we speak , of,, and .if the nine
teenth century is to witness the end of the world, he
certainly must be called the Antichrist.
M. Feuerbach comes very near defining Christianity as
a perversion of human nature, and Christian aesthetics
as a perversion of the most secret instincts of: the heart.
The perpetual lamentations of Christians over their sins,
seem to him intolerable fooleries ; the humility and poverty
of the monastic life are, to him, the worship of dirt and
ugliness, and he would cheerfully say like Rutilius Numa-
tianus: "Is this sect, then, I ask, less deadly than the
poison of Circe ? Circe changed bodies, now they are
spirits that are changed into swine."
We say it aloud, and with the more confidence, as we
wish here to meet considerations of art with views of. the
same order only, the critical spirit cannot admit so absolute
judgment. Wherever there is originality, a real expansion
* The most characteristic writings of M. FeuerbaMh and the} new Hege
lian school have been collected and translated by M. Hermann Ewerbeclf,
in two volumes ; one entitled, " What is Religion ?" the other, " What is
the Bible according to the new German philosophy ?" Paris : 1850. — It is
a pity that the translator, whose disinterestedness merits praise, should have
mixed with writings that may- be worth -knowing, fragments of no value,
some of which, too, can, in no sense, be taken seriously. .

NEW HEGELIAN SCHOOL. 333
of any instincts of human nature, we must recognize and ,
adore beauty. Sad, as sad as you please, this, aesthetic has
its boldness and its grandeur. Clumsy and homely as
compared with the learned legends pf. Greece, this legend,
aside from its matchless morality, even when regarded
as with the eyes of the artist, possesses a great charm
of simplicity; Formerly, good taste refused the name of
beauty to everything that did not reach perfection of form ;
such is not our criticism. We excuse barbarism wherever
we find the expression of a new phase of feeling, and a
genuine breath of the human soul.
Would to God that M. Eeuerbach had bathed in richer
fountains of life than those of his exclusive and haughty
Germanism! Ah! if seated on the ruins of Mount Pala
tine,, or of Mount Celius, he had heard the sound of the
everlasting bells linger and die on the deserted hills, where
Rome stood once ; or if from the solitary shore of the Lido
he had listened to the chimes of St. Mark, as they breathed
themselves away on the lagunes ; if he had seen Assisi and
its mystic marvels, its double basilica and the grand legend
of the second Christ of the middle ages, drawn by the pen
cil of Cimabue or Giotto ; if he had satiated himself with
the long, sweet look of Perugino's Yirgins, or at San
Domenico of Siena, had seen Saint Catherine in ecstasy ;
no, M. Feuerbach would not thus cast opprobriutn on one-
half the poetry of mankind, nor would he exclaim as if he
were exorcising the shade of Iscariot !
M. Feuerbach's error lies almost always in his aesthetic
judgments. The facts are often presented by him with
sufficient delicacy, but always pronounced on with revolt
ing severity, and with a determination to: find everything.
Christian^ ugly, atrocious, or ridiculous. We may agree
with him on many points of detail, and yet share none of,
his views on the general morality of history. Yes, the
great difference between Hellenism and Christianity, is that

334 * M. FEUERBACH AND THE
Hellenism is natural, and Christianity super-natural. The
religions of antiquity were nothing more than the state, the
family, art, morals, raised to a high and poetic expression;
they knew nothing of, renunciation, of sacrifice ; they did
not divide life ; the distinction of sacred and profane had
no existence for them. Antiquity, in its mode of feeling,
is straightforward and simple; Christianity, on the con
trary, ever on its guard against nature, seeks the strange,
the paradoxical. Abstinence, in its view, is better than
enjoyment, happiness must be sought in its opposite; the
wisdom of the flesh, that is to say natural wisdom, is folly ;
the folly of the cross is wisdom. Are the writings of Saint
Paul, from end to end, anything but a deliberate reversal
of human meanings, an anticipative comment on Tertulli-
an's credo quia absurdum ? The distinction of the flesh and
the spirit, unknown to the ancients, for whom human life
preserved its harmonious unity, kindled from that moment
the war between man and himself, which eighteen centu
ries have not quenched.
Hence, strange overthrows compensated by admirable
inoral conquests. Vagaries which antiquity had known
only in connection with its most superstitious rites, become
contagious. On what has the meditation of Christian
piety, the imagination of the enthusiasts preferred to exer
cise itself.? Is it on the Trinity, on the Holy Spirit, on
those controversial dogmas which are received as a sealed
formula ? No ; it is on the little child, the Santo Bambino
in his manger; no saint that has not kissed its feet; Saint
Catherine, of Siena, espoused him, and this other saint
clasped him in her arms. It is on the Passion, on the suf
fering Christ ; no saint that . has not felt the print in his
pierced hands, in his open side ; Saint Madeline of Pazzi
beheld him in dream, shedding five fountains of blood from
his five wounds; this other saw his heart, bloody and
transfixed. It is on Mary ; Mary has sufficed to satisfy the

NEW HEGELIAN SCHOOL. 335
•
craving for love in ten centuries of ascetics. Mary has
entered by" full title into the Trinity. She far excels that
third forgotten person, the Holy Spirit, with neither lovers
nor adorers. She completes the divine family, for it would
have been a marvel if the feminine element, in its triumph,
had not succeeded in reaching even the bosom of God, and
between the Father and the Son, introducing the mother.*
At the same time the ideal of morality changes, but in
one sense becomes elevated and noble. Paganism, taking
human nature to be upright and sound, consecrated the
whole of it, even in its baser parts, in that lay disorder and
error. Christianity, on its side, by placing nature too
absolutely under anathema, fostered that taste for the abject
and the ugly which fed the middle age astray. The man
of antiquity, Aristides or Solon, swims tranquilly in the
current of life, his perfections and his imperfections belong
to our nature. The Christian man climbs upon the column
of the Styljtes, withdraws from everything, and using only
so much of the ground as is necessary to plant his foot on,
suspends himself between heaven and earth. The ideal of.
beauty degenerates in pureness but gains in depth. That
ideal is no longer an ennobled nature, the perfection of the
real, the flowering of the actual ^ it is the anti-natural, it is
the corpse of a dead God, it is the pallid and veiled Addo-
hrata ; it is the Madeleine torturing her flesh. Had one
proposed to the artist of antiquity one of the subjects which
Christianity dejights in, the Yirgin, the Crucifix, he would.
have repelled it as out of the question. The Ceres dolorosa
is beautiful as a woman and as a mother ; but the Yirgin I
. . . her conception, her delivery are supernatural; her
brothers are angels; she has on earth no sister, no hus-

* The representations of the iineoroiata, in which Mary, placed between
the Father and the Son, receives the crcwn from the hand of the former, and
the homage of the latter, describe the tri e Trinity of Christian piety.

336 M. FEUERBACH AND THE
band. : SO, should Christian art, returning to profane tra
dition, go to seek the types of the Madonna at Albano or
at Transtevere; it would be a sacrilege against which
the Christian conscience would justly make outcry. Pro-
metheuS nailed to his rock is still beautiful. But Jesus pn
the Cross! . . . If you try to express in that attenuated
body the : ideal of human forms, the harmonious propor
tions of the Dionysus or the Apollo, if you give to that
thorn-crowned head the high serenity of the Olympian
Jupiter, it is an absurdity and almost an impiety. The
Byzantine Church was consistent in maintaining stubbornly
the thesis of the Christ's physical repulsiveness. He must
be described as lean, lank, and bloody ; let them count all
his bones, let them take: him for a leper, a worm of the
ground and no man. " We have regarded him as a leper.
. . . He hath no form nor comeliness. . . . Despised and
rejected of. men j a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief." Yes, all this is strange, new, unheard of, and Saint Paul
was quite right in calling it scandal and folly. But all this
belongs to human nature. All this came in its season, all
this issued at its time from the eternal seed, which contains
things beautiful* A great modification took place in human
nature. A warm, damp wind blew from the south, and
relaxed its rigidity. Love changed its object ; to the enthu
siasm for beauty succeeded enthusiasm for suffering, the
apotheosis of the man of sorrows, experienced in weak
nesses, the " divine leper," as Bossuet calls him.*
It is a serious mistake to cast on antiquity the reproach
of Materialism. : Antiquity is neither materialistic nor spi
ritualistic, it is human. The life of antiquity so serene,. so
gracious in its fair proportions, had no outlook towards the
* This side of Christianity has never been grasped with more energy and
originality than by Bossuet in the admirable sermons " Oh the Passion," and,
" On the Compassion of the Holy Virgin."

NEW HEGELIAN SCHOOL. 337
infinite. Look at those charming little houses of Pompeii,
how gay, how finished, but, how narrow and pent up 1
Everywhere repose and joy, everywhere images of hap
piness and pleasure. This, however, does not satisfy us ;
we have no longer a conception of unsaddened life. Pene
trated as we are with our supernaturalistic ideas, and our
thirst for the Infinite, this circumscribed art, this simple
morality, this plan of life so bounded in every direction
seems to us a confined realism. Castor and Pollux, Diana
and Minerva are to us cold images, because they represent
nature in its healthy and normal state. But let us be
on our guard ; these grand airs of abstinence and sacrifice
are often but a refinement of instincts which feed on the
opposite qualities. Christian Spiritualism is, at bottom, far
more sensual than what is called the materialism of anti
quity,* and sometimes looks like lassitude. The Dorian
Artemis, that masculine young girl who touched the severe
Hyppolytus, always seemed to me more austere than the
" dear Saint Elizabeth," with whom M. de Montalembert
became so desperately enamoured. Those who have visited
Naples may have seen in the Chapel della Pieta de' Sangri,
a Pudicizia covered with a long veil, which clings to her
whole person in a way to suggest, beneath the marble
folds, the form rendered more seductive by mystery. On
the other hand, in the Museum of the Yatican, there is an
antique Modesty, half nude, but veiled by its severe beauty.
. . . Which, think you, is really the more chaste ? Greece,
with exquisite tact perceived in everything the golden mean,
the flitting shadowy line which is seized at moments, but
which cannot be held. Moderation, indeed, appears cold

* I am speaking, understand, only of the high and pure antiquity of
Greece ; I should observe, too, that the present question is, first of all, one of
(esthetics and of taste, and must be settled by an examination of works of
art and poetry. 22

338 M. FEUERBACH AND THE
and wearisome in the long run ; we tire of proportion and
good taste ; the perfectly pure types no longer satisfy ; we
wish the strange, the superhuman, 'the supernatural.
It is not through the fault of individuals or of systems
that the religious sentiments undergo these profound revo
lutions. Man does not voluntarily leave the pleasant and
easy parts of the plain for the sharp and romantic peaks of
the mountain. He does this because measure and propor
tion representing only the finite become insufficient for the*
heart that longs for the infinite. So long as humanity
incloses itself in just and strict limits, it is at rest and
happy in its mediocrity ; as soon as it hearkens to more
ample needs, become exacting and unhappy, but in one
sense more noble, it will in art and in morality prefer
suffering, the unsatisfied desire, the vague arid painful
feelings which have their birth in the infinite, to the full
and complete satisfaction which a finished work procures.
But if there be one incurable malady, it is, thank God,
this. The delicate are unhappy ; but there is no cure for
delicacy. We can acknowledge that we have bent the
mind away, but we cannot straighten it again. And then
aberration has so many charms and correctness is so tedious !'
An ancient temple has incontestably a purer beauty than
a Gothic church, and yet we spend hours in the l&ttet
without fatigue, and we are tired if we stay five minutes in
the former ! That proves, according to M. Feuerbach, that
we are perverted ; but what is to be done about it ?
Had M. Feuerbach been content to show these contrasts
serenely and tenderly; if, satisfied with curiously rioting
the alternations of human feeling, he had not met the
often gratuitous enthusiasm of the believer with a hate
more gratuitous still, we could not fairly treat him with
much severity. But the impartial philosopher cannot sub
scribe to the wholesale condemnation which M. Feuerbach
launches at eighteen centuries of the history of the human

NEV7 HEGELIAN SCHOOL. 339
mind ; for he must consider, it is the human mind itself
which is on trial. It is useless for him to turn his hatred
against the words Christianity, Theology, etc. What then
has made theology ? What has made Christianity ? Hu
manity accepts no chains but those it imposes on itself.
Humanity has done everything, and we believe has done
everything well.
Besides, it is not Supernaturalism alone that falls under
the criticism of the new German school; M. Feuerbach
and all the philosophers of this school declare without
hesitation that theism, natural religion, every system, in a
word, that admits anything transcendental, must be placed
on the same footing with supernaturalism. To believe in
God and in the immortality of the soul is as superstitious
in his view as to believe in the Trinity and in miracles.
The criticism of the skies is according to him but criticism of
the earth ; theology must become anthropology. All regard
for a higher world, every look that man throws beyond him
self and actual things, every religious feeling under whatever
form manifested, is an illusion and nothing else. In order
not to be severe towards such a philosophy, we are willing
to see in it merely a misunderstanding. At the head
of the second edition of his "Essence of Christianity," M.
Feuerbach has written : " By this book, I have undone
myself with God and with the world." We think that to
some extent, he is to blame for this, and that had he been
willing, God and the world would have forgiven him.
Seduced by the pernicious tone which prevails in the
German Universities, and which might fittingly be called
the pedantry of audacity, many upright minds and honest
souls claim without deserving the honours of Atheism.
When a German boasts of his impiety, he must never
be taken at his word. Germany is not capable of being
irreligious ; religion, that is to say, aspiration after the
ideal world, is the very foundation of its nature. When it

¦340 M. FEUERBACH AND THE
would be atheistic, it is so devotedly and with a kind
of unction. But if you cultivate the worship of beauty
and truth ; if the sanctity of the moral speaks to your
heart ; if all beauty and all truth bring you back to the
hearth of holy life; and if arrived there you forbear
speech, you cover your head, you purposely confound
thought and language in order to say nothing partial in
presence of the infinite, how dare you talk of atheism?
But if your faculties vibrating in unison have never ren
dered that grand peculiar tone which we call God, I have
nothing more to say ; you are wanting in the essential and
characteristic element of our nature..
To those who, planting themselves on substance, ask
me: "Is he, or is he not, this God of yours?" Ah! I
shall reply, God ! It is he that is, and all the rest but
seems to be. Granting even that for us philosophers ano
ther word might be preferable; besides the unfitness of
abstract words to express clearly enough real existence,
there would be an immense inconvenience in thus cutting
ourselves off from the sources of poetry in the past, and in
separating ourselves by our speech from the simple who
adore so well in their way. The word God possessing as
it does the respect of humanity, the word having been
long sanctioned by it, and having been employed in the
finest poems, to abandon it would be to overturn all the
usages of language. Tell the simple to live a life of aspi
ration after truth, beauty, moral goodness — the words
would convey no meaning to them. Tell them to love
God, not to offend God, they will understand you wonder
fully. God, Providence, Immortality ! good old words, a
little clumsy perhaps, which philosophy will interpret in
finer and finer senses ; but which it will never fill the place
of to advantage. Under one form or another, God will
always be the sum of our supersensual needs, the category
of the ideal, the form, that is, under which we conceive the

NEW HEGELIAN SCHOOL. 341
ideal, as spaGe and time are the categories of bodies, that is
to say, the form under which we conceive of bodies. In
other words, man placed in the presence of beautiful, good,
or true things, goes out of himself, and, caught up by a
celestial charm, annihilates his pitiful personality, is
exalted, is absorbed. What is that, if it be not adoration ?

THE FUTURE OF RELIGION IN MODERN
SOCIETY.

M'

ANY among so-called enlightened people have
arrived in our day at a singular conclusion.
Persuaded that universal pacification is the su
preme good, they think that every cause of division be
tween men should be prevented by the state, and they
shut their eyes to the questions which threaten to disturb
their happy quiet. China is, though they do not know it,
the ideal they propose to themselves. There each one has
his official title. Each has a right, after death, to the con
sideration that he enjoyed during his life ; there every
magistrate is upright, every governor a good administrator,
all kings have been fathers ; if they have not been, no one
dares say so, and there is a story that when the old sages
found the trace of some misdeed committed by a sovereign
they prudently wiped it out. In this way China, at the
first glance, looked like the paradise of wise men ; and
the eighteenth century, which took seriously this sanctimo
nious foolery of the annals of the Celestial Empire, thought
it had found the model people. In reality, China, with its
mandarins, its admirable police, its competition of gradu
ates, its widely diffused public instruction, has always been
inferior to our West even in its worst days. When we
burned men for theological subtleties, we certainly were
very far from that rational indifference to the highest things
which, in the eyes of a disciple of Confucius, is the essen
tial condition of happiness ; but races must be judged by
the sum of their history. China, in consequence of this

THE FUTURE OF RELIGION IN MODERN SOCIETY. 343
stubborn optimism, is dying, not of old age, but of an inde
finitely prolonged childhood. The Western nations, with
their burning fever after the absolute and the righteous,
the inquisition, the revolutionary tribunal, terrorism, are
young, mistresses of the world. Capable of great loves
and hates, they owe it to their very excesses that they
have in the past something to detest, and in the future an
ideal to pursue. The words faith and hope have a meaning
for them; they are dogmatic races, accustomed to prefer a
thousand things to life, possessed by an invincible confi
dence in what they believe to be the truth.
That which the superficial politicians of the last century,
and of the beginning of this, most admired in the institu
tions of China, was the pains-taking caution of legislation
in setting aside questions of religion. A sort of academy
of, the moral sciences, regulating once for all man's rela
tions to the infinite ; a central power, laying a wise interdict
on everything that could get into the heart and beget dis
cussion ; a religion of ceremonies and innocent parades
appeared to them the master-piece of a wise administration.
In the persuasion, more or less openly avowed, that enjoy
ment is the end of life, they regarded as marplots any who
called up problems of a higher order. Luther and Calvin
were dangerous men, who had occasioned the shedding of
a great deal of blood. They came near charging Pilate
with having acted too feebly, and the commissaries of the
Roman police with not having exercised a sufficiently close
watch over the catacombs. All propagandism was crime.
One of the vital articles in the Concordat laid it down that
preachers in their instructions should not allow themselves
directly or indirectly to arraign the other creeds authorized
by the state. Lively and apparently aggressive reactions
haVe proved that this narrow tendency of a few minds was
by no means the tendency of Europe, and the West would
never, for the sake of living in peace, resign itself to the

344 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
absence of all motive for living. The struggle will change
faces a thousand times ; the parties will, we must hope,
abandon the unlawful weapons they have too often used ;
but the war will not end. What forms will be assumed
by that eternal discord, the germs of which God himself
has sowed in humanity ? If religions have a future, what
is that future ? How limit without extinguishing the
spark of conflagration, which every great community car
ries in its bosom ? How can the proportions of the reli
gious families that divide the world among themselves be
altered? Some recent works have called attention to all
these points. A writer long known by works of indi
vidual and daring thought, M. Salvador, has published one
of the most original books that has appeared for years on
religious questions. A young and brilliant publicist, whose
noble heart is capable of embracing all that is liberal, M.
Prevost-Paradol, in reprinting a paper published more than
thirty years ago, by one of the men of the last generation
who had the clearest anticipations of the future, has con
nected with it views full of truth and force on the condi
tion of the different Christian communities. An anony
mous writer has set forth with remarkable vigour the con
sequences that result from our legislation on religion, and
shows what is to be understood by religious liberty.
Finally, contemporaneous events, which we shall not dis
cuss here — for it is awkward, before one is asked, to pro
pose solutions of problems that have not been raised, issues
for situations that have not been taken — have shown to
what extent religious questions are still mixed up with the
world's movement ; how much account politics must make
of them, and how inadequate the maxims hitherto followed
have become in the face of the new facts which have
occurred. The question is, are we authorized to elicit
from all these facts any light on the possible transforma
tions of the religious code of humanity ?

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 345

The first question that presents itself, when we reflect on
the religious future of the modern world, is this : Can we
believe that there will appear a new form of religion, a
complete and original expression of the needs of the new
age — or will they still needs seek to find satisfaction in
various modifications of the existing creeds? In other
words, outside of Judaism, of Christianity, of Islamism—
which, for twelve hundred years, have had the close field
of civilization to themselves— will there be formed another
religion, no more related to these three than Jesus was to
Moses, or Mahomet to Jesus? This problem assumes a
singular prominence in the book of M. Salvador. Equally
removed from orthodoxy,, which is shut up in the creeds of
one of the three religions, and from the free symbolism
which interprets them in senses more and more refined,
and from Deism, which preserves but their dried skeletons,
and from criticism, which endeavours to determine their
weight in the collective movement of humanity, M. Salva
dor holds a place apart in the religious labour of our time.
If, as some persons think, our disease consists in an excess
of the historical spirit, M. Salvador is more exempt from
such a fault than any of his contemporaries. A nature
complete, grand, strong, full of the genius of his race ; not
concerned if be raises a smile; caring little for our fine
shades of thought and exactness ; a stranger to that nice
intuition of the past which German criticism has inaugu
rated, M. Salvador is truly an original, an innovator in
religion. He has but half-knowledge ; he borrows freely ;
he is a compiler. In the sixteenth century, in Holland, he
would have held a place by the side of the Spinozas and
the Acostas ; astray in an age of analysis, he remains, I
fear, an empty shade. M. Salvador was the first man in

346 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
France who approached the problem of the origins of
Christianity. He did it with inadequate learning, but with
a lively appreciation of some of its data. He brought to
his task what we may call an endowment of race, that
sort of political insight which has rendered the Semites
alone capable of great religious combinations. This race
seizes the general leadings of human affairs, not as we do
by analysis and thorough study of details, but by a kind
of comprehensive glance, like Elias's view from the top of
Carmel. The philosophy of history is a Jewish product,
in one sense the last phase Of the prophetic spirit, prophe
cy, towards the epoch of the Seleucidae, becoming apoca
lyptic vision, and apocalyptic vision, as first given to us by
the unknown author of the Book of Daniel, directly usher
ing in the Abbe Joachim, Bossuet, Yico, Herder. The
theory of the four empires, which, since Bossuet, has been
the basis of the historical theory taught in our schools, was
first stated in the Book of Daniel. An acquaintance with
the Mussulman philosophy of history, derived from the
Prolegomena of Ibn- Khaldoun, which M. de Slane has trans
lated, will beget surprise at the grand comprehensiveness
of view which this class of Unitarian religions could in
spire, long before any idea of exact historical science was
unfolded. In our time, Abd-el-Kader retains this faculty
of his race in the highest degree ; he is the prophet of the
Semitic autumn, the Jeremiah of Islam. M. Salvador has
often appeared to me in an analogous light. Take him on
the side of exactness and decision, you will find him odd,
frequently puerile. His combinations, stamped with that
species of abstract imagination that is characteristic Of the
Jewish people, are often arbitrary, and. remind us of Philo
and the Cabbala. His style, admirable when reflecting a
vivid imagination, is sometimes rough and hard ; but we
must remember that the prime condition of fertile combina
tions is indefiniteness. Mahomet would not have combined

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 347
Christianity and Judaism so well, had ne known how to
read and been directly acquainted with the Bible. The
religious combination of the future, supposing the future to
have any surprise in store for us here, will certainly not
come from critics and theologians. Ardent minds, looking
at things through the veil of their passionate dreams, are
best prepared for that.
M. Salvador is, without exception, the man who, in our
time, has entertained the largest views of such a renova
tion. , In warmth of soul, revolutionary ardour in reli
gion, and facility of movement amid confusion, he occa
sionally reminds us of St. Paul. An indifferent historian,
he excels us all in practical understanding of religious
matters. Most of us are too good " Christians" to be de
void of all religious prejudice, of all habitual or sympathe
tic attachment. M. Salvador seems to us very much what
the Jews seemed to the pagans of Greece and Rome : an
unbeliever, a riian detached from tradition, a scorner of the
gods. How original and sprightly the account of his reli
gious calling ! What prophet of Israel ever affirmed more
boldly the future of his race ? " Approach—- they say to
the Jew and tell us thy name. — My name ? My name is
Jew ; name that signifies, man of praise, changeless adorer
of Being, the Only One, the Eternal. — Thine age ? Age ?
Two thousand years older than Jesus Christ. — Thy profes
sion ? I set aside , the sad professions which have been
invented for me, the stamp and consequences of which J
Still too plainly show : my own destiny, my traditional
calling is this : — I pledge the holy prerogative of the name
of Law, and I am the living conserver of the old nobility
and of the legitimacy attached, by divine right to the name,
the peculiar name, of people.— Raise thy hand, and swear
that thou wilt speak without hate and without fear ; that
thou wilt tell the truth. — I have certain knowledge; that
in spite of her wondrous grandeur, Rome is an upstart

848 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
city, not the true Jerusalem. For the universal glory of
God, as well as for the definite welfare of the world, Rome
must be providentially transformed, must be by sovereign
act displaced. — I know, for a certainty, that the divinity
of Jesus Christ is to be radically modified, or openly, in
a godly and large measure, corrected. After you have
rendered to the people what is due to the name of the
people, render to the Eternal what is due to the name of
the Eternal alone. I know, too, and have long known, that
the other nations will have room to break the new bread,
to inaugurate the new rest, the Sabbath of the Eternal, to
celebrate new passovers. This is my free and lawful testi
mony. And moreover, what I know by the spirit of tra
dition, by the spirit of justice and intelligence, this I desire
with desire inextinguishable ; and this shall take place
by the spirit of moral force, by supreme necessity and
divine decree."
Every great thing that has been done in the world, has
been done in the name of extravagant hopes, and the Jewish
people presents aspects so strange, that we should never
speak of it lightly ; still, there is a past whose glory excludes
the very thought of a future. How can we speak of the
future of Athens ? What destiny would not be dark for
Greece in view of what she has been ? On the same prin
ciple, as regards the Jews, I can hardly consent to speak
of anything but their past achievements. Since Jesus
Christ, the Jews, in my opinion, have done nothing more
than preserve a book, from the day when they committed
the Bible to European science ; from the day when they
taught Hebrew to Luther and the Buxtorfs, they have had
nothing more of consequence to do. We grant, that since
this time, Judaism has given to the world a remarkable
number of excellent men, distinguished men, men indeed
of the first order, but that privilege it shares 'with every
small church. These small churches, through force of

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 349
circumstances, become aristocracies, in which light more
quickly spreads, and in which routine and prejudice are
more easily pierced.
While I admire as much as M. Salvador the part which
the Jewish people have played in the past, I cannot
agree with him touching the part he assigns to them in the
future. I believe in a reformation of Christianity, but that
reformation will not consist in a return to Judaism. In
general, M. Salvador fails to do justice to the powerful
genius of Christianity takpn as the whole. I persist in
thinking, spite of some lively rejoinders, that Christianity
is not a continuation of Judaism, but rather a reaction
against the dominant temper of Judaism, effected within the
bosom of Judaism itself. Whatever may have been the
views of its founder in this respect, it must be acknow
ledged that the attitude of Saint Paul, and still more the
prevailing tendency of the primitive churches, are most
unequivocal. Judaism furnished the leaven which caused
the fermentation, but the fermentation went on outside of it.
The Hellenic and Roman elements, in the first place, then
the Germanic and Celtic elements gained the predominance
entirely, made Christianity exclusively theirs, and unfolded
it in a way by no means consistent with its first beginning.
Schleiermacher and the Catholic school of Munich, M.
Lassaulx, for example, are right in saying, that Socrates
and Plato are more truly our ancestors and nearer to Jesus
Christ, than the rude Bedouins of the time of Joshua and
David, or than the Jews of the Pharisaic stamp, the genu
ine Jews, narrow, bitter, exclusive. M. de Bunsen is right
in thinking that the future perfection of Christianity will
consist in a further and further remove from Judaism, to
give predominance to the genius of the Indo-European
race. It would be unjust to forget the noble service ren
dered to humanity by the Jewish and the Arab people in
cutting with a bold stroke of the scissors, the inextricable

350 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
skein of the ancient mythologies ; but that is a negative
service; for the ¦ full value of which we must thank the
excellence of the European races. Islamism, falling as it
did on ground that was none of the best, has, on the
whole, done as- much harm as good to the human race ; it
has stifled everything by its dry and desolating simplicity;
Christianity escaped this danger solely because the Semitic
element in it has always been resisted, and at last has been
nearly banished.
In consequence of his Jewish, rather than Christian ten
dencies, St. Salvador carries a very absolute temper into
his j udgments on religious questions. He is unj ust to wards
Protestantism because it publishes no claim to divine right
in everything. He does not comprehend the future of a
free Christianity as the Germanic people understand it ; he
makes too little account of England, of the United States ;
he does not see how the Anglo-Saxon race is overrunning
the, earth. The separation of. the spiritual and the tempo
ral, of which Jewish and Mussulman society had scarcely
an idea, and which has been the salvation of Christian
Europe, M. Salvador accepts with some reserve. He would
be glad: if they might one day be united again, which may
God' forefend ! A certain theocratic leaning peeps out here
and there. In this, M. Salvador shows himself still a true
Semite. The two great forms of Semitic civilization have
this peculiarity : that they leave no place for civil govern
ment in our sense of the term. Power, with Jew as with
Arab, always comes from God ; a deplorable system, which
has committed the Mussulman people to despotism, with
out a shadow of guarantee or of Constitution, aud has
brought about that frightful social state which Islam has
presented for the last six or seven hundred years. Theo
cracy, by ascribing a spiritual origin to power, pleases
lofty minds, but it contains a secret poison which renders it
always deadly; it can produce none but absolute dynasties.

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 351
The Germanic principle, that power in its different degrees
belongs to him who exercises it, mean as it looks,; is really
the better, for in this view, personal right becomes every
thing. Each one has his charter, each one is king in his
castle. So much at least is certain, that this is the only
idea that has succeeded in planting liberty in the world.
Here is the great difference between M., Salvador and
the rest of us liberals. M. Salvador wishes unity and sta
bility.; he contemplates a spiritual power ; he would like a
symbol and an established dogma. The rest of us would
prefer that each should have his own creed ; we dread too
close unions as injurious to liberty. Like all exalted
natures, M. Salvador loves unity. In our judgment, on
the contrary, division is the condition of freedom. It would
be in the power of some one man to melt into one the
nations, the churches, the sects, the schools, which it would
be necessary to oppose to him. The ancient Roman world
perished through its unity ; the safety of the modern
world will depend on its diversity. M. Salvador asks the
age to look towards the east and south ; we others say to
him, flee towards the north and the west. The East has
never produced anything as good as we have. How much
Jew is there in our Germanic and Celtic Christianity; in
Saint Francis d'Assisi, in Saint Gertrude, Saint Bernard,
Saint Elizabeth, and more recently in Yincent De Paul,
Schleiermacher, Channing? Would you compare your
Esthers and your Mardochees with those flowers that have
opened in the romantic and charming atmosphere of our
seas and mountains ? What Jewish element is there in the
book of The Imitation, in the monastic life, that prime fea
ture of Christianity, in, our saints of tbe Merovingian epoch,
our true Saints?" Germans and Celts, we will remain; we
will keep our eternal gospel, Christianity, as our green and
cold nature has made it. All the good there is in humanity
is grafted on it ; all moral progress is identified with it; a

352 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
kind of natural crudity, an original sin, so to speak, mark
the countries and the races which have not passed under
this excellent discipline.
Christianity has thus become almost the synonym for
religion. All endeavour outside of this noble and gra
cious Christian tradition will be sterile. Jesus has founded
religion in humanity as Socrates founded philosophy in it ;
as Aristotle founded science. There was philosophy before
Socrates, and science before Aristotle. Since Socrates, and
since Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense
progress, but it has all been builded on the foundation that
they laid. So, before Jesus, religious thought had passed
through many a revolution ; since Jesus, it has made great
conquests. But we have not left behind us, nor shall we
leave behind, the essential idea that Jesus origiriated. He
has fixed for all time the conception of pure religion ; every
building that has been erected, has been erected on his
foundation. In this sense, the religion of Jesus is limitless.
The Church has had its epochs and its phases ; it is con
fined to creeds which have had, and will have only their
day. Jesus has founded the-^absolute religion, excluding
nothing, fixing nothing; his symbols are not final dogmas,
but images of indefinite expansion. One searches in vain
in the gospels for a theological proposition. All profes
sions of faith are treason to the thought of Jesus,
almost as much as the scholasticism of the middle age
betrayed Aristotle, in the very act of proclaiming him
the solitary master of a finished science. Aristotle, had he
assisted at the debates of the Schoolmen, would have
rejected this narrow interpretation ; he would have been
the advocate of progressive science, against routine; he
would have taken sides with those who in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were his opponents. So, if Jesus
still watches the fortunes of the work that he began, he is
undeniably not with those who pretend that it is shut up

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 353
complete in a few phrases of the catechism, but with those
who labour to carry it on. In every order of grandeur the
eternal glory is to have laid the corner-stone of progress.
It may be that in the physics and in the meteorology of
modern times, not one word from Aristotle's treatises, bear
ing those titles, can be found ; none the less does Aristotle
remain the founder of natural science. Whatever transfor
mations dogma may undergo, Jesus will still be the author
of pure sentiment in religion. The Sermon on the Mount
will not be superseded. We will even say that facts are of
small moment here; biography is of secondary interest;
the idea in such a matter is everything. A document
might be dug up which would show that the personal esti
mate made of Socrates, of Aristotle, of Descartes, has been
exaggerated ; that they were not the authors of the books
or the doctrines attributed to them ; we should none the
less continue to be Aristotelians or Cartesians. The pro
per name is but a birth-mark, the exactness of which is of
no consequence save to the scholar. No discovery, no sys
tem will prevent us from attaching ourselves, as religious
men, to the grand intellectual and moral line, at whose
head shines rightly or wrongly the name of Jesus. In this
sense we are Christians, even though separated at nearly
every, point from the Christian tradition which has pre
ceded us.
The rehgious question of the future is thus found to be
exceedingly hmited. No great wholly original creation of
religion will have its birth in our civilization. Attempts
after the Saint Simonian sort rest on a misconception.
They would give the name of religion to social well-being,
industry, things that have nothing to do with religion.
What place is there in all this for abnegation, devotion,
sacrifice of the real to the ideal, which is the very essence
of religion ? . Not less mistaken are the experiments of
the revolutionary school. Revolution is a secular thing
23 4

354 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
altogether; its last word is the civil code. If America
contains ignorance or natural energy enough to start one of
those singular movements whose sole title to credence is
the endurance of two or three centuries of sarcasm, it may
be safely asserted that the surrounding rationalism will be
strong enough to prevent its doubling the cape past which
blind faith becomes tradition; it will have no point of
attachment. Christianity alone then remains in possession
/ of the future. Christianity alone is a whole world ; to
; gain an idea of its future changes, we must study its actual
\ condition and the relative proportions of the parties that
are formed in its bosom from time immemorial.

H.

Christianity has been much divided. A result of three
centuries of absolutely individual effort, it found the
principle of its force in that very division and in the
intense activity it produced. The primitive organization
of Christianity was in some sort municipal ; each Church
having a separate existence, and all the Churches being in
communication through letters and authorized messengers.
The Churches, to tell the truth, did but continue the vast
system of synagogues which in the age of Augustus
covered the empire, and which has been perpetuated among
the Jews nearly to modern times. The vital intercourse of
the Jewish communities in the middle age, and in our days
too, in the countries where Judaism has preserved its
original organization, is the type of what obtained in the
Churches at the epoch of Saint Paul, of Saint Ignatius, of
Saint Irenseus; the same rivalries, the same cabals, the
same vigilance on questions of doctrine, of discipline, of
hierarchy. The Churches preceded the Church, and even
"when this, become official, aspires to model itself on the

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 355
nnity of the empire, division is at work in another quarter.
A rationalistic opposition party comes to light in Arianism.
and for nearly a century holds the fate of the orthodox
Church in a balance. When this type of Christianity, too
advanced for the age, disappeared, to come to life again
after a thousand years, a much deeper opposition, one that
implicated races, begins to disclose itself. The Church
falls asunder at the dividing line of the two great families
of the ancient world. What imperial Rome .could not do,
Christian Rome succeeded no better in doing. Just as the
Latin language, at the very hour it was extending its con
quests to Scotland and Ireland, stopped at Naples in front
of the Greek line of southern Italy, so the Roman Church
found itself powerless before the Greek Church. Photius
served merely as the instrument of a historical necessity ;
the separation was made as early as Constantine. These
two branches of Christendom continue their , propaganda
through the whole middle age ; one of them assimilates
the Germanic nations, the other the Slavic; long they
fought for the empire. The Greek Church, superior in
culture to the Latin Church down to the tenth or eleventh
century, very soon becomes inferior as a moral force.*
Islamism breaks it in pieces; the Slaves whom it has
affiliated rouse themselves slowly; the Latin Church in the
sixteenth century assumes an immense superiority. This
superiority results, like all great revivals, in a' schism. The
great Christian awakening, — Protestantism occurs in the
Latin Church. The force, the depth, the liberty of the

* The first half of the Latin middle age has no one man of such vast
reading, and such line learning as Photius. In tlie twelfth and thirteenth
ceruury, the superiority is with the West; no Byzantine is the equal of
Abelard and Roger Bacon. Still in tile fourteenth aud fifteenth century the
Greeks are yet our masters, the Italian renaissance is largely due to them.
Plethon and Manuel Paleologus were after all the first men of their time in
mental culture.

356 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
Germanic genius break forth. This genius, which had
submitted reluctantly to the sway of Rome, reasserts its
rights, and creates a Christendom after its own fashion, which
after many attempts towards the end of the eighteenth
and in the nineteenth century attains a religious elevation
till then unheard of. Germany at this period realized the
most beautiful religion that has anywhere been professed,
and it is always called Christianity. Thus by the side
of the two old orthodoxies, the Greek and the Latin, which
remain fettered in their symbols, steps forth a new form of
Christianity, whose last consequence, liberal Christianity,
is not seen , till our own time. Three powers destined
always to fight without ever annihilating or so much
as weakening each other, a fortiori without being able
to combine, divide Christendom, and by rescuing it from
all exclusive domination, insure its future, the future, too,
I venture to say of philosophy and of liberty.
This triple partition, of the Christian family, in fact, is
not like Arianism, Pelagianism, etc., simply a sectarian
division; it corresponds with natural sections, such as in
the civilized world are formed by the separation of the
Latin, the Germanic, the Greco-Slavic races. All England
might be seduced by the shallow criticism of Doctor Pusey,
and yet not be reconciled with the Pope. The Greek and
Latin theologians might come to an understanding on the
filioque, but for all that Rome would not rule in Moscow.
The futility of the efforts made by these three Churches tp
absorb one another, is henceforth demonstrated. In the
middle ages the Latin Church by thp weight of its military
superiority oppresses the Greek Church, and the small
Oriental Churches that may be considered as attachments
to the Greek Church; since the sixteenth century it
oppresses them still by the weight , of its diplomacy, and by
the importance which the exclusive possession of Poland
gives it among the Slaves. It breaks whole branches from

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 357
them — united Armenians, Maronites, united Greeks. The
Turks inflict on the Greek Church what seems an eternal
affront ; but lo, at the end of four or five hundred years
the Greek Church revives; a conquest, which for ages
appeared to be of small consequence, the Russian, confers
On it at a stroke a primacy equal to that of the Latins.
The imaginative and persistent race of the Slaves takes the
place of the exhausted Greek race, and in the course of
ten centuries the work of Photius appears as a leading
phenomenon in the world's history. Protestantism proved
no less stubborn. Philip IL, Pius Y., the duke Of Alva,
the Jesuits, Louis XIY. dashed themselves against it; the
heresy whieh was pronounced exterminated remains mis
tress of the most vital portions of Europe. Nothing, then,
will come of the mutual struggle of the three Christian
families ; their equilibrium is as well assured as that Of the
three great races which share between them the world ;
their separation will secure the future against the excessive
predominance of a single religious power, just as the
division of Europe must for ever prevent the return of that
orbis romanus, that closed circle, which allowed no possible
eseape from the terrible tyranny that unity always engen
ders. Will the spread of these three great Churches over the
parts of the world not yet Christianized affect at all their
respective positions ? In other words, what is the future
of the Catholic, the Greco-Russian, and the Protestant mis
sions ? Uniform experience justifies a very precise ex
pression of opinion on this point. Few sacrifices are so
worthy of respect as those of the missionary ; few institu
tions have rendered or can render to historical and geogra
phical science such great service as missionary institutions.
If in our day the Protestant missions are almost alone in
the performance of this noble work, in consequence of a
shameful indifference to science on the part of the Catholic

358 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
missionaries, we must not forget the beautiful Catholic mis
sions of the eighteenth century — those of the Jesuits in
China, those of the Italian missionaries in India and Thi-
. bet, the Horace della Penna, the Pantin of St. Barthelemy,
the Tieffen thaler. Nevertheless, viewed as religious revo
lutions, missions have always played a secondary part in
the history of humanity. That isolated and individual
mode of action, which is adopted by the great founders of
apostleships, who appear at the commencement of every
religion, is insufficient when the first creative glow is
passed. Saint Paul would not be a missionary to-day.
Not an important Christian community can be mentioned
as the work of modern missions. The Churches of China
and Japan were built on the sand. Neither the heroism of
Francis Xavier, nor the adroitness and sometimes tbe men
tal largeness of the Jesuits, could prevent their crumbling.
The efforts to carry by assault the great religions of Asia —
Islamism, Brahmanism. Bouddhism — the bookish religion
of China, have been futile: Africa does not seem to be
turning to Christianity ; just now, by a singular coincidence,
it is from end to end going over to Islamism. As to the
savage races, those sad survivors of an infant world, for
whom nothing better can be wished than a quiet death, it
is almost a derision to apply our dogmatic formulas to
them. Before making Christians of them we should have
to make them men, and it is doubtful if we should succeed
in doing that. The poor Otaheitan is trained to attend
mass or sermon, but the incurable softness of, his brain is
not remedied — he is only made to die of melancholy or of
ennui. Oh ! leave these lost children of nature to fade
away on their mother's bosom ; let us not, with our stern
dogmas, fruit of twenty centuries of reflection, disturb
their childish play, their dances by moonlight, their hour
of sweet intoxication ! The great mistake of the Jesuits,
the idea that man gets his education from without, by

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 359
means of artificial processes and pious machinery, is at the
bottom of all missions. They make Paraguays, toys for
infants, and think they reproduce Eden !
Do we mean to say that all hope of increase is closed for
Christendom ? By no means. If we take the geographi
cal limit of Christendom towards the year 1500, and compare
it with what is now," we are struck by its vast accessions ;
but these accessions are not due to missions, they are due
to the extension of the European race, in other words, to
conquest and to colonization. In conquest and coloniza
tion lies the whole secret of the future of Christianity.
We must consider which of the three Christian commu
nions can hope for the greatest advantages from this source.
It cannot be denied that Protestantism exhibits a certain
superiority here. The colonizing nations are almost all
Protestant Protestantism, by its tendency to individual
ism, the simplicity of its methods, its small need of alliance
with the rest of Christianity, seems to be eminently the
colonists' religion. With his Bible, the Englishman, in the
depths of Oeeanica, finds the religious nutriment which the
Catholic cannot get, unless he has an official establishment
of bishops and priests. M. Prevost de Paradol well says :
" Of six men who, axe and gun in hand, penetrate the
unexplored solitudes, set up their dwelling, soon build a
city, establish a family there, and speedily a state, hardly
one belongs to the Roman Church ; and in most instances,
if he does not leave it himself, he does not keep his chil
dren in it." It is estimated that if the Catholics emigrat
ing to the United States had remained true to their faith,
they would make a population of 7,500,000 souls ; now
the United States contain but 2,000,000 of Catholics, in
spite of the annexation of Texas and California.
Protestantism, too, has profited by the best conquests
that Christendom has made — the United States, Australia,
the Dutch Indies, the Cape of Good Hope. Even Hindos-

360 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
tan and China have received vital seeds of Protestantism.
Almost all Oeeanica seems destined to become Protestant ;
and more significant still, those rich deposits of the Anglo-
' Saxon race thrown down at the world's end, colonize in
their turn, and multiply with wonderful fecundity. That
is a silent, stealthy conquest, whose results are incalculable.
Still we should be mistaken if we thought 'that in this
division of the earth by the race of Japhet, the two Ortho
dox Churches have not also; by force of policy, important
conquests to achieve.
Russia, in fact, gains for the Greek Church numerous
tribes of Northern and Central Asia ; the Bouddhist popu
lations appear likely thus to connect themselves with the
Christian community. These conquests are effected with
out violence, and with a good deal of adroitness. China
probably will receive from the same quarter a very power
ful Christian accession. Finally, a few small schismatic
communities of the East, the Armenians, for example, seem
destined to join the Greco-Russian Church, as soon as they
shall come forth from their isolation. We see what an
enormous surface is thus opened to the family of Christen
dom, which at one moment seemed doomed to perish.
As to Catholicism, if its colonial future be less brilliant
than that of Protestantism, we must guard against looking
at it in that light alone. Of course, Spanish and Portu
guese America, Canada, the Philippines, are not worth as
much as the United States and Australia, but along the
whole shore of the Mediterranean Rome may make im
portant conquests. A Church that includes the mass of
French people must necessarily have unforeseen triumphs
in store for it, and receive more than one reflection of glory.
The Christian schools, and the charitable establishments
which the zeal of French Catholicism multiplies in the
East, as if to fill up the frightful void in the heart that
Islamism leaves, have a future. Moreover, there is one

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 861
element on which Catholicism has a much stronger hold
than Protestantism, or even than the Greco-Russian Church;
I mean the small communities of Christians, torn in pieces
or floating, which the Greek Church, owing to its disasters,
has been prevented from absorbing — the Abyssinians,
Copts, Syrians, Armenians. Rome has advantages with
these Churches, through her show of traditions, and will
successfully often dispute their possession with Russia.
The fidelity she has inspired in the Maronites, and the
services she obtains from them, are a very characteristic
fact. The abstract way in which Protestantism addresses
these populations is not generally (we make, one exception
in favour of the beautiful American mission among the
Nestorians of Armenia) the best calculated to insure a
very solid success with Christian communities so degraded.
Let us leave these secular considerations, and return to
the conscience ; let us ask each of the three great Christian
communities by what course of policy it intends to meet
the exigencies of modern society, and what compromise it
can offer between tradition and the new requirements of
the human mind ?

III.

Christianity has taken three positions in human societies
which correspond very nearly, though not exactly, to the
three families which the races of history have formed in
its bosom. During the three centuries of its first struggle,
Christianity, of course, asked nothing from the State ; it
managed its own affairs. Persecuted by the State, it tri
umphed by dint of patience, and compelled the State to
sign a peace which, by a singular turn, was far more bur
densome to it than to the State. Something in the nature
of Christianity, it would seem, forbids its being simply free

362 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
and tolerated. The moment persecution ceases, it becomes
a State religion. So powerfully organized was tbe mecha
nism of Rome, that, to become the State religion, was to
become a function of the State. In fact, from the time of
Constantine, in every part of the world which shared the
fate of the old empire, the Church was under the rule of
the State. The episcopal sees followed the divisions of the
empire ; the bishop of Constantinople — a modern see —
became Pope of the East, because he was the Court bishop ;
which was much the same as it would be if the bishop of
Versailles were to become Primate of the Gauls. The
Greek Church, representing the old Roman-Byzantine tradi
tion, has preserved the ineffaceable impress of it ; Russia has
inherited it, the Emperor there being supreme head of the
religion. In the Christian communities under the dominion
of Turkey, the Church, by an inverted but quite logical
process, became the State ; the Patriarch is an administra
tor of civil as well as of religious affairs, by appointment
of the Sultan. The religion has become the nationality ; or
rather the formation of nationalities, in our sense of the
term, has been made impossible in the East.
The West would, I imagine, have followed the same
direction had the unity of the empire been preserved. The
Byzantine world, in its decrepitude, shows us essentially
what the empire of the West would have been but for the
barbarians — a world deprived of liberty and of the sense of
the infinite ; but the Germans, by shattering the empire and
founding distinct kingdoms, created better conditions for
the Church. As each one of the kingdoms could not pre
tend to represent the Church universal, the Church and the
State came to be thought of as two distinct things — the
Church, more comprehensively than the State, taking up
the Catholicity whose chief is the Pope.*
* Under Charlemagne and the Othos, who restore a sort of unity to the

IN MODERN TIMES. 363
The genius of the great Italian Popes of the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, set a seal of marvellous
splendour on this system ; to it the West owes its irrevoca
ble primacy. During the whole middle age the separation
of the two powers is the condition of progress, the guaran
tee of a certain amount of liberty. To appreciate the value
of it, we must cast a glance at Islamism. Islamism never
knew a separation of the two powers; the Mussulman
world perished in consequence. It had neither a John
Chrysostom, a Gregory VII., nor a Thomas Becket. Some
' noble resistances of the Imams may be mentioned ; but an
independent clergy, jealous for its privileges, was never
formed, for all that ; no more either was a well defined
civil State constituted in opposition to the religious order.
If now the efforts of Turkey after a constitution based on
the equality of rights, are vain, it is because she is strug
gling against a secular and fatal principle. Heir of the
Khalifs, a vice-prophet — that is to say, the Sultan — can no
more rule over a mixed State, in which believers and infi
dels have equal rights, than the Pope, if half his subjects
were Jews or Protestants, could take them into the Roman
congregations of the Sacred College. The battle between
the priesthood and the empire has been, in a manner, the
creative fact of modern times. Theocracy and absolute
despotism have been rendered impossible. Had Islamism
enjoyed this wholesome separation, a monster, like the Kha-
lif Hakem, could not have appeared, and Arab science
would not have been stifled by the worst fanaticism of all —
the fanaticism of the laity.
To be sure, the regime of division between the two pow
ers that ruled in the West, during the entire middle age,
was very far from being a regime of liberty. The Latin

Western Empire, the Latin Church presents an aspect very similar to the
Greek Church.

364 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
Church, much more independent than the Eastern, was no
more exempt than that was from one sad evil consequent
on the extreme vehemence with which Christianity pressed
its divine truth ; I mean intolerance. When it broke the
old State religion of the Roman empire, Christianity put
absolute religion in its place. Conscience acquired dignity
by this ; but violences, till then unheard of, resulted from
this exaggerated dogmatism ; and, by a strange reversal,
this religion, whose victory had been the victory of con
science, turned out to be the religion that caused the great
est shedding of blood. The reason of it is simple : The*
Roman despotism had small care of souls ; its religion was
a police regulation, which meddled slightly with philosophic
liberty. Christianity covets souls ; externals do not satisfy
it. -Against consciences it carries fire and sword ; hence the
assaults whose vigour knew no bounds. The Roman empire
never persecuted a single philosopher ; the mediasval Chris
tian stifled liberty of thought by atrocious penalties. Sove
reigns, held up by the Church as models in the eyes of im
partial history, look like pitiless butchers. I will not take
as an example Philip IL, who was at once a religious and
a political tyrant — a true Domitian ; I will take the most
honest man, perhaps, who ever reigned — a genuine liberal,
a sovereign who respected all rights, and whose goodness
of heart has never been surpassed : St. Louis is a terrible
persecutor in religion. So convinced is he of the truth of
his creed, that he lays it down as a principle, that the only
reply a layman should make to objections thrown out in
his hearing against the faith — is a stab to the objector's
heart!* Without the least scruple, he allows the horrible
Dominican Inquisition to decimate his subjects by "incre
mation" and the perpetual scaffold. Diocletian never did
that. Under Diocletian such a thing was not seen as.- a
* See Joinville, Reeueil des Histoires des Gavks et de la Prance, vol. xx. p. 198.

IN MODERN'* TIMES. 365
tribunal that pursued against the Christians legal processes
as odious as that prescribed in Nicholas Eymeric's " Direc-
torium Inquisitorium."* No Roman proconsul wrote a poem
like the inquisitor Izarr's Nbvelle de FHeretique, each argu
ment of which ends with this threat, " and if thou wilt not
believe see the lighted fire in which thy companions are
burning," or else, "But already the fire and the torment
thou must pass through are ready."f In one sense it may
be said that theological persecution is Christianity's deed in
the world. Islamism, much sterner in one aspect, never
aimed at making converts. Its intolerance is that of dis
dain ; it chokes the Christian, plunders him, massacres him
in its moments of fury ; but it does not preach at him,
offering him his choice between syllogism and scaffold.
Christianity, with its infinite tenderness for souls, has created
the fatal type of spiritual tyranny, and has inaugurated in
the world that frightful notion that man has a right over
the opinions of his kind. The Church was not the State,
but it forced the State to do its persecuting for her.
If the secular arm executed the sentence, the priest pro
nounced it.
While denouncing as odious the persecutions of the
empire which could not pretend to be practised in the
name of the Truth, Western Christianity, in the middle
age, was really an armed religion, violent, imperious, suffer
ing no discussion. Such a system was better for the general
morality of the human race than the Roman system, where
the State made the religion, and than the Mussulman system

* Tbe authentic accounts of these horrors, before which those of the revolu
tionary tribunal pale, are as yet but partially edited. The minutes of the
trials before the Inquisition of Toulouse may be read in Limborch. Those of
the Inquisition of Carcassonne are in the Imperial Library. (St Germain,
latin, 395, &c). The Directorium has been published.
f Histoire litteraire de la France, L xix. p. 681.

366 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
where the religion made the State ; but in fact it was more
cruel than either, it made of Latin Europe in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries a field of tortures ; it was in fla
grant contradiction with the noble principles of which the
Gospel kept the secret. A protest from the very heart of
Christianity breaks out in the" sixteenth century, a third
type of Christian Society is constituted, and promises a
return to the primitive liberty. To be sure, the pretension
was not exactly justified then. Protestantism, besides many
an act of violence it could reproach itself with, might seem
at first to have been only a return to less pure ideas on the
relations of Ghurch and State. Lutheranism committed
theology to the hands of German princes; Calvinism, in its
ideal city of Geneva, founded a republic on religion. In
England, in Sweden, official reform resulted in nothing but
national Churches absolutely dependent on the civil power.
Nevertheless, the new principle which was the hidden soul
of the movement, the idea of a free Christianity which
each one creates and carries in his heart, disengages itself
by slow degrees. The dissenting sects in the bosom of
reform, almost as vehemently persecuted by the established
Protestant Churches as they had been by the Catholics,
uphold and propagate this idea with a wonderful tenacity.
In our day it shines triumphantly in every part of the
Protestant world. A crowd of Christian societies having
no bond either with a central Church or with the State,
exist and grow. In America we see this system planted in
constitutional law. Thus Protestantism, after three cen
turies of hesitation, is able to carry out the programme
whose accomplishment it had prematurely announced. It
has actually returned to the liberty of the early centuries,
every trace whereof had disappeared from the day when
Constantine began to meddle with theology. A Church
free as in the first three centuries — as in America to-day ; —
a Church dependent on the State as in Russia, as in Swe-

IN MODERN TIMES. 367
den ; — a Church separated from the State, centralized at
Rome, and dealing with the State as power deals with
power, as in the Catholic countries ; such then are the three
forms under which Christianity stands related to human
society. Let us see which of these three forms seems best
adapted to the tendencies of modern society towards an
ideal of liberty, sweetness of manners, education and
morality. Without question we must rank lowest the system which
makes the Church to be a function of the State. The
effects of this system vary according to the character of
the government to which the Church is subjected. Well
enough in countries where the action of government is
very much circumscribed, it is fatal in despotic countries.
In Russia, it has resulted in excessive depression and
servility. The Russian Church, humiliated, meagrely
recruited, with no apparent germ of progress, drags along
in the shoals of Christendom and almost at its extremity.
No distinguished man can be named as having issued from
its bosom. In Sweden the State Church exhibits a shock
ing intolerance and an imposing mediocrity. In England
the Established Church, after having being a shameful
persecutor at the close of the sixteenth and in the seven
teenth century, reached long since a state of nothingness,
sufficiently inoffensive. Routine and abuse reign there in
perfect quiet ; Oxford, till the remarkable movements of
these • few years past, rivalled Rome in the absence of
criticism and the stubbornness of its bigotry. Happily
seeds of a better future come to light here and there, and
more than that, immense, unexampled, unequalled merit ! —
this official Church, rich, patronized by the State, supported
by the fnajority of the people, does not persecute the
dissenters ; it is no obstacle to liberty ! In tne petty
principalities of Germany the dependence of the Church,
having produced in the seventeenth century an intellectual

368 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
condition that is completely effaced, has since wrought
excellent results. Thanks to the breadth of the German
mind, and to the remarkable intelligence of the German
princes, towards the end of the last century and the
beginning of this, thanks also, perhaps, to those rich specu
lative faculties by which Germany receives compensation
for her want of political influence, the theological instruc
tion in the German Universities has reached an ejevation,
a freedom, which no age has exhibited. The partition of
Germany which made it Protestant bore here the usual
fruit ; in creating rivalry, it created light and liberty.
That is but one exception from which no inference can
be drawn. In general, the subjection of the Church to the
State is bad, and opposed to the real needs of the modern
mind. In France, particularly, it would be fatal, and I
deem wholly mistaken the opinion of very right-minded
people, who seek in this direction a solution of incessantly
recurring problems. The Gallican Church of Peter Pithou
would have had all the defects of the Anglican Church,
and would not, perhaps, have had its virtues. The peti
tions which the clerical assemblies of France addressed to
the king, usually solicited acts of intolerance. I have no
doubt that to-day a Gallican Church, dependent on the
State, would be far more oppressive to liberty than the
Church dependent on Rome. Better the Pope than the
theological Emperor of Byzantium or Moscow. We remem
ber those proud words : "I meant to exalt the Pope im
measurably, to surround him with pomp and homage. I
would have made him cease to regret his temporalities. I
would have idolized him. He should have lived near me ;
Paris should have become the capital of Christendom, and
I would have directed the religious as well as the political
world. It was a device for binding together all the fede
rative parts of the empire, and for holding in the bonds of
peace all that remained outside. I would have held my

IN MODERN TIMES. 369
religious as well as my legislative sessions. My councils
would have represented Christendom; the popes would
merely have presided at them. I would have opened and
closed these assemblies, approved their decisions as Constan
tine and Charlemagne had done." I know no more serious
danger than is implied in this scheme. Organized and
centralized countries suffer the most terribly from a national
church. Pius V. and Philip II. did not stay the modern
spirit ; administrative despotism would do so. This, indeed,
need not be violent. Brutalities are not to be apprehended
like those which were enacted in Judsea under Pontius
Pilate, in Rome under Nero, in Europe in the sixteenth
century. And yet, the liberty which must be assumed in
the foundation of Christianity and reform no longer exists ;
simple regulations of the corrective police have rendered
¦impossible these grand visions. M. Michelet has abun
dantly shown how the persecutions of skilful managers of
Colbert's school, who had small love for the clergy, have
struck to the victim's heart more surely than the coarse
cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition. The hand of the state
laid on the soul is always heavier than the hand of the
priest. The priest prevents nothing from growing; the
state, with its prudent gentleness, and its system of pre
vention, stops at the beginning everything grand. In the
record of the past, I read of no single life of saintly or of
noble man, that would not in our time be a constant irrita
tion. Our laws touching the illegal practice of medicine,
against assemblages, requiring previous authority in the
matter of worship, would have been enough to cut. short
the two or three events to which the world owes its life and
its progress.
France is proud of its Concordat, and in fact the Concordat
is the last word of revolution in the religious order, as the
civil code is its last word in the political order. It bears
the stamp of everything that came from the revolution.
24

370 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION.
Essentially administrative, it evinces a remarkable under
standing of the conditions of strength and peace in a nation,
but at the same time a singular forgetfulness of liberty, a
slender respect for individual conscience, and a complete
disregard of the moral nature of man. The Concordat is
expressed in this phrase, attributed to Portalis : " To regu
late and restrain superstition." It is generally the mistake
of France, to think that well compacted institutions can be
a substitute for free spontaneity of souls. A frightful bar
barism, moralizer, has crept into the French language, start
ing from the idea that a nation is happy as soon as it has a
good code and a good administration, conceding to the indi
vidual one solitary right — that of amusing himself accord
ing to his taste — without ideas, without opinions, without
anything that can disturb the happiness of the vulgar. The
politicians who draw the last inferences from the revolution,
must be brought to regard religious beliefs as an inevitable
evil, to be restrained by wise legislative enactments. But
humanity has too much fire in its blood to be satisfied with
the Eden of a comfortable citizen, amusing himself at tea
parties, living and dying by routine, believing by decree.
The ^religious sentiment will have its revenge ; worship will
prefer the perils of liberty to a protection secured by the
loss of all it holds dearest, the right of doing battle, and
of feeling that it is dependent only on itself and the
truth. In short, the national church system seems to us to have
no future to speak of. The narrow conception of truth it
supposes, conflicts with the tendency of the French mind
towards an ideal that is universal and common to all. It
takes the patriotic optimism of the Englishman to imagine
that the Church of his island must be the best, because it is
his. The religious sentiment aims more and more at ignor
ing rivers and mountains. A central administration, like
that of the Court of Rome, would be, besides, much more

IN MODERN TIMES. 371
accessible to certain ideas of progress, than little churches,
controlled by an incurable routine. Till the eighteenth
century, Rome played in Catholicism the part of a capital
more enlightened than the provinces. Berengar, Abelard,
Roger Bacon, found more support or tolerance in the
papacy than in the local ecclesiastical authorities. Did any
local ehuroh contribute so much to the revival of letters as
the Roman pontificate of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu
ries? What a time was that, when the discovery of a
Latin author was a passport to the papacy or to a cardinal
ate ? Think of the incomparable largeness of mind implied
in popes like Thomas de Sarzane, JEneas Silvius, Julius
II. , Leo X. ; in apostolic secretaries like Poggio Aretino
(Leonardo Bruni), Bembo, Sadolet? In the eighteenth
century even, no national church possessed a Benedict XIV.,
the correspondent of Voltaire, a Clement XIV., a Passionei,
a Stephen Borgia. The papacy, profiting by the rare
qualities of the Italian mind, by its tact, by its skill, by its
practical knowledge of life, has had, altogether, a wider
horizon than any local church. If this is no longer the
case, it is because papal Rome is no longer an Italian cen
tre. Neo-Catholic French, Belgians, Irish, set the fash
ion there, and speak a language which the Mai, the La
Somaglias would not understand.
From the fact that the Catholic system is preferable to
the arrangement of National Churches dependent on the
state, must we conclude that such a system represents the
bio-best religious type of our age? Not by any means.
The Ultramontane notion of a religious power centralized
in a capital, holding that capital and the dependent pro
vinces in full sovereignty, treating with states as one power
treats with another, over the heads of the local clergy, in
volves, in my judgment, difficulties which, will declare
themselves. In fact, a fatal logic has led Catholicism to
strengthen its centre more and more, and to make all power

372 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
converge thither. More and more have Catholics been
brought to think that they derive life and salvation from
Rome. It is especially worth remarking that the new
Catholic conquests exhibit the most sensitiveness on this
point. The old provincial Catholic, whose faith belongs to
the soil, has less need of the Pope, and is much less
alarmed at the storms that menace him than the new Catho
lic who, coming fresh to Catholicism, regards the Pope,
after the new system, as the author and defender of his
faith. There is thus a disposition to establish a sort of
Lamaism, or faith in a perpetual incarnation of the truth.
By an odd coincidence the mightiest auxiliary of these
modern exaggerations is he who has seemed their most for
midable enemy. That the Pope is in the Church what the
Emperor is in the state, that he rules the Church by
bishops as the emperor rules the state by governors, that
to treat with him is to treat with the Church, as to treat
with the Emperor is to treat with the state, is an idea of
Napoleon. It is the essence of the Concordat. Had Gre
gory VII. been asked if he believed himself possessed of
the power to cancel a whole Church by a stroke of the
pen, and the next day to reconstruct it according to the
views *of a temporal sovereign, he would have answered
in the negative. The theologians of what is called the
Low Church would produce invincible arguments to the
same purpose. The Concordat is a thing unheard of in
church history ; it is the most enormous act of Ultramon-
tanism that the Papacy ever allowed itself to commit.
The bishop who, in the old canonical institutions, holds his
authority by divine right, is but a governor who may be
deposed; even without being in fault, when the good of
the community requires that he should be. The Pope, who
has but a loosely defined primacy in the ancient Church,
becomes the administrator-general of church affairs. The
constitution of the dioceses, as distinct Churches, is radically

IN MODERN TIMES. 373
affected ; their interior connexions may be altered at the
pleasure of the supreme director ; they have henceforth a
purely factitious existence, like that of a department.
Thus the principle of administration in France makes a
complete inroad into the Church. The Pope becomes the
actual sovereign of the Church ; all the rights which the
ancient constitution distributed throughout the ecclesiasti
cal body are gathered up in his hand.
It is easy to see the dangers of such an organization.
Experience proves that centralized powers are the least
stable; a blow of the hand is sufficient to sweep them
aw&y. In states thus constituted changes are wrought by
revolution. With centralization, fragility and revolution
have made their way into the Church. The Pope is far
more vulnerable than a well distributed Church. The
Pope, besides, being, by the system of Concordats,- put in
direct relation with the ruling powers, religion is brought
back within the circle of worldly things ; it is mixed up
in every earthly intrigue ; its representative is no longer
the pontiff, the man of holiness, the teacher ; he sits among
the diplomats, the Consalvi, the Caprara. The Pope, in
the first half of the middle age, was, to be sure, very much
implicated in worldly affairs, but as one of the prime ac
tors, yes, even as the ehief of all. Deprived of this supreme
position, since the fourteenth century, representing on the
earth a second or third rate power, the Pope of our time is
reduced to human expediencies that are quite unworthy of
him. Catholicism has been seduced into becoming a reli
gion essentially political; the Jesuits, who have marked
out its diplomatic code; have alone understood the exigencies
of its position, and the line of conduct it was doomed to
follow. Injurious to religion, the Ultramontane system is no less
injurious to the state. It is no superficial prejudice that
in certain countries has opposed to each other the words

374 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
Catholic and patriot, and has made them the badges of con
flicting parties. Catholicism is, in fact, the believer's
country, far more than is the land of his birth. The
stronger a religion is the more effective it is in this way.
Islamism has completely killed love of country in the East
Europe is not exposed to such a danger ; but it; cannot be
denied that Ultramontane Catholicism does seriously em
barrass civil society. As religion in the Ultramontane sys
tem is a distinct power, having worldly means at its dis
posal, the state is obliged to make perpetual concessions to
her. These concessions always abridge the public liberty.
Taking its position as a power divinely instituted, which
those even who are not members of it must obey, the
Church, when she does not rule, thinks herself persecuted.
In claiming common justice, she is right ; but, in fact, she
enjoys an enormous privilege, which she owes to stately
charms. The bishop complains that he does not enjoy full
liberty to publish his mandates ; I am with him in that
crusade ; but why will not the bishop allow the same liberty
to the freethinker? Why does he insist that the state
shall prohibit the teaching of opinions differing from his
own ? If the bishop leans on the state, he must not take
it amiss that the state, leans on him. If he demands of
the state that nothing contrary to his opinions shall be
spoken in the public chairs,, he must not find fault if the
state revises his decrees, to see that they contain nothing
opposed to its policy. It is against nature that the clergy
should be compelled to receive bulls from Rome through
diplomatic channels ; but it must be remembered that the
Pope is a sovereign, and that his Nuncio is an ambassador.
For the state to force the priest to sing Te Deum, and to
prosecute him when he refuses to pray, is absurd; but it is
to be borne in mind that this priest derives an immense
privilege from the state \ that directly or indirectly his
power, his wealth, his past rule, and the beautiful remains

IN MODERN TIMES. 375
of it that are left to him, are due to the state, which for
ages, secured his exclusive monopoly. Be free, and wel
come ; but then let all be free ! Do not ask the state to
declare that you possess the truth ; defend yourself without
calling on the state to meet your adversaries ; demand of
it onie thing only, a thing which all are entitled to — liberty
to believe what you think true, and to impart your con
viction to others by means acknowledged to be strictly
equitable. That, I know, is a sacrifice that cannot be made. Catho
licism, persuaded that it works for the truth, will always
endeavour to enlist the state in its defence, or in its spread.
The formation of a Catholic party, pledged to use its influ
ence in the Church interest, to support or attack govern
ments according as they serve or do not serve its religious
faith, is the inevitable consequence of the Ultramontane
system. This party, which is not wanting in talent or in
skill, has already half a century of history; it has always
been talking of hberty ; can it be said that this grand word
has always been the rule of its conduct ? Has it, the day
after its victory, kept the fine resolutions to be tolerant,
that it made when it was weak ? When the Catholic party,
in the two or'three years following the Revolution of 1848,
reached a position of the highest influence, did it show
much regard for its ^adversaries ? Did it think that one
day all those laws it passed might be applied to itself?
The Concordat of Austria and that of the Grand Duchy
of Baden, both its work, are they liberal achievements?
It approved of Belgium's revolt against Holland ; it ap
proved of the separation of Ireland ; what does it say of '
the insurrection of the Romagna ? Yet it is certain that
the treaties of 1815 were hardly less violated in the one
case than in the other. It very justly abhors terrorism ;
but it apologizes for Pius V, and for the order of Saint
# Dominic ; it rouses itself against tyranny; but does it with

376 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
an audible voice blame the Church for making aUiance
with every despotism that has served its turn from Philip
down to this or that nameless President of the American
Republics? We are assured that there shall be in the
future no more of this. God grant it ! For the rest, little
do we care ; we hold liberty by its own right, not by ano
ther's allowance. We must desire for others the same
liberty we would like ourselves, but we must expect from
ourselves alone the liberty we need, and which is our
right. One circumstance, in particular, complicates these diffi
culties still more. Like all centralized states, Ultramontane
Catholicism must have a capital. A certain portion of the
earth's surface must be withdrawn from all the conditions
of national life, to serve as territory for it to govern, and
as an abode for its sovereign. The superiority of Protes
tantism in this regard is immense. Protestant unity is
wholly spiritual ; it needs not an inch of ground for the
establishment of a centre. No Protestant ever asked that
a village of the tenth rank should be sacrificed for the
peace of his soul. Reposing, not on communion with a
chief, but on faith in a book, and ultimately on the pure
idea of Christ, the soul of the Protestant is beyond the
reach of the revolutions and the hazards of history. This
complete emancipatiori from space, this absolute spiritual
ism admitting no attachment to any terrestrial point, is
unattainable by Ultramontane Catholicism. That cannot
dispense with a material establishment; it must have a
patrimony, an army, a treasury, a diplomacy, a policy.
s It enters fully into the current of passing affairs, clearly it
must submit to the law which regulates them. It builds
on the crumbling soil of our planet, and it must feel all the
shocks. Before Ultramontanism can promise itself an
eternal career, it must be assured that the corner of the
earth on which it has built its holy city will never tremble, *

IN MODERN TIMES. 377
and that the people it has made its own will not only
remain for ever Catholic, but will never claim the right to
live like other nations. It must have a city in the clouds ;
an inaccessible peak, out of the way of troublesome neigh
bours. Let us see if the country where, by virtue of sub
tle theological deductions, and, above all, in consequence
of rigorous historical necessities, Catholicism has planted
itself, unites all these conditions.
That country is Italy. Catholicism met with a happy
fortune there ; and Italy, on its part, attained a brilliant
and peculiar destiny, which became a burden and an injury
to it only after revolution had brought changes into the
movement of the world ; but four important facts got
introduced, half a century ago, into the order of Europe,
and rendered exceedingly difficult the maintenance of the
isolation of Italy, that essential condition of the old Papal
organization. These four facts are: The prominence as
sumed by the principle of nationalities ; the exclusive pre
ponderance arrogated to themselves by the great states ;
the profound transformation of the Papacy itself; the revo
lution in the religious sentiment, which has gone on in all
sects without distinction.
The rights of nationalities may be carried to excess in
the different applications which our age is inclined to make
of it ; but certain it is that the principle of territorial divi
sion, founded on the very nature or the needs of the peo
ple, is gradually taking the place of divisions founded on
the convenience of princes. Now, the grandeur of the
Papacy consists precisely in its being outside of nationality,
and above it; in its being a universal mechanism, in its
exacting, consequently, the sacrifice of the nationality whose
soil it occupies. If the Pope is Italian,. he will not be Ca
tholic ; if he is Catholic, he will not be Italian. The logic
of history is here inflexible. With an evidence which
only minds unwonted to general views can overlook, it

378 \ THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
shows us the Papacy, ever since the Lombardic period,
casting insurmountable obstacles in the way of an organ
ized kingdom of Italy. I make no account here of con
temporary events, whose character is still quite undecided,
and whose immediate consequences cannot be measured.
The Roman Church glories in despising passing storms. I
will admit, then, if you choose, that the attempt at Italian
nationality, even under the mildest form, is doomed to a
succession of defeats ; and that Peter, strong in Catholic
support, will tread ten .times more on the asp and the basi
lisk ; but I do see clearly that every one of these victories
will be fatal to him, that every one of them digs a pit into
which the Vatican will plunge ; for populations never die,
and institutions do ; institutions perish through- their vic
tories, and populations triumph through their defeats. A
duel to the death is fighting, in which one of the combat
ants, although the feeblest, and perpetually beaten to the
earth, cannot be slain. As an inevitable result the other
must be. Every attempt to strangle its enemy costs the
Papacy pledges, compromises, compacts with worldliness,
which will be disastrous to it in the long run, and will
deprive it of the very last particle of that independence
which it claimed on the ground of its possessing a small
principality. A difficulty far more serious than that which results from
the uprising of nationalities encounters the Papal tempo
rality at this point. The independence of the Papacy
was sufficiently guaranteed by its supremacy over three or
four millions of men at a period when the small States
were of some consequence. When the republic of Venice
was a power much respected in Europe, and offered resist
ance to the King of France, the Sovereign of Rome and of
Bologna was a considerable personage in the temporal order
wholly aside from his religious prestige. This is the case
no longer, now that four or five immense groups have

IN MODERN TIMES. 379
monopolized the administration of European affairs. In
such a state of things the necessary position of the petty
sovereigns is easily seen. If it can be said, as certainly it
cannot without many reservations, that for the four or five
grand powers sovereignty is synonymous with independ
ence, it is very clear that the petty sovereign is the most
dependent of men. When this petty sovereign falls out
with his subjects, what is to be said? Clearly in this
case he depends on the nation that takes care of him, or on
the nation he leans on as defence against the nation that
takes care of him. Better be the free subject of one Power
than be thus by turns a debtor to all powers. To organize
a Catholic army is no solution of this difficulty. A Catholic
army, like everything chivalric in our leaden age, would
break down before the fatal force of huge masses. Russia
with her sixteen millions of men, and her military institu
tions, is hardly strong enough to figure among the great
States ; she occupies an awkward position in the European
alliance. If Catholicism can form an army like the French
army, a navy like the English navy, I have nothing to say ;
but who does not see that the national principle alone
is able to keep up these gigantic preparations ? I will add
that the politic party in Rome, which, reckoning little on
miracles, has always paid court to established powers rather
than rely on religious enthusiasm, will put no faith in the
Catholic army, will neutralize its effects, and will in pre
ference turn to diplomacy. By the inevitable course of
things, the Pope will then be compelled to ask of the great
powers a guarantee for his States, to lie in wait for success,
to covenant with the strong, to plunge into a labyrinth of
human calculations. Not from his little principality then
does he derive his independence ; on tbe contrary his prin-^
cipality is the nail by which he is pinned to the earth, and
made over to the tribunal of the European powers, the
majority of whom are schismatics and heretics. I add

380 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
further, that one grand element of power, legitimacy, cannot
here be invoked. Legitimacy is grounded in a sort of
secular marriage between a royal house and a nation,
the royal house pledging itself to strict observance of the
hereditary descent, and renouncing all private interest
apart from the welfare of the nation. In the case before
us, there is neither hereditary house nor national interest;
the Papacy is no more allowed to claim the rights of a
dynasty than is the dogate of Venice, and as to the inter
ests it represents, they long ago ceased to have the least
connexion with the country over whose surface it rules,
but for whose benefit, it does not govern. Charged with
a universal mission, the Pope would fail in his duty as the
common father of the faithful, were he to consider merely
the weal of his little principality, that is to say, were he a
good sovereign.
The exaggerations that our age has introduced into
the idea of the Pope's spiritual and temporal sovereignty,
have given frightful proportions to this difficulty. Italy
clung to the Papacy as long as the Papacy was Italian,
and allowed it its favourite government, — the municipality.
Had there been an attempt in the eighteenth century to
snatch the Papacy from Italy she would have defended
it with all her might. Things are unalterably changed in
this respect. On one side, the Papacy becomes more and
more Catholic as an administration whose patronage is in
the hands of foreigners. On the other, a narrow idea
of direct and executive sovereignty has taken the place in
Rome of the old idea of superiority which gave the Pope
a more dignified and fitting position. By a false judgment,
whose consequences will last through our generation, Consalvi
laid down the principle that the sovereignty of the Pope
over the States conceded to him in 1815 was a full sove
reignty, analogous to that of the King of France, and im
plying abolition of the ancient franchises. This was really

IN MODERN TIMES. 381
a monstrous usurpation, for in 1796 Bologna was a veritable
republic owning but a nominal fealty to Rome ; but ,it was
the fault of the time ; it would seem that in overthrowing
the empire, they undertook to perpetuate everywhere with
the same rigour, but not the same splendour, the governmen
tal system which the empire had inaugurated. The idea of
the Napoleonic sovereignty became in 1815 the basis of
public law in Europe ; Germany retained its petty princes
in complete sovereignty ; the restoration retained the pre-
fectorial regime ; the Pope and the Sultan were declared
absolute Kings over the countries assigned to them on the
map. Rome and Constantinople committed the same fault.
On one side it resulted in the massacre of the Christians ;
on the other, in the revolutionizing of the Roman States,
and especially of the Romagna. Really, the Pope, I mean
to cast on him no serious reproach, will never be a good
governor ; the government of States descends to con
temptible details in which the old Roman majesty must be
compromised. Formerly the Pope escaped this respon
sibility through the undefined nature of his power ; the
Pope of the nineteenth century had but one way of es
caping it ; namely, by accepting the constitutional regime.
He would not do that, and to be just, we must ask if
he could do it? Far be it from me to overlook the
generosity of an attempt, which gained the devotion of
noble hearts ; but I confess, glad enough should I be to
have my apprehension dispelled, — that the theory of a
Papacy administering temporal affairs in parliamentary
fashion seems to me hard to carry out. In some respects
such a theory may be said even to contradict tiie essential
principles, not of the ideal Papacy, but of the exaggerated
Papacy which is created by the maxims of modern Ultra-
montanism. I very well understand a Pope who is feudal
suzerain of free provinces or protector of small republics ;
a constitutional Pope, at least a Pope with a system of

382 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
central representation, I do not understand so well. Is
there no cause to fear that this priest, who must be made a
sovereign in order that he need not be submitted to some
other sovereign, may be submitted to his subjects? Will
not this Catholic whose conscience rebels at the idea that
he who in his eyes represents the truth, should undergo
external restraint, rebel a great deal more when his infal
lible and impeccable chief is dependent on a purely secular
chamber, and is pliant before his cabinet.
Finally, as religion is yearning in our age to confine
itself more and more to the soul, the fatal attachment to
the earth, implied in the new ultramontane system, will
become extremely distasteful to heartily religious people.
They will come to see actual infidelity in this distrust of
the value bf divine aid. There are independencies wholly
human, that manage to sustain themselves without possess
ing a foot of land. Why should not he who is aided by
the power and wisdom of heaven, be as brave as they?
At the bottom of the judgments which Catholics pass on
these points, lies a false idea of sovereignty; they begin
with the assumption that one cannot be subject and free at
the same time; that a sovereign is of necessity a Louis
XIV., owning bodies and souls at once. Let the Catholics
join us in the endeavour to make it otherwise now. Instead
of basing the independence of the faith on stone walls, let
them toil to insure liberty to all, and to reduce the rights
of the State in spiritual things. Let the Pope's action be
confined to strictly religious concerns, and no government
will attempt to molest him on that ground. The Augsburg
Confession needs no sovereign representative to sustain it ;
it is defended by the common faith of its adherents.
From all sides, then, we come to this result : that the esta
blishment of Catholicism, based on the everlasting alienation
of one portion of Italy, cannot be maintained. The impru
dence of Catholicism in this excessive centralization will

IN MODERN TIMES. 383
appear with frightful clearness. The day will be cursed
when Caesar Borgia gave to the papacy the provinces he
had conquered by the admirable policy of Machiavelli.
Oh! standard-bearer of the holy church, a sad present you
,made her! There will be regret for those mean terms
which rendered inconsistency possible and easy. It will be
acknowledged that an Italian principality was a poor device
for maintaining the independence of religion. Thus Catho
licism will be forced to choose the direct appeal to con
science, in preference to a protectorate. On one side it will
be strong enough to render impossible a national church,
under direction of the State ; on the other side, it will be
too weak to defend its central organization. There will
remain for it the condition of a powerful free association,
reposing on a universally distributed moral force. The
day it-accepts that condition, the church with earnest good
faith will call for liberty, and great services will liberty
render her, for sore is her need. I hope that no true libe
ral will sarcastically remind her of the time when she
asserted her divine right to rule ; when she treated every
dissenter as a rebel, and repudiated equality of rights as an
outrage on the truth.
God forbid that I should ever seem to overlook the
grandeur of Catholicism, or the part she has taken in the
battle which our poor humanity wages against darkness
and evil. What virtue yet gushes in the troubled waters
of that inexhaustible fountain, at which humanity so long
has drunk life and death ! Even in this age of decay, and in
spite of faults pushed to extreme with unequalled stubborn
ness, Catholicism gives proof of an amazing vigour. How
fruitful its missions ofcharity! How many excellent souls
among those believers who suck from her breasts the milk
and honey, leaving to others the wormwood and the gall !
In sight of those tents ranged on the plain, through which
Jehovah still walks, how strongly we are tempted, with the

384 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
unbelieving prophet, to bless him they would have us
eurse — and to exclaim, " How beautiful thy pavilions I
how charming thy dwellings I" Notwithstanding the hard
limits that Catholicism imposes on human development in
some directions, how many minds which, without religious
convictions, would have remained sunk in vulgarity or
ignorance, owe their awakening to her. Where can we
find anything more venerable than Saint Sulpice, that liv
ing image of the ancient customs, that school of conscience
and virtue, where we take Francis of Sales, Vincent de
Paul, Fenelon, by the hand ? Even in that sometimes
rather stupid association of Catholicism with the relics of
the old French society, in this somewhat sickish new
Catholicism, what an air of distinction still abides ! W0^
an atmosphere of purity and sincerity ! What ingenuous
efforts to do good ! Ah ! we must be careful how wejhink
that God has left that old church for ever. She will renew
her youth like the eagle ; she will flourish again like the
palm ; but the fire must purify her ; her earthly supports
must be broken; she must repent of having trusted too
much in the flesh ; she must efface from her proud basilica
the Christus regnat, Christus imperat, till she is not ashamed
to occupy in the world a position whose grandeur is appa
rent only to the eyes of the spirit.

IV.

The world will ever be religious, and Christianity, in a
large sense, is religion's last word. Christianity is suscep
tible of unlimited transformation. Every official organiza
tion of Christianity, whether under the form of a National
Church, or under the form of ultramontanism, is destined
to disappear. A free and individual Christianity, with
innumerable interior diversities, like that of the first three

IN MODERN TIMES. 385
centuries, seems to us then the religious future of Europe.
Equally deceived are they who think that religion is des
tined gradually to lose its importance in the affairs of the
world, and they who see all religion terminate at last in a
sort of deism. Religion is a thing sui generis ; the philo
sophy of the schools will never take its place. Deisin,
which pretends to be scientific, is no more so than religion ;
it is an abstract mythology, but a mythology it is. It must
have miracles ; its God providentially intervening in the
world does not differ essentially from Joshua's, who stays
the sun. Besides, rigid, dry dogmas, with no plastic
quality or traditional character) offering no field to the
interpreter, imprisori the human mind more closely than the
popular mythology does. Herder, Fichte, Schleiermacher,
were not orthodox enough to be professors of natural
religion, according to Voltaire ; they were excellent theolo
gians. The religious, undogmatical principle thaT Jesus
proclaimed will unfold itself eternally, with an infinite
flexibility, producing symbols more and more elevated, and
in every case, according to the different stages of human
culture, creating formulas suited to each man's capacity.
I know that to many people a solution like this will
appear visionary, and they would be right if we were
speaking of taking measures, or of reforming legislation ;
but the great transformations of humanity are not effected
in that way. The regulation of worship may remain as it
is as long as you please ; the philosopher is only interested
to know the direction in which the world is going, to see
clearly the consequences involved in actual facts. Now, if
there is one principle immutably fixed, it is that liberty
and individuality are the domain of the soul. The two
great powers of modern Europe, French democracy and .
English understanding, are agreed on this point. The
opposite ideas are linked to parties that have no future.
The whole Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its oraol'e, M. de
25.

386 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
Maistre, has less weight in the world than a few Manches
ter Quakers. How would you have those Christians that
are buried in the depths of America and Oeeanica preserve
the same bond of obedience to old Rome, the mother of us
all, that they have who owe to her civilization and faith ?
Free Christianity alone is eternal and universal. The idea
of a spiritual as opposed to a temporal power must be
modified. To be sure, the spiritual is not the temporal, but
the spiritual does not constitute a power, it constitutes a
liberty. If there was such a thing as a spiritual power on
earth, Gregory VIL would have been justified in his bold
est paradoxes ; the kingdom . of souls would have been
everything, the kingdom of bodies would have been little
or nothing. Really, the kingdom of souls exists only in
the region of souls ; that is to say, in the world of pure
ideas. Liberty in the material order is limited ; I am de
barred from my neighbour's field, justly and necessarily,
that he may not encroach on mine ; but my neighbour does
me no wrong by holding his own peculiar opinions on God,
the world, and society, for in holding these opinions he
deprives me of no portion of my right to hold opposite
ones. The Church, meaning by this word a power armed
with other weapons than those of free persuasion, ought
therefore to disappear, not for the good of the state, but for
the sake of liberty. As long as religion shall be the offi
cial establishment, it will be better that the two authorities'
should be distinct than united ; but the ideal to- be aimed
at is precisely a pure rule, of the spirit, not as fanatics and
sectarians understand it, but. as it is understood by the
true liberals, who are .convinced, that no. belief is precious
till it is seized by personal conviction, that np religions act
is meritorious til! it is, spontaneous,
Without controversy, Protestantism, .makes the nearest
approach, to, this ideal.,. ;Detaching itself by,.degre.es from
the .state, Protestantism; . in, our .time,, reaches its final

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 387
conclusion, which is the free organization of religion, and
the union of Christians, not, in a dead, symbolical form,
but in the pure religious idea, as the Gospel first gave it
utterance. Except for the almost ridiculous reaction repre
sented in Prussia, by the party of the cross, Protestantism in
England, France, Holland, Switzerland, makes visible pro
gress daily in this direction. The Reformed Churches of
France, in particular, are passing through a crisis, the issue
of which is intensely interesting to the philosopher and the
religious man. Compelled to close up for better resistance,
these Churches have until recently been bound in the
severe creed of Calvinism. Religious expansion is the
fruit of a long peace. We must not ask the sons of mar
tyrs to criticize the doctrines for which their fathers suf
fered. Broad statements cannot defend themselves, and do
not absorb the entire man sufficiently to carry him through
a hundred and fifty years of proscription. French Pro
testantism, therefore, claimed to be judged not by what it
had become under the blows of odious persecutions, but by
what it might have become if it had remained free. ^A
half century of liberty has sufficed to give it its natural
direction. As early as the period of the Reformation, a
pastor of Nimes, Samuel Vincent, though little acquainted
with Germanic Christianity, outspoke with rare firmness
views on the nature of religious credence that have since
become axioms. Later, an influence from higher studies,
proceeding principally from Strasbourg, revived the tradi
tion of the learned reformed schools of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The whole body of French Pro
testants will understand at last that if theirs is not a free
religion it will have no justification for its existence ; that
the age will not become Calvinistic, it will not quit the
Church for the Bible, nor the Council of Trent for the
creed of La Rochelle. The old dogmatic and national
Protestantism may yet render good service as the nurse Of

388 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
enlightened men ; but as a special sect it cannot look for
ward to a great future.
Catholicism, with its haughty audacity of assertion, and
its exaggerated notion of its rights, will not so easily submit
to change. It will undergo protracted mutilations before
it will renounce its earthly reign, its anti-Christian khalifate.
Frankly, I confess it seems to me difficult to avoid a schism
between the opposing elements in the bosom of Catholicism
itself. The political party engrossed more and more by
intrigues, and the earnest party more aad more chilled by
the exclusive reliance on human means, will discover at
length that they do not worship the same God. The slightest
misunderstanding that might arise on the death of a Phpe,
if skilfully fostered — as a careful perusal of the first two
pages of the history of the great Western schism would
show — might bring the internal dissension to an v open
rupture. Every great crisis in religion is preceded by a
series of timid attempts, in which the thought of the future
agitates a few sweet souls, and in which the reformers,
humble men as yet, submit to the Church which condemns
them. In such a. period we live. Lamennais's outbreak
was an isolated fact due to his Breton rudeness, which
al way s^ rushes into excess. The docility of the Lacordaires
and the Montalemberts will stand out against all trials.
Measure the space that has elapsed between Joachim of
FlSris and Luther, including Peter John d'Oliva, Tauler,
Conecte, Savonarola; we have the whole period that is
necessary to change a Saint into a Heresiarch. It is true
that mankind moves with great rapidity in our age ; but
long js the patience of pious souls; two generations at
least must pass before Rosmini or Montalembert can be
ancestor to a schismatic.
I must .anticipate one objection that may be urged
against me. " You would revive religion," men will say,
" and you desire to withdraw it from State direction • and

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 389
yet, you would not have it an organized power which can
force the State to take it into account ; do you not see that
you degrade it, that when it is no longer a State affair,
it will sink to the level of opinions in literature or art, to
which government pays no heed because they are beneath
its attention ? Do not you who know the conditions of
liberty perceive that you are beating down its last tower of
defence ? What ! in our dismantled society, you applaud
the ruin of the last feudal castle ? You do not consider
that this castle may one day be the sole asylum for
souls that will not bend before the terrible tribunitial power
of the State ? In short, amid the universal abasement of
Europe, amid the silence created by universal subjugation,
who has resisted? Who has spoken? The Pope, the
Bishops. Equality affords no protection ; the code gives
shelter to nobody. Had old Rome had priests of noble
character, had the pontifical power, instead of being ab
sorbed by the Emperor, succeeded in creating bishops, the
imperial despotism would have been impossible. Liberty
is a result of privilege ; why are you unwilling that the
Church should have its own?" I am not unwilling,
forsooth, if I may be permitted to have mine against it ;
but has not the fault of the Church been precisely this,
that she more than anybody has appealed to the State
principle to stifle all dissent in the name of national unity ?
Who more than the Church has called in that formidable
auxiliary against those whom it counted her enemies ? Is
not the extravagant idea of the State that prevails in
France, is not the difficulty of establishing there a con
stitutional regime, in part the work of Catholicism ? Is not
this idea that the things with which the State has no
concern are for that reason less noble things, the very evil
tb be combated, and does not a considerable portion of the
State's action consist in giving to many social interests the
needful protection against the inevitably encroaching ten-

390 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
dencies of the Church ? Leave to the Church its ieuda.
organization, provided you set up completely the system of
free organizations; provided you allow other Churches,
other organizations of all kinds, to be formed with equal
rights; otherwise the injustice is flagrant. An officially
established Church may be a condition of liberty in a
country already free ; but such an establishment in a des
potic country is, on the contrary, injurious to liberty. Far
from excluding each other, as M. de Tocqueville, a sagacious
publicist in other respects, believes, political liberty and
freedom of thought suppose each other; and if a choice
were to be made, I even confess my preference for the
second, for one may be an accomplished man in a country
which enjoys no political liberty, and without religious and
philosophical liberty one can be but a very imperfect
man. The religious question, then, finds its solution in liberty,
all the more that this is not the solution of moral, social,
political, industrial questions. The reason for this is sim
ple. The end of religion is good ; now, the good which is
not obtained through liberty is not good. Religion is a
problem which the mind raises by self-application ; the
true and excellent religion for each man is that which he
believes and loves. The liberal principle, pre-eminently,
is, that man is a soul, that he is to be reached only through
the soul, that nothing is of value save as it effects a change
in the soul. An inflexible justice, granting with inexora
ble firmness liberty to all, even to those who, were they
masters, would refuse it to their adversaries, is the only
issue that reason diseovers for the grave problems raised in
our time. I am inclined to believe that if, in 1849, social
istic errors had been met simply by a passive liberalism,
the dangerous poison which the repressive measures then
taken forced back into the social system, would have lost
all its force. Many a misery would have been exorcised,

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 391
and heavy shackles imposed on the rights of all would be
loosed. Religion will gain more than anything else by this
regime. Gross associations of ideas, exceedingly injurious
to the elevation 'of souls, will fall of themselves. The
synonymy between libertine and freethinker, fixed by the
hypocrites at the close of the reign of Louis XIV., will
disappear. This confusion is a common effect of official
Catholicism ; it is a sad thought that but for the support of
the village libertine, embroiled with his curate, the revolu
tion of the eighteenth century, which laid the foundation
of intellectual ind ^pendence, would not have been accom
plished. The example of Italy, hovering between mate
rialism and devotion ever since the middle age, devoured
at once by religion and by incredulity, paralysed by Catho
licism, and knowing no way of escape from it, cannot be
censured enough. In a word, the proud indifference of
the Paduan Averrhoism, which seemed such good policy
in the sixteenth century, was a blunder. The exclusive
power of a religion is not combated' by false protestations
of respect. The only way to do that is by the unwearied
appeal to liberty.
Dogmatism which thinks it has the everlasting formula
of truth, scepticism which denies the truth, will always be
two treacherous guides in the direction of religious affairs.
Nothing that is human is contemptible, but nothing either
is to be absolutely embraced. The conditions of civiliza
tion are like those of a limited problem, where each postu
late pushed to "extremity leads to the impossible. No one
• should touch rashly these essential conditions of the human
mean, wherein one degree of heat more or less produces
life or death. Often, in this order of things, what looks
like evil 'is the mainspring which sustains the rest. Every
prejudice is an error, and yet the prejudiced man is greatly
superior to the nullity, the man without character, whom

392 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
our age of indifference has produced. Every abuse is
blameworthy, nevertheless society lives on abuses. Every
dogmatic assertion inclosed in fixed phrase is objectiona
ble, still, the day when mankind shall cease to affirm it will
cease to exist. Every religious form is irnperfect, notwith
standing that religion cannot exist without form. Only in
its quintessence is it true, and yet to refine on it too much
is to destroy it. The philosopher who, struck by the pre
judice, the abuse, the error contained in the form, thinks
to get at the truth by taking refuge in abstraction, substi
tutes for reality something that never existed. He is the
wise man who sees at once that all is image, prejudice,
symbol, and that the image, the prejudice, the symbol are
necessary, useful, and true. Dogmatism is presumption,
for if, in fine, among the millions of men who have, one
after another, believed themselves in possession of the
truth, not one has been wholly right, how can we hope to
be more fortunate? But, as we do not reproach a painter
with puerile absurdity because he represents the ideal
under finite forms, so we may admit and love the symboJ
that once has lived, in the conscience of humanity. With
out looking for absolute perfection, which closely embraced
would be nothingness, we may believe that an immense
career is open to reason and to liberty. The problem of
the true and the just is like that of squaring the circle,
approach it as nearly as you can, you will never reach it.
For ever breached by one portion of the human soul,
religion will for ever, therefore, resist, sustained by the other
portion. Were religion simply a mistake of mankind, like
astrology, sorcery, and other chimaeras that have command-*
ed general belief for centuries, science would already have
swept it away, as it has consigned to the lower regions of
society the belief in spirits and sorcerers. On the other
hand, were religion only the fruit of a childish calculation,
by which man hopes to receive on the other side of the

IN MODERN SOCIETY. 393
tomb a return for his virtuous investments here below, he
would be attracted to it particularly in his selfish moments.
Now, it is in their best moments that men are religious ; it
is when they are good that they are persuaded that virtue
corresponds to the eternal order; it is when they contem
plate things disinterestedly that they find death abhorrent
and absurd. Must we not suppose that in these moments
man's vision is the clearest? Which is right, the selfish
and dissipated or the good and self-possessed man ? If, as
the Italian sophists of the sixteenth century maintained, reli
gion had been invented by the simple and the weak, how
comes it that the finest natures are precisely the most reli
gious ? Let us, then, boldly say that religion is the pro
duct of the normal man, that man is most truly himself
when he is most religious, and is surest of an infinite des
tiny ; but let us dismiss all absolute confidence in the
images which serve to express this destiny, and let us
believe solely that the real fact must be far above all that
feeling is permitted to desire, or fancy to paint.
Perhaps something will occur here analogous to that
which has occurred in the physical sciences. At fisst it
might well be thought that modern science, by destroying
the primitive system which represented natural phenomena
as the work of free agents, was going to destroy the beauty
of the universe, and reduce everything to a flat realism
without mystery. Many a tender soul bewailed that world
of enchantment in which ignorant humanity lived, that
world where everything was moral, passionate, full of life
and feeling. Science, it was apprehended, would belittle
this world. In fact, it has infinitely enlarged it. The
most extravagant looking ideas of antiquity turned out to
be narrow, tame, puerile, when compared with the reality.
The earth like a disk, the sun big as the Peloponnesus, the
stars rolling a few leagues overhead in the grooves of a
solid vault, an enclosed universe, surrounded with walls,

394 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION.
hooped like a chest,* behold the most splendid system
of the world then conceivable. Who would venture to sigh
after it in presence of that revealed by science? Is not the
mechanical hypothesis of Newton more noble than that of
angels moving the spheres ? Is not the history of the
globe, as geology presents it to us, more poetical than the
world that was manufactured five thousand years ago?
Let us dare to believe that the system of the moral world
is likewise superior to all our symbols. Let us not bewail
the childish 'chimseras of the childish epochs. Dream
always fades before reality. Let us allow inflexible science
to assail with the utmost vigour of its method these pro
blems which sentiment and imagination solved ages ago.
Who knows that the metaphysics and the theology of the
past will not hold the same relation to those which the
advance of speculation will one day reveal, that the Cos
mos of Anaximenes or of Indicopleustes holds to the Cos*
mos of Laplace and Humboldt ?
 .  ..  _j—
* See the Study of M. Letronne, on Cosmos Indicopleustes, and the Opi
nions on Cosmography of the Church Fathers. "Revue" of 15 March,
1834.

THE END.

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The Central Park.
THE ORIGIN, PEOGEESS, AND DESCRIPTION, OF THE MAGNIFICENT
CENTRAL PARK at NEW YORK.— Beautifully illustrated with
more than 50 exquisite photographs bf the principal views
and objects of interest. One large quarto, sumptuously
bound in  Turkey morocco, $25.00
Ernest Renan.
/HE LIFE OF JESUS.— Translated from the original French
by C. E. Wilbour  1 2mo. cloth bound, $1.50

BY CARLETON, NEW YORK.

A. S. Roe's Works.
A LONG LOOK AHEAD.— . A novel. . 12mo. cloth, $1.25
I'VE BEEN THINKING.— . . do. . . . do. $1.25
TRUE TQ. THE LAST.— . . do. . . . do. $1.25
TIIE STAE AND THE CLOUD.— do. . . . do. $1.25
HOW COULD HE HELP IT.— . do. . . . do. $1.2 5
LIKE AND UNLIKE.— . . . do. . . . do. $1.25
TO LOVE AND TO BE LOVED.— do. . . . do. $1.25
TIME AND TIDE.— . . . . do. . . . do. $1.25
Walter Barrett, Clerk.
THE OLD MERCHANTS OF NEW YOEK CITY.— Being personal
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cerning nearly every leading merchant in New York. Two
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Rev. John Camming, D.D., of London.
THE GREAT TRIBULATION ; OR, THINGS COMING ON THE EARTH.—
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THE GREAT PREPARATION ; REDEMPTION DRAWETH NIGH.—
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TEACH US to PRAY.— A volume of devotional sermons on the
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WOMAN (LA FEMME.)— Translated from the French. . .$1.25
THE MORAL HISTORY OF WOMEN.— do. . . $1.25
WOMAN made FBEE.— From the French of D'Hericourt, $1.25
Novels by Rufflnl.
DE. ANTONIO.— A love story of Italy. . izmo. cloth, $1.50
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LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED

Fred. S. Cozzcus.
THE sparrowgrass papees.— A laughable picture cf Spar-
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Epcs Sargent.
PECULIAR.— A very clever new novel. . 12 mo. cloth, $1.50
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THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH; OB, MAID, WIFE, AND WIDOW.—
A magnificent historical novel. By the Author of "Peg Wof-
fington," etc. Reade's best work. Octavo, cl. bd., $1.50
The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers.
A collection of. exquisitely satirical and humorous milita/j
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T. S. Arthur's New Works.
LIGHT ON SHADOWED PATHS.— 12m. cl., $1.25
OUT IN THE WORLD.— (In press.)  do.
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drifting about.— By " Jeems Pipes," of Pipesville ; with
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Mother Goose for Grown Folks.
Humorous rhymes for grown people ; based upon the famous
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Hcarton Drllle.
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witty West Point love story. ... 1 zmo. cloth, $ 1 .00
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A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS.— A humorous and entertaining vol
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Jas. H. Hackett.
NOTES AND COMMENTS ON SHAKSPEAER-By the great Amfi
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Now Sporting Work,
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BY CARLETON, NEW YORK.

Doesticks' Humorous Works.
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PLUE1BUSTAII.-  do. do. $1.50
THE ELEPHANT CLUB.— . . do. do. $1.50
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PETTY ANNOYANCES OF MAEEIED .LIFE.— do. do.. $1.00
TIIE ALCHEMIST.—  do. do. $1.00
EUGENIE GEANDET.—  do. do., $1.00
D. D. Home (or Hume).
INCIDENTS IN MY LIFE.— By the celebrated spirit medium;
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich. ¦
BABIE belt,, and other poems— Blue and gold binding, $1.00
OUT OF His head.— An eccentric romance. l2mo. cl., $1.00
Adam Gurowski.
DIARY.— During the years 1861 to '63, in Washington. Two
volumes, each,  $1.25
Edmund C. Stedman.
ALICE OF MONMOUTH.— . 1 zmo., tinted papei;, cloth, $1.00
LYEICS AND IDYLS.—  75 CtS.
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Alexander Von Humboldt.
LIFE and travels.— With an introduction by Bayard Tay
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Richard H. Stoddard.
THE* KING'S BELL.— izmo. cloth bound, tinted paper, 75 cts.
THE MORGESONS.— A novel. By Mrs. R. H. Stoddard., $1.00
II. T. Wal worth.
LULU.— A novel of life in Washington. . i2mo. cloth, $1.25
Hugh Miller.
A LIFE of the great Geologist and Author. l2mo. clo., $1.5.0
Miss Dinah Huloch.
A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT women.— A new work by th
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TIIE SPIRIT OF HEBREW POETEY;— With a biographical intro
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i LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OARLETON NE W YORK.
miscellaneous Works.
•HUSBAND & WIFE; OR, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.— 12mo. cl., $1.25
ROCKFOED.—A novel. By Mrs. L. D. Umsted. do. $1.00
SOUTHWOLD.— do. do. do. $1.00
wanderings OF A BEAUTY.— By Mrs. Edwin James. $1.00
THE YACHTMAN'S PRIMER.— By T. R. Warren. do. 50 cts.
SPREES AND SPLASHES.— By Henry Morford. . do. $1.00
THE U. S. tax LAW.—" Government Edition." .do. 75 cts
THE PRISONER OF STATE. -By D. A. Mahony. . do. $1.25
the partisan leader.— By Beverly Tucker. . do. $1.25
CHINA AND THE CHINESE.— By W. L. G. Smith, do. $1.00
AROUND THE PYRAMIDS.— By Gen. Aaron Ward. do. $1.25
TREATISE ON DEAFNESS.— By E. B. LighthiU, M.D. do. $ 1 .00
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NATIONAL CHESS BOOK.— By D. W. Fiske. . . do. $1.50
garret VAN HORN.— By J. S. Sauzade. ... do. $1.25
TWENTY YEARS AROUND THE WORLD. J. G.Vassar. 8vo. $3.50
national hymns.— By Richard Grant White. 8vo. $1.00
fort LAFAYETTE.— By Benjamin Wood. 1 2mo. cloth, $ 1 .00
alfio BALZANL— By Domenico Minnelli. . . do. $1.Z5
THE NATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE SOLDIER.— . do. 50 CtS.
ORIENTAL Haeems.— Translated from the French, do. $l.z5
LOLA MONTEZ.— Her life and lectures. . . . do. $1.50
ESSAYS.— By George Brimley  do. $i.z5
GEN. NATHANIEL LYON.— A life  do. $1.00
PHILIP thaxter.— A novel  do. $1.00
FROM HAYING TIME TO HOPPING.— A novel. . do. $1.00
JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE.— By E. S. Gould, do. $1.00
married off.— An illustrated poem  do. 50 cts.
EOUMANIA.— By Dr. Jas. O. Noyes  do. $1.50
HUSBAND m. WIFE.— A poem illustrated. ... do. 50 cts
BROWN'S CARPENTER'S ASSISTANT.— .... 4t0. $j.0O
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DEBT and grace.— By Rev. C. F. Hudson. . . do. $i.z5
the vagabond.— By Adam Badeau  do. $1.00
cosmogony.— By Thos. A. Davies  8vo. $1.50
ANSWER to HUGH MILLER.--By T. A. Davies. izmo., $1.25
EDGAR poe and his CRITICS.— By Mrs. Whitman, do. 7*5 cts,
HARTLEY NORMAN.— A novel  do. $1.ZJ

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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