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Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse. Par Ernest Renan. Guardian,
18th July 1883.

The sketches which M. Renan gives us of his early life are what we should have looked for from the writer of the Vie de JÉsus. The story of the disintegration of a faith is supposed commonly to have something tragic about it. We expect it to be a story of heart-breaking disenchantments, of painful struggles, of fierce recoils against ancient beliefs and the teachers who bolstered them up; of indignation at having been so long deceived; of lamentation over years wasted in the service of falsehood. The confessions of St. Augustine, the biography of Blanco White, the letters of Lamennais, at least agree in the witness which they bear to the bitter pangs and anxieties amid which, in their case, the eventful change came about. Even Cardinal Newman's Apologia, self-restrained and severely controlled as it is, shows no doubtful traces of the conflicts and sorrows out of which he believed himself to have emerged to a calmer and surer light. But M. Renan's story is an idyl, not a tragedy. It is sunny, placid, contented. He calls his life the "charmante promenade" which the "cause of all good," whatever that may be, has granted him through the realities of existence. There are in it no storms of passion, no cruelties of circumstances, no deplorable mistakes, no complaints, no recriminations. His life flows on smoothly, peacefully, happily, with little of rapids and broken waters, gradually and in the most natural and inevitable way enlarging itself, moving in new and wider channels and with increased volume and force, but never detaching itself and breaking off from its beginnings. It is a spectacle which M. Renan, who has lived this life, takes a gentle pleasure in contemplating. He looks back on it with thankfulness, and also with amusement It makes a charming and complete picture. No part could be wanting without injuring the effect of the whole. It is the very ideal of the education of the Rousseau school—a child of nature, developing, amid the simplest and humblest circumstances of life, the finest gifts and most delicate graces of faith and reverence and purity—brought up by sages whose wisdom he could not in time help outrunning, but whose piety, sweetness, disinterestedness, and devoted labour left on his mind impressions which nothing could wear out; and at length, when the time came, passing naturally, and without passion or bitterness, from out of their faithful but too narrow discipline into a wider and ampler air, and becoming, as was fit, master and guide to himself, with light which they could not bear, and views of truth greater and deeper than they could conceive. But every stage of the progress, through the virtues of the teachers, and the felicitous disposition of the pupil, exhibits both in exactly the due relations in which each ought to be with the other, with none of the friction of rebellious and refractory temper on one side, or of unintelligent harshness on the other. He has nothing to regret in the schools through which he passed, in the preparations which he made there for the future, in the way in which they shaped his life. He lays down the maxim, "On ne doit jamais Écrire que de ce qu'on aime." There is a serene satisfaction diffused through the book, which scarcely anything intervenes to break or disturb; he sees so much poetry in his life, so much content, so much signal and unlooked-for success, that he has little to tell except what is delightful and admirable. And then he is so certain that he is right: he can look down with so much good-humoured superiority on past and present, alike on what he calls "l'effroyable aventure du moyen Âge," and on the march of modern society to the dead level of "Americanism." It need not be said that the story is told with all M. Renan's consummate charm of storytelling. All that it wants is depth of real feeling and seriousness—some sense of the greatness of what he has had to give up, not merely of its poetic beauty and tender associations. It hardly seems to occur to him that something more than his easy cheerfulness and his vivid historical imagination is wanted to solve for him the problems of the world, and that his gradual transition from the Catholicism of the seminary to the absolute rejection of the supernatural in religion does not, as he describes it, throw much light on the question of the hopes and destiny of mankind.

The outline of his story is soon told. It is in general like that of many more who in France have broken away from religion. A clever studious boy, a true son of old Brittany—the most melancholy, the most tender, the most ardent, the most devout, not only of all French provinces, but of all regions in Europe—is passed on from the teaching of good, simple, hard-working country priests to the central seminaries, where the leaders of the French clergy are educated. He comes up a raw, eager, ignorant provincial, full of zeal for knowledge, full of reverence and faith, and first goes through the distinguished literary school of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, of which Dupanloup was the founder and the inspiring soul. Thence he passed under the more strictly professional discipline of St. Sulpice: first at the preparatory philosophical school at Issy, then to study scientific theology in the house of St. Sulpice itself at Paris. At St. Sulpice he showed special aptitudes for the study of Hebrew, in which he was assisted and encouraged by M. le Hir, "the most remarkable person," in his opinion, "whom the French clergy has produced in our days," a "savant and a saint," who had mastered the results of German criticism as they were found in the works of Gesenius and Ewald. On his faith all this knowledge had not made the faintest impression; but it was this knowledge which broke down M. Renan's, and finally led to his retiring from St. Sulpice. On the one side was the Bible and Catholic theology, carefully, scientifically, and consistently taught at St. Sulpice; on the other were the exegesis and the historical criticism of the German school. He came at length to the conclusion that the two are incompatible; that there was but a choice of alternatives; and purely on the ground of historical criticism, he says, not on any abstract objections to the supernatural, or to miracles, or to Catholic dogma, he gave up revealed religion. He gave it up not without regrets at the distress caused to friends, and at parting with much that was endeared to him by old associations, and by intrinsic beauty and value; but, as far as can be judged, without any serious sense of loss. He spent some time in obscurity, teaching, and studying laboriously, and at length beginning to write. Michel LÉvy, the publisher, found him out, and opened to him a literary career, and in due time he became famous. He has had the ambiguous honour of making the Bible an object of such interest to French readers as it never was before, at the cost of teaching them to find in it a reflection of their own characteristic ways of looking at life and the world. It is not an easy thing to do with such a book as the Bible; but he has done it.

As a mere history of a change of convictions, the Souvenirs are interesting, but hardly of much importance. They are written with a kind of Epicurean serenity and dignity, avoiding all exaggeration and violence, profuse in every page in the delicacies and also in the reticences of respect, not too serious to exclude the perpetual suggestion of a well-behaved amused irony, not too much alive to the ridiculous and the self-contradictory to forget the attitude of composure due to the theme of the book. He warns his readers at the outset that they must not look for a stupid literalness in his account. "Ce qu'on dit de soi est toujours poÉsie"—the reflection of states of mind and varying humours, not the exact details of fact. "Tout est vrai dans ce petit volume, mais non de ce genre de veritÉ qui est requis pour une Biographie universelle. Bien des choses ont ÉtÉ mises, afin qu'on sourie; si l'usage l'eÛt permis, j'aurais dÛ Écrire plus d'une fois À la marge—cum grano salis". It is candid to warn us thus to read a little between the lines; but it is a curious and unconscious disclosure of his characteristic love of a mixture of the misty and the clear. The really pleasant part of it is his account, which takes up half the volume, of Breton ways and feelings half a century ago, an account which exactly tallies with the pictures of them in Souvestre's writings; and the kindliness and justice with which he speaks of his old Catholic and priestly teachers, not only in his boyish days at TrÉguier, but in his seminary life in Paris. His account of this seminary life is unique in its picturesque vividness. He describes how, at St. Nicolas, under the fiery and irresistible Dupanloup, whom he speaks of with the reserved courtesy due to a distinguished person whom he much dislikes, his eager eyes were opened to the realities of literature, and to the subtle powers of form and style in writing, which have stood him in such stead, and have been the real secret of his own success.

Le monde s'ouvrit pour moi. MalgrÉ sa prÉtention d'Être un asile fermÉ aux bruits du dehors, Saint-Nicolas Était a cette Époque la maison la plus brillante et la plus mondaine. Paris y entrait À pleins bords par les portes et les fenÊtres, Paris tout entier, moins la corruption, je me hÂte de le dire, Paris avec ses petitesses et ses grandeurs, ses hardiesses et ses chiffons, sa force rÉvolutionnaire et ses mollesses flasques. Mes vieux prÊtres de Bretagne savaient bien mieux les mathÉmatiques et le latin que mes nouveaux maÎtres; mais ils vivaient dans des catacombes sans lumiÈre et sans air. Ici, l'atmosphÈre du siÈcle circulait librement…. Au bout de quelque temps une chose tout À fait inconnue m'etait rÉvÉlÉe. Les mots, talent, Éclat, rÉputation eurent un sens pour moi. J'Étais perdu pour l'idÉal modeste que mes anciens maÎtres m'avaient inculquÉ.

And he describes how Dupanloup brought his pupils perpetually into direct relations with himself and communicated to them something of his own enthusiasm. He gained the power over their hearts which a great general gains over his soldiers. His approval, his interest in a man, were the all-absorbing object, the all-sufficient reward; the one punishment feared was dismissal, always inflicted with courtesy and tact, from the honour and the joy of serving under him:—

AdorÉ de ses ÉlÈves, M. Dupanloup n'Était pas toujours agrÉable À ces collaborateurs. On m'a dit que, plus tard, dans son diocÈse, les choses se passÈrent de la mÊme maniÈre, qu'il fut toujours plus aimÉ de ses laÏques que de ses prÊtres. Il est certain qu'il Écrasait tout autour de lui. Mais sa violence mÊme nous attachait; car nous sentions que nous Étions son but unique. Ce qu'il Était, c'Était un Éveilleur incomparable; pour tirer de chacun de ses ÉlÈves la somme de ce qu'il pouvait donner, personne ne l'Égalait. Chacun de ses deux cents ÉlÈves existait distinct dans sa pensÉe; il Était pour chacun d'eux l'excitateur toujours prÉsent, le motif de vivre et de travailler. Il croyait au talent et en faisait la base de la foi. Il rÉpÉtait souvent que l'homme vaut en proportion de sa facultÉ d'admirer. Son admiration n'Était pas toujours assez ÉclairÉe par la science; mais elle venait d'une grande chaleur d'Âme et d'un coeur vraiment possÉdÉ de l'amour du beau…. Les dÉfauts de l'Éducation qu'il donnait Étaient les dÉfauts mÊme de son esprit. Il Était trop peu rationnel, trop peu scientifique. On eÛt dit que ses deux cents ÉlÈves Étaient destinÉs À Être tous poÈtes, Écrivains, orateurs.

St. Nicolas was literary. Issy and St. Sulpice were severely philosophic and scientific, places of "fortes Études"; and the writer thinks that they were more to his own taste than the more brilliant literary education given under Dupanloup. In one sense it may be so. They introduced him to exactness of thought and precision of expression, and they widened his horizon of possible and attainable knowledge. He passed, he says, from words to things. But he is a writer who owes so much to the form into which he throws his thoughts, to the grace and brightness and richness of his style, that he probably is a greater debtor to the master whom he admires and dislikes, Dupanloup, than to the modest, reserved, and rather dull Sulpician teachers, whom he loves and reveres and smiles at, whose knowledge of theology was serious, profound, and accurate, and whose characteristic temper was one of moderation and temperate reason, joined to a hatred of display, and a suspicion of all that seemed too clever and too brilliant. But his witness to their excellence, to their absolute self-devotion to their work, to their dislike of extravagance and exaggeration, to their good sense and cultivation, is ungrudging and warm. Of course he thinks them utterly out of date; but on their own ground he recognises that they were men of strength and solidity, the best and most thorough of teachers; the most sincere, the most humble, the most self-forgetting of priests:—

Beaucoup de mes jugements Étonnent les gens du monde parcequ'ils n'out pas vu ce que j'ai vu. J'ai vu À Saint-Sulpice, associÉs À des idÉes Étroites, je l'avoue, les miracles que nos races peuvent produire en fait de bontÉ, de modestie, d'abnÉgation personelle. Ce qu'il y a de vertu À Saint-Sulpice suffirait pour gouverner un monde, et cela m'a rendu difficile pour ce que j'ai trouvÉ ailleurs.

M. Renan, as we have said, is very just to his education, and to the men who gave it. He never speaks of them except with respect and gratitude. It is seldom, indeed, that he permits himself anything like open disparagement of the men and the cause which he forsook. The shafts of his irony are reserved for men on his own side, for the radical violences of M. ClÉmenceau, and for the exaggerated reputation of Auguste Comte, "who has been set up as a man of the highest order of genius, for having said, in bad French, what all scientific thinkers for two hundred years have seen as clearly as himself." He attributes to his ecclesiastical training those excellences in his own temper and principles on which he dwells with much satisfaction and thankfulness. They are, he considers, the result of his Christian and "Sulpician" education, though the root on which they grew is for ever withered and dead. "La foi disparue, la morale reste…. C'est par le caractÈre que je suis restÉ essentiellement l'ÉlÈve de mes anciens maÎtres." He is proud of these virtues, and at the same time amused at the odd contradictions in which they have sometimes involved him:—

Il me plairait d'expliquer par le dÉtail et de montrer comment la gageure paradoxale de garder les vertus clÉricales, sans la foi qui leur sert de base et dans un monde pour lequel elles ne sont pas faites, produisit, en ce que me concerne, les rencontres les plus divertissantes. J'aimerais À raconter toutes les aventures que mes vertus sulpiciennes m'amenÈrent, et les tours singuliers qu'elles m'ont jouÉs. AprÈs soixante ans de vie sÉrieuse on a le droit de sourire; et oÙ trouver une source de rire plus abondante, plus À portÉe, plus inoffensive qu'en soimÊme? Si jamais un auteur comique voulait amuser le public de mes ridicules, je ne lui demanderais qu'une chose; c'est de me prendre pour collaborateur; je lui conterais des choses vingt fois plus amusantes que celles qu'il pourrait inventer.

He dwells especially on four of these virtues which were, he thinks, graven ineffaceably on his nature at St. Sulpice. They taught him there not to care for money or success. They taught him the old-fashioned French politeness—that beautiful instinct of giving place to others, which is perishing in the democratic scramble for the best places, in the omnibus and the railway as in business and society. It is more curious to find that he thinks that they taught him to be modest. Except on the faith of his assertions, the readers of his book would not naturally have supposed that he believed himself specially endowed with this quality; it is at any rate the modesty which, if it shrinks into retirement from the pretensions of the crowd, goes along with a high and pitying sense of superiority, and a self-complacency of which the good humour never fails. His masters also taught him to value purity. For this he almost makes a sort of deprecating apology. He saw, indeed, "the vanity of this virtue as of all the others"; he admits that it is an unnatural virtue. But he says, "L'homme ne doit jamais se permettre deux hardiesses À la fois. Le libre penseur doit Être rÉglÉ en ses moeurs." In this doctrine it may be doubted whether he will find many followers. An unnatural virtue, where nature only is recognised as a guide, is more likely to be discredited by his theory than recommended by his example, particularly if the state of opinion in France is such as is described in the following passage—a passage which in England few men, whatever they might think, would have the boldness to state as an acknowledged social phenomenon:—

Le monde, dont les jugements sont rarement tout À fait faux, voit une sorte de ridicule À Être vertueux quand on n'y est pas obligÉ par un devoir professionnel. Le prÊtre, ayant pour État d'Être chaste, comme le soldat d'Être brave, est, d'aprÈs ces idÉes, presque le seul qui puisse sans ridicule tenir À des principes sur lesquels la morale et la mode se livrent les plus Étranges combats. Il est hors de doute qu'en ce point, comme en beaucoup d'autres, mes principes clericaux, conservÉs dans le siÈcle, m'ont nui aux yeux du monde.

We have one concluding observation to make. This is a book of which the main interest, after all, depends on the way in which it touches on the question of questions, the truth and reality of the Christian religion. But from first to last it docs not show the faintest evidence that the writer ever really knew, or even cared, what religion is. Religion is not only a matter of texts, of scientific criticisms, of historical investigations, of a consistent theology. It is not merely a procession of external facts and events, a spectacle to be looked at from the outside. It is, if it is anything, the most considerable and most universal interest in the complex aggregate of human interests. It grows out of the deepest moral roots, out of the most characteristic and most indestructible spiritual elements, out of wants and needs and aspirations and hopes, without which man, as we know him, would not be man. When a man, in asking whether Christianity is true, leaves out all this side of the matter, when he shows that it has not come before him as a serious and importunate reality, when he shows that he is unaffected by those deep movements and misgivings and anxieties of the soul to which religion corresponds, and treats the whole matter as a question only of erudition and criticism, we may acknowledge him to be an original and acute critic, a brilliant master of historical representation; but he has never yet come face to face with the problems of religion. His love of truth may be unimpeachable, but he docs not know what he is talking about. M. Renan speaks of giving up his religion as a man might speak of accepting a new and unpopular physical hypothesis like evolution, or of making up his mind to give up the personality of Homer or the early history of Rome. Such an interior attitude of mind towards religion as is implied, for instance, in Bishop Butler's Sermons on the Love of God, or the De Imitatione or Newman's Parochial Sermons seems to him, as far as we can judge, an unknown and unattempted experience. It is easy to deal with a question if you leave out half the factors of it, and those the most difficult and the most serious. It is easy to be clear if you do not choose to take notice of the mysterious, and if you exclude from your consideration as vague and confused all that vast department of human concerns where we at best can only "see through a glass darkly." It is easy to find the world a pleasant and comfortable and not at all perplexing place, if your life has been, as M. Renan describes his own, a "charming promenade" through it; if, as he says, you are blessed with "a good humour not easily disturbed "; and you "have not suffered much"; and "nature has prepared cushions to soften shocks"; and you have "had so much enjoyment in this life that you really have no right to claim any compensation beyond it." That is M. Renan's experience of life—a life of which he looks forward to the perfection in the clearness and security of its possible denials of ancient beliefs, and in the immense development of its positive and experimental knowledge. How would Descartes have rejoiced, he says, if he could have seen some poor treatise on physics or cosmography of our day, and what would we not give to catch a glimpse of such an elementary schoolbook of a hundred years hence.

But that is not at any rate the experience of all the world, nor does it appear likely ever to be within the reach of all the world. There is another aspect of life more familiar than this, an aspect which has presented itself to the vast majority of mankind, the awful view of it which is made tragic by pain and sorrow and moral evil; which, in the way in which religion looks at it, if it is sterner, is also higher and nobler, and is brightened by hope and purposes of love; a view which puts more upon men and requires more from them, but holds before them a destiny better than the perfection here of physical science. To minds which realise all this, it is more inconceivable than any amount of miracle that such a religion as Christianity should have emerged naturally out of the conditions of the first century. They refuse to settle such a question by the short and easy method on which M. Renan relies; they will not consent to put it on questions about the two Isaiahs, or about alleged discrepancies between the Evangelists; they will not think the claims of religion disposed of by M. Renan's canon, over and over again contradicted, that whether there can be or not, there is no evidence of the supernatural in the world. To those who measure and feel the true gravity of the issues, it is almost unintelligible to find a man who has been face to face with Christianity all his life treating the deliberate condemnation of it almost gaily and with a light heart, and showing no regrets in having to give it up as a delusion and a dream. It is a poor and meagre end of a life of thought and study to come to the conclusion that the age in which he has lived is, if not one of the greatest, at least "the most amusing of all ages."