Ernest Renan

“ The most trifling act of goodness, the least spark of talent, are in my eyes infinitely superior to all riches and worldly achievements. But as I had a well-balanced mind I saw that the ideal and reality have nothing in common; that the world is, at all events for the time, given over to what is commonplace and paltry; that the cause which generous souls will embrace is sure to be the losing one; and that what men of refined intellect hold to be true in literature and poetry is always wrong in the dull world of accomplished facts. ”

“ I know what faith is, and though I have since discovered how deep a fund of irony there is in the most sacred of our illusions, yet the experience derived from the days of old is very precious to me. I feel that in reality my existence is still governed by a faith which I no longer possess, for one of the peculiarities of faith is that its action does not cease with its disappearance. Grace survives by mere force of habit the living sensation of it which we have felt. ”

“ Catholicism, like a fairy circle, casts such a powerful spell upon one's whole life, that when one is deprived of it everything seems aimless and gloomy. I felt terribly out of my element. The whole universe seemed to me like an arid and chilly desert. With Christianity untrue, everything else appeared to me indifferent, frivolous, and undeserving of interest. The shattering of my career left me with a sense of aching void, like what may be felt by one who has had an attack of fever or a blighted affection. ”

“ By endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors, who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time. The most fatal error is to believe that one serves one’s country by calumniating those who founded it. All ages of a nation are leaves of the self-same book. The true men of progress are those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the past. All that we do, all that we are, is the outcome of ages of labour. ”

“ Firm in my faith, I shall have force to withstand my evil counsellors, my scepticism, which leads me to doubt of the people, my restless spirit which, after truth has been brought to light, impels me to go on searching for it, and my fancy which cannot be still even when Reason has pronounced her judgment. O Archegetes, ideal which the man of genius embodies in his masterpieces, I would rather be last in thy house than first in any other. ”

“ In one of my Utopian dreams of an aristocratic society, I have provided that there should only be one penalty, death; or rather, that all serious offences should be visited by a reprimand from the recognised authorities which no man of honour would survive. I should never have done to be a soldier, for I should either have deserted or committed suicide. I am afraid that the new military institutions which do not leave a place for any exceptions or equivalents will have a very lowering moral effect. To compel every one to obey is fatal to genius and talent. ”

“ I would sacrifice everything to her except my duty and my conscience. Yes, if God exacted of me, in order to spare her this pain, that I should extinguish my thought and condemn myself to a plodding, vulgar existence, I would submit. Many a time I have endeavoured to deceive myself, but it is not in human power to believe or not to believe at will. I wish that I could stifle within me the faculty of self-examination, for it is this which has caused all my unhappiness. Fortunate are the children who all their life long do but sleep and dream! ”

“ I was terrified at seeing so many ties destroyed in a few hours, and I should have been glad to arrest this fatal progress, all too rapid as I thought; but I was perforce driven forward, and there were no means of holding back. The days which followed were the darkest of my life. I was isolated from the whole world, without a friend, an adviser or an acquaintance, without any one to appeal to about me, and this after having just left my mother, my native Brittany, and a life gilded with so many pure and simple affections. Here I am alone in the world, and a stranger to it. ”

“ My experience of life has, therefore, been very pleasant; and I do not think that there are many human beings happier than I am. I have a keen liking for the universe. There may have been moments when subjective scepticism has gained a hold upon me, but it never made me seriously doubt of the reality, and the objections which it has evoked are sequestered by me as it were within an inclosure of forgetfulness; I never give them any thought, my peace of mind is undisturbed. Then, again, I have found a fund of goodness in nature and in society. ”

“ Sulpice rule, which, in my contact with the outside world, has placed me in very singular positions, and has often made me appear very old-fashioned, a relic of the past, and unfamiliar with the age in which we live. The right way to behave at table is to help oneself to the worst piece in the dish, so as to avoid the semblance of leaving for others what one does not think good enough—or, better still, to take the piece nearest to one without looking at what is in the dish. Any one who was to act in this delicate way in the struggle of modern life, would sacrifice himself to no purpose. ”

“ I must accustom myself to brave public opinion, so as to be ready for any sacrifice. I suffer much at times. This Holy Week, for instance, has been particularly painful for me, for every incident which bears me away from my ordinary life, revives all my anxious doubts. I console myself by thinking of Jesus, so beautiful, so pure, so ideal in His suffering—Jesus whom I hope to love always. Even if I should ever abandon Him, that would give Him pleasure, for it would be a sacrifice made to my conscience, and God knows that it would be a costly one! ”

“ To have abandoned a path which I had selected from my childhood, and which led without danger to the pure and noble aims which I had set before myself, in order to tread another along which I could discern nothing but uncertainty and disappointment; to have disregarded the opinion which will have only blame in store for what is really an honest act on my part, would have been a small thing, if I had not at the same time been compelled to tear out part of my heart, or, to speak more accurately, to pierce another to which my own was so deeply attached. ”

“ For, at whatever cost, I am resolved to be a Christian; but I cannot be an orthodox Catholic. When I find such independent and bold thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Fichte, calling themselves Christians, I should like to be so too. But can I be so in the Catholic faith, which is like a bar of iron? and you cannot reason with a bar of iron. Will not some one found amongst us a rational and critical Christianity? I will confess to you that I believe that I have discovered in some German writers the true kind of Christianity which is adapted to us. ”

“ To get the most one can out of oneself is becoming the rule of the world at large. The idea that the nobleman is the man who does not make money, and that any commercial or industrial pursuit, no matter how honest, debases the person engaged in it, and prevents him from belonging to the highest circle of humanity is fast fading away. So great is the difference which an interval of forty years brings about in human affairs. All that I once did now appears sheer folly, and sometimes in looking around me I fail to recognise that it is the same world. ”

“ It is God Himself who holds you fast, and remorseless opinion is looking on, ready to laugh if you signify that you are tired of the toys which amused you as a child. It would be nothing if there was only public opinion to brave. But the pity is that all the softest ties of your life are woven into the web that entangles you, and you must pluck out one-half of your heart if you would escape from it. Many a time I have wished that man was born either completely free, or deprived of all freedom. ”

“ This is only natural, for the men of our day have no moral sense. France seems to me every day more devoid of any part in the great work of renovating the life of humanity. A dry, anti-critical, barren, and petty orthodoxy, of the St. Sulpice type; a hollow and superficial imitation full of affectation and exaggeration, like Neo-Catholicism; and an arid and heartless philosophy, crabbed and disdainful, like the University, make up the sum of French culture. Jesus Christ is nowhere to be found. ”

“ If only I could be sure of the future, and of being one day able to secure for my ideas their due place, and follow up at my ease and free from all external preoccupations the work of my intellectual and moral improvement! But even could I be sure of myself, how could I be of the circumstances which force themselves so pitilessly upon us? In truth, I am driven to regret the paltry store of liberty which God has given us; we have enough to make us struggle; not enough to master destiny, just enough to insure suffering. ”

“ I walked with free and unflagging steps in the path which He disclosed before me, and behold this path has led me to the brink of a precipice! God has betrayed me! I never doubted but that a wise and merciful Providence governed the universe and governed me in the course which I was to take. It is not, however, without considerable effort that I have been able to apply so formal a contradiction to apparent facts. I often say to myself that vulgar common sense is little capable of appreciating the providential government whether of humanity, of the universe, or of the individual. ”

“ But here you had a whole people of aristocrats, a general public composed entirely of connoisseurs, a democracy which was capable of distinguishing shades of art so delicate that even our most refined judges can scarcely appreciate them. Here you had a public capable of understanding in what consisted the beauty of the Propylon and the superiority of the sculptures of the Parthenon. This revelation of true and simple grandeur went to my very soul. All that I had hitherto seen seemed to me the awkward effort of a Jesuitical art, a rococo mixture of silly pomp, charlatanism, and caricature. ”

“ The time will come when thy disciples will be regarded as the disciples of ennui. The world is greater than thou dost suppose. If thou hadst seen the Polar snows and the mysteries of the austral firmament thy forehead, O Goddess, ever so calm, would be less serene; thy head would be larger and would embrace more varied kinds of beauty.
"Thou art true, pure, perfect; thy marble is spotless; but the temple of Hagia-Sophia, which is at Byzantium, also produces a divine effect with its bricks and its plaster-work. It is the image of the vault of heaven. ”

“ But we need not be surprised at the feverish heat which, after these orgies of dialectics, can only be calmed by the kisses of the artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles. Woman restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects Himself. The candour of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation of the ideal, just as the unconscious coquetry of the flower is a proof that Nature adorns herself for a husband. ”

“ Then, again, I have found a fund of goodness in nature and in society. Thanks to the remarkable good luck which has attended me all my life, and always thrown me into communication with very worthy men, I have never had to make sudden changes in my attitudes. Thanks, also, to an almost unchangeable good temper, the result of moral healthiness, which is itself the result of a well-balanced mind, and of tolerably good bodily health, I have been able to indulge in a quiet philosophy, which finds expression either in grateful optimism or playful irony. ”

“ Our intellectual growth was like the phenomenon which occurs through a sort of action due to close contact and to passive complicity. M. Berthelot looked as favourably upon what I did as myself; I liked his ways as much as he could have done himself. There was never so much as a trivial vulgarity—I will not say a moral slackening of affection—between us. We were invariably upon the same terms with each other that people are with a woman for whom they feel respect. ”