Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

"I do not understand the German language," he said, in reply, "and have never read a line of German literature in the original. In fact, I know so little German that when I have been in Germany, I have had difficulty in finding my way at railroad stations and elsewhere."

"Have you made the acquaintance of the German philosophers through translations?"

"Kant I have read in a translation, of Hegel not a syllable either in a translation or in the original. I know him only through reviews and refutations, best of all through a concise presentation of his views by the only Hegelian in England, – Stirling."

"And what impressions have you received of Hegel?"

"That the writings in which Hegel has attempted to apply his principles may perhaps contain some good things, but that everything purely metaphysical in what he has written is sheer nonsense!"

I was startled, and suggested that I supposed this remark was to be taken cum grano salis.

"No; every word is meant to be understood literally," replied he. Then he dwelt on the outlines of the system, on the first preliminaries, the theory of being that is identified with nothing, and exclaimed, "What would you expect from a whole that begins with such sophistry? Have you really read Hegel?"

"Certainly; I have read most of his writings."

Mill (with a highly incredulous air), "And you have understood him?"

"I think so; at least, in all the principal features of his works."

He (with almost naïve astonishment), "But is there actually anything to understand?"

I did what I could to reply to this singular and rather diffusive question, and Mill, by no means convinced, yet as though he entered into my thought, said, "I understand very well the reverence, or the gratitude, you cherish for Hegel. We are always grateful to those who have taught us to think."

Never have I felt so keenly, as during this conversation, how thoroughly Mill was a man cast in one mould, a genuine Englishman, wilful and obstinate, equipped with a singularly iron will, and absolutely devoid of any flexible critical power of appropriation. What took the deepest hold of me, however, was the impression of the ignorance in which the most noteworthy men of different countries, even of the few lands most closely akin to their own, are of their mutual merits, and that in this second half of our nineteenth century. It seemed to me one could do much good by simply studying, confronting, and understanding these great minds that fail to understand one another.

I endeavored to bring into play against the principles of empirical philosophy the mode of contemplation I owed to my university training. To my astonishment, all the arguments I brought forward, and on whose effect upon Mill I had counted much, had long been familiar to him. "Those," said he, "are the old German arguments." He traced them all back to Kant, and had his answers to them ready.

It would not be in place in these pages to treat of the real significance of the controversy between the two modern schools, a problem which, in Germany, by almost all thinkers, is solved from the Teutonic point of view; as a matter of course, Stuart Mill would not admit that David Hume had been refuted by Kant, an opinion which I now thoroughly share with him, and which I believe will be universally prevalent when the Kant worship begins to be somewhat on the decline. (I already find a trace of this change of conception in Germany in Fr. Paulsen's admirable work on Kant's "Theory of Knowledge.") At that time, to be sure, I had a presentiment that there must be some way of reconciling the rationalistic and the empiric theory of knowledge, but I did not yet know Herpert Spencer's simple solution of the problem. Mill spoke briefly but decidedly against all attempts at mediation, and concluded, with the mingling of modesty and decision that was peculiar to him, in the following words, which have remained fixed in my memory, "I believe that we must choose between the theories."

In the same spirit he expressed himself concerning the various modern philosophers, whose thought was nearly related to his own. He recommended me to become acquainted with Herbert Spencer, yet would not advise me, he said, to study Spencer's later works; he thought that in these Spencer had deviated from the "good method." On the other hand, he urgently commended to me Spencer's "Principles of Psychology," and the two chief works of his, in my estimation, far less intellectual contemporary Bain, – "The Senses and the Intellect" and "The Emotions and the Will." He presented me with a copy of the "Analysis of the Human Mind," by his much-revered father (the edition prepared and supplied with notes by himself and Bain), extolling the book to me as the main work of the English school in this century; and I having expressed to him my admiration of his critique of Hamilton's philosophy, he sent me the book the very next day. Almost of itself the conversation fell on Taine's recently issued volume, "De l'intelligence," in which Mill is so zealously investigated, profited by, and refuted, and in which the English tendency has perhaps placed its most enduring monument in French philosophy. Mill praised Taine, called his book one of the most profound and important works of modern France, and said about the same things to me regarding it that I found repeated later in his review of it ("Fortnightly Review," July, 1870). As a whole, he liked the book; but he had the same kind of objections to offer against the last chapters as against the later works of Herbert Spencer. We must, according to his conviction, most decidedly "choose," once for all, between the conditional knowledge of empiricism and the absolute certainty of intuition, and Taine, in the last volume of his work, had attempted to establish axioms which, not being derived from experience, had validity for the whole universe, independent of the boundaries of our experience. Mill, himself, thought, as is well known, that even the propositions of algebra and of geometry, whose empiric origin he endeavored to establish, could only be sure of a limited dominion. He extolled to me the little book "Essays by a Barrister," from which he himself quoted a few sentences. The barrister finds it quite conceivable that our multiplication-table, as well as our Euclid, may be utterly valueless in another solar system. "The question is," he says, "whether our certainty of the truth of the multiplication table arises from experience or from a transcendental conviction, excited by experience, but anterior to and formative of it." To illustrate the former of these views he presents a few striking examples: —

"There is a world in which, whenever two pairs of things are either placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is immediately created, and brought within the contemplation of the mind engaged in putting two and two together. This is surely neither inconceivable, for we can readily conceive the result by thinking of common puzzle tricks, nor can it be said to be beyond the power of Omnipotence, yet, in such a world, surely two and two may be five; that is, the result to the mind of contemplating two twos would be to count five. This shows that it is not inconceivable that two and two might make five; but, on the other hand, it is perfectly easy to see why in this world we are absolutely certain that two and two make four. There is probably not an instant of our lives, in which we are not experiencing the fact. We see it whenever we count four books, four tables or chairs, four men in the street, or the four comers of a paving stone, and we feel more sure of it than of the rising of the sun to-morrow, because our experience upon the subject is so much wider, and applies to such an infinitely greater number of cases. Nor is it true that every one who has once been brought to see it is equally sure of it. A boy who has just learned the multiplication table is pretty sure that twice two are four, but is often extremely doubtful whether or not seven times nine are sixty-three. If his teacher told him that twice two made five, his certainty would be greatly impaired.

"It would be possible to put a case of a world, in which two straight lines should be universally supposed to include a space. Imagine a man, who had never had any experience of straight lines through the medium of any sense whatever, suddenly placed upon a railway, stretching out on a perfectly straight line to an indefinite distance in each direction. He would see the rails, which would be the first straight lines he ever saw, apparently meeting, or at least tending to meet, at each horizon; and he would thus infer in the absence of all other experience that they actually did enclose a space, when produced far enough. Experience alone could undeceive him. A world in which every object was round with the exception of a straight, inaccessible railway, would be a world in which every one would believe that two straight lines enclosed a space." In his conversation, Mr. Mill expressed his adherence to these humorous sophistries, which have been so keenly criticised by Spencer, and he added, "If we possessed the sense of sight without the sense of touch, we would have no doubt that two or more bodies might exist in the same place, so completely is every so-called a priori axiom dependent on the character of our organs and experiences."

IV

Our conversation turned one day on the then existing circumstances in Rome. I compared the religious condition of Rome with that of France; I reminded Stuart Mill of the phenomenon observed by both of us in Paris of the beau monde congregating in a church, and added: "In your Dissertations and Discussions, you have written some words which you will scarcely now defend. You say: 'So far as the upper ranks are concerned, France may as properly be called a Buddhistic as a Catholic country; the latter is not more true than the former.' Would you still maintain this?" He answered: "It was at that time more true than now. In our day a new reaction has taken place, the possibility of which I could not conceive. In my youth I did not believe that man could retrograde; now I know it." A portion of the blame for this retrogression he ascribed to the French university philosophy. He spoke with a deprecation which was not to be wondered at, coming from his lips, of Cousin and his school. "But in spite of all," he concluded, "I cling to my old conviction that the history of France in modern times is the history of all Europe."

This view, which is reflected in all the works of Stuart Mill, is, in my judgment, a one-sidedness which can easily be accounted for by his ignorance of the German language and literature, and his undervaluation of the English situation, in which he, as a matter of course, was well able to detect the evils. He had visited France when he was very young; he told me he had passed his fifteenth year there, and had during that time learned all the French now at his command. As the French language was the only foreign tongue he spoke fluently and frequently (even though not without a strong English accent), and as through his whole life he had exerted himself to introduce French ideas into England, and to impart to his countrymen a love for the French national spirit, France necessarily represented to him Europe almost as though he were a native-born Frenchman.

Among all the Frenchmen whom Mill knew, Armand Carrel was, I believe, the one whom he held in the highest esteem. The essay he has written about this young French journalist is perhaps the most beautiful and the most overflowing with sentiment of anything he has written. In his great admiration for Armand Carrel, I find a partial explanation of his vehement antipathy to Sainte-Beuve. He could never forgive Sainte-Beuve for the fact that he, who had once been a collaborator of the "National," and a friend of Carrel, had become friendly to the Empire, and allowed himself to be elected senator. And yet this isolated fact was scarcely sufficient to warrant the hard words Mill dropped concerning Sainte-Beuve in my presence. Sainte-Beuve was distasteful to him for the same reason that Carrel so greatly pleased him. He had not thoroughly studied him; his "Port Royal," for instance, he had never read; but a mind with such keenness and such firmly rooted principles as Mill's, was naturally repelled by the pliant and undulating temperament of Sainte-Beuve. Stuart Mill was a man of almost metallic character, rigid, angular, and immovable; the spirit of Sainte-Beuve, on the contrary, was like a lake, broad, tender, elastic, and of great circumference, yet moving altogether in little ripples of an undefined and varying size. Therefore Stuart Mill was, as it were, created to be an authority; his tone was that of one accustomed to command, and even when his demeanor was the boldest, he seemed, through the very conciseness and confidence with which he substantiated his results, to repulse every contradiction. Sainte-Beuve, on the contrary, never closed a subject entirely and without reservation; he was never quite catholic, nor quite romantic, nor quite imperial, nor quite a naturalist; one thing alone he was absolutely and entirely – Sainte-Beuve, in other words, the critic with feminine sympathy and ever-lurking scepticism. He was of the tiger race, yet was no tiger. He attached himself thoroughly to no one and to nothing, but he rubbed against everything, and the inevitable friction produced sparks. Mill's repugnance to him was like the antipathy of the dog for the cat. It was impossible for Sainte-Beuve to write simply; he could not pronounce a verdict without making it dependent on a whole system of subordinate conditions; he could not utter ever so brief a eulogy without spicing it with all kinds of malice. The greatest critic of France, after the death of Saint-Beuve, once said to me, "A laudatory sentence from Saint-Beuve is a veritable nest of leeches." Now, take in comparison the character of the mind and the whole style of Stuart Mill; his thoughts always on a grand scale, embracing the universal, allowing the individual to slip from notice; his diction unadorned, without artistic finish, naked as a landscape, whose sole beauty is the simplicity and power of the position of the land.

On one of the last days of my stay in London the conversation with Stuart Mill turned on the relation between literature and theatre in England and in France. He expressed the opinion, so common in our day, that the French who in the seventeenth century appropriated Spanish, in the eighteenth century English, and in the nineteenth century German ideas, in reality possess no other literary originality than that which lay in the form. Stuart Mill, whose mind was pretty much devoid of a sense of the purely æsthetic, and who cared more for the idea in art than for art itself as art, apparently did not realize that the poetic and artistic originality of the French would remain unaffected even by this undue limitation of its inventive genius; for where form and contents are inseparable, originality in form is identical with originality in general. Without permitting myself to touch on this point of view in my conversation with Mill, I merely replied, that one characteristic commonly held up as a reproach to the French, their so-called superficiality, was most highly useful to them when they imitated, for their imitation is but a semblance. With a strong tendency to be influenced by everything foreign, the French unite an almost total lack of capacity to form an objective impression of the foreign; consequently the national stamp is always plainly recognizable beneath the thin coating of foreign gloss. By way of example, I mentioned Victor Hugo, as an imitator of Shakespeare, and Alfred de Musset, as an imitator of Byron. "However," I added, "I will heartily admit the superiority of English poetry to the French if you will reward me by conceding the superiority of French dramatic art over the English." I had the previous evening attended the performance at the Adelphi Theatre, of Molière's "Le malade imaginaire," under the title of "The Robust Invalid," and having very often seen the play in Paris, I had a fine opportunity to compare the English mode of acting with the French. The invalid and the servant-girl were allowed all manner of coarse exaggerations; they bawled aloud in the roughest conceivable way, even had the audacity to end the second act with a cancan; and this while English prudery demanded that the scene with the syringe, and all expressions supposed to violate decency, should be omitted. "Yes," said Mill, "the theatre with us has fallen into decay. So far as the comedy is concerned, this may be accounted for by the fact that English nature is so devoid of form, and so untheatrical, and because our gestures are so stiff and so rare, while the French, even in their daily lives, always demean themselves like actors; yet in the direction of tragedy we can show some great names. Who knows, though, but that in our day reading may supplant theatre-going and compensate for it?"

He led the conversation from the theatre to English authors, and discussed with warmth two men as totally different from himself as Dickens and Carlyle. Thoroughly matter-of-fact as he was himself, he could appreciate as well as any one the poet with the great, warm heart, and the historian with the gushing, visionary imagination. Dickens was at that time just deceased; a few days previous to our conversation I had stood on the spot in Westminster Abbey where his body had but recently been laid to rest. His grave was still covered with living roses, while heavy, cold stone monuments covered the surrounding graves; it had the effect of a symbol. I communicated my impression to Mill, who expressed deep regret that he had not known Dickens personally, and had only learned through others of his amiability in private intercourse.

The last words we exchanged concerned the directly impending Franco-German War, to which Mill looked forward with gloomy misgivings. He considered it a misfortune for all humanity, for the entire European civilization.

I gazed long into his deep, blue eyes, before I could prevail upon myself to bid him a final farewell. It was my earnest desire to imprint upon my mind this so earnest and so stem, yet at the same time so bold, countenance, with all its youthful freshness. I wished to render it impossible to me to forget the peculiar greatness stamped on the man's form and on his every word. It is of considerable importance in grasping the character of an author to learn in what relation the impression of his human disposition stands to that of his disposition as an author. I have never known a great man in whom these two impressions were so thoroughly harmonious as in Mill. I have never discovered any quality in him as an author that I have not rediscovered in my personal intercourse with him, and I have found his different characteristics in both spheres exalted above and subordinated to one another in precisely the same order and manner. There are authors in whose writings some definite quality – for instance, philanthropy, or wit, or dignity – plays a more prominent rôle than in their lives; others whose writings display not a trace of those qualities, such as humor or free humanity, which render them amiable in their private lives. Most authors are far inferior to their books. In Stuart Mill no such inequality existed, for he was the very incarnation of truthfulness. There occurs in Mill's "Autobiography" a situation which affords an opportunity of measuring the degree of this truthfulness. I have in mind his position when he, the social reformer, who was so far removed from all demagogism, at a meeting of electors, comprised chiefly of the working class, was asked if he had written and made public the statement that the working classes of England were, as a rule, liars. He answered at once, and briefly, "I did." "Scarcely," he adds, "were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust."

Mill gives the most modest interpretation of the proceeding, but the reader surmises what a halo of truthfulness must at that moment have hovered about him whose accusation of pervading falsehood was met with storms of applause from men spoiled by the flatteries of demagogues. In daily life, too, Mill bore that invisible nimbus of exalted love of truth. His whole being radiated with purity of character. It is needful to look back to the most sublime philosophic characters of antiquity, to Marcus Aurelius and his peers, if peers he has, to find a parallel to Mill. He was equally true and equally great, whether he addressed his maturely considered thought in some renowned work to a circle of readers spread over the whole globe, or whether, in his own home, without any assumption of superiority, he dropped an accidental remark to a chance visitor..

ERNEST RENAN

1880

It was not my intention to call on Renan during my stay in Paris from April to September, 1870, for I have always had an absolute horror of robbing celebrated men of their time under pretext of paying tribute to them. When, however, Taine – Renan's most intimate friend – repeatedly urged me to look up his "friend, the philologist," I gathered up my courage, and one day, provided with a letter of introduction from Taine, found myself on the third floor of a house in Rue de Vannes, where Renan lived. His surroundings were exceedingly simple. Since he had been deprived of the chair of Hebrew in the "Collège de France," he was without any fixed income, and his first popular publication was the only one of his books that had been at all remunerative.

Judging from his works and portrait, I had imagined Renan to be a refined reproduction of Jules Simon, philanthropic, gentle, with his head slightly inclined to one side; I found him decided, terse, and bold in his utterances, firm in his convictions, with somewhat of the modesty of the savant, but still more of the confidence and air of superiority of the man of the world. Renan was at the time forty-seven years of age. He was sitting at his writing-table when I entered his room, a little, broad-shouldered man, with a slight stoop, and a large, heavy head; his features were coarsely moulded, his complexion poor; he had blue eyes that displayed a wondrous power of penetration, and a mouth that, even in repose, was eloquent and indicative of shrewdness. His far from beautiful yet unquestionably attractive face, with its expression of lofty understanding and excessive industry, was framed in a mass of long brown hair that over the temples gradually shaded into white. In looking at him I was reminded of one of his own sentences, "La science est roturière".

I

In early youth I had been repelled by the works of Renan, who is by no means the author for youth. Moreover, his "Life of Jesus," the first of his writings that fell into my hands, is perhaps his weakest work; the trace of sentimentality, the occasional appearance of unction, that last remnant of a priestly education, all that to a young person must seem either unduly effeminate, or lacking in genuineness, prevented me from arriving at a correct estimation of his literary qualities. That first impression had later been lost; the noble collection, "Etudes d'histoire religieuse," had opened my eyes to the almost feminine delicacy of feeling that could only seem unmanly to very youthful and inexperienced minds, and I found it quite natural that he who had justly been called "the most gentle of the bold" should be unable to speak without melancholy of his exceptional position. "The worst penalty a man who has fought his way to a life of reflection is compelled to pay for the independent stand he has taken, is to see himself excluded from the great religious family to which belong the best souls on earth, and regarded by the very beings with whom he would most gladly live in spiritual harmony, as a corrupt man. One must be very sure of one's position not to be shaken when women and children clasp their hands and cry, Oh, believe as we do!"

I had, however, erred in my supposition that any reminder of this elegiac tone would ring through Renan's every-day mode of expression. The main characteristic of his conversation was a thorough intellectual freedom, the magnificent repose of a genial child of the world. The nerve and sinew of his words was an unbounded contempt for the majority and for the masses, such as I had never before encountered in any one who displayed neither misanthropy nor bitterness. The first time I saw him he led the conversation to human stupidity. He said, evidently in view of inspiring his younger fellow-laborer with tranquillity of mind for the coming storms of life, "Most men are not human beings at all, but apes"; but he said it without anger. The words of Géruzez occurred to my mind, "L'âge mûr méprise avec tolérance." Traces of this calm contempt may be found in the prefaces to his works; many years later it received poetic expression in his translation of Shakespeare's "Tempest"; but in his essay on Lamennais he has plainly defined it. He says: "There is found in Lamennais quite too much anger and not sufficient contempt. The literary consequences of this fault are very serious. Anger leads to declamation, bluntness, often coarse insults; while contempt, on the contrary, almost always produces a refined and dignified style. Anger bears within itself a need of being shared. Contempt is a subtile, penetrating delight which does not require the sympathy of others. It is discreet and all-sufficient to itself."

Renan's manner of speaking has a certain upward-soaring flight, a certain sprightly and redundant grace, without which no one ever gains the praise in Paris accorded to Renan, that in social intercourse and conversation he was "charmant." Of the solemnity which his style often displays there was not a trace in its oral form. There was nothing priestlike about him, and he was wholly devoid of the pathos of a martyr of free thought. It was his wont to introduce a turn in the discourse with his favorite expression, "Diable!" and he was so far removed from striking the bitter and elegiac tone, that his equanimity had rather a touch of Olympian cheerfulness. Whoever knew anything of the childishly odious attacks with which he was daily assailed from the orthodox ranks, and whoever, like myself, had observed in Veuillot's journalistic circles how opinions wavered between whether the right punishment for his heresy was hanging or shooting, could not but feel interested to inquire of Renan if he had not suffered a great deal for his convictions. "I!" was the answer; "not the least! I hold no intercourse with Catholics; I am only acquainted with one of them; we have one in the 'Academic des Inscriptions,' and we are very good friends. The sermons preached against me I do not hear; the pamphlets written against me I do not read. What possible harm could they do me?" According to Renan's opinion, the devout Catholics of France constitute about one-fifth of the population; and he thought they were far more fanatical than the orthodox Catholics of other places, because Catholicism in Spain and Italy is viewed almost as a matter of custom, while in France it is stimulated by intelligent opposition.

I found Renan, in June, 1870, very much exhilarated by the events in Rome. "A statue should be erected to Pius IX.," said he. "He is an extraordinary man. Since Luther no one has rendered such great service to religious freedom as he. He has advanced the cause about three hundred years. Without him Catholicism might very well have remained unchanged for three hundred years, shut up in a closed room with its spider's web and its thick dust. Now we are airing the room, and every one can see for himself that it is empty, and that nothing lies concealed within it." He had entertained a fear that during the negotiations concerning the infallibility of the Pope, even at the last moment, some compromise or other would be effected, through which everything would practically remain in the former channels; but this possibility had just vanished, and it could readily be foreseen that the bishops would shun no consequence, not even the result anticipated by Renan, which was, that a dismemberment would take place within Catholicism similar to that existing in Protestantism. It has been proved that the policy of the Catholic Church was wiser than its opponents at the first moment supposed. The division that took place was neither deep nor important, and there is not the slightest prospect of a dismemberment that can in any way be compared with the nature of the sects of Protestantism. Renan, who thought chiefly of France, hoped that time might open the eyes of the French bourgeoisie, which had thrown itself completely into the arms of the Church since the February Revolution, and was watching with profound anxiety the position so inimical to civilization assumed by the papal power.

In his interesting novel "Ladislaus Bolski," Victor Cherbuliez has turned into mild ridicule certain pet theories of Renan, by putting into the mouth of the good-natured yet thoroughly unpractical mentor of the hero, Renan's doctrine concerning the delicate nature of truth, and the consequent necessity of approaching it with the utmost deliberation and caution. George Richardet believes with Renan, that everything depends on some shade of meaning; that truth is not simply white or black, but is one shade of these colors, and he is wrecked because we cannot act in shades, but must act totally or not at all. In fact, Richardet aims at an actual realization of the idea expressed by Renan in one of many passages on the subject, as follows: "We might as well attempt to hit a winged insect with a club, as to grasp the truth in a moral science with the coarse claws of syllogism. Logic cannot grasp delicate shades of meaning, yet truths that are of a moral nature depend solely and entirely upon these shades. It is, therefore, of no avail to pounce on truth with the clumsy violence of a wild boar, for fleet and nimble truth will escape the ruthless attack, and all the pains taken to capture it will be in vain."

Whoever is familiar with Renan's literary activity knows how closely he adheres to this thought when he writes. How different is the fate of his beloved shades of meaning when he speaks! While Taine, whose writings are filled with such bold utterances, is ever moderate and subdued in conversation, only allowing himself to be guided by the strictest considerations of justice and fairness, Renan, when he speaks, goes to extremes, and is by no means the knight of the delicate shades of thought. In one point alone were the two men equally decided in their expressions. This was when the discourse turned on that spiritualistic philosophy of France which strove to gain strength in its tender alliance with the Church, that system of philosophy which originally won the hearts of fathers of families, by bearing on its shield dogmas and virtue, and that in the place of discoveries of new truths, promised to furnish the entire land with good morals as the fruits of its scientific research. It had at that time control of all the professorships of France. In Sorbonne it was represented by Janet and Caro. Janet, the more refined, more elegant spirit, endeavored to understand his opponents and set them right, while Caro, a specimen of genuine mediocrity, won the applause of the audiences he addressed, by flinging out his arms and vigorously beating his broad chest, and by his appeals to the freedom of the will. To Renan, who, nevertheless, has treated of Cousin as an orator and an author in so elegant an essay, the entire eclectic philosophy was orally mere "official soup," "children's pap," "product of mediocrity, calculated for mediocrity." Indeed, so obstinate was he on this point, that he, the advocate of fine shadings, could never be persuaded that spiritualism was not absolutely false. For Taine, on the other hand, he cherished an admiration that was almost passionate, "Taine, c'est l'homme du vrai, l'amour de la vérité même." In spite of the strikingly apparent difference of their natures, – Taine's style has the strength of a fountain, Renan's style flows as much like a stream as does the verse of Lamartine, – Renan declared himself to be in accord with his friend on all essentials. And when one day I led the conversation to the so frequently discussed question, namely, how much justice there was in the universal tendency to bewail the intellectual decadence of France, Renan immediately referred to Taine. "Decadence, what do you mean by that?" he exclaimed. "Everything is relative. Is not Taine, for instance, of vastly more importance than Cousin and Villemain put together? There is yet much intellect in France." Several times he repeated the words, "Il y a beaucoup d'esprit en France."

In common with nearly all cultivated Frenchmen, Renan was a reverential admirer of George Sand. This remarkable woman had been able to extend her dominion over the younger generation of France, without being in the least untrue to her youthful ideals. An idealist like Renan, she had won through her idealism; a naturalist like Taine, through the mysterious endowments that testified of her nearness to nature; the younger Dumas, to whom we might believe the heroes and heroines of George Sand, concerning whom his dramas often make bitter criticisms, would be especially odious, was perhaps the one among the post-romantic authors who stood personally nearest to her. The enthusiasm of Dumas for George Sand was, upon the whole, only a consequence of his literary susceptibility; the enthusiasm of Renan was of a deeper character. As strong as must necessarily be his hatred for Béranger, in whom he sees the personification of all that is frivolous and prosaic in the French national character, and whose narrow "Dieu des bonnes gens" is a thorn in the eye of the follower of Herder, the pantheistic thinker and dreamer, quite as lively must naturally be his sympathy for the authoress of "Lélia," "Spiridion," and so many other dreamily enthusiastic writings.

Notwithstanding his wide range of vision, Renan is not without national limitations in his literary sympathies. In a conversation about England, he had nothing whatever that was good to say of Dickens; he was not even inclined to be fair. "The pretentious style of Dickens," said he, "makes the same impression on me as the style of a provincial newspaper." His well-known unjust article on Feuerbach fills us with less astonishment, when we learn in how marked a degree the defects of Dickens caused him to overlook the merits. It is the same morbidly developed taste for a classic and well-tempered mode of expression which gives Renan an antipathy to the humorous peculiarities in the style of Dickens and to the passionate form of Feuerbach's style; the genial mannerism of the English seemed to him provincial; the violence of the German appeared to him to savor of a tobacco-like after-taste of the pedantry of German-student atheism.

II

In the spring of 1870 Renan was on the point of making a trip to Spitzbergen, in company with Prince Napoleon. Shortly before starting he was discussing politics with me one day. "You can become thoroughly acquainted with the Emperor," said he, "through his writings. He is a journalist on the throne, a publicist who takes pains to inquire into popular opinion. Since his whole power depends upon the latter, he has occasion to employ more art, notwithstanding his inferiority, than Bismarck, who can afford to disregard everything. Until now he has been merely physically, not intellectually, enfeebled, but he has been extremely cautious (extrêmement cauteleux), and he entertains a profound distrust of himself hitherto unknown to him." Renan's estimate of Napoleon was very similar to that expressed by Sainte-Beuve, in the well-known fragment on "The Life of Cæsar." Ollivier, whom he had known for a long time, he criticised severely. "He and the Emperor are admirably suited to each other," said he; "they have the same kind of ambitious mysticism; they are, as it were, allied through their chimeras." As early as the year 1851 Ollivier had often said to Renan, "As soon as I am at the helm, as soon as I become premier – "

When I, with my simple political principles, urged the necessity of obligatory education, a thought I constantly had occasion to advocate, and which was everywhere treated as an absurdity or as a long since abandoned whim, Renan was, in my estimation, so paradoxical that I could scarcely believe him to be in earnest. His arguments, however, are interesting, especially because similar ones were continually presented at that time by the most prominent men of France, although perhaps in a different form. Renan maintained, first of all, that enforced education was tyranny. "I have myself," said he, "a little child that is in feeble health. How despotic it would be to take that child from me in order to educate it!" I replied that there would be exceptions made by the law. "Then no one would send children to school," he answered. "You do not know our French peasants. They would gain nothing from such legislation. Let them till the soil and pay their taxes, or give them a musket in their hand, and a knapsack on their back, and they are the best soldiers in the world. But what is well adapted to one race does not always suit another. France is not like Scotland or the Scandinavian countries; Puritanic and Teutonic customs cannot take root in our soil. France is not a religious country, and every attempt to make it so would prove abortive. Ours is a land that produces two things, – what is great and what is fine (du grand et du fin). Respectable mediocrity will never thrive here. These two words express the ideal needs of the population; as for the rest, there is but one thing they want, and that is to amuse themselves, to experience through pleasure that they are living. And finally, believe me, it is my firm conviction that elementary education is a downright evil. What is a human being that can read and write – I mean a human being that can do nothing but read and write? An animal, a stupid and conceited animal. Give human beings an education of from fifteen to twenty years' duration, if you can; otherwise, nothing! Anything less, so far from making them any wiser, only destroys their natural amiability, their instinct, their innate sound reason, and renders them positively unendurable. Is there anything worse than to be governed by a seminarist? The sole reason why we are forced to occupy ourselves with this question is because this mass of street boys (ce tas de gamins) gained the upper hand and wrung from us the right of universal suffrage. No, let us agree that culture is only a good in the case of highly-cultivated people, and that the half-cultivated are to be regarded as useless, arrogant apes." I spoke of decentralization, of elevating the condition of the provincial cities, Lyons, for instance. "Lyons!" he burst out, in absolute earnest, "why, it would never occur to any one to transform the metropolitan cities of the provinces into intellectual focuses, for they would at once come under the control of the bishops. No," he added with droll conviction, "in such cities nothing but absurdities will ever be accomplished." After such utterances from the man of all others in France who fought most vigorously for a reform in the higher schools and universities, it is perhaps easier to understand why it was that the indifference of the liberals in that country went hand in hand with the zeal of the Catholic priesthood, whenever there arose a question of remedying that ignorance of the lower classes which later proved so dangerous for the outer and inner security of the land. Old Philarète Chasles, who was really no Chauvinist, made himself very merry one evening in May, 1870, over my faith in the efficacious power of compulsory education; he called it my Revalenta arabica, and facetiously declared that I hoped through it to make the human race happy through all eternity. He asked me, too, if I did not think the peasants made sufficiently good fathers of families and good soldiers, without the aid of the schoolmaster. The war soon taught these men that the soldier who can read and write has a power in his hands never before adequately appreciated. It was, indeed, remarkable to see how ideas we are apt to ascribe wholly to the Catholic priesthood – as, for instance, this idea of the absolute harmfulness of imperfect knowledge – had gradually gained such authority in a land saturated with Catholicism that, with a slight alteration of form, they even swayed the opponents of the Catholic faith.

Another equally interesting application of the Renan theory, that what was good in Germany or in the North was not necessarily suitable for France, I heard one day at Renan's country villa in Sèvres when he himself was absent. The conversation fell on French convenance marriages. A lady, closely allied to Renan, a German-born lady, who was thoroughly imbued with his ideas, defended the French custom of founding marriages on an agreement between the suitor and the parents, and of permitting the wedding to take place after a few obligato visits. "This manner of forming a matrimonial alliance," said she, "would not exist without very good reasons. Although brought up in France, I who am German by birth did not marry in this way. As often as it was proposed to me to take a suitor into consideration, I declared that I would not see him; the mere fact that he came as a suitor sufficed to make him odious in my eyes. I was acquainted with my husband several years before our marriage." Who can offer any protest against the French custom, however, that has seen, as I have in the case of so many of our friends – and she mentioned one and another – who were introduced but one week before their wedding-day, and yet whose union proved so happy and satisfactory to both parties.

While I was viewing these words, partly as a subterfuge employed to escape passing judgment on the relations of near friends, partly as a symptom of the French characteristic desire to represent every national peculiarity, however unfortunate it may be, as an unalterable quality of the race, a gentleman who was present, one of the most unprejudiced of French authors, laid his hand on the head of his little daughter, a child of two years old, and said: "Do you think it would be right for me to give my little girl to the first man that might appear on the scene, and without appealing to us, her parents, manage to steal away her heart? Remember how great is the inexperience of a young girl, and do not forget the conditions of the actual world, nor what scoundrels there are abroad, nor what a past, what diseases, what bestial appetites a young man may have, which a father's eye may detect, but whose existence the innocent mind of a young maiden neither can nor should deem possible. The world is an enemy. Should not I with all my might defend my little daughter against this enemy? If, some day fifteen years hence, suitors for her hand announce themselves, we parents, if we are then living, will act as follows: we will discard those who cannot suitably be taken into consideration, either because of their social position, or because of moral or physical weaknesses; we will make a choice selection, and from this permit the young girl to choose as she pleases." To account for this mode of contemplation, the secluded education of young girls in convents, or in boarding-schools, should be borne in mind. Viewed in this light, even when consideration is taken of the greater ardor and sensuality of the Latin races, the conclusion arrived at is perhaps not unreasonable.

III

I was in London when the Franco-German war broke out, and being so fortunate as to have intercourse with some wholly unbiased men of great political insight, I foresaw sooner than my French acquaintances all the disasters the war must inevitably bring upon France. On my return to Paris, I found the people full of hope and confidence; indeed, there was, as is well known, a manifestation of arrogance that could not but affect every stranger unpleasantly. This arrogance, however, was by no means shared by men of science. As yet there had been no battle; but already the news of the suicide of Prévost Paradol in North America had filled with the most painful forebodings every one who knew him and was aware how thoroughly posted he was in the preparations and resources of France. The terrible event occurred immediately after an attack of fever, yet no one doubted that Paradol had laid hands on himself with a full consciousness of what he was doing, and with a plain design. That he had not merely sent in his resignation was because – so it would seem – he was altogether too proud to admit that he had in any way been in error; he was not even willing to make such an admission in an argument, and now he had been guilty of a triple error: believing in the justice of the constitutional tendency of the emperor; seeking the post of ambassador to Washington; and finally not giving up his post at once, when the odious comedy of universal suffrage in May had shown what the constitutional temper of the emperor indicated. The declaration of war, in his eyes identical with the downfall of France, caused him to prefer death to a position in which he could not consistently remain, and from which he was unable to withdraw without a humiliation far worse to him than death. This solitary pistol-shot, resounding across the ocean as the signal of many hundred thousand terrible volleys, deeply affected the friends and companions of Prévost Paradol's youth. Taine, who had been making a brief trip to Germany, where he went to collect materials for an essay on Schiller, which had been interrupted by the war, was profoundly moved by the thought of the impending crisis. "I have just come from Germany," said he, "and have conversed with so many industrious and excellent men. When I consider how much trouble it costs to bring a human child into the world, to tend it, bring it up, educate it, establish it in life; when I, furthermore, consider how many struggles and hardships this child must itself undergo in order to gain preparation for life, and then reflect that all this must now be cast into a ditch as a mass of bloody flesh, I can do nothing but mourn! With two regents of the nature of Louis Philippe, we might have succeeded in escaping the war; with two chieftains like Bismarck and Louis Napoleon, it became a necessity." He was at that time the first Frenchman whom I heard take into consideration the possibility of German superiority.

Then came a series of shocks in the first tidings of great defeats, only varied by false rumors of victory directly after the battle at Weissenburg. Dejected and sorrowful was the prevailing mood in the city in those days, when the proclamations at the street comers told of armies put to rout and lost battles; but more fearful still was the mood on that 6th of August, when the first half of the day was passed in the mad intoxication of triumph over victory, the last half in mortified despondency. How great would have been the humiliation had there been the slightest foreboding of the battle of Wörth, whose fate was at the same moment sealed! When, early in the morning, the news of great victories spread through the city, all Paris covered itself with banners; the citizens walked the streets with little flags in their hats; all the horses had little flags on their heads. I sat in front of a café, opposite the "Hôtel de Ville," gazing at the houses about the public square that were decked with hundreds of small flags, when suddenly there appeared, at the window of a house near me, a hand that hastily drew in the flag there floating in the breeze. Never shall I forget that hand, or that act. Trifling as was the occurrence, it startled me; for there was something so sorrowful about the movement of the hand; something in its appearance testifying so plainly of disappointment, that the thought immediately flashed through my mind: "The news of victory must be false!" Soon hands were seen at all the surrounding windows; the flags quickly disappeared, and in quarter of an hour the whole banner decoration seemed as though it had been blown away by the wind. A proclamation from the government had declared that nothing at all was reported that day from the scene of war, and that the police were on the track of the promulgators of false news, in order to punish them severely. The promulgators of false news! As though the hungering imaginations and the languishing yearning of the great city were not the only guilty ones!

About a week later, on the 12th of August, I met Renan. He had returned from the far North before the appointed time. I have never seen him so deeply moved. He was desperate; this trivial word is the only appropriate one. He was beside himself with exasperation. "Never," said he, "was an unhappy people so governed by imbeciles as we are. One might have supposed that the emperor had had an attack of insanity. But the fact is, he is surrounded by the most contemptible flatterers. I know officers of high rank, who were well aware that the Prussian cannons far surpassed our much-lauded mitrailleuses, but; who dared not tell him so, because he had taken an active part in the preparation of these machine-guns himself, had done a little drawing on the design, which is expressed in official language by the statement that he is the inventor of the mitrailleuse. Never was there so great a lack of brains (si peu de tête) in an imperial ministry; he was himself sensible of it. I am acquainted with a person to whom he said so, and yet he undertook a war with such a ministry. Was ever such folly known? Is it not heart-rending? As a people, we are vanquished for a long time to come. And to think that all that we men of science have been striving to build up for the past fifty years – sympathy between nations, mutual understanding, fruitful co-operation – is overthrown with one blow. How such a war destroys the love of truth! What lies, what calumnies, will not for the next fifty years be eagerly believed by one people of the other, and separate them from one another for immeasurable time! What a delay of European progress! We cannot raise up again in a hundred years what these people have tom down in a day."

No one could have been more grieved at the rupture between the two great neighbors than Renan, who had so long stood in France as the representative of German culture. Nor could any one have spoken with greater gratitude than he, of German thought. One of his favorite remarks was: "There is nothing that can hold so much as a German head." He seemed to have little liking for the Germans personally, but he spoke with respect of their noble intelligence. To the South German, however, in every other respect than in a capacity for the affairs of government, he ascribed a far higher endowment than to the North German, an opinion shared by the majority of cultivated Frenchmen.