The Apostles. Ernest Renan
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better by dispensing with reading.
There are persons of a very practical turn of mind, who, on hearing of any new scientific work, ask what political party the author aims to please, and who think that every poem should contain a moral lesson. These people think that propagandism is the only object that a writer has in view. The idea of an art or science aspiring only after the true and beautiful, without regard either to policy or politics, is something quite strange to them. Between such persons and ourselves misapprehensions are inevitable. “There are people,” said a Greek philosopher, “who take with their left hand what is offered to them with their right.” A number of letters, dictated by a really honest sentiment, which have been sent me, may be summed up in the question, “What is the matter with you? What end are you aiming at?” Why, I write for precisely the same reason that all historical writers do. If I could have several lives, I would devote one to writing a life of Alexander, another to a history of Athens, and a third to either a history of the French Revolution or the monkish order of St. Francis. In writing these works I would be actuated by a desire to find the truth, and would endeavor to make the mighty events of the past known with the greatest possible exactness, and related in a manner worthy of them. Far from me be the thought of shocking the religious faith of any person! Such works should be prepared with as much supreme indifference as if they were written in another planet. Every concession to the scruples of an inferior order, is a derogation from the dignity and culture of art and truth. It can at once be seen that the absence of proselytism is the leading feature of works composed in such a spirit.
The first principle of the critical school is the allowance in matters of faith of all that is needed, and the adaptation of beliefs to individual wants. Why should we be foolish enough to concern ourselves about things over which no one has any control? If any person adopts our principles it is because he has the mental tendency and the education adapted to them; and all our efforts will not be able to impart this tendency and this education to those who do not naturally possess them. Philosophy differs from faith in this, that faith is believed to operate by itself independently of the intelligence acquired from dogmas. We, on the contrary, hold that truth only possesses value when it comes of itself, and when the order of its ideas is comprehended. We do not consider ourselves obliged to maintain silence in regard to those opinions which may not be in accord with the belief of some of our fellow-creatures; we will make no sacrifice to the exigencies of differing orthodoxies, but neither have we any idea of attacking them; we shall only act as if they did not exist. For myself, it would be really painful to me for any one to convict me of an effort to attract to my side of thinking a solitary adherent who would not come voluntarily. I would conclude that my mind was perturbed in its serene liberty, or that something weighed heavily upon it, if I were no longer able to content myself with the simple and joyous contemplation of the universe.
It will readily be supposed that if my object was to make war upon established religions, I should adopt different tactics, and should confine myself to exposing the impossibilities and the contradictions in texts and dogmas that are viewed as sacred. This work has been often and ably done. In 1865[I.61] I wrote as follows: “I protest once for all against the false interpretation which has been given to my writings, in accepting as polemical works the various essays and religious and historical matters which I have published, or may hereafter publish. Viewed as polemical works, these essays, I am well aware, are very unskilful. Polemics demand a strategy to which I am a stranger; it requires the writer to choose the weak point of his adversaries, to hold on to it, to avoid uncertain questions, to beware of all concession, and practically renounce even the essence of scientific spirit. Such is not my method. Revelation and the supernatural—those fundamental questions around which must revolve all religious discussion—I do not touch upon; not because I may not answer these questions with thorough certainty, but because such a discussion is not scientific, or, rather, because independent science presupposes that such questions are already answered. For me to pursue any polemical or proselyting end, would be to bring forward among the most difficult and delicate problems, a question which can be more satisfactorily treated in the more practical phraseology in which controversialists and apologists usually discuss it. Far from regretting the advantages which I thus deprive myself of, I would be well pleased thereat, if I could thus convince theologians that my writings are of a different order to theirs, that they are only intended as scholarly researches, open to attack as such, when they sometimes attempt to apply to the Christian and Jewish religions the same principles of criticism which are adopted towards other branches of history and philology. Questions of a purely theological nature I am no more called upon to discuss, than are Burnouf, Creuzer, Guizniaut, and other critical historians of ancient religions, to defend the creeds which they have made their study. The history of humanity seems to me to be a vast grouping where everything, though unequal and diverse, is of the same general order, arises from the same causes, and is subject to the same laws. These laws I seek without any other intention than to understand them exactly as they are. Nothing will ever induce me to leave a sphere, humble it may be, but valuable to science, for the paths of the controversialist, who is always certain of the countenance of those interested in opposing war to war.”
For the polemic system, the necessity of which I do not deny, though it is neither adapted to my tastes nor to my capabilities, Voltaire was enough. One cannot be, at the same time, a good controversialist and a good historian. Voltaire, so weak in mere erudition; Voltaire who, to us initiated into a better method, seems so poorly to comprehend the spirit of antiquity, is twenty times victorious over adversaries yet more destitute of true criticism than himself. A new edition of the works of this great man would furnish a reply that is now much needed to the usurpations of theology—a reply poor in itself, but well suited to that which it would combat; a weak, old-fashioned reply to a weak, old-fashioned science. Let us, who possess a love of the true and an inquiring spirit, do better. Let us leave these discussions to those who care for them; let us work for the limited class who follow the true path of the human mind. Popularity, I know, is more easily gained by those writers who, instead of pursuing the most elevated form of truth, devote their energies to combating the opinions of their age; yet by a just compensation, they are of no value after the theories they combat are abandoned. Those who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, refuted magic and astrology, rendered an immense service to right and truth; and yet their writings are to-day unknown, and their very victory has consigned them to oblivion.
I shall always hold to this rule of conduct as the only one suitable to the dignity of the savant. I know that researches into religious history always bring one face to face with vital questions which seem to demand a solution. Persons unfamiliar with free speculation do not at all comprehend the calm deliberation of thought; practical minds grow impatient of a science which does not respond to their desires. Let us guard against this vain ardor; let us remain in our respective Churches, profiting by their secular teachings and their traditions of virtue, participating in their charitable works, and enjoying the poetry of their past. Let us only reject their intolerance. Let us even pardon this intolerance, for like egotism it is one of the necessities of human nature. The formation of new religious families or beliefs, or any important change in the proportions of those existing to-day, is contrary to present indications. Catholicism will soon be scarred and seamed by great schisms; the days of Avignon, of the anti-popes, of the Clementists and the Urbanists, are about to return. The Catholic Church will see another sixteenth century; and yet, notwithstanding its divisions, it will remain the Catholic Church. It is not probable that for a hundred years to come the relative proportions of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, will be materially varied. But a great change will be accomplished, or, at least, people will become sensible of it. Every one of these religious families will have two classes of adherents; the one believing simply and absolutely after the manner of the middle ages, the other sacrificing the letter of the law and maintaining its spirit. In every communion this latter great class will increase; and as the spirit draws together quite as much as the letter separates, the spiritually-minded of each faith will be brought nearer. Fanaticism will be lost in a general tolerance. The theory of the dogma will become merely a mysterious vault which no one will ever care to open; and if the vault be empty, of what importance is it? Only one religion—Islamism alone, I fear—will resist this mollifying process. Among certain Mahommedans of the old school, several eminent men in Constantinople, and above all among the Persians, there are the germs of a tolerant and conciliatory spirit.