MtiitUiiHHiHiHtimttHiHtHHittiHUiiHUMilli (r^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/frenchrenascenceOOsarorich THE FRENCH RENASCENCE THE FRENCH RENASCENCE BY CHARLES SAROLEA Belgian Consul in Edinburgh LL.D. (Montreal), DJur. (Cleveland), D.Litt (Likge), D.Ph, (Brussels). JAMES POTT & CO. 214-220 EAST 23RD STREET, NEW YORK Firtt published in 1916. CONTENTS VC-3(> 53!r PAGE Intkoduction 9 Montaigne 37 Montaigne and Nietzsche 49 Pascal's " Thoughts " 59 Pascal and Newman 73 Madame de Maintenon 89 Liselotte : A German Princess at the Court op Louis XIV . Ill Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the French Huguenots 137 Rousseau's " ^mile " 147 Marie Antoinette Bepore the Revolution . 165 Mirabeau ........ 167 Robespierre 179 The Real Napoleon ... ... 191 Napoleon as a Socialist 205 Balzac 225 Gust AVE Flaubert 239 Maurice Maeterlinck 249 The Condemnation of Maeterlinck . . . 261 Professor Bergson 271 Mons. Poincar£ 285 The New France 293 3G7506 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAOX Michel Eyqubm, Seigneur de Montaigne . . 41 Chateau op Montaigne 46 Jean Jacques Rousseau 149 Honoe£ Gabriel Riqueti Mirabeau . . . 173 HonorA de Balzac 231 Gustavb Flaubert 243 Maurice Maeterlinck ..... 266 Henri Bergson 279 Raymond PoincarA 289 INTRODUCTION In the Year of Terror, 1792, when the hosts of Prussia and Austria, taking advantage of the distress of their neighbours, invaded a dis- tracted country, and initiated a European War which was to last a quarter of a century ; when France, bankrupt, without an army, and in the grip of anarchy, seemed threatened with total ruin, the greatest of German poets, who had accompanied the Teutonic legions on their triumphant march through Gaul, wrote down in his notebook, on the eve of the Battle of Valmy, the following fateful words : *' On this day a new era has begun in the history of the World/' There is no Goethe amongst the German legions to-day ; there is no room for a Goethe in a Prussianized Germany. But it requires no German prophet to confidently foretell that, as on the eve of Valmy, so on the morrow of the Battle of the Marne, a new era has dawned for humanity, and that amidst the conflict of two million soldiers, amidst the thunder of thousands 10. .MB ':I?IIENCH EENASCENCE of giant howitzers, a new Europe is being born in suffering and sorrow. The fate of Western civilization is still trembling in the balance. In 1914 the Germans tried to force a decision in the plains of Champagne and they failed .. They are still trying to force a decision in the plains of Kussia in 1915, and they have not succeeded. They may to-morrow attempt to force a decision before the walls of Constantinople. Their Leviathan airships may continue to murder babies and women, their submarines^ may continue to sink Lusitanias and ArahicSy they may continue to spread terror in every land, and to sow mines in every sea, but in the battlefields of the Marne the German coalition received a blow from which it cannot recover. But when the final victory comes, it will not merely seal the doom of the Pan-Germanic world-power, it will not merely recast the geo- graphical map of Europe, it will not merely mean the collapse of the two central Empires, it will not merely deliver the world from the yoke of the " unspeakable Turk,'" it will not merely bring transference of military and political power; it will also bring a readjust- ment and trans valuation of all our moral and spiritual values. '' Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,'' said Schiller. "Das Welt- INTRODUCTION 11 gericht/' the World Tribunal, has already pro- nounced its verdict. Even as adversity testa the moral fibre of an individual, even as disaster tests the strength and weakness of our bodily constitution, so this war has tested the strength and weakness of the body politic of every European nation. It has dispelled many an illusion. It has exploded many a theory. It has compelled us to revise many a judgment. It has revealed to us why our enemies were predestined to lose ; why France, Great Britain and Russia were predestined to win. II Posterity will not cease to wonder why the German people staked a glorious present and an even more glorious future on the chances of a mad and criminal venture. They will compare the action of the German Government to that of a millionaire who would gamble away a magnificent fortune, accummulated by the labours of generations, in the Green Rooms of Monte Carlo. At the outbreak of the war the German Empire stood at the zenith of its power. The Empire of the Hohenzollern seemed to have 12 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE revived the glories of the Hohenstaufen. In the past centuries, Europe had challenged the World-Empire of Philip of Spain, of Louis XIV, and of Napoleon. But it seemed as if European nations in their very desire to avoid a world- conflict, no longer dared to challenge the German world-power, and preferred to submit to the megalomania of the Teuton rather than to plunge the peace-loving democracies into the horrors of Armageddon. Germany seemed to incarnate an implacable Destiny. Let a servile German Chancellor deliver an equivocal speech to a more servile Reichstag, and suddenly, all over Europe, the political skies were overcast. Let the Kaiser, in his restless wanderings, suddenly appear at Tangier, in Jerusalem, in Heligoland, in Norway, in the glittering armour of Lohengrin, and let him but rattle his Imperial Sword, and all the nations listened in a hush of anxious expectation. And the commercial power of Germany had kept pace with the growth of her military power and political prestige. Through unremitting labour, through ingenious self-advertising, through iron discipline, through marvellous organization, through a mobilization of her productive forces, through a clever imitation of her rivals, through unscrupulous methods of underselling, by threat INTRODUCTION 13 and blackmail, by craft and by graft, and last, but not least, owing to the generous free-trade policy of the British people — the Commerce and Industry of Germany were gradually ousting her rivals from every world market, and German argosies, sailing under the Black Eagle, the sinister bird of prey, carried German enterprise to the Chinese Seas and to the upper reaches of the Amazon. Nothing succeeds like success. Nowhere had German political and commercial triumphs left a deeper impression than in Great Britain. German megalomaniacs are still indignantly reproaching the British people, supposed to be animated with base envy, for not doing justice to the magnificent efforts of their rivals. But future historians will certainly not blame Great Britain for depreciating German achievements. Rather will they blame Great Britain for unduly over-rating them, rather will they reprove her for her generous and blind appreciation. For not only did British public opinion give Germany credit for her achievements in the province of Trade and Industry, which were real. PubHc opinion also extended its admira- tion to intellectual and spiritual achievements, which were non-existent. The trade mark " Made in Germany " had long ceased to be a 14 THE FEENCH RENASCENCE badge of inferiority. In vain would dispassionate observers point out that there was no relation whatsoever between the military power of Germany and her spiritual and moral power, that a profound moral deterioration had set in, that Berlin was the most depraved capital of the Continent, that the German genius had ceased to be creative, that for the last generation German Art and German Literature had not added one single masterpiece to the inheritance of mankind. British public opinion was blind to the moral decline of the German people. Prejudice and the worship of material success were stronger than facts. Everything German was the fashion. Only German specialists oould cure patients of deadly diseases, and only the bracing air and the miraculous waters of German Health Resorts had a curative virtue. The only music which found favour was the sensuous music of Wagner and the morbid music of Strauss. The only research, the only philosophy which commanded respect were German. Even estimable mediocrities like Eucken were proclaimed great original thinkers. The only seats of learning, where the British scholar could receive the consecration of his studies, were German Universities, and every theological faculty in the British Empire, from 7 INTRODUCTION 16 Edinburgh to Toronto, seemed to share Lord Haldane's belief that " Germany was the only spiritual home '' for a true Briton. It was not only Kings who were made in Germany, it was not only German royalties which occupied every throne of Europe, God Almighty Himself was made in Germany. Our progressive age refused to believe in the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church, in the religious experiences and traditions of two thousand years. But the Protestant divines believed all the more con- fidently in the infallibility of Professor von Harnack, Wirklicher Geheimrath and Spiritual Adviser of the Kaiser. German Higher Critics decided on their own authority, and on the authority of the Kaiser, which were the words of Christ which had to be accepted, and which were the words of Christ which ought to be rejected. And a considerable section of the German Higher Critics did not only reject the words of Christ, they did reject His very exis- tence. The German Professor Drews, following the lead given by Strauss, fifty years ago, pro- claimed that Christ was a myth, and the disciples of Nietzsche, of him who claimed to be the new Anti-Christ, declared that Zarathustra had ousted the Galilean. 16 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE III Together with the tendency to glorify every- thing German, there existed a corresponding tendency to depreciate everything French. The Anti-French movement may be said to have begun with the political reaction of Burke, and the Gallophobia of de Quincey and Coleridge. It developed into the Germanomania of Kingsley and Carlyle. It found its most striking ex- pression in that extraordinary travesty of history, Carlyle's caricature of Frederick the Great. It culminated in that odious letter to The Times in October, 1870, when the oracle of Craigen- puddock pronounced an inexorable vcb victis against the vanquished of Sedan. After 1870 a belief in the superiority of the German race, and in the inferiority of the French race, acquired almost the force of a dogma. It was assumed that the French were a decaying nation ; that, with all their brilliant gifts, they were incorrigibly frivolous and incurably im- moral. Critics would still ironically concede to the French a certain superiority in the arts of cooking and dancing and fashion, in the lighter graces of style. As a moral and intellectual power the French people had ceased to count. But the anti-French prejudices which gained INTRODUCTION 17 strength in Great Britain after 1870 were not merely the outcome of German victories, and of a materialistic belief in the finality of success. It was in reality a very old British tradition. We find traces of this old British tradition even in the Olympian mind of Shakespeare — in the odious caricature of Joan of Arc, and in that characteristic passage of " Hamlet '' where the frivolous young men are sent to Paris and the serious young men, including Hamlet himself, are sent to German Universities. And that anti-French tradition was not only a deeply-rooted national prejudice against the hereditary enemy, it was even more a survival of the old Protestant and Puritan sentiment. It is true that the French people had produced the greatest of Protestant reformers, Calvin. It is true that the French Huguenots had suffered more heroically for their faith than the Protestants of any other nation, and that Cardinal Richelieu had been supporting the Pro- testant cause when even the Protestant Prussian Elector had deserted Gustavus Adolphus. Still the British people felt that the French nation always remained Catholic at heart, and that there exists somehow an incompatibility between the Protestant religion and the French national character. The French spirit, always aiming 18 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE at universal truth, refuses to accept an ex- clusively national religion. French logic refuses to accord to a Book interpreted by private judgment an infallibility which was denied to the collective experiences and to the religious tradition of two thousand years. French idealism rejected the Protestant confusion of temporal and spiritual power. The French artistic sense was repelled by the iconoclasm of the Puritan reformers. French Protestantism might survive as a political party, but as a spiritual influence it has long been a vanishing quantity, and it only represented an insignificant minority in the nation. There lay the secret to the subconscious antipathy of the British Nonconformists against France. Hence the conviction that France was doomed to be ever distracted between super- stition and atheism. Hence the systematic attempt to magnify every failing of the French character, to exaggerate every political disorder. English critics would point to the regular and progressive decline of the French population, ignoring the fact that the restriction of births was a universal law of modern civilization, and that in France the decrease was due to a higher standard of living, and even more to an increased sense of parental responsibility. Again critics INTRODUCTION 19 would point to the increase of crime and intem- perance, forgetting that crime was everywhere on the increase, and that in Germany suicide was playing havoc even amongst school-children ; forgetting that drink was even more a curse in Scotland and England than in Normandy. Again, English critics would point to the political corruption and anarchy ever3rwhere rampant, to the chronic religious dissensions, to perpetually recurring scandals such as the Panama affair, the Humbert and Dreyfus trials, the Caillaux drama — forgetting that this political and social fermentation might only be the result of a more intense political and spiritual life, of deeper conflicts between spiritual ideals ; forgetting also that the struggles of democracy with their attendant risks are always preferable to the passive obedience of despotism with all its security ; forgetting that the open sores of France were less dangerous than the hidden malignant disorders of Germany ; forgetting, above all, that France could not be impunately the chosen ground of daring political and religious ex- periments without paying the price. British critics would not take the broad and philosophical and sympathetic view of the French situation. They persisted in putting the worst possible construction on every symptom, and they were 20 THE FEENCH RENASCENCE congratulating themselves every day that the German and Anglo-Saxon races were not like their degenerate Gallic neighbours. IV When the hurricane suddenly burst over France, political and military events at first seemed to confirm the most glowing anticipations of the pessimists. A few weeks before the declaration of war, Senator Humbert had disclosed the lamentable unpreparedness and the foul cor- ruption in high places. At the outbreak of war, the insensate murder of the great leader, Jaur^s, seemed as ominous as the suicide of Prevost-Paradol in 1870. The sudden collapse of military resistance, the defeat at Mons, the retreat of the French armies all along the line, seemed to justify the worst fears. In 1870 Paris, at least, had opposed a heroic resistance. In 1914 the capital was abandoned at the very approach of the enemy. In 1870 the Govern- ment had only retired to Bordeaux when the situation had become hopeless. In 1914 the French Government retired to Bordeaux within two weeks of the German invasion. Alarmists prophesied the total breakdown of the military resistance. They expected every moment to INTRODUCTION 21 hear that the capital had capitulated: Finis Galliae ! France was to share the fate of Poland, and like Poland she was to fall a prey to cor- ruption and anarchy. Then the great miracle happened. Once more Prance manifested that recuperative power which she has revealed all through her tragic history. At the end of the Hundred Years' War, when the country seemed at her last gasp ; when the Duke of Burgundy, the greatest vassal of the French crown, the head of the younger Capetian branch, had betrayed the national cause and joined hands with the enemy ; when the English invaded and occupied the whole of Northern and Central France on this side of the Loire, one of those strange events happened which make French history read like a fairy tale and a mystery play, rather than like a bald record of prosaic facts. A peasant girl of seventeen years of age arose and announced that angels had appeared to her and had entrusted to her the mission of saving the people. Joan of Arc placed herself at the head of the army, and in a few months cleared the country of the enemy. After 450 years, once more France found 22 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE herself in the same desperate situation. Again the horrors of civil war were added to the horrors of foreign war. The insolent manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick declared that Paris would be razed to the ground. The country- was bankrupt. There was no Government left and no army left. Again the nation rose in arms. Ragged bands of volunteers crushed the Prussian invader on the hills of Valmy. Once more France was saved by a miracle. And now once more in 1914, when the country had been betrayed by incompetent and corrupt leaders, when everything seemed lost, the people arose to the national emergency, pulled them- selves together. They proclaimed the sacred truce of parties. They rallied like one man in the presence of the enemy. Yet the peril in August and September of 1914 seemed greater than it had ever been at any previous crisis of French history. Everything seemed to favour the foe. His treacherous onslaught had taken the French nation by surprise. Whilst the French armies were pre- paring to meet an attack on the Eastern front, the Prussian burglar had entered by the Belgian backdoor and by a frontier denuded of fortresses and troops. The enemy was reaping all the military advantages of his own crime, of INTRODUCTION 23 the violation of Belgian neutrality, and was also reaping all the military advantages of a rigid maintenance by the Allies of the neutrality of Holland. The enemy enjoyed all the superiority of preparations on a colossal scale, of gigantic accumulations of war material. He enjoyed all the superiority of a despotic form of Government, permitting a unity and concentration of power which are impossible in a free democracy. And last, not least, the enemy possessed all the moral force of a war spirit which had been inculcated by a systematic education, and which a peaceful nation like the French could not possess. And last, not least, the enemy had all the driving power of an insensate race hatred and of a military fanaticism to which we can only find an historical parallel in the religious fanaticism of the Mohammedan hordes at the zenith of their military power. Notwithstanding all those advantages of the barbarians, the whole military scheme of the German invader collapsed in a dramatic failure. The hosts which had swept like an irresistible tide over Northern France were suddenly thrown back in the fateful battle of the Marne, one of the decisive battles of Universal History. To-day, after twelve months, two million of stout French hearts still oppose to the invader a Uving wall 24 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE of 400 miles. After twelve months, notwith- standing a reckless sacrifice of lives, the Germans have been battering that wall in vain. For twelve months the French have borne the brunt of the fight and the heat of the day, whilst their British and Russian Allies were getting ready for the combined counter-offensive, which was to deal the crushing blow to Prussian militarism. VI But not only did France in her hour of trial reveal a resisting power which staggered her enemies, she also revealed moral and spiritual resources which amazed her friends. She com- pelled us to revise all our judgments. She revealed to us how much she had learned in the fitern school of adversity. We had been told ad nauseam that excitability, emotionalism were the main traits of the Gallic character. And now, behold ! in the darkest hour of her history she preserved a marvellous self-restraint and an impressive calmness. I was present in Paris at the beginning of August, during the first days of mobilization. I saw at the Gare de Lyon, at the Gare du Nord, at the Gare de TEst, day and night, over one million French soldiers entrained. There was no beating INTRODUCTION 26 of drums. There was no war fever, and I did not see one drunken man. There was no police- man to keep order, and there was no disorder in the streets. Every soldier left for the battle resolute and determined as for the performance of a solemn and sacred duty. We had been told that the French, after an initial spurt of enthusiasm, would be found lacking in staying power ; that their effervescent temperament, which might be suitable for a vigorous offensive, for Napoleonic tactics would probably be found unsuitable for the defensive. And now, behold ! they revealed in defensive warfare the same tenacity of purpose, the same cheerful contempt of death, the same patient and stoical heroism which their Russian Allies were manifesting in the Eastern Theatre of War. We were warned that under the influence of a succession of reverses they would succumb to the old fatal Gallic individualism, to that lack of discipline, to that incapacity for leadership, to that " spontaneous anarchy '' which were bound to spell disaster. And behold ! the evacuation of Paris, the withdrawal of the Government, instead of giving a chance to the demagogues, only welded more firmly together the unity of the nation. Instead of indulging in political dis- sensions, every Frenchman, from the journalist 26 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE to the artisan, worked in complete unanimity amongst themselves and in absolute harmony with their Allies. And the religious divisions vanished as well as the political. Twenty thousand priests were incorporated as common soldiers in the French armies. Those priests worked like heroes on the battlefield, and after the battle they ministered to the wounded like saints. There have been strikes or threats of strikes in England, in Scotland and in Wales. There have been divisions in Russia. In France the Sacred Union, the " Union Sacree " has not been broken for one day. VII From the beginning of the war, in every one of her actions, in her reverses as in her successes, France has given the lie to her enemies. She has justified those who loved her and believed in her. She has disconcerted and amazed her critics. Those critics, in their surprise and in their eagerness to explain away their previous false judgments, are speaking to-day of a " new spirit,"' of a dramatic transformation of the French character. They tell us that the war has breathed a new soul into the people. But INTRODUCTION 27 that explanation of the critics is as superficial as were their former blunders. What we are to-day observing in France is not something new, it is something very old and very familiar. It is the old heroism, the old vitality which are asserting themselves. The well-meaning foreign journalists, whose whole horizon was bounded by the cofiee-houses of the boulevards, are amazed by this sudden revelation of order and restraint, of devotion and sacrifice. But French life in the past has ever been a miracle of orderli- ness and devotion to duty. Those scribblers who told us that there was no family life in France, that the French language did not even possess a word to express the idea of " home," apparently did not suspect that French family life was something very beautiful and very sacred ; that even in modern Babylon there were hundreds of thousands of Middle Class homes whose whole existence was a discipline in self- sacrifice. The scribblers who sternly condemned the meanness and selfishness of the French temperament, who denounced French marriages as mercenary, who abused the French institution of the Dowry, did not know that this much- abused French institution of the Dowry was an everyday school of thrift and self-restraint and self-suppression; that from the first day of 28 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE marriage, before their first child is born, the young couple are providing for the future. But let us not be hard on those foreign critics. This is an age of prose and realism. How could it do full justice to a nation of artists and ideal- ists ? This is a calculating and scientific genera- tion. How could it do justice to a French spirit which has ever eluded calculation, where it is the incalculable and the unexpected which always happens ? In the now distant days when misunder- standings were rife, when an important section of the English people were under the spell of <5rallophobes, when France herself was distracted by civil quarrels and religious dissensions, when it sometimes seemed as if the French ship were threatened with shipwreck — a great English poet, too much neglected to-day, expressed her unshakable faith in the French people. Eliza- beth Barrett Browning understood the spirit of France as few Englishmen have under- stood it. The following lines of Aurora Leigh reveal a deeper insight and contain a deeper truth than are contained in all the ponderous -volumes of the detractors of French genius : — " And so I am strong to love this noble France, This poet of the nations, who dreams on For ever, after some ideal good, — Some spontaneous brotherhood. INTRODUCTION 29 Some wealth that leaves none poor and finds non& tired, Some freedom of the many that respects The wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams ! SubUme, to dream so ; natural to wake : May God save France ! VIII Thus, generous and gentle nation of the Gauls, did a magnanimous English singer, with the sympathy of a woman and the insight of a genius, pay thee thy just meed of praise. And to-day her inspired words are finding an echo in every British heart. There are nations whom we respect ; there are other nations whom we also love. There are nations whom we both love and respect. But thee, France ! we revere with a reverence less distant and more intimate t Thee we love with a more personal and more tender love, and they love thee most who know thee best. We admire thee for thy marvellous gifts, for thy luminous reason, for the glories of thy past, for the integrity and honesty of thy intellect, for thy romantic spirit of adventure, for the loftiness of thy courage. And we love thee for thy grace and gentleness, for thy courtesy and chivalry ; because thou 30 THE FKENCH RENASCENCE hast ever been the knight-errant of every crusade, because thou hast ever been the champion of the weak and the oppressed ; because thou hast ever been ready to lose thy soul in order to save thy soul and to redeem the souls of others ', because thou hast ever sought the beautiful rather than the useful, wisdom rather than power, right rather than might. Already in the forests of the Druids, two thousand years ago, thy Gallic children had raised on a pinnacle the Priest and the Teacher, the Judge and the Law-maker, exalted high above the brute force of arms. All through thy heroic history, the sword of the soldier has only been wielded in defence of an idea, and military force has only been the instrument of a higher purpose. And we love thee because of thy infinite wit and thy inexhaustible cheerfulness. Thou hast ever been radiating joy around thee. Thy heroes are smiling even in the face of death. Thy teachers, Rabelais and Montaigne, taught us that whilst pedantry is sullen and repellent, wisdom ever wears a serene and joyful counten- ance. And we love thee because of thy humanity. Thou art human and compassionate to the frailties of thy children. Thou dost not claim for them a perfection which is not granted to INTRODUCTION 31 mortal man. Thou dost not hide their short- comings under the cloak of hypocrisy. Thy enemies have called thy children vainglorious, but even thy enemies have not dared to call them proud. Thou never didst worship a Teutonic *' Superman."' Rather didst thou extol the humble, the meek and the weak. Thy sociable instinct has ever taught thy children that pride is the most odious of vices, because it is the most unsociable, because it is the one vice which isolates us from the fellowship of man. And we love thee because thou art incapable of hatred. Thy national Epics, like the Chanson de Roland, are poems of chivalry, of knightly deeds. The Epics of the Teuton, like the Nihelungen Lied, are poems of hatred and revenge. The Teutons are to-day what they were in the past. They are relentless in their rancour, merciless in their vindictiveness. And their rancour is retrospective. They cannot and will not forget. Treitschke is still brooding over imaginary wrongs committed a thousand years ago. Thou hast ever been ready to forget and to forgive. Thou dost not under- stand hatred. Thou dost not brandish the dagger of revenge. Thou leavest vengeance to ^Grod Almighty. Thou leavest retribution to -Eternal Justice. 32 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE Enthroned in the very centre of the old Continent, in a temperate clime, under sunny skies, in thee all antagonisms are reconciled, in thee all contrasts are harmonized, all extremes are attempered. Temperance, moderation, measure, equipoise and rhythm are the hall-marks of thy genius, as they were the hall-marks of the Greeks. In thee all nations commune. In the Golden Age of the Catholic Church, twenty thousand scholars gathered within the walls of thy ancient colleges, from all parts of the world. Thy *' angelic doctors "" and thy " seraphic doctors '* preached the universal faith. And ever since, the world has been willing to sit at the feet of thy teachers. Ever since thy Capital has been the metropolis of civilization. Vrhs orbis. Thou art heir to the experience of all the ages, to the wisdom of Athens and Rome. Thy spirit of adventure, thy passion for daring political experiments, thy craving for justice has misled people into thinking that thou art subversive of the past. Thy passion for truth has misled foreign critics into the belief that thou art lacking in reverence. But in no other country is the past more living. In no other country is there a more pious and grateful feeling for the achievements of her ancestors. No cult is more devoutly observed by thy people than the " Cult INTKODUCTION 3» of the Dead." And has not one of the greatest of thy thinkers reminded us of the eternal truth that in appraising the spiritual legacy of humanity the dead must be counted more than the living. Of all these legacies of thy wonderful past thy language is the most wonderful : simple, graceful, truthful as thy own image. It has succeeded to the universality of the language of Imperial Kome. The greatest of German philosophers and the greatest of Prussian kings only used thy language. The greatest historian of England deemed it the only fitting medium in which to write his masterpiece. The solemn covenants between nations are still written in French. In thy luxuriant youth, Brunetto Latino, the master of Dante, praised thy speech as the most " delectable '' of all. In thy vigorous maturity the genius of thy children, the genius of Montaigne and Descartes, of Balzac and Victor Hugo, have added their perfections to thy speech and made it for all ages to come the vehicle of universal reason. Far away in the Northern mists, in a Celtic land which was ever thy loyal ally, in the land of Mary Stuart, the hapless Queen who ruled over thy people, in an ancient seat of learning, it has been my privilege and pride for twenty 34 THE FEENCH KENASCENCE years to worship at thy shrine, even I, the least worthy of thy worshippers. Far away from thy smiling vineyards and thy sunlit plains, I have taught others to love thee even as I love thee. I have tried to tell the young generation of the British Empire all that the world owes to thee, and I have challenged the slanderers of thy fair fame. I have tried to kindle in receptive young minds the sacred fire of thy soul. I have tried to awaken in their minds a passion for thy grace and for thy beauty. In bygone days, it was said of thy pleasant land of Gaul that it was the most beautiful Ejngdom God ever created after his own Kingdom of Heaven. Chroniclers extolled the " deeds of God through the Franks,"" Gesta Dei per Francos. For thy Frankish Kings were saints, and even thy maidens were heroes. Greatly has the world changed since those days- But thy spirit, France, has not changed. Thy modern palaces, even as thy ancient cathedrals, still reveal thy virtues. The sanctuary of Rheims, razed by the Barbarians, was the Parthenon of Christendom. As in the days of St. Louis, of Ste. G^nevi^ve and Joan of Arc, France is still doing the " deeds of God.'" Thou art still accomplishing the Divine purpose in humanity. As in the days of the Maid of Orleans, the God INTRODUCTION 36 who ever protected thee is still choosing the humblest and the poorest amongst thy children to manifest His Divine will. Thou hast indeed been fortunate in thy children and in thy servants. Thou hast lifted them above themselves to the level of thy ideals. There are other races which have not been thus fortunate. The ideals of nations are not always divine ideals, they are only too often heathen idols and tribal gods. It has happened in the past, it is happening even now, that all the virtues of the good and honest men amongst thy enemies have only been used to perpetrate appalling crimes in the service of those cruel tribal gods. Even though thy children have served thee well, thou art much greater than thy children. They may wander away from thy path. Nor is thy greatness affected by their shortcomings. Thy purity has not been tarnished by their impurity, nor thy gentleness by their violence. And that is why, gentle and generous France, in this thy supreme hour of trial, we maintain an unwavering and unshaken trust in thy final victory. We trust in thy triumph simply be- cause we believe in Divine Providence, simply because we cannot admit that the moral order has suddenly been subverted. Sooner far would 36 THE FEENCH EENASCENCE we believe that the sun and the stars will cease to shine, and will drop from the high heavens. We are convinced in our hearts that thou shalt emerge from thy tragic ordeal as radiant as ever. The motto of thy capital — flucticat nee mergitur — is engraved on every page of thy chequered annals. The bark which carried the fortunes of France, like the bark of Lutetia, has been " ever tossed on the waves, but it has never been submerged."' How often in thy past history did everything seem lost ! Yet thou didst keep thy stout heart and still thou didst challenge thine enemies. Thou shalt repel the Teuton as the Maid of Orleans repelled the invader. Thy men and women shall still save thee from the modern Hun as Ste. Genevieve saved thee from the Huns of Attila. Thou shalt crush the modern Prussian in the forests of Argonne as thou once didst crush the same Prussian on the hills of Valmy. And thou shalt emerge from thy trials, glorified by thy sufierings, justified by thy faith. And thy people shall continue bearing aloft the torch of Justice and Liberty, entrusted by thee to their fathers, still diffusing Joy and Beauty, Sweetness and Light, still triumphant over the the Powers of Darkness. MONTAIGNE MONTAIGNE In the year of our Lord 1572, the Annus Mirabilis of French history, when the massacre of the night of St. Bartholomew sent a thrill of horror through- out the civilized world, when the bells of the Church of St. Germain TAuxerrois were sounding the death-knell of thousands of Huguenots, when his most Christian Majesty, Charles IX, and his most august mother, the Dowager Queen Catherine of Medici, were witnessing from a window of the Louvre overlooking the Seine and were directing and enjoying the holy and wholesale slaughter of their miscreant subjects, there lived in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, at the chateau of Montaigne, a country noble- man of moderate fortune, of simple habits, and more noted for his learning than for those war- like qualities becoming his rank and station. II He claimed to be of ancient lineage and of English descent, although, if the truth be told, his grandfather was only a fish merchant. In 38 MONTAIGNE 39 his youth he had been a keen man of pleasure, but in his mature age he had learned to curb the passions of a sensuous temperament, and he had come to profess a profound contempt for that fair sex of which he had been such an ardent and such a fickle admirer. He was a sorry husband, which might have been the fault of his wife. He was a bad father, which certainly was not the fault of his children. He was an indifferent citizen, and there was a public rumour that, having been made a mayor of his native city, and the great plague having broken out during his tenure of office, he fled for his life, and left his fellow-citizens to grapple with the disease. He was one of those leaders of men who consider personal safety the better part of discretion, and who think that the first duty of a leader is to follow. Ill In his younger years the Lord of Montaigne had also shown an eager desire to push his way into politics. He professed to be a loyal son of the Church, and was never tired of cursing those wicked Huguenots. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the Guises, the leaders of the Catholic party, and when counsels of moderation for one moment prevailed over bigotry and fanaticism, 40 THE FRENCH EENASCENCE the young man, although himself a sceptic and a pagan, went out of his way to protest against the policy of toleration inaugurated by the Chancellor THopital, in order to ingratiate himself with those in power. But he soon discovered that political honours were a burden and a danger, and that at best they were absolutely incompatible with ease and liberty, which he valued above all things. And there- fore, having filled for a few years several dis- tinguished legal offices, he decided to live in the seclusion of his own manor. And there, in the old tower, fitted up with a magnificent library, he would hold converse with one or two select friends, but especially with those quietest and most loyal of all friends, the silent occupants of his shelves. And there, whilst the whole of France was devastated by predatory warfare, overlooking from his turret the champaigns and vineyards of Gascony, he would contemplate, with philosophic composure, the political tragedy which was being enacted. Others, indeed, might be distressed by the awful condition of their unhappy country ; others, again, might be " sicklied over with the pale cast of thought '' ; but the temperament of the Lord of Montaigne was so happily con- stituted that nothing could disturb the serene vs/. y-s MICHEL EYQUEM, SEIGNEUR DE MONTAIGNE, NATUS 1539, OBIT 1592. 42 THE FEENCH EENASCENCE equanimity of his disposition. It has been said that to those who are content to think, life is only a comedy ; whilst to those who feel, life must needs be a tragedy. The Gascon noble- man belonged pre-eminently to the thinking kind, and not to the feeling. He had never been troubled with a morbid sensibility, and, therefore, the most harrowing horrors enacted under his very eyes would only appear in the light of a tragi-comedy of surpassing interest. IV And thus year after year he would pursue the equable tenor of his life, escaping, by his con- tinuous good fortune, from all those perils which were threatening his neighbours. Once or twice, indeed, when the hurricane of civil war was surging and raging too furiously, he would think it safe for a brief moment to withdraw from the tempestuous scene, and he would prefer the stimulus and excitement of travel to the imminent dangers involved by staying at home. But as soon as the hurricane had passed over, he would repair again to his beloved castle and observatory, to his friends and to his books. And, as time went on, in the summer of his life, he would more and more give up all his days to solitude and MONTAIGNE 43 contemplation. And, meditating on his distant travels, on the stirring events of his times, on the civil dissensions, on the discoveries and explorations of new countries, and reading those great masters of antiquity who had recently been discovered, he would write down the result of his experiences, and he would note the im- pressions of his readings. And having thus garnered day by day, year after year, the rich harvest of the past, the idea naturally occurred to him that those private journals ought not to remain private, and that he ought to impart to the world the benefit of his wisdom. And encouraged thereto by the appreciation of his friends, he finally decided to publish his experiments at authorship, and those " Essays,"" or " attempts,"" as he called them, appeared in a ponderous volume in the year of grace 1580. V A very strange book they were, those '* Essays,"" desultory, rambling, and, to outward appearance, rather a collection of stories and anecdotes than a treatise with a plan and purpose. They were written in every kind of style, in turn serious and frolicsome, solemn and frivolous, pious and cynical. They em- 44 THE FEENCH RENASCENCE braced every problem of life and death, they dealt with theology and ethics, with literature and politics. From a chapter on cannibals we pass on to a chapter on smells and public coaches ; from a chapter on treason we pass on to a chapter on prayer. And yet this strange book, by an eccentric and egotistic baronet of Gascony, thus ushered into the world in the most troubled times of the French wars of religion, has become one of the great books of world literature. The country nobleman, so careful of living in retirement and obscurity, has become one of the master-minds of his age and of all ages, " the master of those who know.'' VI The vicissitudes of literary reputations are one of the commonplaces of criticism. But we doubt whether there is another instance in the history of letters of a book having had such a singular fortune or an influence so deep, so far- reaching, so universal, so immediate, and yet so permanent. In the lifetime of the writer, when books were dear and readers were few, it attained a sudden popularity, and for more than three hundred years the *' Essays '' of Montaigne have been one of the forces that have moulded .v^' ^ •**i*y*t;^:: >.■■*;■"• ' ,;i?. Sj^ 46 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE European thought and literature, in substance as well as in form. The sceptical, impious, and immoral writer has become the spiritual father and guide of the most devout moralists, of the most saintly theologians. The " litterateur " and '* dilettante,^' who knew nothing of science, has been directly or indirectly the promoter of a great scientific revival. The recluse has be- come the trusted adviser of men of the world. Nor is there any sign that the popularity of the " Essays "" is on the wane. Indeed, the book is like the wine of the author's own Southern vineyards ; it improves and becomes more " vital " as it gets older, and it becomes more valued as we get older, as we are able to interpret its lessons of wisdom from our own life experiences. And thus the '' Essays " appear to us as one of the mountain peaks of letters, or rather as a mountain range from which mighty rivers of thought have taken their source. If, indeed, you tried to bring together all the great men that have fallen under the spell of the Gascon, what an august company and what a motley crowd would be assembled : a company that would join in unexpected association Shakespeare and Moli^re, Bacon and Bayle, Pascal and Rousseau, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, La Bruy^re and Ste. Beuve. MONTAIGNE 47 VII And let us take due notice of the fact that in that illustrious company not the least illustrious names are those belonging to the history of English thought, and that the influence of Mon- taigne in England is not the least extraordinary feature in the miraculous fortune of Montaigne's " Essays/' Here is a foreigner, a Frenchman of the French, a Gascon of the Gascons, and this alien has become to all intents and purposes an English classic, and has exerted on English literature an influence as great as that which he exerted on his own country. The work of that Frenchman, translated by the Italian Florio, has become one of the standard books of a litera- ture which sometimes, and somewhat foolishly, boasts of its insular and splendid isolation. The greatest thinker of the Elizabethan age has been so completely steeped in Montaigne that his " Essays '' would never have appeared but for the French work which served them as a model. The greatest poet of the Elizabethan age, and of all ages, has imbibed Montaigne's inmost spirit so thoroughly that he has dramatized his philo- sophy and plagiarized his paradoxes. Was there ever a great moralist who could claim nobler intellectual progeny than Bacon and Shake- speare, not to mention Dean Church and Emerson, Walter Pater and Fitzgerald '{ MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE There is a continuity and heredity in the trans- mission of ideas as there is in the transmission of life. Each great thinker has a spiritual posterity, which for centuries perpetuates his doctrine and his moral personality. And there is no keener intellectual enjoyment than to trace back to their original progenitors one of those mighty and original systems which are the milestones in the history of human thought. It is with such a spiritual transmission that I am concerned in the present paper. I would like to establish the intimate connection which exists between Montaigne and Nietzsche, between the greatest of French moralists and the greatest of Germans. A vast literature has grown up in recent years round the personality and works of Nietzsche, which would already fill a moderately sized library. It is, therefore, strange that no critic should have emphasized and explained the close filiation between him and Montaigne. It is all the more strange because Nietzsche himself has acknowledged his debt to 50 MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE 51 the ** Essays '* with a frankness which leaves no room to doubt. To any one who knows how careful Nietzsche was to safeguard his originality, such an acknow- ledgment is in itself sufficient proof of the immense power which Montaigne wielded over Nietzsche at a decisive and critical period of his intellectual development. But only a systematic comparison could show that we have to do here with something more than a mental stimulus and a quickening of ideas, that Montaigne's " Essays "' have provided the foundations of Nietzsche's philosophy, and that the French Pagan may rightly be called, and in a literal sense, the " spiritual father '' of the German. II At first sight this statement must appear para- doxical, and a first reading of the two writers reveals their differences rather than their resem- blances. The one strikes us as essentially sane ; the other, even in his first books, reveals that lack of mental balance which was to ter- minate in insanity. The one is a genial sceptic ; the other is a fanatic dogmatist. To Montaigne life is a comedy ; to his disciple life is a tragedy. The one philosophizes with a smile ; the other. 52 THE FKENCH KENASCENCE to use his own expression, philosophizes with a hammer. The one is a Conservative ; the other is a herald of revolt. The one is constitutionally moderate and temperate ; the other is nearly always extreme and violent in his judgment. The one is a practical man of the world ; the other is a poet and a dreamer and a mystic. The one is quaintly pedantic, and his page is often a mosaic of quotations ; the other is supremely original. The one is profuse in his professions of loyalty to the Eoman Catholic Church ; the other calls himself Anti-Christ. Ill There can be no doubt that if the character- istics which we have just referred to belonged essentially to Montaigne, there would be little affinity between the thought of Nietzsche and that of Montaigne. And it would be impossible to account for the magnetic attraction which drew Nietzsche to the study of the " Essays," and for the enthusiasm with which they inspired him. But I am convinced that those charac- teristics are not the essential characteristics. I am convinced that there is another Montaigne who has nothing in common with the Montaigne of convention and tradition. I am convinced MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE 53 that the scepticism, the Conservatism, the irony, the moderation, the affectation of humility, frivolity, pedantry, and innocent candour, are only a mask and disguise which Montaigne has put on to conceal his identity, that they are only so many tricks and dodges to lead the temporal and spiritual powers off the track, and to reassure them as to his orthodoxy. I am convinced that beneath and beyond the Montaigne of con- vention and tradition there is another much bigger and much deeper Montaigne, whose identity would have staggered his contem- poraries, and would have landed him in prison. And it is this unconventional and real Montaigne who is the spiritual father of Nietzsche. It is obviously impossible, within the limits of a brief paper, to prove this far-reaching state- ment and to establish the existence of an esoteric and profound meaning in the '* Essays." I shall only refer to a passage which is ignored by most commentators, which has been added in the posthumous edition, in which Montaigne himself admits such a double and esoteric meaning, and which seems to me to give the key to the inter- pretation of the *' Essays '' : — " I know very well that when I hear any one dwell upon the language of my essays, I had rather a great deal he would say nothing : 'tis 54 THE FKENCH EENASCENCE not so much to praise the style as to underrate the sense, and so much the more offensively as they do it obliquely ; and yet I am much deceived if many other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and, how well or ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more substantial, or at all events more downright, upon his paper than myself. To bring the more in, I only muster up the heads ; should I annex the sequel I should trebly multiply the volume. And how many stories have I scattered up and down in this book, that I only touch upon, which, should any one more curiously search into, they would find matter enough to produce infinite essays. Neither those stories nor my quotations always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament ; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them ; they carry sometimes, besides what I apply them to, the seed of a more rich and a bolder matter, and sometimes, col- laterally, a more delicate sound, both to myself, who will say no more about it in this place, and to others who shall be of my humour." IV The real and esoteric Montaigne is, like Nietzsche, a herald of revolt, one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all times. And the: MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE 55 Gascon philosopher who philosophizes with a smile is far more dangerous than the Teuton who philosophizes with a hammer. The corrosive acid of his irony is more destructive than the violence of the other. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne transvalues all our moral values. Nothing is absolute ; everything is relative. There is no law in morals. ** The laws of conscience, which we pretend to* be derived from nature, proceed from custom ; every one, having an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply himself to them without applause/^ There is no absolute law in politics. And one form of government is as good as another. " Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other forms of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured to monarchy do the same ; and what opportunity soever fortune presents them with to change, even then,, when with the greatest difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and grievous to them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to create 56 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE another ; being unable to take into hatred sub- jection itself/' There is no law in religion. There is no j ustification in patriotism. The choice of religion is not a matter of conscience or of reason, but of custom and climate. We are Christians by the same title which makes us Perigordins or Germans. If to destroy all human principles and illusions is to be a sceptic, Montaigne is the greatest sceptic that ever existed. But Montaigne's scepticism is only a means to an end. On the ruin of all philosophies and religions Montaigne, like Nietzsche, has built up a dogmatism of his own. The foundation of that dogmatism in both is an unbounded faith in life and in nature. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne is an optimist. At the very outset of the " Essays '' he proclaims the joy of life. He preaches the " Gaya scienza,'' the " frdhliche Wissenschaft." All our sufferings are due to our departing from the teachings of nature. The chapter on cannibalism, from which Shakespeare has borrowed a famous passage in The Tempest, and which has probably suggested the character of Caliban, MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE 57 must be taken in literal sense. The savage who lives in primitive simplicity comes nearer to Montaigne's ideal of perfection than the philo- sopher and the saint. VI And this brings us to the fundamental analogy between Nietzsche and Montaigne. Like the Oerman, the Frenchman is a pure Pagan. Here again we must not be misled by the innumerable professions of faith, generally added in later editions and not included in the edition of 1580. Montaigne is uncompromisingly hostile to Chris- tianity. His Catholicism must be understood to be the Catholicism of Auguste Comte, aa defined by Huxley, namely, Catholicism minus Chris- tianity. He glorifies suicide. He abhors the self - suppression of asceticism ; he derides chastity, humility, mortification — every virtue which we are accustomed to associate with the Christian faith. He glorifies self-assertion and the pride of life. Not once does he express even the most remote sympathy for the heroes of the Christian Church, for the saints and martyrs. On the other hand, again and again he indulges in lyrical raptures for the achievements of the great men of Greece and Rome. He is an 58 THE FRENCH KENASCENCE intellectual aristocrat. His ideal policy is the policy of the Spartans — " almost miraculous in its perfection/' His ideal man is the Pagan hero — ^the Superman of antiquity — Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Alexander, Julius Caesar. PASCAL'S "THOUGHTS" PASCAL'S "THOUGHTS" The launching by Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons of a French " Everyman's Library "' has been the sensational event of the publishing year.^ It is now four years since Messrs. Nelson brought out their French Collections, over the literary fortunes of which I had the honour to preside until I assumed the onerous responsibilities of EvEEYMAN. The '* Collection Nelson'' has become world famous, and has marked a new epoch in the French publishing trade. The Scottish invasion of France is now followed up by an English invasion. The *' Collection Gallia " is continuing the work of its predecessor on a different and, I think, a more ambitious and comprehensive scale, and with an ampler scope. It is placing at the disposal of all lovers of French literature exquisite shilling editions of French classics. Immediate success has already justified this bold undertaking. The Collection was only issued a few weeks ago, and already the 1 Written in 1914. 60 PASCAL'S "THOUGHTS" 61 little volumes are to be seen on every village bookstall in France and at every leading book- seller's on the Continent. II It was in the fitness of things that a library of French classics should begin with one of the immortal masterpieces of the language, a master- piece which, more than any other, can claim the credit of having first fixed the standard of French style. Of Pascal's ''Thoughts" there have been editions innumerable, but the present shilling edition is likely, for many years to come, to be the favourite one with the reading public. It represents the joint labours of the three leading Pascal scholars of France. Monsieur Boutroux, the master of Bergson, and leader of the new school of French philosophy (and, by the way, a close relation of President Poincare), and Monsieur Victor Giraud, the eminent sub- editor of the Revue des deux Mondes, have both contributed illuminative Introductions. As for the critical text of the edition itself, it has been established by Monsieur Brunschvigg, and is the result of ten years of benedictine labour and ingenious research. 62 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE III English students of French literature often overlook the very important fact that there are two entirely different strains running through the whole course of French literature. The most conspicuous writers are, no doubt, men of the type of Rabelais, Montaigne, Moli^re, Voltaire, and Anatole France, who give us, in sparkling and epigrammatic style, that incisive criticism of life which Matthew Arnold, in his famous essay on " The Literary Influence of Academies,'^ considers as the chief function of the French mind, and who represent the purely intellectual and artistic outlook, which is so often divorced from and opposed to the moral view. It is this unbroken continuity of masters of wit and irony which has given currency to the theory that the French mind is naturally of a sceptical, cynical, and flippant turn, and that it has none of the earnestness and depth of the Teutonic mind. That theory of the superficial- ness of the French mind is itself based on a most superficial study of French literature. For every serious student of literature knows that, along with those masters of wit and irony, every generation of French literature has produced a succession of masters of ethical and religious PASCAL'S "THOUGHTS" 63 thought — men of the stamp of Calvin, Bossuet, Kousseau, Chateaubriand, Lamennais — char- acters of intense earnestness and passionate fervour. Of those representative teachers and preachers, Pascal is perhaps the greatest, as he is certainly the most striking, personality in the Golden Age of French literature. IV About the exact chronology of that Golden Age of French literature there is still, I think, a great deal of confusion of thought. To the majority of critics even to-day that Golden Age is pre- eminently the age of Louis XIV. On the contrary, to a small minority the Golden Age is the age of Richelieu. I believe that it is the minority which is right. For it is the age of Richelieu which is truly the age of reconstruction and creation. It is the age which produced everything that is greatest and most original in French culture. It is the age of Richelieu which saw the rise of the French monarchy in its modern form. It saw the establishment of the French Academy and of Port-Royal. It saw the foundation by Descartes of modern French philosophy. It saw the foundation by Corneille of the French drama. 64 THE FRENCH EENASCENCE To that age Pascal may be said to belong — a giant in a generation of giants. It is true that when the " Provincial Letters "" appeared Louis XIV had already been the nominal King of France for thirteen years. But at that date he was only eighteen years of age, and his^ personal rule had not begun. And it would be absurd if Louis XIV were allowed to appropriate the fame of a writer whose genius owes all its characteristics to the discipline of an early day^ and whose writings glorify every cause whick it was the policy of Louis XIV to destroy. V Born in 1623, from a legal stock, belonging to the middle class, like Moliere, Bossuet and Kacine, like most of the great writers of that so- called " aristocratic '' age, a native of Auvergne, a country of extinct volcanoes and hardy mountaineers, Blaise Pascal was brought up in., an atmosphere of piety and learning by a father of keen scientific tastes. The incidents of his education recall to us some of the circumstances, in the upbringing of John Stuart Mill. A wonder child, with a marvellous disposition for niathe-^ matics, Pascal, at the age of sixteen, amazed even Descartes by his treatise on conical sections^ PASCAL'S " THOUGHTS " 65 It is to be noted in this connection that Pascars- training was almost exclusively scientific, and it is certainly remarkable that this supreme master of literary style never read more than one book of secular literature, namely, the *' Essays '' of Montaigne, whole pages of which are incorpor-^ ated and almost plagiarized in the " Thoughts." Blaise Pascal had to pay the penalty of his morbid precocity and of the perilous overstrain of his mental faculties. At eighteen years of age his health broke down, and we are told that after this breakdown he never knew one single day without suffering. It was under the influence of his illness and of his chance acquaintance with the Jansenists that his first " conversion "' took place. He became a fervid Port-Royalist, and converted his family to his faith. The effects of this first " conversion " did not last, and for the next few years Pascal was diverted from exclusive absorption in religion by the distractions of society and by his interest in scientific pursuits. To this time belong his famous experiments confirming the theories of Torricelli. In those early days Pascal little resembled the saint and enthusiast he was to become in later days. He was worldly and aggressive. 66 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE He quarrelled with Descartes. He quarrelled with his admirable sister Jacqueline, and wanted to prevent her from entering the convent, partly for sordid financial reasons. During those brief years also Pascal mixed freely in Parisian society. He was a friend of libertines and freethinkers. He thought of marriage, and it is presumed that to this period belongs the " Discourse on the Passions of Love.'" It has also been held by many biographers that the object of Pascal's love was the sister of his friend, the Duke of Roannez, but all we know about the relations between Pascal and the Duchess of Roannez is that it was on Pascal's advice that the young lady renounced the world and entered the monastery of Port-Royal. A carriage accident near the bridge of Neuilly, in which he was saved from imminent death by a miracle, together with a moral and intellectual crisis, brought about Pascal's second ** con- version." He left Parisian society and joined the soHtaries of Port-Royal. He espoused their •cause against the Jesuits, and in 1656 he hurled against the Reverend Fathers the first of his eighteen " Provincial Letters." A second lyiiracle, by which his niece. Marguerite Perrier, was cured by the touch of a thorn from the crown of Jesus Christ — a relic preserved at Port- PASCAL'S '' THOUGHTS " 67 Royal — convinced Pascal that, in defending the Port-Royalists, he was on the right side, and that Heaven was in his favour. But a two years' ardent controversy proved too much for his highly strung constitution, already undermined. His health was ruined beyond recovery. But, together with incurable illness, ineffable happiness had come to him. Henceforward Pascal is really a new-born man. Hitherto he had been worldly ; henceforth he is free from all mundane passion. He had been hard and pugnacious ; he now becomes meek and charitable. He had been restless ; he is now serene and smiling. He is only hard against his own self. To use the words of Professor Lanson, he " persecuted his poor body with incredible refinements of cruelty. "" He died in 1662, on August 19th, at thirty-nine years of age, leaving behind him the fame of one of the supreme mathematicians and physicists, as well as of one of the supreme thinkers and writers of French literature. VI One must accurately recall the conditions under which Pascal's " Thoughts " were composed in order not to be misled by their character. 68 THE FEENCH EENASCENCE Although conceived under the inspiration and obsession of one systematic idea, and of one settled plan, the " Thoughts "" are but the disjointed notes, disjecta membra, scattered leaflets and sibylline leaves composed by an incurable invalid during the short luminous intervals in the course of a painful and lingering illness. Those leaflets, written with a trembling and fever-stricken hand, in almost illegible writing, were collected with pious care by the solitaries of Port-Eoyal, but they were of so bold and original a nature, and contained so many hostile references to the then all- powerful Jesuits, that the peace-loving Port- Eoyalists found it necessary to expurgate all the controversial passages. It was only in our own day that the French philosopher, Victor Cousin, discovered the original manuscript, and conclusively proved that the edition of Port- Eoyal of 1670 had mutilated and distorted the meaning of the writer. The first revised edition based on the manuscript was published in the forties, and tried to reproduce the original plan and design of Pascal. But it must be admitted that the attempt was an impossible one. The secret of Pascal was buried with him, and all editions, even the present one, are bound to be more or less arbitrary. The " Thoughts "" of PASCAL'S " THOUGHTS " 69 Pascal are not only one of the most impressive ruins of world literature, they are also one of its most perplexing mysteries. VII It has long been assumed that the " Thoughts '* of Pascal have nothing in common with the " Provincial Letters/' that they are devotional rather than controversial, and that the author has transported his demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion into the sublime atmosphere of philosophical and mystical con- templation. This is not so. The " Thoughts " do not constitute a breach of continuity ; they are a sequel to the " Provincial Letters.'* They are still strongly aggressive. Pascal is still bitterly anti- Jesuitic, and, what is more, he has become more pronouncedly anti-Roman. No doubt he is emphatically anti-Protestant, speak- ing with horror of the heretics who reject auricular confession. But he speaks with even greater horror of the tyranny of the Papacy. And assuredly the philosopher who again and and again, in a treatise which professes to be an apology of Christianity, goes but of his way to attack his opponents cannot be said to move in the serene region of pure devotion and mystic detachment. 70 THE FEENCH RENASCENCE VIII We must leave over for the next chapter the discussion of Pascal's demonstration of the Chris- tian religion, which is the prime object and purpose of the ** Thoughts/' and we take the liberty of referring to our discussion of the subject in our recent book on Cardinal Newman (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh). We only wish, in conclusion, to draw the attention of the reader to what seems to us most truly original and epoch-making in Pascal's work. Critics have too much em- phasized the duality between the scientist and the theologian. I do not see that the contra- diction is as far-reaching as is generally supposed. To Pascal, Science and Religion are certainly different in their object ; they are not essen- tially different in their methods. So far from Religion being opposed to Science, in Pascal's conception it becomes itself subject to scientific treatment. Religion ceases to be an abstract logical system, or a footnote to history, or an exercise in higher criticism. It becomes experi- mental. To adopt the terminology of William James, used by Dr. Barry : " Religion becomes a variety of human experience." The philo- sophy of Religion is the interpretation of the deepest intuitions and emotions and aspirations PASCAL'S " THOUGHTS " 71 of spiritual life. And Pascal applies all the^ power of a marvellous intellect to the observa- tion and analysis of those spiritual phenomena. Nor are we pressing an accidental or artificial analogy when, in connection with Pascal, we use the vocabulary of William James's famous book. For Professor James, like Professor Boutroux and Bergson, came directly or in- directly under the influence of Pascal's genius, Pascal is really the Father of Modern Prag- matism, and the " Thoughts " of Pascal may be considered as the first as well as the most profound contribution to the new philosophy of Religion, PASCAL AND NEWMAN PASCAL AND NEWMAN Religious philosophy and apologetic literature in France have been nourished for the last seventy-five years on the " Thoughts " of PascaL Since the famous " Report " of Victor Cousin, the most penetrating moralists — Vinet, Sainte- Beuve, Havet, Sully, Prudhomme, Boutroux — have applied themselves to the investigation of the fascinating and perplexing mystery. '" The Catholic Church," says M. Boutroux in his admirable monograph on Pascal, " has been for a long time satisfied with apologetic systems which are based mainly on pure reason and on authority. But to-day we witness inside the Church remarkable efforts to seek the first reasons for belief, no more in the objects of faith, but in man and in his nature. According to this method, the first condition of any demon- stration of religion ought to be the awakening in the human soul of a desire to possess God,, a desire which indeed constitutes one of it& elemental instincts, but which is oppressed and repressed by our sensuous life. The problem would be to disentangle in nature itself the 74 ^ PASCAL AND NEWMAN 75 claims of the supernatural. Now it is partly under the influence of Pascal, read and meditated in the simplicity of our heart, that those aspects of Christian apologetics are being developed *'^ (pp. 201, 202). For the last ten years the younger generation have turned away from the problem of Pascal and have given their allegiance to Cardinal Newman ; and to-day, even in France, the influence of Newman on the elite of Roman Catholicism is certainly stronger and deeper than the influence of Pascal. The same battles which once were fought about the Pensees, are being waged to-day round the Apologia, and the University Sermons, and the Theory of Develop- ment, and the Grammar of Assent. The same minds which once would follow the teachings of the one are to-day the disciples of the other. Between those two great names — the greatest, perhaps, in the religious literature of the modern world — a comparison, therefore, naturally sug- gests itself. Their parallel destinies correspond to the same preoccupations, the same needs of the times. And, therefore, to contrast Pascal and Newman is to probe the very depths of the spirit of the age. And, moreover, they belong to the same spiritual family. To compare their works is 76 THE FRENCH EENASCENCE one of the best means of understanding them both. We see their characteristics in their true perspective ; we distinguish those which are only secondary from those which are funda- mental ; we distinguish those which are rooted in the spiritual temperament from those which are only due to the accidents of time and place. ^ The Diffekences At first sight the differences appear to be far more important than the resemblances. It would seem as if their surroundings, the age in which they lived, the circumstances of their existence, had created a gulf between them. - 1. Newman is a professional Churchman, with the narrow outlook of his class ; a recluse and a monk ; a theologian writing primarily for theologians ; a convert from Anglicanism, de- voting himself to the conversion of his former co-religionists. Pascal is a layman ; a great physicist and mathematician, he has taken a leading part in the scientific movement of his time, and has immortalized his name by epoch-making dis- coveries. A man of the world, he writes for men ^ Madame Lucie Felix Faure-Goyau was the first to point out the analogies between Newman and Pascal, as she was one of the first to introduce Newman to the French pubhc. PASCAL AND NEWMAN 77 of the world. What interests him in religion is not one particular sect as distinguished from another sect, but its human and universal aspect. And, therefore, he wishes to found Christianity on the bed rock of the human soul. He does not, like Newman, write for Anglicans or converts from Anglicanism ; he wishes to be understood of every man ; he appeals to Protestants and Catholics, to believers and unbelievers. 2. And with a wider outlook, there also seems to be a greater intensity, a deeper religious passion in Pascal than in Newman. The con- version of Pascal was rather a revolution than a gradual evolution ; like St. Paul, Pascal had his illumination on the way to Damascus. ^ The '* conversion '* of Newman was an even, and equable, and continuous development extending over fifteen years. Newman himself confesses in his Apologia that his reception into Catholicism did not produce any great change in his inner life. And the change is not much more apparent in his works. For he again makes the significant admission that in the twelve volumes of his Pro- testant works, where he treats of every question of ^ The tendency of the eighteenth-century commentators of Pascal was to emphasize the " catastrophic " nature of Pascal's conversion, and to attribute this conversion to morbid causes and to strange occurrences like the imaginary accident at the Bridge of Neuilly. 78 THE FRENCH RENASCENCE the religious life, he can hardly trace : so little difference is there between the Protestant phase and the Catholic phase ! 3. Such a contrast between religious appre- hension in Newman and in Pascal suggests some constitutional opposition in their temperament. Pascal is from childhood an invalid, predestined to a premature death. His life, though brief, is one long tragedy. He tells us that from his adolescence he did not spend one day without acute suffering ; and, generalizing his own indi- vidual experience, he proclaims that illness is the natural state of the true Christian. And this physical martrydom is reflected in the tone