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RECOLLECTIONS OF MY YOUTH

BY

ERNEST RENAN

1897







[Illustration: Ernest Renan]



CONTENTS.


THE FLAX-CRUSHER.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

PART IV.

PRAYER ON THE ACROPOLIS

ST. RENAN

MY UNCLE PIERRE.

GOOD MASTER SYSTEME.

PART I.

PART II.

LITTLE NOEMI.

PART I.

PART II.

THE PETTY SEMINARY OF ST. NICHOLAS DU CHARDONNET.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

THE ISSY SEMINARY.

PART I.

PART II.

THE ST. SULPICE SEMINARY.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

PART IV.

PART V.

FIRST STEPS OUTSIDE ST. SULPICE.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

PART IV.

PART V.

APPENDIX




PREFACE.


One of the most popular legends in Brittany is that relating to an
imaginary town called Is, which is supposed to have been swallowed up
by the sea at some unknown time. There are several places along the
coast which are pointed out as the site of this imaginary city, and
the fishermen have many strange tales to tell of it. According to
them, the tips of the spires of the churches may be seen in the hollow
of the waves when the sea is rough, while during a calm the music of
their bells, ringing out the hymn appropriate to the day, rises above
the waters. I often fancy that I have at the bottom of my heart a city
of Is with its bells calling to prayer a recalcitrant congregation.
At times I halt to listen to these gentle vibrations which seem as if
they came from immeasurable depths, like voices from another world.
Since old age began to steal over me, I have loved more especially
during the repose which summer brings with it, to gather up these
distant echoes of a vanished Atlantis.

This it is which has given birth to the six chapters which make up the
present volume. The recollections of my childhood do not pretend to
form a complete and continuous narrative. They are merely the images
which arose before me and the reflections which suggested themselves
to me while I was calling up a past fifty years old, written down in
the order in which they came. Goethe selected as the title for his
memoirs "Truth and Poetry," thereby signifying that a man cannot write
his own biography in the same way that he would that of any one else.
What one says of oneself is always poetical. To fancy that the small
details of one's own life are worth recording is to be guilty of very
petty vanity. A man writes such things in order to transmit to others
the theory of the universe which he carries within himself. The form
of the present work seemed to me a convenient one for expressing
certain shades of thought which my previous writings did not convey.
I had no desire to furnish information about myself for the future use
of those who might wish to write essays or articles about me.

What in history is a recommendation would here have been a drawback;
the whole of this small volume is true, but not true in the sense
required-for a "Biographical Dictionary." I have said several things
with the intent to raise a smile, and, if such a thing had been
compatible with custom, I might have used the expression _cum grano
salis_ as a marginal note in many cases. I have been obliged to be
very careful in what I wrote. Many of the persons to whom I refer may
be still alive; and those who are not accustomed to find themselves in
print have a sort of horror of publicity. I have, therefore,
altered several proper names. In other cases, by means of a slight
transposition of date and place, I have rendered identification
impossible. The story of "the Flax-crusher" is absolutely true, with
the exception that the name of the manor-house is a fictitious one.
With regard to "Good Master Systeme," I have been furnished by M.
Duportal du Godasmeur with further details which do not confirm
certain ideas entertained by my mother as to the mystery in which this
aged recluse enveloped his existence. I have, however, made no change
in the body of the work, thinking that it would be better to leave
M. Duportal to publish the true story, known only to himself, of this
enigmatic character.

The chief defect for which I should feel some apology necessary if
this book had any pretension to be considered a regular memoir of
my life, is that there are many gaps in it. The person who had the
greatest influence on my life, my sister Henriette, is scarcely
mentioned in it.[1] In September 1862, a year after the death of this
invaluable friend, I wrote for the few persons who had known her well,
a short notice of her life. Only a hundred copies were printed. My
sister was so unassuming, and she was so averse from the stress
and stir of the world that I should have fancied I could hear her
reproaching me from her grave, if I had made this sketch public
property. I have more than once been tempted to include it in this
volume, but on second thoughts I have felt that to do so would be an
act of profanation. The pamphlet in question was read and appreciated
by a few persons who were kindly disposed towards her and towards
myself. It would be wrong of me to expose a memory so sacred in my
eyes to the supercilious criticisms which are part and parcel of the
right acquired by the purchaser of a book. It seemed to me that in
placing the lines referring to her in a book for the trade I should
be acting with as much impropriety as if I sent a portrait of her for
sale to an auction room. The pamphlet in question will not, therefore,
be reprinted until after my death, appended to it, very possibly being
several of her letters selected by me beforehand. The natural sequence
of this book, which is neither more nor less than the sequence in the
various periods of my life, brings about a sort of contrast between
the anecdotes of Brittany and those of the Seminary, the latter
being the details of a darksome struggle, full of reasonings and
hard scholasticism, while the recollections of my earlier years are
instinct with the impressions of childlike sensitiveness, of candour,
of innocence, and of affection. There is nothing surprising about
this contrast. Nearly all of us are double. The more a man develops
intellectually, the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole:
that is to say, to the irrational, to the repose of mind in absolute
ignorance, to the woman who is merely a woman, the instinctive being
who acts solely from the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce
school of controversy, in which the mind of Europe has been involved
since the time of Abelard, induces periods of mental drought and
aridity. The brain, parched by reasoning, thirsts for simplicity, like
the desert for spring water. When reflection has brought us up to the
last limit of doubt, the spontaneous affirmation of the good and of
the beautiful which is to be found in the female conscience delights
us and settles the question for us. This is why religion is preserved
to the world by woman alone. A beautiful and a virtuous woman is the
mirage which peoples with lakes and green avenues our great moral
desert. The superiority of modern science consists in the fact
that each step forward it takes is a step further in the order of
abstractions. We make chemistry from chemistry, algebra from algebra;
the very indefatigability with which we fathom nature removes us
further from her. This is as it should be, and let no one fear to
prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes
life. But we need not be surprised at the feverish heat which, after
these orgies of dialectics, can only be calmed by the kisses of the
artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles. Woman restores us to
communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects Himself.
The candour of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing God
clear as the daylight, is the great revelation of the ideal, just as
the unconscious coquetry of the flower is a proof that Nature adorns
herself for a husband.

One should never write except upon that which one loves. Oblivion and
silence are the proper punishments to be inflicted upon all that we
meet with in the way of what is ungainly or vulgar in the course of
our journey through life. Referring to a past which is dear to me,
I have spoken of it with kindly sympathy; but I should be sorry to
create any misapprehension, and to be taken for an uncompromising
reactionist. I love the past, but I envy the future. It would have
been very pleasant to have lived upon this planet at as late a period
as possible. Descartes would be delighted if he could read some
trivial work on natural philosophy and cosmography written in the
present day. The fourth form school boy of our age is acquainted with
truths to know which Archimedes would have laid down his life. What
would we not give to be able to get a glimpse of some book which will
be used as a school-primer a hundred years hence?

We must not, because of our personal tastes, our prejudices perhaps,
set ourselves to oppose the action of our time. This action goes on
without regard to us, and probably it is right. The world is moving in
the direction of what I may call a kind of Americanism, which shocks
our refined ideas, but which, when once the crisis of the present
hour is over, may very possibly not be more inimical than the ancient
_regime_ to the only thing which is of any real importance; viz.
the emancipation and progress of the human mind. A society in which
personal distinction is of little account, in which talent and wit are
not marketable commodities, in which exalted functions do not ennoble,
in which politics are left to men devoid of standing or ability, in
which the recompenses of life are accorded by preference to intrigue,
to vulgarity, to the charlatans who cultivate the art of puffing, and
to the smart people who just keep without the clutches of the law,
would never suit us. We have been accustomed to a more protective
system, and to the government patronizing what is noble and worthy.
But we have not secured this patronage for nothing. Richelieu and
Louis XIV. looked upon it as their duty to provide pensions for men of
merit all the world over; how much better it would have been, if the
spirit of the time had admitted of it, that they should have left
the men of merit to themselves! The period of the Restoration has the
credit of being a liberal one; yet we should certainly not like
to live now under a _regime_ which warped such a genius as Cuvier,
stifled with paltry compromises the keen mind of M. Cousin, and
retarded the growth of criticism by half a century. The concessions
which had to be made to the court, to society, and to the clergy, were
far worse than the petty annoyances which a democracy can inflict upon
us.

The eighteen years of the monarchy of July were in reality a period
of liberty, but the official direction given to things of the mind was
often superficial and no better than would be expected of the average
shopkeeper. With regard to the second empire, if the ten last years of
its duration in some measure repaired the mischief done in the first
eight, it must never be forgotten how strong this government was when
it was a question of crushing the intelligence, and how feeble when
it came to raising it up. The present hour is a gloomy one, and the
immediate outlook is not cheerful. Our unfortunate country is ever
threatened with heart disease, and all Europe is a prey to some
deep-rooted malady. But by way of consolation, let us reflect upon
what we have suffered. The evil to come must be grevious indeed if we
cannot say:

"O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."

The one object in life is the development of the mind, and the first
condition for the development of the mind is that it should have
liberty. The worst social state, from this point of view, is the
theocratic state, like Islamism or the ancient Pontifical state, in
which dogma reigns supreme. Nations with an exclusive state religion,
like Spain, are not much better off. Nations in which a religion of
the majority is recognized are also exposed to serious drawbacks.
In behalf of the real or assumed beliefs of the greatest number, the
state considers itself bound to impose upon thought terms which it
cannot accept. The belief or the opinion of the one side should not
be a fetter upon the other side. As long as the masses were believers,
that is to say, as long as the same sentiments were almost universally
professed by a people, freedom of research and discussion was
impossible. A colossal weight of stupidity pressed down upon the human
mind. The terrible catastrophe of the middle ages, that break of a
thousand years in the history of civilization, is due less to the
barbarians than to the triumph of the dogmatic spirit among the
masses.

This is a state of things which is coming to an end in our time, and
we cannot be surprised if some disturbance ensues. There are no
longer masses which believe; a great number of the people decline
to recognise the supernatural, and the day is not far distant, when
beliefs of this kind will die out altogether in the masses, just as
the belief in familiar spirits and ghosts have disappeared. Even if,
as is probable, we are to have a temporary Catholic reaction, the
people will not revert to the Church. Religion has become for once and
all a matter of personal taste. Now beliefs are only dangerous
when they represent something like unanimity, or an unquestionable
majority. When they are merely individual, there is not a word to be
said against them, and it is our duty to treat them with the respect
which they do not always exhibit for their adversaries, when they feel
that they have force at their back.

There can be no denying that it will take time for the liberty, which
is the aim and object of human society, to take root in France as it
has in America. French democracy has several essential principles to
acquire, before it can become a liberal _regime_. It will be above
all things necessary that we should have laws as to associations,
charitable foundations, and the right of legacy, analogous to those
which are in force in England and America. Supposing this progress to
be effected (if it is Utopian to count upon it in France, it is not so
for the rest of Europe, in which the aspirations for English liberty
become every day more intense), we should really not have much cause
to look regretfully upon the favours conferred by the ancient _regime_
upon things of the mind. I quite think that if democratic ideas were
to secure a definitive triumph, science and scientific teaching would
soon find the modest subsidies now accorded them cut off. This is an
eventuality which would have to be accepted as philosophically as may
be. The free foundations would take the place of the state institutes,
the slight drawbacks being more than compensated for by the advantage
of having no longer to make to the supposed prejudices of the majority
concessions which the state exacted in return for its pittance. The
waste of power in state institutes is enormous. It may safely be said
that not 50 per cent of a credit voted in favour of science, art, or
literature, is expended to any effect. Private foundations would not
be exposed to nearly so much waste. It is true that spurious science
would, in these conditions, flourish side by side with real science,
enjoying the same privileges, and that there would be no official
criterion, as there still is to a certain extent now, to distinguish
the one from the other. But this criterion becomes every day less
reliable. Reason has to submit to the indignity of taking second
place behind those who have a loud voice, and who speak with a tone of
command. The plaudits and favour of the public will, for a long time
to come, be at the service of what is false. But the true has great
power, when it is free; the true endures; the false is ever changing
and decays. Thus it is that the true, though only understood by a
select few, always rises to the surface, and in the end prevails.

In short, it is very possible that the American-like social condition
towards which we are advancing, independently of any particular
form of government, will not be more intolerable for persons of
intelligence than the better guaranteed social conditions which we
have already been subject to. In such a world as this will be, it
will be no difficult matter to create very quiet and snug retreats
for oneself. "The era of mediocrity in all things is about to begin,"
remarked a short time ago that distinguished thinker, M. Arniel of
Geneva. "Equality begets uniformity, and it is by the sacrifice of the
excellent, the remarkable, the extraordinary that we extirpate what
is bad. The whole becomes less coarse; but the whole becomes more
vulgar." We may at least hope that vulgarity will not yet a while
persecute freedom of mind. Descartes, living in the brilliant
seventeenth century, was nowhere so well off as at Amsterdam, because,
as "every one was engaged in trade there," no one paid any heed to
him. It may be that general vulgarity will one day be the condition
of happiness, for the worst American vulgarity would not send Giordano
Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no right to be
very fastidious. In the past we were never more than tolerated.
This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future.
A narrow-minded, democratic _regime_ is often, as we know, very
troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they
can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. _Noli me
tangere is_ the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass
through several alternatives of anarchy and despotism before we find
repose in this happy medium. But liberty is like truth; scarcely any
one loves it on its own account, and yet, owing to the impossibility
of extremes, one always comes back to it.

We may as well, therefore, allow the destinies of this planet to
work themselves out without undue concern. We should gain nothing by
exclaiming against them, and a display of temper would be very much
out of place. It is by no means certain that the earth is not falling
short of its destiny, as has probably happened to countless worlds;
it is even possible that our age may one day be regarded as
the culminating point since which humanity has been steadily
deteriorating; but the universe does not know the meaning of the
word discouragement; it will commence anew the work which has come
to naught; each fresh check leaves it young, alert, and full of
illusions. Be of good cheer, Nature! Pursue, like the deaf and blind
star-fish which vegetates in the bed of the ocean, thy obscure task of
life; persevere; mend for the millionth time the broken meshes of the
net; repair the boring-machine which sinks to the last limits of the
attainable the well from which living water will spring up. Sight and
sight again the aim which thou hast failed to hit throughout the ages;
try to struggle through the scarcely perceptible opening which leads
to another firmament. Thou hast the infinity of time and space to try
the experiment. He who can commit blunders with impunity is always
certain to succeed.

Happy they who shall have had a part in this great final triumph which
will be the complete advent of God! A Paradise lost is always, for him
who wills it so, a Paradise regained. Often as Adam must have mourned
the loss of Eden, I fancy that if he lived, as we are told, 930 years
after his fall, he must often have exclaimed: _Felix culpa!_ Truth is,
whatever may be said to the contrary, superior to all fictions. One
ought never to regret seeing clearer into the depths. By endeavouring
to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital
of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors,
who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time.
The most fatal error is to believe that one serves one's country by
calumniating those who founded it. All ages of a nation are leaves of
the self-same book. The true men of progress are those who profess as
their starting-point a profound respect for the past. All that we do,
all that we are, is the outcome of ages of labour. For my own part,
I never feel my liberal faith more firmly rooted in me than when I
ponder over the miracles of the ancient creed, nor more ardent for the
work of the future than when I have been listening for hours to the
bells of the city of Is.

[Footnote 1: Upon the very day that this volume was going to press,
news reached me of the death of my brother, snapping the last thread
of the recollections of my childhood's home. My brother Alain was
a warm and true friend to me; he never failed to understand me,
to approve my course of action and to love me. His clear and sound
intellect and his great capacity for work adapted him for a profession
in which mathematical knowledge is of value or for magisterial
functions. The misfortunes of our family caused him to follow a
different career, and he underwent many hardships with unshaken
courage. He never complained of his lot, though life had scant
enjoyment save that which is derived from love of home. These joys
are, however, unquestionably the most unalloyed.]




THE FLAX-CRUSHER.

PART I.


Treguier, my native place, has grown into a town out of an ancient
monastery founded at the close of the fifth century by St. Tudwal (or
Tual), one of the religious leaders of those great migratory movements
which introduced into the Armorican peninsula the name, the race, and
the religious institutions of the island of Britain. The predominating
characteristic of early British Christianity was its monastic
tendency, and there were no bishops, at all events among the
immigrants, whose first step, after landing in Brittany, the north
coast of which must at that time have been very sparsely inhabited,
was to build large monasteries, the abbots of which had the cure of
souls. A circle of from three to five miles in circumference, called
the _minihi_, was drawn around each monastery, and the territory
within it was invested with special privileges.

The monasteries were called in the Breton dialect _pabu_ after the
monks (_papae_), and in this way the monastery of Treguier was known
as _Pabu Tual_.

It was the religious centre of all that part of the peninsula which
stretches northward. Monasteries of a similar kind at St. Pol de Leon,
St. Brieuc, St. Malo, and St. Samson, near Dol, held a like position
upon the coast. They possessed, if one may so speak, their diocese,
for in these regions separated from the rest of Christianity nothing
was known of the power of Rome and of the religious institutions which
prevailed in the Latin world, or even in the Gallo-Roman towns of
Rennes and Nantes, hard by.

When Nomenoe, in the ninth century, reduced to something like a
regular organisation this half savage society of emigrants and created
the Duchy of Brittany by annexing to the territory in which the
Breton tongue was spoken, the Marches of Brittany, established by the
Carlovingians to hold in respect the forayers of the west, he found it
advisable to assimilate its religious organisation to that of the rest
of the world. He determined, therefore, that there should be bishops
on the northern coast, as there were at Rennes, Nantes, and Vannes,
and he accordingly converted into bishoprics the monasteries of St.
Pol de Leon, Treguier, St. Brieuc, St. Malo, and Dol. He would
have liked to have had an archbishop as well and so form a separate
ecclesiastical province, but, despite the well-intentioned devices
employed to prove that St. Samson had been a metropolitan prelate, the
grades of the Church universal were already apportioned, and the new
bishoprics were perforce compelled to attach themselves to the nearest
Gallo-Roman province at Tours.

The meaning of these obscure beginnings gradually faded away, and from
the name of _Pabu Tual, Papa Tual_, found, as was reported, upon some
old stained-glass windows, it was inferred that St. Tudwal had been
Pope. The explanation seemed a very simple one, for St. Tudwal, it was
well known, had been to Rome, and he was so holy a man that what could
be more natural than that the cardinals, when they became acquainted
with him, should have selected him for the vacant See. Such things
were always happening, and the godly persons of Treguier were
very proud of the pontifical reign of their patron saint. The more
reasonable ecclesiastics, however, admitted that it was no easy matter
to discover among the list, of popes the pontiff who previous to his
election was known as Tudwal.

In course of time a small town grew up around the bishop's palace,
but the lay town, dependent entirely upon the Church, increased very
slowly. The port failed to acquire any importance, and no wealthy
trading class came into existence. A very fine cathedral was built
towards the close of the thirteenth century, and from the beginning
of the seventeenth the monasteries became so numerous that they formed
whole streets to themselves. The bishop's palace, a handsome building
of the seventeenth century, and a few canons' residences were the only
houses inhabited by people of civilized habits. In the lower part of
the town, at the end of the High Street, which was flanked by several
turreted buildings, were a few inns for the accommodation of the
sailors.

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