Chapter VII — RELIGION

RELIGION

It is outside our purpose to embark upon discussions of the religious problem in France, in so far as this became a problem of politics. Our intention is rather to examine the inner core of religious thought, the philosophy of religion, which forms an appropriate final chapter to our history of the development of ideas.

Yet, although our discussion bears mainly upon the general attitude to religion, upon the development of central religious ideas such as the idea of God, and upon the place of religion in the future—that is to say, upon the philosophy of religion—it is practically impossible to understand the religious attitude of our thinkers without a brief notice of the religious situation in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In our Introduction we briefly called attention to the attempt of the Traditionalists after the Revolution to recall their countrymen to the Christian faith as presented in and by the Roman Catholic Church. The efforts made by De Bonald, De Maistre, Chateaubriand, Lamennais and Lacordaire did not succeed as they had hoped, but, nevertheless, a considerable current of loyalty to the Church and the Catholic religion set in. Much of this loyalty was bound up with sentimental affection for a monarchy, and arose partly from anti-revolutionary sentiments. It cannot, however, be entirely explained by these political feelings. There was the expression of a deeper and more spiritual reaction directed against the materialistic and sceptical teachings of the eighteenth century. Man’s heart craved comfort, consolation and warmth. It had been starved in the previous century, and revolution and war had only added to the cup of bitterness. Thus there came an epoch of Romanticism in religion of which the sentimental and assumed orthodoxy of Chateaubriand was a sign of the times. His Génie du Christianisme may now appear to us full of sentimentality, but it was welcomed at the time, since it expressed at least some of those aspirations which had for long been denied an expression. It was this which marked the great difference between the two centuries in France. The eighteenth was mainly concerned with scoffing at religion. Its rationalism was that of Voltaire. In the first half of the nineteenth century the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. Romanticism, in poetry, in literature, in philosophy and in religion was à la mode, and it led frequently to sentimentality or morbidity. Lamartine, Victor Hugo and De Vigny professed the Catholic faith for many years. We may note, and this is important, that in France the only form of Christianity which holds any sway over the people in general is the Roman Catholic faith. Outside the Roman Church there is no religious organisation which is of much account. This explains why it is so rare to find a thinker who owns allegiance to any Church or religion, and yet it would be wrong to deem them irreligious. There is no via media between Catholicism and free personal thought. This was a point which Renan quite keenly felt, and of which his own spiritual pilgrimage, which took him out of the bounds of the Church of his youth, is a fine illustration. Many of France’s noblest sons have been brought up in the religious atmosphere of the Church and owe much of their education to her, and Rome believes in education. The control of education has been throughout the century a problem severely contested by Church and State. More important for our purpose than the details of the quarrels of Church and State is the intellectual condition of the Church itself.

De Maistre regarded the Revolution as an infliction specially bestowed upon France for her national neglect of religion—his religion, of course. The same crude, misleading, and vicious arguments have since been put forward by the theologians in their efforts to push the cause of the Church with the people. This was very noticeable both in the war of 1870 and that of 1914. In each case it was argued that the war was a punishment from God for France’s frivolity and neglect of the Church. In 1914, in addition, it was deemed a direct divine reply to “Disestablishment.”

This reveals a striking vitality, a vigour and initiative at war with the central powers of the Vatican, a seething unrest which uniformity and authority find annoying. How strong the power of the central authority was, the affair of the Concordat had shown, when forty bishops were deposed for non-acceptance of the arrangement between Napoleon and the Pope. Stronger still was the iron hand of the Pope over intellectual freedom.

The Revolution had separated Church and State and suppressed clerical privilege by the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” enactment of 1790. Napoleon, alive to the patriotic value of a State Church, repealed this law and declared the divorce of Church and State to be null and void. His negotiations with the Pope (Pius VII.) resulted, in 1801, in the arrangement known as the Concordat, by which the Roman Catholic Church was again made the established national Church, its clergy became civil servants paid by the State, and its worship became a branch of public administration.

Lamennais was not a “modernist,” as this term is now understood, for his theology was orthodox. His fight with the Vatican was for freedom in the relations of the Church to society. He pleaded in his Essai sur L’indifference en Matière de Religion for the Church to accept the principle of freedom, to leave the cherished fondling of the royalist cause, and to present to the world the principles of a Christian democracy. Lamennais and other liberal-minded men desired the separation of Church and State, and were tolerant of those who were not Catholic. They claimed, along with their own “right to believe,” that of others “not to believe.” His was a liberal Catholicism, but its proposals frightened his co-religionists, and drew upon him in 1832 an encyclical letter (Mirari vos) from the Vatican. The Pope denounced liberalism absolutely as an absurd and an erroneous doctrine, a piece of folly sprung from the “fetid source of indifferentism.” Lamennais found he could not argue, as Renan himself later put it, “with a bar of iron.” It was the reactionary De Maistre, with his principle of papal authority, and not Lamennais, whom the Vatican, naturally enough, chose to favour, or rather to follow.

As stated in Du Pape, 1819.

Thus Lamennais found himself, by an almost natural and inevitable process, outside the Church, and this in spite of the fact that his theology was orthodox. He endeavoured to present his case in his paper L’Avenir and in an influential brochure, The Words of a Believer, which left its mark upon Hugo, Michelet, Lamartine, and George Sand. His views blended with the current of humanitarian and democratic doctrines which developed from the Saint-Simonists, Pierre Leroux and similar thinkers. We have already noted that these social reformers held to their beliefs with the conviction that in them and not in the Roman Church lay salvation.

This brings us to a crucial point which is the clue to much of the subsequent thought upon religion. This is the profound and seemingly irreconcilable difference between these two conceptions of religion.

The orthodox Catholic faith believes in a supernatural revelation, and is firmly convinced that man is inherently vile and corrupt, born in sin from which he cannot be redeemed, save by the mystical operations of divine grace, working only through the holy sacraments and clergy of the one true Church, to whom all power was given, according to its view, by the historic Jesus. Its methods are conservative, its discipline rigid and based on tradition and authority. Its system of salvation is excessively individualistic. It holds firmly to this pessimistic view of human nature, based on the doctrine of original sin, thus maintaining a creed which, in the hands of a devoted clergy, who are free from domestic ties, works as a powerful moral force upon the individual believer. His freedom of thought is restricted; he can neither read nor think what he likes, and the Church, having made the thirteenth-century doctrines of Aquinas its official philosophy, hurls anathema at ideas scientific, political, philosophical or theological which have appeared since. No half-measures are allowed: either one is a loyal Catholic or one is not a Catholic at all. In this relentlessly uncompromising attitude lies the main strength of Catholicism; herein also is contained its weakness, or at least that element which makes it manufacture its own greatest adversaries.

While claiming to be the one Church of Jesus Christ, it does not by any means put him in the foreground of its religion. Its hierarchy of saints is rather a survival of polytheism; its worship of the Virgin and cult of the Sacré Cœur issue often in a religious sentimentality and sensuality promoted by the denial of a more healthy outlet for instincts which are an essential part of human nature. Tribute, however, must be paid—high tribute—to the devotion of individuals, particularly to the work done by the religious orders of women, whose devotion the Church having won by its intense appeal to women keeps, consecrates and organises in a manner which no other Church has succeeded in doing. This is largely the secret of the vigorous life of the Church, for as a power of charity the Roman Church is remarkable and deserves respect. Her educational efforts, her missions, hospitals, her humbler clergy, and her orders which offer opportunity of service or of sanctuary to all types of human nature—these constitute Roman Catholicism in a truer manner than the diplomacy of the Jesuits or the councils of the Vatican. It is this pulsing human heart of hers which keeps her alive, not the rigid intellectual dogmatism and antiquated theology which she expounds, nor her loyalty to the established political order, which, siding with the rich and powerful, frequently gives to this professedly spiritual power a debasing taint of materialism.

Against all this, and in vital opposition to this, we have the humanitarians who, rejecting the doctrine of corruption, believe that human instincts and human reason themselves make for goodness and for God. While Catholicism looks to the past, humanitarianism looks forward, believes in freedom and in progress, and regards the immanent Christ-spirit as working in mankind. Its gospel is one of love and brotherhood, a romantic doctrine issuing in love and pity for the oppressed and the sinful. In the collective consciousness of mankind it sees the incarnation, the growth of the immanent God. Therefore it claims that in democracy, socialism and world brotherhood lies the true Christianity. This, the humanitarians claim, is the true religious idealism—that which was preached by the Founder himself and which his Church has betrayed. The humanitarians make service to mankind the essence of religion, and regard themselves as more truly Christian than the Church.

In those countries where Protestantism has a large following, the two doctrines of humanitarian optimism and of the orthodox pessimism regarding human nature are confused vaguely together. The English mind in particular is able to compromise and to blend the two conflicting philosophies in varying degrees; but in the French mind its clearer penetration and more logical acumen prevent this. The Frenchman is an idealist and tends to extremes, either that of whole-hearted devotion to a dominating Church or that of the abandonment of organised religion. In Protestantism he sees only a halfway house, built upon the first principles of criticism, and unwilling to pursue those principles to their conclusion—namely, the rejection of all organised Church religion, the adoption of perfect freedom for the individual in all matters of belief, a religion founded on freedom and on personal thought which alone is free.

Such were the two dominant notes in religious thought in France at the opening of our period.

Catholicism resisted the humanitarianism of 1848 and strengthened its power after the coup d’état. The Church and the Vatican became more staunch in their opposition to all doctrines of modern thought. The French clergy profited by the alliance with the aristocracy, while religious orders, particularly the Jesuits, increased in number and in power. Veuillot proclaimed the virtues of Catholicism in his writings. Meanwhile the Pope’s temporal power decreased, but his spiritual power was increasing in extent and in intensity. Centralisation went on within the Church, and Rome (i.e., the Pope and the Vatican) became all-powerful.

Just after the half-century opens the Pope (Pius IX.), in 1854, proclaimed his authority in announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. As France had heard the sentence, L’Etat, c’est moi, from the lips of one of its greatest monarchs, it now heard from another quarter a similar principle enunciated, L’Eglise, c’est moi. As democracy and freedom cried out against the one, they did so against the other. Undaunted, the Vatican continued in its absolutism, even although it must have seen that in some quarters revolt would be the result. Ten years later the Pope attacked the whole of modern thought, to which he was diametrically opposed, in his encyclical Quanta Cura and in his famous Syllabus, which constituted a catalogue of the modern errors and heresies which he condemned. This famous challenge was quite clear and uncompromising in its attitude, concluding with a curse upon “him who should maintain that the Roman Pontiff can, and must, be reconciled and compromise with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation!” To the doctrine of L’Eglise, c’est moi had now been added that of La Science, aussi, c’est moi. This was not all. In 1870 the dogma of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed. By a strange irony of history, however, this declaration of spiritual absolutism was followed by an entire loss of temporal power. The outbreak of the war in that same year between France and Prussia led to the hasty withdrawal of French troops from the Papal Domain and the Eternal City fell to the secular power of the Italian national army under Victor Emmanuel.

This new dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin must not, of course, be confused, as it often is by those outside the Catholic Church, with the quite different and more ancient proposition which asserts the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

The defeat of France at the hands of Prussia in 1871 issued in a revival of religious sentiment, frequently seen in defeated nations. A special mission or crusade of national repentance gathered in large subscriptions which built the enormous Church of the Sacré Coeur overlooking Paris from the heights of Montmartre.

The anti-Catholic element, however, have had the audacity, and evidently the legal right, to place a statue to a man who, some centuries back, was burned at the stake for failing to salute a religious procession, in such a position immediately in front of this great church that the plan for the large staircase cannot be carried out.

Seeking for religious consolation, the French people found a Catholicism which had become embittered and centralised for warfare upon liberal religion and humanitarianism. They found that the only organised religion they knew was dominated by the might of Rome and the powers of the clergy. These even wished France, demoralised as she was for the moment, to undertake the restoration of the Pope’s temporal power in Italy. Further, they were definitely in favour of monarchy: “the altar and the throne” were intimately associated in the ecclesiastical mind.

It was the realisation of this which prompted Gambetta to cry out to the Third Republic with stern warning, “Clericalism is your enemy.” Thus began the political fight for which Rome had been strengthening herself. With the defeat of the clerical-monarchy party in 1877 the safety of the Republic was assured. From then until 1905 the Republic and the Church fought each other. Educational questions were bitterly contested (1880). The power of the Jesuits, especially, was regarded as a constant menace to the State. The Dreyfus affair (1894- 1899) did not improve relations, with its intense anti-semitism and anti-clericalism. The battle was only concluded by the legislation of Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 and Combes in 1903, expelling religious orders. Combes himself had studied for the priesthood and was violently anti-clerical. The culmination came in the Separation Law of 1905 carried by Briand, in the Pope’s protest against this, followed by the Republic’s confiscation of much Church property, a step which might have been avoided if the French Catholics had been allowed to have their way in an arrangement with the State regarding their churches. This was prevented by the severance of diplomatic relations between France and the Vatican and by the Pope’s disagreement with the French Catholics whose wishes he ignored in his policy of definite hostility to the French Government.

Relations with the Vatican, which were seen to be desirable during the Great European War, have since been resumed (in 1921) by the Republic.

During our period a popular semi-nationalist and semi-religious cult of Jeanne d’Arc, “the Maid of Orleans,” appeared in France. The clergy expressly encouraged this, with the definite object of enlisting sentiments of nationality and patriotism on the side of the Church. Ecclesiastical diplomacy at headquarters quickly realised the use which might be made of this patriotic figure whom, centuries before, the Church had thought fit to burn as a witch. The Vatican saw a possibility of blending French patriotism with devotion to Catholicism and thus possibly strengthening, in the eyes of the populace at least, the waning cause of the Church.

The adoration of Jeanne d’Arc was approved as early as 1894, but when the Church found itself in a worse plight with its relation to the State, it made preparations in 1903 for her enrolment among the saints. She was honoured the following year with the title of “Venerable,” but in 1908, after the break of Church and State, she was accorded the full status of a saint, and her statue, symbolic of patriotism militant, stands in most French churches as conspicuous often as that of the Virgin, who, in curious contrast, fondles the young child, and expresses the supreme loveliness of motherhood. The cult of Jeanne d’Arc flourished particularly in 1914 on the sentiments of patriotism, militarism and religiosity then current. This was natural because it is for these very sentiments that she stands as a symbol. She is evidently a worthy goddess whose worship is worth while, for we are assured that it was through her beneficent efforts that the German Army retired from Paris in 1914 and again in 1918. The saintly maid of Orleans reappeared and beat them back! Such is the power of the “culte” which the Church eagerly fosters. The Sacré Coeur also has its patriotic and military uses, figuring as it did as an emblem on some regimental flags on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the celebrations of Napoleon’s centenary (1921) give rise to the conjecture that he, too, will in time rank with Joan of Arc as a saint. His canonisation would achieve absolutely that union of patriotic and religious sentimentality to which the Church in France directs its activities.

t is interesting to observe the literature on Jeanne d’Arc published at this time: Anatole France, Vie de Jeanne d’Arc (2 vols., 1908); Durand, Jeanne d’Arc et l’Eglise (1908). These are noteworthy, also Andrew Lang’s work, The Maid of Orleans (also 1908).

Herein, undoubtedly, lies the strong appeal of the Church to women.

The vast majority of the 39,000,000 French people are at least nominally Catholic, even if only from courtesy or from a utilitarian point of view. Only about one in sixty of the population are Protestant. Although among cultured conservatives there is a real devotion to the Church, the creed of France is in general something far more broad and human than Catholicism, in spite of the tremendously human qualities which that Church possesses. The creed of France is summed up better in art, nature, beauty, music, science, la patrie, humanity, in the worship of life itself.

Those who desire to study the religious psychology of France during our period cannot find a better revelation than that given in the wonderful novel by Roger Martin du Card, entitled Jean Barois.

I

It was against such a background of ecclesiastical and political affairs that the play of ideas upon religion went on. Such was the environment, the tradition which surrounded our thinkers, and we may very firmly claim that only by a recognition that their religious and national milieu was of such a type as we have outlined, can the real significance of their religious thought be understood. Only when we have grasped the essential attitude of authority and tradition of the Roman Church, its ruthless attitude to modern thought of all kinds, can we understand the religious attitude of men like Renan, Renouvier and Guyau.

We are also enabled to see why the appeal of the Saint-Simonist group could present itself as a religious and, indeed, Christian appeal outside the Church. It enables us to understand why Cousin’s spiritualism pleased neither the Catholics nor their opponents, and to realise why the “Religion of Humanity,” which Auguste Comte inaugurated, made so little appeal. This has been well styled an “inverted Catholicism,” since it endeavours to preserve the ritual of that religion and to embody the doctrines of humanitarianism. Naturally enough it drew upon itself the scorn of both these groups. The Catholic saw in it only blasphemy: the humanitarian saw no way in which it might further his ends.

Littré, his disciple, as we have already noted, rejected this part of his master’s teaching. Littré was opposed by Robinet, who laid the stress upon the “Religion of Humanity” as the crown of Comte’s work.

Comte’s attempt to base his new religion upon Catholicism was quite deliberate, for he strove to introduce analogies with “everything great and deep which the Catholic system of the Middle Ages effected or even projected.” He offered a new and fantastic trinity, compiled a calendar of renowned historical personalities, to replace that of unknown saints. He proclaimed “positive dogmas “and aspired to all the authority and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, supported by a trained clergy, whose word should be law. Curiously enough he, too, had his anathemas, in that he had days set apart for the solemn cursing of the great enemies of the human race, such as Napoleon. It was indeed a reversed Catholicism, offering a fairly good caricature of the methods of the Roman Church, and it was equally obnoxious in its tyrannical attitude. While it professed to express humanity and love as its central ideas it proceeded to outline a method which is the utter negation of these. Comte made the great mistake of not realising that loyalty to these ideals must involve spiritual freedom, and that the religion of humanity must be a collective inspiration of free individuals, who will in love and fellowship tolerate differences upon metaphysical questions. Uniformity can only be mischievous.

Guyau’s criticisms of Comte’s “Religion of Humanity” in his L’Irreligion de l’Avenir are interesting. “The marriage of positive science and blind sentiment cannot produce religion” (p. 314; Eng. trans., p. 366). “Comtism, which consists of the rites of religion and nothing else, is an attempt to maintain life in the body after the departure of the soul” (p. 307; Eng. trans., p. 359).

It was because he grasped this vital point that Renan’s discussion of the religious question is so instructive. For him, religion is essentially an affair of personal taste. Here we have another indication of the clear way in which Renan was able to discern the tendencies of his time. He published his Etudes d’Histoire religieuse in 1857, and his Preface to the Nouvelles Etudes d’Histoire religieuse was written in 1884. He claims there that freedom is essential to religion, and that it is absolutely necessary that the State should have no power whatever over it. Religion is as personal and private a matter as taste in literature or art. There should be no State laws, he claims, relating to religion at all, any more than dress is prescribed for citizens by law. He well points out that only a State which is strictly neutral in religion can ever be absolutely free from playing the rôle of persecutor. The favouring of one sect will entail some persecution or hardship upon others. Further, he sees the iniquity of taxing the community to pay the expenses of clergy to whose teachings they may object, or whose doctrines are not theirs. Freedom, Renan believed, would claim its own in the near future and, denouncing the Concordat, he prophesied the abolition of the State Church.

The worst type of organisation Renan holds to be the theocratic state, like Islam, or the ancient Pontifical State in which dogma reigns supreme. He condemns also the State whose religion is based upon the profession of a majority of its citizens. There should be, as Spinoza was wont to style it, “liberty of philosophising.” The days of the dominance of dogma are passing, in many quarters gone by already, “Religion has become for once and all a matter of personal taste.”

Renan himself was deeply religious in mind. He was never an atheist and did not care for the term “free-thinker” because of its implied associations with the irreligion of the previous century. He stands out, however, not only in our period of French thought, but in the world development of the century as one of the greatest masters of religious criticism. His historical work is important, and he possessed a knowledge and equipment for that task. His distinguished Semitic scholarship led to his obtaining the chair of Hebrew at the Collège de France, and enabled him to write his Histories, one of the Jews and one of Christianity.

It was as a volume of this Histoire des Origines du Christianisme that his Vie de Jésus appeared in 1863. This life of the Founder of Christianity produced a profound stir in the camps of religious orthodoxy, and drew upon its author severe criticisms. Apart from the particular views set forth in that volume, we must remember that the very fact of his writing upon “a sacred subject,” which was looked upon as a close preserve, reserved for the theologians or churchmen alone, was deemed at that time an original and daring feat in France.

His particular views, which created at the time such scandal, were akin to those of Baur and the Tubingen School, which Strauss (Renan’s contemporary) had already set forth in his Leben Jesu. Briefly, they may be expressed as the rejection of the supernatural. Herein is seen the scientific or “positive” influence at work upon the dogmas of the Christian religion, a tendency which culminated in “Modernism” within the Church, only to be condemned violently by the Pope in 1907. It was this temper, produced by the study of documents, by criticism and historical research which put Renan out of the Catholic Church. His rational mind could not accept the dogmas laid down. Lamennais (who was conservative and orthodox in his theology, and possessed no taint of “modernism” in the technical sense) had declared that the starting-point should be faith and not reason. Renan aptly asks in reply to this, “and what is to be the test, in the last resort, of the claims of faith is not reason?”

Written in 1835. Littré issued a French translation in 1839, a year previous to the appearance of the English version by George Eliot. Strauss’s life covers 1808-1874.

In Renan we find a good illustration of the working of the spirit of modern thought upon a religious mind. Being a sincere and penetrating intellect he could not, like so many people, learned folk among them, keep his religious ideas and his reason in separate watertight compartments. This kind of people Renan likens in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse to mother-o’-pearl shells of Francois de Sales “which are able to live in the sea without tasting a drop of salt water.” Yet he realises the comfort of such an attitude. “I see around me,” he continues, “men of pure and simple lives whom Christianity has had the power to make virtuous and happy. . . . But I have noticed that none of them have the critical faculty, for which let them bless God!” He well realises the contentment which, springing sometimes from a dullness of mind or lack of sensitiveness, excludes all doubt and all problems.

In Catholicism he sees a bar of iron which will not reason or bend. “I can only return to it by amputation of my faculties, by definitely stigmatising my reason and condemning it to perpetual silence.” Writing of his exit from the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he was trained for the priesthood, he remarks in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse that “there were times when I was sorry that I was not a Protestant, so that I might be a philosopher without ceasing to be a Christian.” For Renan, as for so many minds in modern France, severance from the Roman Church is equivalent to severance from Christianity as an organised religion. The practical dilemma is presented of unquestioning obedience to an infallible Church on the one hand, or the attitude of libre-penseur on the other. There are not the accommodating varieties of the Protestant presentation of the Christian religion. Renan’s spiritual pilgrimage is but an example of many. In a measure this condition of affairs is a source of strength to the Roman Church for, since a break with it so often means a break with Christianity or indeed with all definite religion, only the bolder and stronger thinkers make the break which their intellect makes imperative. The mass of the people, however dissatisfied they may be with the Church, nevertheless accept it, for they see no alternative but the opposite extreme. No half-way house of non-conformity presents itself as a rule.

Yet, as we have insisted, Renan had an essentially religious view of the universe, and he expressly claimed that his break with the Church and his criticism of her were due to a devotion to pure religion, and he even adds, to a loyalty to the spirit of her Founder. Although, as he remarks in his Nouvelles Etudes religieuses, it is true that the most modest education tends to destroy the belief in the superstitious elements in religion, it is none the less true that the very highest culture can never destroy religion in the highest sense. “Dogmas pass, but piety is eternal.” The external trappings of religion have suffered by the growth of the modern sciences of nature and of historical criticism. The mind of cultivated persons does not now present the same attitude to evidence in regard to religious doctrines which were once accepted without question. The sources of the origins of the Christian religion are themselves questionable. This, Renan says, must not discourage the believers in true religion, for that is not the kind of foundation upon which religion reposes. Dogmas in the past gave rise to divisions and quarrels, only by feeling can religious persons be united in fellowship. The most prophetic words of Jesus were, Renan points out, those in which he indicated a time when men “would not worship God in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but when the true worshippers would worship in spirit and in truth.” It was precisely this spirit which Renan admired in Jesus, whom he considered more of a philosopher than the Church, and he reminds the “Christians” who railed against him as an unbeliever that Jesus had had much more influence upon him than they gave him credit for, and, more particularly, that his break with the Church was due to loyalty to Jesus. By such loyalty Renan meant not a blind worship, but a reverence which endeavoured to appreciate and follow the ideals for which Jesus himself stood. It did not involve slavish acceptance of all he said, even if that were intelligible, and clear, which it is not. “To be a Platonist,” remarks Renan, “I need not adore Plato, or believe all that he said.”

Renan complains of the ignorance of the clergy of Rome regarding his own work, which they did not understand because they had not read it, merely relying on the Press and other sources for false and biassed accounts.

Cf. Renan’s Essay in Questions contemporaines on “L’Avenir religieux des Sociétés modernes.”

Renan is in agreement with the central ideas of Jesus’ own faith, and he rightly regards him as one of the greatest contributors to the world’s religious thought. Renan’s religion is free from supernaturalism and dogma. He believes in infinite Goodness or Providence, but he despises the vulgar and crude conceptions of God which so mar a truly religious outlook. He points out how prayer, in the sense of a request to Heaven for a particular object, is becoming recognised as foolish. ‘As a “meditation,” an interview with one’s own conscience, it has a deeply religious value. The vulgar idea of prayer reposes on an immoral conception of God. Renan rightly sees the central importance for religion of possessing a sane view of the divinity, not one which belongs to primitive tribal wargods and weather-gods. He aptly says, in this connection, that the one who was defeated in 1871 was not only France but le bon Dieu to which she in vain appealed. In his place was to be found, remarks Renan with a little sarcasm, “only a Lord God of Hosts who was unmoved by the moral ‘délicatesse’ of the Uhlans and the incontestable excellence of the Prussian shells.” He rightly points to the immoral use made of the divinity by pious folk whose whole religion is utilitarian and materialistic. They do good only in order to get to heaven or escape hell, and believe in God because it is necessary for them to have a confidant and sonsoler, to whom they may cry in time of trouble, and to whose will they may resignedly impute the evil chastisement which their own errors have brought upon them individually or collectively. But, he rightly claims, it is only where utilitarian calculations and self-interest end, that religion begins with the sense of the Infinite and of the Ideal Goodness and Beauty and Love.

Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques, p. ix.

One pious individual thought to convert Renan himself by writing him every month, quite briefly, to this effect “There is a hell.”

He endeavours in his Examen de Conscience philosophique (1888) to sum up his attitude upon this question. There he affirms that it is beyond dispute or doubt that we have no evidence whatever of the action in the universe of one or of several wills superior to that of man. The actual state of this universe gives no sign of any external intervention, and we know nothing of its beginning. No beneficent interfering power, a deus ex machinâ, corrects or directs the operation of blind forces, enlightens man or improves his lot. No God appears miraculously to prevent evils, to crush disease, stop wars, or save his children from peril. No end or purpose is visible to us. God in the popular sense, living and acting as a Divine Providence, is not to be seen in our universe. The question is, however, whether this universe of ours is the totality of existence. Doubt comes into play here, and if our universe is not this totality, then God, although absent from his world, might still exist outside it. Our finite world is little in relation to the Infinite, it is a mere speck in the universe we know, and its duration to a divine Being might be only a day.

The Infinite, continues Renan, surrounds our finite world above and below. It stretches on the one hand to the infinitely large concourse of worlds and systems, and, on the other, to the infinitely little as atoms, microbes and the germs by which human life itself is passed on from one generation to another. The prospect of the world we know involves logically and fatally, says Renan, atheism. But this atheism, he adds, may be due to the fact that we cannot see far enough. Our universe is a phenomenon which has had a beginning and will have an end. That which has had no beginning and will have no end is the Absolute All, or God. Metaphysics has always been a science proceeding upon this assumption, “Something exists, therefore something has existed from all eternity.” which is akin to the scientific principle, “No effect with- out a cause.”

Examen de Conscience philosophique, p. 412 of the volume Feuilles détachées.

We must not allow ourselves to be misled too far by the constructions or inductions about the uniformity and immutability of the laws of nature. “A God may reveal himself, perhaps, one day.” The infinite may dispose of our finite world, use it for its own ends. The expression, “Nature and its author,” may not be so absurd as some seem to think it. It is true that our experience presents no reason for forming such an hypothesis, but we must keep our sense of the infinite. “Everything is possible, even God,” and Renan adds, “If God exists, he must be good, and he will finish by being just.” It is as foolish to deny as to assert his existence in a dogmatic and thoughtless manner. It is upon this sense of the infinite and upon the ideals of Goodness, Beauty and Love that true faith or piety reposes.

Love, declares Renan, is one of the principal revelations of the divine, and he laments the neglect of it by philosophy. It runs in a certain sense through all living beings, and in man has been the school of gentleness and courtesy—nay more, of morals and of religion. Love, understood in the high sense, is a sacred, religious thing, or rather is a part of religion itself. In a tone which recalls that of the New Testament and Tolstoi, Renan beseeches us to remember that God is Love, and that where Love is there God is. In loving, man is at his best; he goes out of himself and feels himself in contact with the infinite. The very act of love is veritably sacred and divine, the union of body and soul with another is a holy communion with the infinite. He remarks in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse, doubtless remembering the simple purity and piety of his mother and sister, that when reflection has brought us to doubt, and even to a scepticism regarding goodness, then the spontaneous affirmation of goodness and beauty which exists in a noble and virtuous woman saves us from cynicism and restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects himself. Love, which Renan with reason laments as having been neglected on its most serious side and looked upon as mere sentimentality, offers the highest proof of God. In it lies our umbilical link with nature, but at the same time our communion with the infinite. He recalls some of Browning’s views in his attitude to love as a redeeming power. The most wretched criminal still has something good in him, a divine spark, if he be capable of loving.

It is the spirit of love and goodness which Renan admires in the simple faith of those separated far from him in their theological ideas. “God forbid,” he says, “that I should speak slightingly of those who, devoid of the critical sense, and impelled by very pure and powerful religious motives, are attached to one or other of the great established systems of faith. I love the simple faith of the peasant, the serious conviction of the priest.”

“Supprimer Dieu, serait-ce amoindrir l’univers?”

asks Guyau in one of his Vers d’un Philosophe.’ Renan observes that if we tell the simple to live by aspiration after truth and beauty, these words would have no meaning for them. “Tell them to love God, not to offend God, they will understand you perfectly. God, Providence, soul, good old words, rather heavy, but expressive and respectable which science will explain, but will never replace with advantage. What is God for humanity if not the category of the ideal?”

“Question,” Vers d’un Philosophe, p. 65.

This is the point upon which Vacherot insisted in his treatment of religion. He claimed that the conception of God arises in the human consciousness from a combination of two separate ideas. The first is the notion of the Infinite which Science itself approves, the second the notion of perfection which Science is unable to show us anywhere unless it be found in the human consciousness and its thoughts, where it abides as the magnetic force ever drawing us onward and acts at the same time as a dynamic, giving power to every progressive movement, being “the Ideal” in the mind and heart of man.

Similar was the doctrine of Taine, who saw in Reason the ideal which would produce in mankind a new religion, which would be that of Science and Philosophy demanding from art forms of expression in harmony with themselves. This religion would be free in doctrine. Taine himself looked upon religion as “a metaphysical poem accompanied by belief,” and he approached to the conception of Spinoza of a contemplation which may well be called an “intellectual love of God.”

II

Like Renan, Renouvier was keenly interested in religion and its problems; he was also a keen opponent of the Roman Catholic Church and faith, against which he brought his influence into play in two ways—by his néo-criticisme as expressed in his written volumes and by his energetic editing of the two periodicals La Critique philosophique and La Critique religieuse.

In undertaking the publication of these periodicals Renouvier’s confessed aim was that of a definite propaganda. While the Roman Church profited by the feelings of disappointment and demoralisation which followed the Franco-Prussian War, and strove to shepherd wavering souls again into its fold, to find there a peace which evidently the world could not give, Renouvier (together with his friend Pillon) endeavoured to rally his countrymen by urging the importance, and, if possible, the acceptance of his own political and religious convictions arising out of his philosophy. The Critique philosophique appeared weekly from its commencement in 1872 until 1884, thereafter as a monthly until 1889. Among its contributors, whose names are of religious significance, were A. Sabatier, L. Dauriac, R. Allier and William James.

Now Dean of the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris.

Renouvier’s great enthusiasm for his periodical is the main feature of this period of his life, although, owing to his tremendous energy, it does not seem to have interfered with the publication of his more permanent works. The political and general policy of this journal may be summed up in a sentence from the last year’s issue, where we find Renouvier remarking that it had been his aim throughout “to uphold strictly republican principles and to fight all that savoured of Caesar, or imperialism.” The declared foe of monarchy in politics, he was equally the declared foe of the Pope in the religious realm. His attitude was one of very marked hostility to the power of the Vatican, which he realised to be increasing within the Roman Church, and one of keen opposition to the general power of that Church and her clergy in France. Renouvier’s paper was quite definitely and aggressively anti-Catholic. He urged all Catholic readers of his paper who professed loyalty to the Republic to quit the Roman Church and to affiliate themselves to the Protestant body.

La Critique philosophique, 1889, tome ii., p. 403.

It was with this precise object in view that, in 1878, he added to his Critique philosophique a supplement which he entitled La Critique religieuse, a quarterly intended purely for propaganda purposes. “Criticism,” he had said, “is in philosophy what Protestantism is in religion.” As certitude is, according to Renouvier’s doctrines, the fruit of intelligence, heart and will, it can never be obtained by the coercion of authority or by obedience such as the Roman Church demands. He appealed to the testimony of history, as a witness to the conflict between authority and the individual conscience. Jesus, whom the Church adores, was himself a superb example of such revolt. History, however, shows us, says Renouvier, the gradual decay of authority in such matters. Thought, if it is really to be thought in its sincerity, must be free. This Renouvier realised, and in this freedom he saw the characteristic of the future development of religion, and shows himself, in this connection, in substantial agreement with Renan and Guyau.

Renouvier’s interest in theology and religion, and in the theological implications of all philosophical thought, was not due merely to a purely speculative impulse, but to a very practical desire to initiate a rational restatement of religious conceptions, which he considered to be an urgent need of his time. He lamented the influence of the Roman Church over the minds of the youth of his country, and realised the vital importance of the controversy between Church and State regarding secular education. Renouvier was a keen supporter of the secular schools (écoles laïques). In 1879, when the educational controversy was at its height, he issued a little book on ethics for these institutions (Petit Traité de Morale pour les Ecoles laïques), which was republished in an enlarged form in 1882, when the secular party, ably led by Jules Ferry, triumphed in the establishment of compulsory, free, secular education. That great achievement, however, did not solve all the difficulties presented by the Church in its educational attitude, and even now the influence of clericalism is dreaded.

Renouvier realised all the dangers, but he was forced also to realise that his enthusiastic and energetic campaign against the power of the Church had failed to achieve what he had desired. He complained of receiving insufficient support from quarters where he might well have expected it. His failure is a fairly conclusive proof that Protestantism has no future in France: it is a stubborn survival, rather than a growing influence. With the decline in the power and appeal of the Roman Catholic Church will come the decline of religion of a dogmatic and organised kind. Renouvier probably had an influence in hastening the day of the official severance of Church and State, an event which he did not live long enough to see.

It occurred, however, only two years after his death.

Having become somewhat discouraged, Renouvier stopped the publication of his religious quarterly in 1885 and made the Critique philosophique a monthly instead of a weekly Journal. It ceased in 1889, but the following year Renouvier’s friend, Pillon, began a new periodical, which bore the same name as the one which had ceased with the outbreak of the war in 1870. This was L’Année philosophique, to which Renouvier contributed articles from time to time on religious topics.

Some writers are of the opinion that Renouvier’s attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and faith, so far from strengthening the Protestant party in France, tended rather to increase the hostility to the Christian religion generally or, indeed, to any religious view of the universe.

Renouvier’s own statements in his philosophy, in so far as these concern religion and theology, are in harmony with his rejection of the Absolute in philosophy and the Absolute in politics. His criticism of the idea of God, the central point in any philosophy of religion, is in terms similar to his critique of the worship of the Absolute or the deification of the State.

In dealing with the question of a “Total Synthesis” Renouvier indicated his objections to the metaphysical doctrine of an Absolute, which is diametrically opposed to his general doctrine of relativity. He is violently in conflict with all religious conceptions which savour of this Absolute or have a pantheistic emphasis, which would diminish the value and significance of relativity and of personality. The “All-in-All” conception of God, which represents the pantheistic elements in many theologies and religions, both Christian and other, is not really a consciousness, he shows, for consciousness itself implies a relation, a union of the self and non-self. In such a conception actor, play and theatre all blend into one, God alone is real, and he is unconscious, for there is, according to this hypothesis, nothing outside himself which he can know. Renouvier realises that he is faced with the ancient problem of the One and the Many, with the alternative of unity or plurality. With his usual logical decisiveness Renouvier posits plurality. He does not attempt to reconcile the two opposites, and he deals with the problem in the manner in which he faced the antinomies of Kant. Both cannot be true, and the enemy of pantheism and absolutism acclaims pluralism, both for logical reasons and in order to safeguard the significance of personality. In particular he directly criticises the philosophy of Spinoza in which he sees the supreme statement of this philosophy of the eternal, the perfect, necessary, unchanging One, who is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. He admits that the idea of law or a system of laws leads to the introduction of something approaching the hypothesis of unity, but he is careful to show by his doctrine of freedom and personality that this is only a limited unity and that, considered even from a scientific standpoint, a Total Synthesis, which is the logical outcome of such an hypothesis, is ultimately untenable. He overthrows the idols of Spinoza and Hegel. Such absolutes, infinite and eternal, whether described as an infinite love which loves itself or a thought thinking thought, are nothing more to Renouvier than vain words, which it is absurd to offer as “The Living God.”

Against these metaphysical erections Renouvier opposes his doctrines of freedom, of personality, relativity and pluralism. He offers in contrast the conception of God as a Person, not an Absolute, but relative, not infinite, but finite, limited by man’s freedom and by contingency in the world of creatures. God, in his view, is not a Being who is omnipotent, or omniscient. He is a Person of whom man is a type, certainly a degraded type, but man is made in the image of the divine personality. Our notion of God, Renouvier reminds us, must be consistent with the doctrine of freedom, hence we must conceive of him not merely as a creator of creatures or subjects, but of creative power itself in those creatures. The relation of God to man is more complex than that of simple “creation” as this word is usually comprehended, “It is a creation of creation,” says Renouvier, a remark which is parallel to the view expressed by Bergson, to the effect that, we must conceive of God as a “creator of creators.” The existence of this Creative Person must be conceived, Renouvier insists, as indissolubly bound up with his work, and it is unintelligible otherwise. That work is one of creation and not emanation—it involves more than mere power and transcendence. God is immanent in the universe.

Psychologie ralionnelle, vol. 2, p. 104.

In his address to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, 1914.

Theology has wavered between the two views—that of absolute transcendence and omnipotence and that of immanence based on freedom and limitation. In the first, every single thing depends upon the operation of God, whose Providence rules all. This is pure determinism of a theological character. In the other view man’s free personality is recognised; part of the creation is looked upon as partaking of freedom and contingency, therefore the divinity is conceived as limited and finite.

Renouvier insists that this view of God as finite is the only tenable one, for it is the only one which gives a rational and moral explanation of evil. In the first view God is responsible for all things, evil included, and man is therefore much superior to him from a moral standpoint. The idea of God must be ethically acceptable, and it is unfortunate that this idea, so central to religion, is the least susceptible to modification in harmony with man’s ethical development. We already have noticed Guyau’s stress upon this point in our discussion of ethics. Our conception of God must, Renouvier claims, be the affirmation of our highest category, Personality, and must express the best ethical ideals of mankind. Society suffers for its immoral and primitive view of God, which gives to its religion a barbarous character which is disgraceful and revolting to finer or more thoughtful minds.

It is true that the acceptance of the second view, which carries with it the complete rejection of the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, modifies profoundly many of the old and primitive views of God. Renouvier recognises this, and wishes his readers also to grasp this point, for only so is religion to be brought forward in a development harmonious with the growth of man’s mind in other spheres. Man should not profess the results of elaborate culture in science while he professes at the same time doctrines of God which are not above those of a savage or primitive people. This is the chief mischief which the influence of the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament has had upon the Christian religion. The moral conscience now demands their rejection, for to those who value religion they can only appear as being of pure blasphemy. God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, consequently many things must be unknown to him until they happen. Foreknowledge and predetermination on his part are impossible, according to Renouvier. God is not to be conceived as a consciousness enveloping the entire universe, past, present and future, in a total synthesis. Such a belief is mischievous to humanity because of its fatalism, in spite of the comfortable consolation it offers to pious souls. Moreover, it presents the absurd view of God working often against himself.

The idea of God, Renouvier shows, arises out of the discussions of the nature of the universal laws of the universe and from the progress of personalities. The plausible conceptions of God based on causality and on “necessary essence” have not survived the onslaughts of Criticism. The personality of God seems to us, says Renouvier, indicated as the conclusion and the almost necessary culmination of the consideration of the probabilities laid down by the practical reason or moral law. The primary, though not primitive, evidence for the existence of God is contained in, and results from, the generalisation of the idea of “ends” in the universe. We must not go bevond phenomena or seek evidence in some fictitious sphere outside of our experience. In its most general and abstract sense the idea of God arises from the conception of moral order, immortality, or the accord of happiness and goodness. We cannot deny the existence of a morality in the order and movements of the world, a physical sanction to the moral laws of virtue and of progress, an external reality of good, a supremacy of good, a witness of the Good itself. Renouvier does not think that any man, having sufficiently developed his thought, would refuse to give the name God to the object of this supreme conception, which at first may seem abstract because it is not in any way crude, many of its intrinsic elements remaining undetermined in face of our ignorance, but which, nevertheless, or just for that very reason, is essentially practical and moral, representing the most notable fact of all those included in our belief. This method of approaching the problem of God is, he thinks, both simple and grand. It is a noble contrast to the scholastic edifice built up on the metaphysical perfection of being, called the Absolute. In this conception all attributes of personality are replaced by an accumulation of metaphysical properties, contradictory in themselves and quite incompatible with one another. This Absolute is a pure chimerical abstraction; its pure being and pure essence are equivalent to pure nothing or pure nonsense.

The fetish of pure substance, substantial cause, absolute being, whatever it be called, is vicious at all times, but particularly when we are dealing with the fundamental problems of science. It would be advisable here that the only method of investigation be that of atheism, for scientific investigation should not be tainted by any prejudices or preconceived ideas upon the nature of the divinity.

What really is Atheism? The answer to this query, says Renouvier, is clear. The idea of God is essentially a product of the moral law or conscience. An atheist is, strictly speaking, one who does not admit the reality of this moral order of ends and of persons as valuable in themselves. Verily, he himself may personally lead a much more upright life than the loud champions of theism, but he denies the general moral order, which is God. With the epithet of atheist as commonly used for those who merelv have a conception of God which differs from the orthodox view, we are not here concerned. That may be dismissed as a misuse of the word due to religious bigotry. The fruits of true atheism are materialism, pantheism and fatalism. Indeed any doctrine, even a theological doctrine, which debases and destroys the inherent value of the human consciousness and personality, is rightly to be regarded, whatever it may say about God, however it may repeat his name (and two of these doctrines are very fond of this repetition, but this must not blind us to the real issue)—that doctrine is atheistic. The most resolute materialists, the most high-minded worshippers of Providence and the great philosophers of the Absolute, find themselves united here in atheism. God is not a mere totality of laws operating in the universe. Such a theism is but a form of real atheism. We must, insists Renouvier, abandon views of this type, with all that savours of an Absolute, a Perfect Infinite, and affirm our belief in the existence of an order of Goodness which gives value to human personality and assures ultimate victory to Justice. This is to believe in God. We arrive at this belief rationally and after consideration of the world and of the moral law of persons. Through these we come to God. We do not begin with him and pretend to deduce these from his nature by some incomprehensible a priori propositions. The methods of the old dogmatic theology are reversed. Instead of beginning with a Being of whom we know nothing and can obviously deduce nothing, let us proceed inductively, and by careful consideration of the revelation we have before us in the world and in humanity let us build up our idea of God.

Renouvier is anxious that we should examine the data upon which we may found “rational hypotheses” as to the nature of God. The Critical Philosophy has upset the demonstrations of the existence of God, which were based upon causality and upon necessary existence (the cosmological and ontological proofs). Neo-criticism not only establishes the existence of God as a rational hypothesis, but “this point of view of the divine problem is the most favourable to the notion of the personality of God. The personality of God seems to us to be indicated as the looked-for conclusion and almost necessary consummation of the probabilities of practical reason.”

Psychologie rationnelle, vol. 2, p. 300.

The admission of ends, of finality, or purpose in the universe is frequently given as involving a supreme consciousness embracing this teleology. Also it is argued that Good could not exist in its generality save in an external consciousness—that is, a divine mind. By recalling the objections to a total synthesis of phenomena, Renouvier refutes both these arguments which rest upon erroneous methods in ontology and in theology. The explanation of the world by God, as in the cosmological argument, is fanciful, while the ontological argument leads us to erect an unintelligible and illogical absolute. Renouvier regards God as existing as a general consciousness corresponding to the generality of ends which man himself finds before him, finite, limited in power and in knowledge. But in avowing this God, Renouvier points him out to us as the first of all beings, a being like them, not an absolute, but a personality, possessing (and this is important) the perfection of morality, goodness and justice. He is the supreme personality in action, and as a perfect person he respects the personality of others and operates on our world only in the degree which the freedom and individuality of persons who are not himself can permit him, and within the limits of the general laws under which he represents to himself his own enveloped existence. This is the hypothesis of unity rendered intelligible, and as such Renouvier claims that it bridges in a marvellous manner the gap always deemed to exist between monotheism and polytheism—the two great currents of religious thought in humanity. The monotheists have appeared intolerant and fanatical in their religion and in their deity (not in so far as it was manifest in the thoughts of the simple, who professed a faith of the heart, but as shown in the ambitious theology of books and of schools), bearing on their banner the signs of a jealous deity, wishing no other gods but himself, declaring to his awed worshippers: “I am that I am; have no other gods but me!” On the other hand, the polytheistic peoples have been worshippers of beauty and goodness in all things, and where they saw these things they created a deity. They were more concerned with the immortality of good souls than the eternal existence of one supreme being; they were free-thinkers, creators of beauty and seekers after truth, and believers in freedom. The humanism of Greece stands in contrast to the idolatrous theocracy of the Hebrews.

The unity of God previously mentioned does not exclude the possibility of a plurality of divine persons. God the one would be the first and foremost, rex hominum deorumque. Some there may be that rise through saintliness to divinity, Sons of God, persons surpassing man in intelligence, power and morality. To take sides in this matter is equivalent to professing a particular religion. We must avoid the absolutist spirit in religion no less than in philosophy. By this Renouvier means that brutal fanaticism which prohibits the Gods of other people by passion and hatred, which aims at establishing and imposing its own God (which is, after all, but its own idea of God) as the imperialist plants his flag, his kind and his customs in new territory, in the spirit of war and conquest. Such a “holy war” is an outrage, based not upon real religion, but on intolerant fanaticism in which freedom and the inherent rights of personality to construct its own particular faith are denied.

Renouvier finds a parallelism between the worship of the State in politics and of the One God in religion. The systems in which unity or plurality of divine personality appears differ from one another in the same way in which monarchal and republican ideas differ. Monarchy in religion offers the same obstacles to progress as it has done in politics. It involves a parallel enslavement of one’s entire self and goods, a conscription which is hateful to freedom and detrimental to personality. To this supreme and regal Providence all is due; it alone in any real sense exists. Persons are shadows, of no reality, serfs less than the dust, to whom a miserable dole is given called grace, for which prayer and sacrifice are to be unceasingly made or chastisements from the Almighty will follow. This notion is the product of monarchy in politics, and with monarchy it will perish. The two are bound up, for “by the grace of God” we are told monarchs hold their thrones, by his favour their sceptre sways and their battalions move on to victory. This monarchal God, this King of kings and Lord of hosts, ruler of heaven and earth, is the last refuge of monarchs on the earth. Confidence in both has been shaken, and both, Renouvier asserts, will disappear and give place to a real democracy, not only to republics on earth, but to the conception of the whole universe as a republic. Men raise up saints and intercessors to bridge the gulf between the divine Monarch and his slaves. They conceive angels as doing his work in heaven; they tolerate priests to bring down grace to them here and now. The doctrine of unity thus gives rise to fanatical religious devotion or philosophical belief in the absolute, which stifles religion and perishes in its own turn. The doctrine of immortality, based on the belief in the value of human personality, leads us away from monarchy to a republic of free spirits. A democratic religion in this sense will display human nature raised to its highest dignity by virtue of an energetic affirmation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual respect and liberty of faith—a free religion without priests or clericalism, not in conflict with science and philosophy, but encouraging these pursuits and in turn encouraged by them.

The fullest treatment of this is the large section in the conclusion to the Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire (tome iv.). Cf. also the discussion of the influence of religious beliefs on societies in the last chapter of La Nouvelle Monadologie.

III

Ravaisson, in founding the new spiritual philosophy, professed certain doctrines which were a blending of Hellenism and Christianity. In the midst of thought which was dominated by positivism, naturalism or materialism, or by a shallow eclecticism, wherein religious ideas were rather held in contempt, he issued a challenge on behalf of spiritual values and ideals. Beauty, love and goodness, he declared, were divine. God himself is these things, said Ravaisson, and the divinity is “not far from any of us.” In so far as we manifest these qualities we approach the perfect personality of God himself. In the infinite, in God, will is identical with love, which itself is not distinguished from the absolutely good and the absolutely beautiful. This love can govern our wills; the love of the beautiful and the good can operate in our lives. In so far as this is so, we participate in the love and the life of God.

Boutroux agrees substantially with Ravaisson, but he lays more stress upon the free creative power of the deity as immanent. “God,” he remarks in his thesis, “is not only the creator of the world, he is also its Providence, and watches over the details as well as over the whole.” God is thus an immanent and creative power in his world as well as the perfect being of supreme goodness and beauty. Boutroux here finds this problem of divine immanence and transcendence as important as does Blondel, and his attitude is like that of Blondel, midway between that of Ravaisson and Bergson.

La Contingence des Lois de la Nature, p. 150.

Religion, Boutroux urges, must show man that the supreme ideal for him is to realise in his own nature this idea of God. There is an obligation upon man to pursue after these things-goodness, truth, beauty and love—for they are his good, they are the Good; they are, indeed, God. In them is a harmony which satisfies his whole nature, and which does not neglect or crush any aspect of character, as narrow conceptions of religion inevitably do. Boutroux insists upon the necessity for intellectual satisfaction, and opposes the “philosophy of action” in ils doctrine of “faith for faith’s sake.” At the same time he conceives Reason as a harmony, not merely a coldly logical thing. Feeling and will must be satisfied also.

Boutroux has in his volume, Science et Religion dans la Philosophie contemporaine, contributed a luminous and penetrating discussion of various religious doctrines from Comte to William James. This was published in 1908.

We have observed already how Fouillée claimed that the ethics of his idées-forces contained the gist of what was valuable in the world religions. He claims that philosophy includes under the form of rational belief or thought what the religions include as instinctive belief. In religion he sees a spontaneous type of metaphysic, while metaphysic or philosophy is a rationalised religion.

Nothing in this connection is more important than a rational and harmonious view of God. This he insists upon in his thesis and in his Sketch of the Future of a Metaphysic founded on Experience. The old idea of God was that of a monarch governing the world as a despot governs his subjects. The government of the universe may still be held to be a monarchy, but modern science is careful to assure us that it must be regarded as an absolutely constitutional monarchy. The monarch, if there be one, acts in accordance with the laws and respects the established constitution. Reason obliges us to conceive of the sovereign: experience enlightens us as to the constitution.

There can be little doubt that one of the world’s greatest books upon religion is the work of Guyau, which appeared in 1886, bearing the arresting title, L’Irreligion de l’Avenir. Its sub-title describes it as an Etude sociologique, and it is this treatment of the subject from the standpoint of sociology which is such a distinctive feature of the book. The notion of a social bond between man and the powers superior to him, but resembling him, is, claims Guyau, a point of unity in which all religions are at one. The foundation of the religious sentiment lies in sociality, and the religious man is just the man who is disposed to be sociable, not only with all living beings whom he meets, but with those whom he imaginatively creates as gods. Guyau’s thesis, briefly put, is that religion is a manifestation of life (again he insists on “Life,” as in his Ethics, as a central conception), becoming self-conscious and seeking the explanation of things by analogies drawn from human society. Religion is “sociomorphic” rather than merely anthropomorphic; it is, indeed, a universal sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.

The religious sentiment expresses a consciousness of dependence, and in addition, adds Guyau, it expresses the need of affection, tenderness and love—that is to say, the “social” side of man’s nature. In the conception of the Great Companion or Loving Father, humanity finds consolation and hope. Children and women readily turn to such an ideal, and primitive peoples, who are just like children, conceive of the deity as severe and all- powerful. To this conception moral attributes were subsequently added, as man’s own moral conscience developed, and it now issues in a doctrine of God as Love. All this development is, together with that of esthetics and ethics, a manifestation of life in its individual and more especially social manifestations.

It is the purpose of Guyau’s book not only to present a study of the evolution of religion in this manner, from a sociological point of view, but to indicate a further development of which the beginnings are already manifest—namely, a decomposition of all systems of dogmatic religion. It is primarily the decay of dogma and ecclesiasticism which he intends to indicate by the French term irréligion. The English translation of his work bears the title The Non-religion of the Future. Had Guyau been writing and living in another country it is undoubtedly true that his work would probably have been entitled The Religion of the Future. Owing to the Roman Catholic environment and the conception of religion in his own land, he was, however, obliged to abandon the use of the word religion altogether. In order to avoid misunderstanding, we must examine the sense he gives to this word, and shall see then that his title is not meant to convey the impression of being anti-religious in the widest sense, nor is it irreligious in the English meaning of that word.

Guyau considers every positive and historical religion to present three distinct and essential elements:

An attempt at a mythical and non-scientific explanation of (a) natural phenomena—e.g., intervention, miracles, efficacious prayer; (b) historical facts—e.g., incarnation of Buddha or Jesus. A system of dogmas—that is to say, symbolic ideas or imaginative beliefs—forcibly imposed upon one’s faith as absolute verities, even though they are susceptible to no scientific demonstration or philosophical justification. A cult and a system of rites or of worship, made up of more or less immutable practices which are looked upon as possessing a marvellous efficacy upon the course of things, a propitiatory virtue.

L’Irréligion de l’Avenir, p. xiii; Eng. trans., p. 10.

By these three different and really organic elements, religion is clearly marked off from philosophy. Owing to the stability of these elements religion is apt to be centuries behind science and philosophy, and consequently reconciliation is only effected by a subtle process which, while maintaining the traditional dogmas and phrases, evolves a new interpretation of them sufficiently modern to harmonise a little more with the advance in thought, but which presents a false appearance of stability and consistency, disguising the real change of meaning, of view-point and of doctrine. Of this effort we shall see the most notable instance is that of the “Modernists” or Neo-Catholics in France and Italy, and the Liberal Christians in England and America.

Guyau claims that these newer interpretations, subtle and useful as they are, and frequently the assertions of minds who desire sincerely to adapt the ancient traditions to modern needs, are in themselves hypocritical, and the Church in a sense does right to oppose them. Guyau cannot see any satisfactoriness in these compromises and adaptations which lack the clearness of the old teaching, which they in a sense betray, while they do not sufficiently satisfy the demands of modern thought.

With the decay of the dogmatic religion of Christendom which is supremely stated in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, there must follow the non-religion of the future, which may well preserve, he points out, all that is pure in the religious sentiment and carry with it an admiration for the cosmos and for the infinite powers which are there displayed. It will be a search for, and a belief in, an ideal not only individual, but social and even cosmic, which shall pass the limits of actual reality. Hence it appears that “non-religion” or “a-religion,” which is for Guyau simply “the negation of all dogma, of all traditional and supernatural authority, of all revelation, of all miracle, of all myth, of all rite erected into a duty,” is most certainly not a synonym for irreligion or impiety, nor does it involve any contempt for the moral and metaphysical doctrines expressed by the ancient religions of the world. The non-religious man in Guyau’s sense of the term is simply the man without a religion, as he has defined it above, and he may quite well admire and sympathise with the great founders of religion, not only in that they were thinkers, metaphysicians, moralists and philanthropists, but in that they were reformers of established belief, more or less avowed enemies of religious authority and of every affirmation laid down by an ecclesiastical body in order to bind the intellectual freedom of individuals. Guyau’s remarks in this connection agree with the tone in which Renan spoke of his leaving the Church because of a feeling of respect and loyalty to its Founder. Guyau points out that there exists in the bosom of every great religion a dissolving force—namely, the very force which in the beginning served to constitute it and to establish its triumphant revolt over its predecessor. That force is the absolute right of private judgment, the free factor of the personal conscience, which no external authority can succeed, ultimately, in coercing or silencing. The Roman Church, and almost every other organised branch of the Christian religion, forgets, when faced with a spirit which will not conform, that it is precisely to this spirit that it owes its own foundation and also the best years of its existence. Guyau has little difficulty in pressing the conclusions which follow from the recognition of this vital point.

Briefly, it follows that the hope of a world-religion is an illusion, whether it be the dream of a perfect and world-wide Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Mohammedanism. The sole authority in religious matters, that of the individual conscience, prevents any such consummation, which, even if it could be achieved, would be mischievous. The future will display a variety of beliefs and religions, as it does now. This need not discourage us, for therein is a sign of vitality or spiritual life, of which the world-religions are examples, marred, however, by their profession of universality, an ideal which they do not and never will realise.

The notion of a Catholic Church or a great world- religion is really contrary to the duty of personal thought and reflection, which must inevitably (unless they give way to mere lazy repetition of other people’s thoughts) lead to differences. The tendency is for humanity to move away from dogmatic religion, with its pretensions to universality, catholicity, and monarchy (of which, says Guyau, the most curious type has just recently been achieved in our own day, by the Pope’s proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility), towards religious individualism and to a plurality of religions. There may, of course, be religious associations or federations, but these will be free, and will not demand the adherence to any dogma as such.

With the decay of dogmatic religion the best elements of religious life will have freer scope to develop themselves, and will grow both in intensity and in extent. “He alone is religious, in the philosophical sense of the word, who researches for, who thinks about, who loves, truth.” Such inquiry or search involves freedom, it involves conflict, but the conflict of ideas, which is perfectly compatible with toleration in a political sense, and is the essence of the spirit of the great world teachers. This is what Jesus foresaw when he remarked: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” More fully, he might have put it, Guyau suggests: “I came not to bring peace into human thought, but an incessant battle of ideas; not repose, but movement and progress of spirit; not universal dogma, but liberty of belief, which is the first condition of growth.” Well might Renan remark that it was loyalty to such a spirit which caused him to break with the Church.

While attacking religious orthodoxy in this manner, Guyau is careful to point out that if religious fanaticism ls bad, anti-religious fanaticism is equally mischievous, wicked and foolish. While the eighteenth century could only scoff at religion, the nineteenth realised the absurdity of such raillery. We have come to see that even although a belief may be irrational and even erroneous, it may still survive, and it may console multitudes whose minds would be lost on the stormy sea of life without such an anchor. While dogmatic or positive religions do exist they will do so, Guyau reminds us, for quite definite and adequate reasons, chiefly because there are people who believe them, to whom they mean something and often a great deal. These reasons certainly do diminish daily, and the number of adherents, too, but we must refrain from all that savours of anti- religious fanaticism. He himself speaks with great respect of a Christian missionary. Are we not, he asks, both brothers and humble collaborators in the work and advance of humanity? He sees no real inconsistency between his own dislike of orthodoxy and dogma and the missionary’s work of raising the ignorant to a better life by those very dogmas. It is a case of relative advance and mental progress.

He cites a curious case of anti-religious fanaticism at Marseilles in 1885, when all texts and scripture pictures were removed fromthe schools.

Guyau’s book abounds in illustrations. He mentions here Huss’s approval of the sincerity of one man who brought straw from his own house to burn him. Huss admired this act of a man in whom he saw a brother in sincerity.

It is with great wealth of discussion that Guyau recounts the genesis of religions in primitive societies to indicate the sociological basis of religion. More important are his chapters on the dissolution of religions in existing societies, in which he shows the unsatisfactoriness of the dogmas of orthodox Protestantism equally with those of the Catholic Church. As mischievous as the notion of an infallible Church is that of an infallible book, literally—that is to say, foolishly-interpreted. He recognises that for a literal explanation of the Bible must be substituted, and is, indeed, being substituted, a literary explanation. Like Renan, he criticises the vulgar conception of prayer and of religious morality which promotes goodness by promise of paradise or fear of hell. He urges in this connection the futility of the effort made by Michelet, Quinet and, more especially, by Renouvier and Pillon to “Protestantise” France. While admitting a certain intellectual, moral and political superiority to it, Guyau claims that for the promotion of morality there is little use in substituting Protestantism for Catholicism. He forecasts the limitation of the power of priests and other religious teachers over the minds of young children. Protestant clergymen in England and America he considers to be no more tolerant in regard to the educational problem than the priests. Guyau urges the importance of an elementary education being free from religious propaganda. He was writing in 1886, some years after the secular education law had been carried. There is, however, more to be done, and he points out “how strange it is that a society should not do its best to form those whose function it is to form it.” In higher education some attention should be given to the comparative study of religions. “Even from the point of view of philosophy, Buddha and Jesus are more important than Anaximander or Thales.” It is a pity, he thinks, that there is not a little more done to acquaint the young with the ideas for which the great world-teachers, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, stood, instead of cramming a few additional obscure names from early national history. It would give children at least a notion that history had a wider range than their own country, a realisation of the fact that humanity was already old when Christ appeared, and that there are great religions other than Christianity, religions whose followers are not poor ignorant savages or heathen, but intelligent beings, from whom even Christians may learn much. It is thoroughly mischievous, he aptly adds, to bring up children in such a narrow mental atmosphere that the rest of their life is one long disillusionment.

With particular reference to his own country, Guyau criticises the religious education of women, the question of “mixed marriages,” the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the influence of religious beliefs upon the limitation or increase of the family.

After having summed up the tendency of dogmatic religion to decay, he asks if any unification of the great religions is to-day possible, or whether any new religion may be expected? The answer he gives to both these questions is negative, and he produces a wealth of very valid reasons in support of his finding. He is, of course, here using the term religion as he has himself defined it. The claim to universality by all world-religions, the insistence by each that it alone is the really best or true religion, precludes any question of unity. As well might we imagine unity between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church.

In the “non-religious” state, dogma will be replaced by individual constructions. Religion will be a free, personal affair, in which the great philosophical hypotheses (e.g., Theism and Pantheism) will be to a large extent utilised. They will, however, be regarded as such by all, as rational hypotheses, which some individuals will accept, others will reject. Certain doctrines will appeal to some, not to others. The evidence for a certain type of theism will seem adequate to some, not to others. There will be no endeavour to impose corporately or singly the acceptance of any creed upon others.

With Guyau’s conception of the future of religion or non-religion, whichever we care to call it, we may well close this survey of the religious ideas in modern France. In the Roman Church on the one hand, and, on the other, in the thought of Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, together with the multitude of thinking men and women they represent, may be seen the two tendencies—one conservative, strengthening its internal organisation and authority, in defiance of all the influences of modern thought, the other a free and personal effort, issuing in a genuine humanising of religion and freeing it from ecclesiasticism and dogma.

A word may be said here, however, with reference to the “Modernists.” The Modernist movement is a French product, the result of the interaction of modern philosophical and scientific ideas upon the teaching of the Roman Church. It has produced a philosophical religion which owes much to Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, and is in reality modern science with a veneer of religious idealism or platonism. It is a theological compromise, and has no affinities with the efforts of Lamennais. As a compromise it was really opposed to the traditions of the French, to whose love of sharp and clear thinking such general and rather vague syntheses are unacceptable. It must be admitted, however, that there is a concreteness, a nearness to reality and life, which separates it profoundly from the highly abstract theology of Germany, as seen in Ritschl and Harnack.

The Abbé Marat of the Theological School at the Sorbonne and Father Gratry of the Ecole Normale were the initiators of this movement, as far back as the Second Empire. “Modernism” was never a school of thought, philosophical or religious, and it showed itself in a freedom and life, a spirit rather than in any formula;. As Sorel’s syndicalism is an application of the Bergsonian and kindred doctrines to the left wings, and issues in a social theory of “action,” so Modernism is an attempt to apply them to the right and issues in a religion founded on action rather than theology. The writings of the Modernists are extensive, but we mention the names of the chief thinkers. There is the noted exegetist Loisy, who was dismissed in 1894 from the Catholic Institute of Paris and now holds the chair of the History of Religions at the College de France. His friend, the Abbé Bourier, maintained the doctrine, “ Where Christ is there is the Church,” with a view to insisting upon the importance of being a Christian rather than a Catholic or a Protestant.

The importance of the Catholic thinker, Blondel, both for religion and for philosophy, has already been indicated at an earlier stage in this book. His work inspires most.Modernist thought. Blondel preaches, with great wealth of philosophical and psychological argument, the great Catholic doctrine of the collaboration of God with man and of man with God. Man at one with himself realises his highest aspirations. Divine transcendence and divine immanence in man are reconciled. God and man, in this teaching, are brought together, and the stern realism of every-day life and the idealism of religion unite in a sacramental union. The supreme principle in this union Laberthonnière shows to be Love. He is at pains to make clear, however, that belief in Love as the ultimate reality is no mere sentimentality, no mere assertion of the will-to-believe. For him the intellect must play its part in the religious life and in the expression of faith. No profounder intellectual judgment exists than just the one which asserts “God is Love,” when this statement is properly apprehended and its momentous significance clearly realised. We cannot but lament, with Laberthonnière, the abuse of this proposition and its subsequent loss of both appeal and meaning through a shallow familiarity. The reiteration of great conceptions, which is the method by which the great dogmas have been handed down from generations, tends to blurr their real significance. They become stereotyped and empty of life. It is for this reason that Le Roy in Dogme et Critique (1907) insisted upon the advisability of regarding all dogmas as expressions of practical value in and for action, rather than as intellectual propositions of a purely “religious” or ecclesiastical type, belonging solely to the creeds.

To Blondel, Laberthonnière, and Le Roy can be added the names of Fonsegrive, Sertillanges, Loyson and Houtin, the last two of whom ultimately left the Church, for the Church made up its mind to crush Modernism. The Pope had intimated in 1879 that the thirteenth-century philosophy of Aquinas was to be recognised as the only official philosophy. Finally, Modernism was condemned in a Vatican encyclical (Pascendi Dominici Gregis) in 1907, as was also the social and educational effort, Le Sillon.

This led to revival of the study of the Summa Theologiæ and to the commencement of the review of Catholic philosophy, Revue Thomiste.

Such has been Rome’s last word, and it is not surprising, therefore, that France is the most ardent home of free thought upon religious matters, that the French people display a spirit which is unable to stop at Protestantism, but which heralds the religion or the non-religion of the future to which Guyau has so powerfully indicated the tendencies and has by so doing helped, in conjunction with Renan and Renouvier, to hasten its realisation.

A parallel to the “modernist” theology of the Catholic thinkers was indicated on the Protestant side by the theology of Auguste Sabatier, whose Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion d’après la Psychologie et l’Histoire appeared in 1897 and of Menegoz, whose Publications diverges sur le Fidéisme et son Application a l’Enseignement chrétien traditionnel were issued in 1900. Sabatier assigns the beginning of religion to man’s trouble and distress of heart caused by his aspirations, his belief in ideals and higher values, being at variance with his actual condition. Religion arises from this conflict of real and ideal in the soul of man. This is the essence of religion which finds its expression in the life of faith rather than in the formation of beliefs which are themselves accidental and transitory, arising from environment and education, changing in form from aee to age both in the individual and the race. While LeRoy on the Catholic side, maintained that dogmas were valuable for their practical significance, Sabatier and Ménégoz claimed that all religious knowledge is symbolical. Dogmas are but symbols, which inadequately attempt to reveal their object. That object can only be grasped by “faith” as distinct from “belief”—that is to say, by an attitude in which passion, instinct and intuition blend and not by an attitude which is purely one of intellectual conviction. This doctrine of “salvation by faith independently of beliefs” has a marked relationship not only to pragmatism and the philosophy of action, but to the philosophy of intuition. A similar anti-intellectualism colours the “symbolo-fidéist” currents within Catholicism, which manifest a more extreme character. A plea voiced against all such tendencies is to be found in Bois’ book, De la Connaissance religieuse (1894), where an endeavour is made to retain a more intellectual attitude, and it again found expression in the volume by Boutroux, written as late as 1908, which deals with the religious problem in our period.

It was followed after his death in 1901 by the volume Les Religions d’Authorité et la Religion de l’Esprit, 1904.

This is the late Eugene Ménégoz, Professor of Theology in Paris, not Ferdinand Ménégoz, his nephew, who is also a Professor of Theology now at Strasbourg.

Quoting Boehme in the interesting conclusion to this book on Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy (1908) Boutroux sums up in the words of the old German mystic his attitude to the diversity of religious opinions. “Consider the birds in our forests, they praise God each in his own way, in diverse tones and fashions. Think you God is vexed by this diversity and desires to silence discordant voices? All the forms of being are dear to the infinite Being himself!”

It is interesting to compare with the above the sentiments expressed in Matthew Arnold’s poem, entitled Progress:

“Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye For ever doth accompany mankind, Hath look’d on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.

This survey of the general attitude adopted towards religion and the problems which it presents only serves to emphasise more clearly those tendencies which we have already denoted in previous chapters. As the discussion of progress was radically altered by the admission of the principle of freedom, and the discussion of ethics passes bevond rigid formulae to a freer conception of morality, so here in religion the insistence upon freedom and that recognition of personality which accompanies it, colours the whole religious outlook. Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, the three thinkers who have most fully discussed religion in our period, join in proclaiming the importance of the personal factor in religious belief, and in valiant opposition to that Church which is the declared enemy of freedom, they urge that in freedom of thought lies the course of all religious development in the future, for only thus can be expressed the noblest and highest aspirations of man’s spirit.

CONCLUSION

The foregoing pages have been devoted to a history of ideas rather than to the maintenance of any special thesis or particular argument. Consequently it does not remain for us to draw any definitely logical conclusions from the preceding chapters. The opportunity may be justly taken, however, of summing up the general features of the development.

Few periods in the history of human thought can rival in interest that of the second half of the nineteenth century in France. The discussion covers the principal problems with which man’s mind is occupied in modern times and presents these in a manner which is distinctly human and not merely national. This alone would give value to the study of such a period. There is, however, to be added the more striking fact that there is a complete “turning of the tide” manifested during these fifty years in the attitude to most of the problems. Beginning with an overweening confidence in science and a belief in determinism and in a destined progress, the century closed with a complete reversal of these conceptions.

Materialism and naturalism are both recognised as inadequate, a reaction sets in against positivism and culminates in the triumph of spiritualism or idealism. This idealism is free from the cruder aspects of the Kantian or Hegelian philosophy. The Thing-in-itself and the Absolute are abandoned; relativity is proclaimed in knowledge, and freedom in the world of action. Thoughts or ideas show themselves as forces operating in the evolution of history. This is maintained in opposition to the Marxian doctrine of the purely economic or materialistic determination of history. A marked tendency, however, is manifested to regard all problems from a social stand point. The dogmatic confidence in science gives way to a more philosophical attitude, while the conflict of science and religion resolves itself into a decay of dogma and the conception of a free religion.

We have indicated the problem presented by “science et conscience,” and in so far as we have laid down any thesis or argument in these pages, as distinct from an historical account of the development, that thesis has been, that the central problem in the period was that of freedom. It was to this point which the consideration of science, or rather of the sciences, led us. We have observed the importance of the sciences for philosophy, and it is clear that, so far from presenting any real hostility to philosophy, it can acclaim their autonomy and freedom, without attempting by abstract methods to absorb them into itself. They are equally a concrete part of human thought, and in a deep and real sense a manifestation of the same spirit which animates philosophy.

By recognising the sciences philosophy can avoid the fallacy of ideology on the one hand and naturalism on the other. Unlike the old eclecticism, the new thought is able to take account of science and to criticise its assertions. We have seen how this has been accomplished, and the rigidly mechanical view of the world abandoned for one into which human freedom enters as a real factor. This transforms the view of history and shows us human beings creating that history and not merely being its blind puppets. History offers no cheerful outlook for the easy-going optimist; it is not any more to be regarded as mere data for pessimistic reflections, but rather a record which prompts a feeling of responsibility. The world is not ready-made, and if there is to be progress it must be willed by us and achieved by our struggle and labour.

The doctrine of immanence upon which the modern tendency is to insist, in place of the older idea of transcendence, makes us feel, not only that we are free, but that our freedom is not in opposition to, or in spite of, the divine spirit, but is precisely an expression of divine immanence. Instead of the gloomy conception of a whole which determines itself apart from us, we feel ourselves part, and a very responsible part, of a reality which determines itself collectively and creatively by its own action, by its own ideals, which it has itself created. This freedom must extend not only to our conceptions of history but also to those of ethics and of religion.

“English philosophy ends in considering nature as an assemblage of facts; German philosophy looks upon it chiefly as a system of laws. If there is a place midway between the two nations it belongs to us Frenchmen. We applied the English ideas in the eighteenth century; we can in the nineteenth give precision to the German ideas. What we have to do is to temper, amend and complete the two spirits, one by the other, to fuse them into one, to express them in a style that shall be intelligible to everybody and thus to make of them the universal spirit.”

Such was Taine’s attitude, and it indicates clearly the precise position of French thought. We are apt to consider Taine purely as an empiricist, but we must remember that he disagreed with the radical empiricism of John Stuart Mill. His own attitude was largely that of a reaction against the vague spiritualism of the Eclectic School, especially Cousin’s eclecticism, a foreign growth on French soil, due to German influence. The purely a priori constructions of the older spiritualism could find no room, and allowed none, for the sciences. This was sufficient to doom it, and to lead naturally to a reaction of a positive kind, revolting from all a priori constructions.

It was to combat the excessive positive reaction against metaphysics that Renouvier devoted his energies, but while professing to modernise Kant and to follow out the general principles of his Critical Philosophy, Renouvier was further removed from the German thinker than he at times seems to have observed. Renouvier must undoubtedly share with Comte the honours of the century in French Philosophy. Many influences, however, prevented the general or speedy acceptance of Renouvier’s doctrines. The University was closed against him, as against Comte. He worked in isolation and his style of presentation, which is heavy and laborious, does not appeal to the esprit of the French mind. Probably, too, his countrymen’s ignorance of Kant at the time Renouvier wrote his Essais de Critique générale prevented an understanding and appreciation of the neo-critical advance on Criticism.

Renouvier commands respect, but he does not appear to be in the line of development which manifests so essentially the character of French thought. This is to be found rather in that spiritualism, which, unlike the old, does not exclude science, but welcomes it, finds a place for it, although not by any means an exclusive place. The new spiritualists did not draw their inspiration, as did Cousin, from any German source, their initial impulse is derived from a purely French thinker, Maine de Biran, who, long neglected, came to recognition in the work of Ravaisson and those subsequent thinkers of this group, right up to Bergson.

This current of thought is marked by a vitality and a concreteness which are a striking contrast to the older eclectic spiritualism. Having submitted itself to the discipline of the sciences, it is acquainted with their methods and data in a manner which enables it to oppose the dogmatism of science, and to acclaim the reality of values other than those which are purely scientific. Ignoring a priori construction, or eclectic applications of doctrines, it investigates the outer world of nature and the inner life of the spirit.

We have said that these ideas are presented, not merely from a national standpoint, but from one which is deeply human and universal. “La Science*,” re-marked Pasteur, “*n’a pas de patrie.” We may add that philosophy, too, owns no special fatherland. There is not in philosophy, any more than in religion, “a chosen people,” even although the Jews of old thought themselves such, and among moderns the Germans have had this conceit about their Kultur. In so far as philosophy aims at the elucidation of a true view of the universe, it thereby tends inevitably to universality. But just as a conception of internationalism, which should fail to take into account the factors of nationality, would be futile and disastrous, so a conception of the evolution of thought must likewise estimate the characteristics which nationality produces even in the philosophical field.

Such characteristics, it will be found, are not definite doctrines, for these may be transferred, as are scientific discoveries, from one nation to another, and absorbed in such a manner that they become part of the general consciousness of mankind. They are rather differences of tone and colour, form or expression, which express the vital genius of the nation. There are features which serve to distinguish French philosophy from the development which has occurred in Germany, Italy, England and America.

Modern French thought does not deliberately profess to maintain allegiance to any past traditions, for it realises that such a procedure would be inconsistent with that freedom of thought which is bound up with the spirit of philosophy. It does, however, betray certain national features, which are characteristic of the great French thinkers from Descartes, Pascal and Malebranche onwards.

One of the most remarkable points about these thinkers was their intimacy with the sciences. Descartes, while founding modern philosophy, also gave the world analytic geometry; Pascal made certain physical discoveries and was an eminent mathematician. Malebranche, too, was keenly interested in science. In the following century the Encyclopaedists displayed their wealth of scientific knowledge, and in the nineteenth century we have seen the work of Comte based on science, the ability of Cournot and Renouvier in mathematics, while men like Boutroux, Hergson and Le Roy possess a thorough acquaintance with modern science.

These facts have marked results, and distinguish French philosophy from that of Germany, where the majority of philosophers appear to haye been theological students in their youth and to have suffered from the effects of their subject for the remainder of their lives. Theological study does not produce clearness; it does not tend to cultivate a spirit of precision, but rather one of vagueness, of which much German philosophy is the product. On the other hand, mathematics is a study which demands clearness and which in turn increases the spirit of clarity and precision.

There is to be seen in our period a strong tendency to adhere to this feature of clearness. Modern French philosophy is remarkably lucid. Indeed, it is claimed that there is no notion, however profound it may be, or however based on technical research it may be, which cannot be conveyed in the language of every day. French philosophy does not invent a highly technical vocabulary in order to give itself airs in the eyes of the multitude, on the plea that obscurity is a sign of erudition and learning. On the contrary, it remembers Descartes’ intimate association of clearness with truth, remembers, too, his clear and simple French which he preferred to the scholastic Latin. It knows that to convince others of truth one must be at least clear to them and, what is equally important, one must be clear in one’s own mind first. Clarity does not mean shallowness but rather the reverse, because it is due to keen perceptive power, to a seeing further into the heart of things, involving an intimate contact with reality.

French thought has always remained true to a certain “common sense.” This is a dangerous and ambiguous term. In its true meaning it signifies the general and sane mind of man free from all that prejudice or dogma or tradition, upon which, of course, “common sense” in the popular meaning is usually based. A genuine “common sense” is merely “liberté” for the operation of that general reason which makes man what he is. It must be admitted that, owing to the fact that philosophy is taught in the lycées, the French are the best educated of any nation in philosophical ideas and have a finer general sense of that spirit of criticism and appreciation which is the essence of philosophy, than has any other modern nation. Philosophy in France is not written in order to appeal to any school or class. Not limited to an academic circle only, it makes its pronouncements to humanity and thus embodies in a real form the principles of egalité and fraternité. It makes a democratic appeal both by its clarté and its belief that la raison commune is in some degree present in every human being.

Not only was clearness a strong point in the philosophy of Descartes, but there was also an insistence upon method. Since the time of his famous Discours de la Méthode there has always been a unique value placed upon method in French thought, and this again serves to distinguish it profoundly from German philosophy, which is, in general, concerned with the conception and production of entire systems. The idea of an individual and systematic construction is an ambitious conceit which is not in harmony with the principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité. Such a view of philosophical work is not a sociable one, from a human standpoint, and tends to give rise to a spirit of authority and tradition. Apart from this aspect of it, there is a more important consideration. All those systems take one idea as their starting-point and build up an immense construction a priori. But another idea may be taken and opposed to that. There is thus an immense wastage of labour, and the individual effort is never transcended. Yet an idea is only a portion of our intelligence, and that intelligence itself is, in turn, only a portion of reality. A wider conception of philosophy must be aimed at, one in which the vue d’ensemble is not the effort of one mind, but of many, each contributing its share to a harmonious conception, systematic in a sense, but not in the German sense. Modern French thought has a dislike of system of the individualistic type; it realises that reality is too rich and complex for such a rapid construction to grasp it. It is opposed to systems, for the French mind looks upon philosophy as a manifestation of life itself—life blossoming to self-consciousness, striving ever to unfold itself more explicitly and more clearly, endeavouring to become more harmonious, more beautiful, and more noble. The real victories of philosophical thought are not indicated by the production of systems but by the discovery or creation of ideas. Often these ideas have been single and simple, but they have become veritable forces, in the life of mankind.

French thinkers prefer to work collectively at particular problems rather than at systems. Hence the aim and tone of their work is more universal and human, and being more general is apt to be more generous. This again is the expression of liberte, égalité and fraternité in a true sense. The French prefer, as it were, in their philosophical campaign for the intellectual conquest of reality diverse batteries of soixante-quinze acting with precision and alertness to the clumsy production of a “Big Bertha.” The production of ambitious systems, each professing to be the final word in the presentation of reality, has not attracted the French spirit. It looks at reality differently and prefers to deal with problems in a clear way, thereby indicating a method which may be applied to the solution of others as they present themselves. This is infinitely preferable to an ambitious unification, which can only be obtained at the sacrifice of clearness or meaning, and it arises from that keen contact with life, which keeps the mind from dwelling too much in the slough of abstraction, from which some of the German philosophers never succeed in escaping. Their pilgrimage to the Celestial City ends there, and consequently the account of their itinerary cannot be of much use to other pilgrims.

Another feature of modern French thought is the intimacy of the connection between psychology and metaphysics, and the intensive interest in psychology, which is but the imestigation of the inner life of man. While in the early beginnings of ancient Greek philosophy some time was spent in examining the outer world before man gave his attention to the world within, we find Descartes, at the beginning of modern philosophy, making his own consciousness of his own existence his starting-point. Introspection has always played a prominent part in French philosophy. Pascal was equally interested in the outer and the inner world. Through Maine de Biran this feature has come down to the new spiritualists and culminates in Bergson’s thought, in which psychological considerations hold first rank.

The social feature of modern French thought should not be omitted. In Germany subsequent thought has been coloured by the Reformation and the particular aspects of that movement. In France one may well say that subsequent thought has been marked by the Revolution. There is a theological flavour about most German philosophy, while France, a seething centre of political and social thought, has given to her philosophy a more sociological trend.

The French spirit in philosophy stands for clearness, concreteness and vitality. Consequently it presents a far greater brilliance, richness and variety than German philosophy displays. This vitality and even exuberance, which are those of the spirit of youth manifesting a joie de vivre* or an *élan vital, have been very strongly marked since the year 1880, and have placed French philosophy in the van of human thought.

It is, therefore to be lamented that French thought has not received the attention which it deseives. In England far more attention has been given to the nineteenth-century German philosophy, while the history of thought in France, especially in the period between Comte and Bergson, has remained in sad neglect. This can and should be speedily remedied.

It would be vain to ask whither its advance will lead. Even its own principles prevent any such forecast; its creative richness may blossom forth to-morrow in forms entirely new, for such is the characteristic of life itself, especially the life of the spirit, upon which so much stress is laid in modern French philosophy. The New Idealism lays great stress upon dynamism, voluntarism or action. Freedom and creative activity are its keynotes, and life, ever fuller and richer, is its aspiration. La Vie, of which France (and its centre, Paris) is such an expression, finds formulation in the philosophy of contemporary thinkers.

The student of comparative thought will find it both interesting and profitable to compare the work done recently in Italy by Croce and Gentile. The intellectual kinship of Croce and Bergson has frequently been pointed out, but Gentile’s work comes very close to the philosophy of action and to the whole positive-idealistic tendency of contemporary French thought. This is particularly to be seen in L’atto del pensare come atto puro (1912), and in Teoria generalo dello spirito come atto puro (1916). Professor Carr, the well-known exponent of Bergson’s philosophy, remarks in his introduction to the English edition of Gentile’s book, “We may individualise the mind as a natural thing-object person. . . . Yet our power to think the mind in this way would be impossible were not the mind with and by which we think it, itself not a thing, not a fact, but act; . . . never factum, but always fieri.” This quotation is from p. xv of the Theory of Mind as Pure Act. With one other quotation direct from Gentile we must close this reference to Italian neo-idealism. “In so far as the subject is constituted a subject by its own act it constitutes the object. . . . Mind is the transcendental activity productive of the objective world of experience” (pp. 18, 43). Compare with this our quotation from Ravaisson, given on p. 75 of this work, and the statement by Lachelier on p. 122, both essential principles of the French New Idealism.

One word of warning must be uttered against those who declare that the tendency of French thought is in the direction of anti-intellectualism. Such a declaration rests on a misunderstanding, which we have endeavoured in our pages to disclose It is based essentially upon a doctrine of Reason which belongs to the eighteenth century. The severe rationalism of that period was mischievous in that it rested upon a one-sided view of human nature, on a narrow interpretation of “Reason” which gave it only a logical and almost mathematical significance. To the Greeks, whom the French represent in the modern world, the term “NOUS” meant more than this—it meant an intelligible harmony. We would do wrong to look upon the most recent developments in France as being anti-rational, they are but a revolt against the narrow view of Reason, and they constitute an attempt to present to the modern world a conception akin to that of the Greeks. Human reason is much more than a purely logical faculty, and it is this endeavour to relate all problems to life itself with its pulsing throb, which represents the real attitude of the French mind. There is a realisation expressed throughout that thought, that life is more than logic. The clearness of geometry showed Descartes that geometry is not all-embracing. Pascal found that to the logic of geometry must be added a spirit of appreciation which is not logical in its nature, but expresses another side of man’s mind. To-day France sees that, although a philosophy must endeavour to satisfy the human intelligence, a merely intellectual satisfaction is not enough. The will and the feelings play their part, and it was the gteat fault of the eighteenth century to misunderstand this The search to-day is for a system of values and of truth in action as well as a doctrine about things in their purely theoretical aspects.

This is a serious demand, and it is one which philosophy must endeavour to appreciate Salvation will not be found in a mere dilettantism which can only express ieal indifference, nor in a dogmatism which results in bigotry and pride. Criticism is required, but not a purely destructive criticism, rather one which will offer some acceptable view of the universe. Such a view must combine true positivism or realism with a true idealism, by uniting fact and spirit, things and ideas. Its achievement can only be possible to minds possessing some creative and constructive power, yet minds who have been schooled in the college of reality. This is the task of philosophy in France and in other lands. That task consists not only in finding values and in defining them but in expressing them actively, and in endeavouring to realise them in the common life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Works of the Period classified under Authors. (The more important monographs are cited.) Names of philosophical journals.

II. Books on the Period.

III. Comparative Table showing contemporary German and Anglo-American Works from 1851 to 1921.

I WORKS OF THE PERIOD CLASSIFIED UNDER AUTHORS.

BERGSON: Les Données immédiates de la Conscience. 1889. English Translation—Time and Free-Will. 1910. Matière et Mémoire. 1896. (E.T. 1911.) Le Rire. 1901. (E.T. 1911.) Introduction a la Métaphysique. 1903. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. (E.T. 1913.) L’Evolution créatrice. 1907. (E.T. 1911.) L’Energie spirituelle. 1919. (E.T. 1920.) Some monographs on Bergson: Le Roy (1912), Maritain (1914) in France, Meckauer (1917) in Germany, and for the English reader Lindsay (1911), Stewart (1911), Carr (1912), Cunningham (1916), and Gunn (1920). BERNARD: Introduction a l’Etude de la Médecine expérimental. 1865. BERTHELOT: Science et Philosophie. 1886. BINET: Magnétisme animal. 1886. Les Altérations de la Personnalité. 1892. L’Introduction à la Psychologie expérimental. 1894. (Founded the Année psychologique in 1895.) BLONDEL: L’Action, Essai d’une Critique de la Vie et d’une Science de la Pratique. 1893. Histoire et Dogme. 1904. BOIRAC: L’Idée du Phénomène. 1894. BOIS: De la Connaissance religieuse. 1894. BOURGEOIS: Solidarité. 1896. BOUTROUX (EMILE): De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature 1874. (E.T. 1916.) De l’Idée de Loi naturelle dans la Science et la Philosophie contemporaines. 1895. (E.T. 1914.) Questions de Morale et d’Education. 1895. (E.T. 1913.) De l’Influence de la Philosophie écossaise sur la Philosophie française. 1897. La Science et la Religion dans la Philosophie contemporaine. 1908. (E.T. 1909.) Rapport sur la Philosophie en France depuis 1867. Paper read to Third Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg in 1908. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. Nov., 1908. Etudes d’Histoire de la Philosophie. (E.T. 1912.) The Beyond that is Within. E.T. 1912. (Addresses.) BROCHARD: De la Responsabilité morale. 1874. De l’Universalité des Notions morales. 1876. De L’Erreur. 1879. BRUNSCHWICG: La Modalité du jugement. 1897. La Vie de l’Esprit. 1900. Les Etapes de la Philosophie mathématique. 1912. BUREAU: La Crise morale des Temps nouveau*. 1907. CARO: *Le Matérialisme et la Science. 1868. Problèmes de Morale sociale. 1876. COMTE: Cours de Philosophie positive. 6 vols. 1830-42. Discours sur l’Esprit positive. 1844. Système de Politique positive. 4 vols. 1851-4. Catéchisme positiviste. Synthèse subjective (vol. i.). 1856. Note.—The Free and Condensed Translation of Comte’s Positive Philosophy in English by Miss Martineau, appeared in two volumes in 1853. Monograph by Lévy-Bruhl. COURNOT: Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la Critique philosophique (2 vols.). 1851. Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idées fondamentales dans les Sciences et dans l’Histoire (2 vols.). 1861. Considérations sur la Marche des Idées et des Evénements dans les Temps modernes (2 vols.). 1872. Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisine: Etude sur l’Emploi des Données de la Science en Philosophie. 1875. Note.—A number of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale was devoted to Cournot in 1905. See also the Monograph by Bottinelli and his Souvenirs de Cournot. 1913. COUTURAT: De l’Infini mathématique. Les Principes des Mathématiques. CRESSON: Le Malaise de la pensée philosophique contemporaine*. 1905. DAURIAC: *Croyance et Realité. 1889. Motions de Matière et de Force. 1878. DELBOS: L’Esprit philosophique de l’Allemagne et la Pensée française*. 1915. DUHEM: La Théorie physique. 1906. DUNAN: Les deux Idéalismes. 1911. DURKHEIM: *De la Division du Travail social. 1893. Les Regles de la Méthode sociologique. 1894. Le Suicide. 1897. Les Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse. 1912. (E. T.) ESPINAS: Societés animales. 1876. EVELLlN: La Raison pure et les Antinomies. 1907. FONSEGRIVE: Morale et Société. 1907. FOUILLÉE: La Philosophie de Platon 2 vols. 1869. Prize for competition in 1867, on the. Theory of Ideas, offered by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. “Crowned” after publication by the Académie française. 1871. Second Edition, revised, and enlarged to four volumes. 1888-9. La Liberté et le Determinisme. 1872. (Doctorate Thesis) La Philosophie de Socrate. 2 vols 1874. Prize in 1868, Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. Histoire générale de la Philosophie. 1875. New Edition revised and augmented, 1910. Extraits des grands Philosophes. 1877. L’Idée moderne du Droit en Allemagne, en Ingleterre et en France. 1878. La Science sociale contemporaine. 1880. Critique des Systèmes contemporains. 1883. La Propriété sociale et la Démocratie. 1884. L’Avenir de la Métaphysique fondée sur l’Expérience. 1889. L’Evolutionisme des Idées-forces. 1890. L’Enseignement au Point de Vue national. 1891 (E. T. 1892.) La Psychologie des Idées-forces. 2 vols. 1893. Tempérament et Caractère selon les Individus, les Sexes et les Races. 1895. Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive. 1895. Le Mouvement positiviste et la Conception sociologique du Monde. 1896. Psychologie du Peuple français. 1898. Les Etudes classiques et la Démocratie. 1898. La France au Point de Vue moral. 1900. La Reforme de l’Enseignement par la Philosophie. 1901. La Conception morale et civique de L’Enseignement. Nietzsche et l’Immoralisme. 1904. Esquisse psychologique des Peuples européens. 1903. Le Moralisme de Kant et l’Amoralisme contemporain. 1905. Les Elements sociologiques de la Morale. 1905. La Morale des Idées-forces. 1907. Le Socialisme et la Sociologie réformiste. 1909. La Démocratie politique et sociale en France. 1911. La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intéllectualistes. 1912. Posthumous: Esquisse d’une Interprétation du Monde. Humanitaires et Libertaires. 1914. Equivalents philosophiques des Religions. On Fouillée, monograph by Augustin Guyau, son of J. M. Guyau. GOBLOT: Traité de Logique. 1918. GOURD: Le Phénomène. 1888. La Philosophie de la Religion. 1911. GUYAU: La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines contemporaines. 1878. “Crowned” four years before by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. La Morale anglaise contemporaine. 1879. An extension of the Prize Essay (Second Part). Vers d’un Philosophe. 1881. Problèmes de l’Esthétique contemporaine. 1884. Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction. 1885. (E.T. 1898.) L’Irréligion de l’Avenir. 1887. (E.T. 1897.) Posthumous: Education et Hérédité. (E.T. 1891.) L’Art au Point de Vue sociologique. La Genèse de l’Idée de Temps. 1890. There is a monograph on Guyau by Fouillée. HAMELIN: Essai sur les Eléments principaux de la Représentation*. 1907. HANNEQUIN: Essai critique sur l’Hypothèse des Atomes. 1896. IZOULET: *La Cité moderne. 1894. JANET (PAUL): La Famille. 1855. Histoire de la Philosophie morale et politique dans L’Antiquité et dans les Temps modernes.* 2 vols. 1858. Republished as *Histoire de la Science politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale. 1872. La Philosophie du Bonheur. 1862. La Crise philosophique. 1865. Le Cerveau et la Pensée. 1867. Eléments de Morale. 1869. Les Problèmes du XIXe Siècle. 1872. La Morale. 1874 (E T. 1884.) Philosophie de la Révolution française. 1875. Les Causes finales. 1876. (E.T. 1878.) JANET (PIERRE): L’Automatisme psychologique. 1889 L’Etat mental des Hystériques. 1894. Névroses et Idées-fixes. 1898. (Janet founded the Journal de Psychologie. 1904). JAVARY: L’Idée du Progrès*. 1850. LABERTHONNIÈRE. *Le Dogmatisme morale. 1898. Essais de Philosophie religieuse. 1901. Le Réalisme chrétien et l’Idéalisme grec. LACHELIER: Du Fondement de l’Induction. 1871. Psychologie et Métaphysique. 1885. Article in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, now published with the above. Etude sur le Syllogisme. 1907. Monograph by Séailles, article by Noël. LACOMBE: De l’Histoire considérée comme Science*. 1894. LALANDE: *La Dissolution opposée à l’Evolution, dans les Sciences physiques et morales. 1899. Précis raisonné de Morale pratique par Questions et Réponses. 1907. LAPIE: Logique de la Volonté. 1902. LE BON: Lois psychologiques de l’Evolution des Peuples. Les Opinions et les Croyances. 1911. Psychologie du Socialisme. 1899. Psychologie des Foules. (E.T.) La Vie des Vérités. 1914. LEQUIER: La Recherche d’une Première Vérité (Fragments posthumes)*. 1865. LE ROY: *Dogme et Critique. 1907. LIARD: Des Définitions géometriques et des Définitions empiriques. 1873. La Science positive et la Métaphysique. 1879. Morale et Enseignement civique. 1883. L’Enseignement supérieure en France, 1789 à 1889. 1889. LOISY: L’Evangile et l’Eglise. (E.T.) MARION: La Solidarité morale. 1880. MÉNÉGOZ: Publications diverses sur le Fidéisme et son Application à l’Enseignement chrétien traditionnel. 1900. Two additional volumes later. MEYERSON: Identité et Réalité. 1907 MICHELET: L’Amour. 1858 Le Prêtre la Femme et la Famille. 1859. La Bible de l’Humanité. 1864 MILHAUD: Essai sur les Conditions et les Limites de la Certitude logique. 1894 Le Rationnel. 1898. OLLÉ-LAPRUNE: La Certitude morale. 1880. Le Prix de la Vie. 1885 La Philosophie et le Temps présent. 1895. La Raison et le Rationalisme. 1906. PARODI: Le Problème morale et la Pensée contemporaine*. 1910. PASTEUR: *Le Budget de la Science. 1868 PAULHAN: Phénomènes affectifs. L’Activité mentale. 1889 PAYOT: La Croyance. 1896. PELLETAN: Profession da Foi du XIXe Siècle. 1852. POINCAIRÉ: La Science et l’Hypothèse. 1902. (E.T. 1905.) La Valeur de la Science. 1905. Science et Méthode. 1909 Dernières pensées. PROUDHON: Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? 1840 Système des Contradictions économiques. 1846 La Philosophie du Progrès. 1851. De la Justice. 1858. RAUH: Psychologie appliquée à la Morale et à l’Education. De la Méthode dans la Psychologie des Sentiments. Essai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale. 1890. L’Expérience morale. 1903. RAVAISSON-MOLLIEN (1813-1900): Habitude. 1838. (Thesis.) Reprinted 1894 in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. Aristote. 1837. Vol. I. Vol. II. in 1846. Development of work crowned by Académie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1833, when the author was twenty. Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 1867. La Philosophie de Pascal (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1887) L’Education (Revue bleue. 1887). Métaphysique et Morale (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1893). Le Testament philosophique (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1901). Cf. Boutroux on Ravaisson (Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1900). Bergson : Discours à l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. 1904. RENAN: Averroès et l’Averroisme. 1852. Etudes d’Histoire religieuse. 1857. Essais de Morale et de Critique. 1851). Les Origines du Christianisme. 1863-83. 8 vols., of which: Vie de Jésus. 1863. (E.T.) Questions contemporaines. 1868. La Réforme intellectual et morale. 1871. Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques. 1870. (E.T. 1883.) Drames philosophiques. Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse. 1883. (E.T. 1883.) Nouvelles Etudes d’Histoire religieuse. 1884. (E.T. 1886.) Histoire du Peuple d’Israël. 5 vols. 1887-04. (E.T. 1888-91. 3 vols.) L’Avenir de la Science. 1890. Written 1848-9. (E.T.) Feuilles détachées. 1802. For monographs on Renan: Allier: La Philosophie de Renan. 1895. Monod: Renan, Taine, Michelet. 1894. Séailles: Renan. 1894*. RENOUVIER: Manuel de Philosophie moderne. 1842. Manuel de Philosophie ancienne. 1844. Manuel républicaine de l’Homme et du Citoyen. 1848. Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale et centrale de la République. 1851. Essais de Critique générale. 4 vols. 1854, 1859, 1864, 1864. (On revision these four became thirteen vols.) La Science de la Morale. 2 vols. 1869. 1er Essai, revised: Traité de Logique général et de Logique formelle. 3 vols. 1875. 2e Essai, revised: Traité de Psychologie rationnelle. 3 vols. 1875. Uchronie (L’Utopie dans l’Histoire), Esquisse historique du Développement de la Civilisation européenne, tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel qu’il aurait pu être. 1876. Petit Traité de Morale pour les Ecoles laïques. 1879. Esquisse d’une Classification systématique des Doctrines philosophiques. 2 vols. 1886. 3e Essai, revised: Les Principes de la Nature. 1892. Victor Hugo, le Poète. 1893. 4e Essai, revised: L’lntroduction à la Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. 1896. 5e Essai, new: La Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. 4 vols. I. and II. 1806. III. and IV. 1897. (This brought the Essais up to thirteen volumes.) La Nouvelle Monadologie. 1891). (With L. Prat.) (“Crowned” by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.) Victor Hugo, le Philosophe. 1900. Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure. 1901. Histoire et Solution des Problèmes métaphysiques. 1901. Le Personnalisme, suivi d’une Etude sur la Perception externe et sur la Force 1903. Posthumous: Derniers entretiens. 1905. Doctrine de Kant. 1906. For his two journals, see under “Periodicals.” In the latest edition the complete Essais de Critique générale are only ten volumes, as follows: Logic, 2; Psychology, 2; Principles of Nature*, 1; Introduction to Philosophy of History, 1; *and the Philosophy of History, 4. The best monograph is that of Séailles, 1905. Renouvier’s Correspondence with the Swiss Philosopher, Sécretan, has been published; cf. also The Letters of William James. REYNAUD: Philosophie religieuse. 1858. (Third Edition.) RIBOT: La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine. 1870. (E.T. 1873.) Hérédité, Etude psychologique. 1873. (E.T. 1875.) La Psychologie allemande contemporaine. 1879. (E.T. 1886.) Les Maladies de la Mémoire, Essai dans la Psychologie positive. 1881. (E.T. 1882.) Les Maladies de la Volonté. 1883. (E.T. 1884.) Les Maladies de la Personnalité. 1885. (E.T. 1895.) La Psychologie de l’Attention. 1889. (E.T. 1890.) La Psychologie des Sentiments. 1896. (E.T. 1897.) L’Evolution des Idées générales. 1897. (E.T. 1899.) Essai sur l’Imagination créatrice. 1900. La Logique des Sentiments. 1904. Essai sur les Passions. 1906. La Vie inconsciente et les Mouvements. SABATIER (AUGUSTE): Esquisse d’une Philosophie de Religion d’après la Psychologie et l’Histoire. 1897. Les Religions d’Autorité et la Religion de l’Esprit. 1904. (E.T.) SABATIER (PAUL): A propos de la Séparation des Eglises de l’Etat. 1905. E.T., Robert Dell, 1906 (with Text of the Law). SÉAILLES: Affirmations de la Conscience moderne. 1903. SIMON: La Liberté de Conscience. 1859. Dieu, Patrie, Liberté. 1883. SOREL: Reflexions sur la Violence. 1907. (E.T 1916.) Illusions du Progrès. 1911. TAINE: Les Philosophes français au XIXe Siecle. 1857. Essais de Critique et d’Histoire. 1858. Philosophie de l’Art. 2 vols. 1865. (E.T. 1865.) Nouveaux Essais de Critique et d’Histoire. 1865. De l’Intélligence. 2 vols. 1870. (E T. 1871.) The work Origines de la France contemporaine in 5 vols, 1876-93. Histoire de la Littérature anglaise. 5 vols. 1863. (E.T. by Van Laun. 1887.) Monographs: De Margerie: Taine. 1894. Monod: Renan, Taine, et Michelet. 1894. Barzellotti: La Philosophie de Taine. Boutmy: H. Taine. 1897. Giraud: Essai sur Taine. 1901. TARDE: Criminalité comparée. 1898. Les Lois de l’Imitation. 1900. VACHEROT: Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie. 1846-51. La Métaphysique et la Science. 3 vols. 1858. La Démocratie. 1860. Essais de Philosophie critique. 1864. La Religion. 1868. La Science et la Conscience. 1870. Le Nouveau Spiritualisme. 1884. Cf. Parodi on Vacherot, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1899. WEBER: Le Rythme du Progrès. Vers le Positivisme absolu par l’Idéalisme. 1903. WlLBOIS: Devoir et Durée: Essai de Morale sociale*. 1912. XÉNOPOL: *Principes fondamentaux de l’Histoire. 1899. Revised and reissued in larger form in 1905 as La Théorie de l’Histoire.

This abbreviation is used throughout for “English Translation.”

PERIODICALS

“LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE,” of Renouvier and Pillon, 1872. to 1884, weekly; monthly from 1885 to 1889. “LA CRITIQUE RELIGIEUSE,” 1878-1884 (quarterly). Renouvier. “REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE DE LA FRANCE ET DE L’ÉTRANGER,” founded by Ribot in 1876. “L’ANNÉE PHILOSOPHIQUE.” 1867-1869. Renouvier and Pillon, refounded in 1890 by Pillon. “REVUE DE MÉTAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE,” founded by Xavier Leon in 1893. “Crowned” by Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, 1921. “ANNÉE PSYCHOLOGIQUE,” founded by Beaunet and Binet, 1895. “REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE,” founded by Peillaube, 1900. “REVUE THOMISTE.” “ANNALES DE PHILOSOPHIE CHRÉTIENNE.” Laberthonnière. “ANNÉE SOCIOLOGIQUE.” 1896-1912. Durkheim. “JOURNAL DE PSYCHOLOGIE NORMALE ET PATHOLOGIQUE.” Founded 1904 by Janet and Dumas. “BULLETIN DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE DE PHILOSOPHIE.” From 1901.

II GENERAL BOOKS ON THE PERIOD.

ALIOTTA: The Idealistic Reaction against Science. (E.T. from Italian. 1914.) BARTH: Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie. 1897. BERGSON: La Philosophie française. 1915. BOUTROUX: Philosophie en France depuis 1867. Report to Congress of Philosophy given in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1908. La Philosophie: an Essay in the volume of collected Essays entitled: Un Demi-Siècle de la Civilisation française. 1870- 1915. Pp. 25-48. (Paris: Hachette. 1916.) DWELSHAUVERS: La Psychologie française contemporaine*. 1920. FAGUET: *Dix-Neuvième Siècle. 1887. Politiques et Moralistes du XIXe Siècle. 1881. FERRAZ: Etudes sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 3 vols. 1882-9. It is interesting to notice the triple division adopted by Ferraz: Socialism (under which heading he also groups Naturalism and Positivism). Traditionalism (Ultramontanism). Spiritualism (together with Liberalism). FISCHER: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 9 vols. FOUILLÉE: Histoire de la Philosophie, Latest Edition, last Chapter. Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive. 1896. La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intellectualistes. 1912. HÖFFDING: Modern Philosophers. (E.T. from Danish. 1915.) LÉVY-BRUHL: Modern Philosophy in France. Chicago, 1899. MERZ: History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century. 4 vols. A great work. Very comprehensive, particularly for German and British thought. PARODI: La Philosophie contemporaine en France. 1919. An excellent treatment of the development from 1890 onwards by a French thinker. (“Crowned” by Académie.) RAVAISSON: Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 1867. (Second Edition, 1889.) This has become an acknowledged classic. RENOUVIER: Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. (Vol. IV. latest sections.) 1897. RUGGIERO: Modern Philosophy. 1912. (E.T. from Italian. 1921.) Gives a stimulating account of German, French, Anglo- American and Italian thought. STEBBING: Pragmatism and French Voluntarism. 1914. TAINE: Les Philosophes français du XIXe Siècle. 1857. TURQUET-MILNES, G.: Some Modern French Writers: A Study in Bergsonism. 1921. Deals mainly with literary figures-e.g., Barres, Péguy, France, Bourget, Claudel. VILLA: Contemporary Psychology. (E.T. from Italian. 1903.) L’Idealismo moderno. 1905. WEBER: Histoire de la Philosophie européenne. (Eighth Edition, 1914.)

The article contributed by Ribot to Mind in 1877 is worthy of notice, while much light is thrown on the historical development by articles in the current periodicals cited on p. 338, especially in the Revue philosophique* and the *Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.

IIII COMPARATIVE TABLE

THE CHIEF PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS IN FRANCE, GERMANY, ENGLAND AND AMERICA FROM 1851 TO 1921.

FRANCE. GERMANY. ENGLAND AND AMERICA. l851 COURNOT: “Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances.” 1851 FECHNER: “Zend Avesta.” 1851 MANSEL: “Prolegomena to Logic.” RENOUVIER: “Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale.”

PROUDHON: “La Philosophie du Progrès.”

1852 MOLESCHOTT: “Der Kreislauf des Lebens.” LOTZE: “Medizinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele.” 1854 RENOUVIER: “Essai de Critique générale”(Ier Essai). 1854 FERRIER: “Institutes of Metaphysic.” COMTE completes “Systeme de Politique positive.”

1855 BÜCHNER: “Kraft und Stoff.” 1855 BAIN: “The Senses and the Intellect.” FECHNER: “Uber die physikalische und die philosophische Atomlehre.” SPENCER: “Principles of Psychology.” CZOLBE: “Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus.” 1856 COMTE: “Synthèse subjective,” vol. i. 1856 LOTZE: “Mikrokosmos” (1856-1864).

CZOLBE: “Die Enstehung des Selbstbewusstseins.” 1857 TAINE: “Philosophes rançais du XIXe Siecle.” 1857 BUCKLE: “History of Civilization in England” (vol. i.). RENAN: “Etudes d’Histoire religieuse.” MANSEL: “The Limits of Religious Thought.” 1858 VACHEROT: “La Métaphysique et la Science.” 1858 HAMILTON: “Lectures” (1858-1860). 1859 RENOUVIER: “Deuxième Essai de Critique generale.” I859 DARWIN: “Origin of Species.”

1860 FECHNER: “Elemente der Psychophysik.” 1861 COURNOT: “Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idees.” 1861 FECHNER: “Uber die Seelenfrage.”

1862 HÄCKEL: “Generalle Morphologie” (1862-1866). 1862 SPENCER: “First Principles.” 1863 RENAN: “Vie de Jésus.” 1863 VOGT: “Vorlesungen iiber den Menschen.” 1863 MILL (J. S.): “Utilitarianism.”

FECHNER: “Die Drei Motive des Glaubens.” 1864 RENOUVIER: “Troisième Essai de Critique générale”; “Quatrième Essai de Critique générale.” 1865 BERNARD: “Introduction à l’Etude de la Médecine expérimentale.” 1865 DÜHRING: “Der Wert des Lebens.” 1865 HODGSON: “Time and Space.”

CZOLBE: “Die Grenzen und der Ursprung der Menschlichen Erkenntnis.” MILL (J. S): “Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy.”

HAMILTON: “Lectures on Metaphysics.” STIRLING: “Secret of Hegel.” 1866 LANGE: “Geschichte des Materialismus.” 1867 RAVAISSON: “Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siecle.” 1867 MARX: “Das Kapital.” 1867 BUCKLE: “History of Civilization in England” ( vol. ii.). 1868 RENAN: “Questions contemporaines.” 1868 LOTZE: “Geschichte der Asthetik in Deutschland.”

HÄCKEL: “Natürliche Schöpftungsgeschichte 1869 RENOUVIER: “Science deU Morale.” 1869 HARTMANN: “Philosophic des Unbewussten.” 1870 TAINE: “De l’Intelligence.” 1870 RITSCHL: “Lehre von der Rechfertigung”(1870-1874). 1871 LACHELIER: “Du Fondement de l’Induction.” 1872 FOUILLÉE: “La LibertcS et la Determinisme,” 1872 STRAUSS: “Der Alte und der neue Glaube.” 1872 MAURICE: “Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.” JANET: “Problemes du XIXe Siecle.” NIETZSCHE: “Die Geburt der Tragödie” WALLACE: “Logic of Hegel.” COURNOT: “Considerations sur la Marche des Idees.” 1873 RIBOT: “IWredite.” 1873 1973 SIGWART: “Logik” (1873-1878). 1873 1973 STEPHEN (J. F.): “Liberty, Equality,Fraternity.” 1874 BOUTROUX: “La Contingence des Lois de la Nature.” 1874 LOTZE: “Drei Bucher der Logik.” 1874 SIDGWICK: “Method of Ethics.”

WUNDT: “Physiologische Psychologie.” BRENTANO: “Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt.” 1875 COURNOT: “Materialisme, Vitalisme,Rationalisme.” RENOUVIER: Revises first and second “Essais.” 1876 RENAN: “Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques.” 1876 FECHNER: “Vorschule der Asthetik.” 1876 BRADLEY: “Ethical Studies.” JANET: “Les Causes finales.” GROTE: “Moral Ideals.”

1877 FLINT: “Theism.” 1878 FOUILLEE: “L’Idee du Droit.” 1878 NIETZSCHE: “Menschliches Allzumenschhches “(1878-1880). 1878 HODGSON: “Philosophy of Reflection.” 1879 BROCHARD: “De l’Erreur.” 1879 LOTZE: “Drei Bucher der Metaphysik.” 1879 SPENCER: “Data of Ethics.”

HARTMANN: “Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins.” BALFOUR: “Defence of Philosophic Doubt.” 1880 AVENARIUS: “Kritik der reinen Erfahrung”(1880-1890) 1880 CAIRD: “Philosophy ol Religion.” 1881 GUYAU: “Vers d’un Philosophe.” 1881 NIETZSCHE: “Morgenrote.”

1882 NIETZSCHE: “Die frohliche Wissenschaft.” 1882 STEPHEN (L.): “Science of Ethics.” 1883 NIETZSCHE: “Also sprach Zarathustra”(1883-1891) 1883 GREEN: “Prolegomena to Ethics.” DUHRING: “Der Ersatz der Religion.” BRADLEY: “Principles of Logic.” WUNDT: “Logik.” MACH: “Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung.” 1885 GUYAU: “Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction.” 1885 MARTINEAU: “Types o. Ethical Theory.” LACHELIER: “Psychologic et Métaphysique.” BOSANQUET: “Knowledge and Reality.” 1886 GUYAU: “L’Irreligion de l’Avenir.” 1886 MACH: “Analyse der Empfindungen.” 1886 WARD: “Psychology” (article).

WUNDT: “Ethik.” NIETZSCHE: “Jenseits von Gut und Böse.” 1887 NIETZSCHE: “Zur Genealogie der Moral.” 1887 SETH (Pringle-Pattison): “Hegelianism and Personality.” 1888 EUCKEN: “Die Einheit des Geisteslebens.” 1888 BOSANQUKT: “Logic.” 1889 BERGSON: “Les Donnees immediates de la Conscience.” 1889 WUNDT: “System der Philosophie.” 1889 MARTINEAU: “Study of Religion.” FOUILLEE: “L’Avenir de la Metaphysique.” LIPPS: “Grundthatsachen des Seelenlebens.” ALEXANDER: “Moral Order and Progress.” JANET (Pierre): “L’Automatisme psychologique.”

PAULHAN: “L’Activité mentale.” 1890 RENAN: “L’Avenir de la Science.” 1890 JAMES: “Principles of Psychology.” FOUILLÉE: “L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces.” RAUH: “Le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale”

1891 SIMMEL: “Moralwissenschaft.” AVENARIUS: “Der menschliche Weltbegriff.” 1892 RENOUVIER Revises third “Essai.” 1892 PEARSON: “Grammar Of Science.” RENAN “Feuilles détachées.” 1893 DURKHEIM: “De la Division du Travail social.” 1893 HUXLEY: “Evolution and Ethics.” BLONDEL: “L’Action.” CAIRD: “Evolution of Religion” FOUILLÉE: “Psychologie des Idées-forces.” BRADLEY: “Appearance and Reality.”

1894 MEINONG: “Werththeorie” (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen). 1894 FRASER: “Philosophy of Theism” HERTZ: “Prinzipien der Mechanik.” 1895 FOUILLÉE: “Le Mouvement idéaliste.” 1895 BALFOUR: “Foundations of Belief.” 1896 BERGSON: “Matière et Mémoire” 1896 EUCKEN: “Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt.” 1896 STOUT: “Analytic Psychology.” RENOUVIER: Revises fourth “Essai.” HOBHOUSE: “Theory of Knowledge.” RENOUVIER: Publishes fifth “Essai” (La Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire), vols. 1 and 2. MERZ: “History of Thought in the Nineteenth Century” (1896-1914).

MACTAGGART: “Hegelian Dialectic.” 1897 RENOUVIER: Ditto, vols. 3 and 4. 1897 HARTMANN: “Kategorienlehre.” 1897 JAMES: “The Will to Believe SABATIER: “Esquisse d’une Philosophie de Religion.” DREWS: “Das Ich als Grundproblem der Metaphysik.”

EHRENFELS: “System der Werttheorie” (1897-1898).

1898 WALLACE: “Natural Theology and Ethics.” 1899 RENOUVIER (and Prat): “La Nouvelle Monadologie.” 1899 MEINONG: “Uber gegenstände höheren Ordnung.” 1899 WARD: “Naturalism and Agnosticism.”

BOSANQUET: “Philosophical Theory of the State.” HODGSON: “Metaphysic of Experience.” 1900 TARDE: “Les Lois de l’Imitation.” 1900 PETZOLDT: “Die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung.” 1900 ROYCE: “The World and the Individual.” BRUNSCHWICG: “La Vie de l’Esprit.”

1901 EUCKEN: “Das Wesen der Religion.” EUCKEN: “Das Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion.” 1902 POINCARÉ 1902 COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Logik.” 1902 JAMES: “Varieties of Religious Experience.”

CLIFFORD: “Essays and Lectures.” 1903 WEBER: “Vers le Positivisme absolu par l’Idéalisme.” 1903 BERGMANN: “System des objectiven Idealismus.” 1903 RUSSELL: “Principles of Mathematics.” RAUH: “L’Expérience morale.” SCHILLER: “Humanism.” RENOUVIER: “Le Personnalisme.”

1904 COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Ethik.” 1904 MACTAGGART: “Hegelian Cosmology.” 1905 POINCARÉ: “Valeur de la Science.” 1905 MACH: Erkenntnis und Irrtum.” 1906 OLLÉ-LAPRUNE: “La Raison et le Rationalisme.” 1906 MEINONG: “Die Stellung der Gegenstandtheorie ein System der Wissenschaften.” 1906 BAILLIE: “Idealistic Construction of Experience.” DUHEM: “La Théorie physique.” BALDWIN: “Thought and Things.” 1907 HAMELIN: “Les Eléments principaux de la Répresentation.” 1907 EUCKEN: “Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensauschauung.” 1907 SCHILLER: “Studies in Humanism.” BERGSON: “L’Evolution créatrice.” EUCKEN: “Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie.” EVELLIN: “La Raison pure et les Antinomies.” LALANDEL “Précis de Morale.” FOUILLÉE: “Morale des Idées-forces.” 1908 BOUTROUX: “Science et Religion.” 1908 EUCKEN: “Sinn und Wertdes Lebens.”

EUCKEN: “Philosophie des Geisteslebens.” MÜNSTERBERG: “Philosophie der Werte.” 1909 POINCARÉ: “Science et Méthode.” 1909 DEWEY: “Logical Theory.”

1910 REMKHE: “Philosophie als Grundwissenschaft” 1911 DUNAN: “Les Deux Idéalismes.” 1911 EUCKEN: “Konnen wir noch Christen sein?” 1911 WARD: “Realm of Ends.” 1912 FOUILLÉE: “La Pensée.” 1912 COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Æsthetik.” 1912 BOSANQUET: “Value and Destiny of the Individual” DURKHEIM: “Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse.” EUCKEN: “Erkennen und Leben.”

1913 BOSANQUET: “Value and Destiny of the Individual.” 1914 FOUILLÉE: “Humanitaires et Libertaires.”

1915 SORLEY: “Moral Values and the Idea of God.” 1917 LOISY: “La Religion.” 1918 GOBLOT: “Traité de Logique.” 1919 BERGSON: “L’Energie spirituelle.”

1920 ALEXANDER: “Space, Time and Deity.” 1921 RUSSELL: “Analysis of Mind.” MACTAGGART: “Nature of Existence.”