Renan, although he broke off his career in the Church and his connection with organised religion, retained, nevertheless, much of the priestly character all his life, and he himself confesses this: “I have learned several things, but I have changed in nowise as to the general system of intellectual and moral life. My habitation has become more spacious, but it still stands on the same ground. I look upon my estrangement from orthodoxy as only a change of opinion concerning an important historical question, a change which does not prevent me from dwelling on the same foundations as before.” He indeed found it impossible to reconcile the Catholic faith with free and honest thought. His break with the Church made him an enemy of all superstition, and his writings raised against him the hatred of the Catholic clergy, who regarded him as a deserter. In the customary terms of heated theological debate he was styled an atheist. This was grossly unfair or meaningless. Which word we use here depends upon our definition of theism. As a matter of fact, Renan was one of the most deeply religious minds of his time. His early religious sentiments remained, in essence if not in form, with him throughout his life. These were always associated with the tender memories he had of his mother and beloved sister and his virtuous teachers, the priests in the little town of Brittany, whence he came. Much of the Breton mysticism clung to his soul, and much of his philosophy is a restated, rationalised form of his early beliefs.
As a figure in the intellectual life of the time, Renan is difficult to estimate. The very subtilty of his intellect betrayed him into an oscillation which was far from admirable, and prevented his countrymen in his own day from “getting to grips” with his ideas. These were kaleidoscopic. Renan seems a type, reflecting many tendencies of the time, useful as an illustration to the historian of the ideas of the period; but for philosophy in the special sense he has none of the clearly defined importance of men like Renouvier, Lachelier, Guyau, Fouillée, Bergson or Blondel. His humanism keeps him free from dogmatism, but his mind fluctuates so that his general attitude to the ultimate problems is one of reserve, of scepticism and of frequent paradox and contradiction. Renan seems to combine the positivist scorn of metaphysics with the Kantian idealism. At times, however, his attitude is rather Hegelian, and he believes in universal change which is an evolving of spirit, the ideal or God, call it what we will. We need not be too particular about names or forms of thought, for, after all, everything “may be only a dream.” That is Renan’s attitude, to temper enthusiasm by irony, to assert a duty of doubt, and often, perhaps, to gain a literary brilliance by contradictory statements. “The survey of human affairs is not complete,” he reminds us, “unless we allot a place for irony beside that of tears, a place for pity beside that of rage, and a place for a smile alongside respect.”[[12]]
[12] Preface to his Drames philosophiques, 1888.
It was this versatility which made Renan a lover of the philosophic dialogue. This literary and dramatic form naturally appealed strongly to a mind who was so very conscious of the fact that the truths with which philosophy deals cannot be directly denied or directly affirmed, as they are not subject to demonstration. All the high problems of humanity Renan recognised as being of this kind, as involving finally a rational faith; and he claimed that the best we can do is to present the problems of life from different points of view. This is due entirely to the peculiar character of philosophy itself, and to the distinction, which must never be overlooked, between knowledge and belief, between certitude and opinion. Geometry, for example, is not a subject for dialogues but for demonstration, as it involves knowledge and certitude. The problems of philosophy, on the contrary, involve “une nuance de foi,” as Renan styles it. They involve willed adhesion, acceptance or choice; they provoke sympathy or hate, and call into play human personality with its varying shades of colour.
This state of nuance Renan asserts to be the one of the hour for philosophy. It is not the time, he thinks, to attempt to strengthen by abstract reasoning the “proofs” of God’s existence or of the reality of a future life. “Men see just now that they can never know anything of the supreme cause of the universe or of their own destiny. Nevertheless they are anxious to listen to those who will speak to them about either.”[[13]]
[13] From his Preface to Drames philosophiques.
Knowledge, Renan maintained, lies somewhere between the two schools into which the majority of men are divided. “What you are looking for has long since been discovered and made clear,” say the orthodox. “What you are looking for is impossible to find,” say the practical positivists, the political “raillers” and the atheists. It is true that we shall never know the ultimate secret of all being, but we shall never prevent man from desiring more and more knowledge or from creating for himself working hypotheses or beliefs.
Yet although Renan admits this truth he never approaches even the pragmatist position of supporting “creative beliefs.” He rather urges a certain passivity towards problems and opinions. We should, he argues in his Examen de Conscience philosophique,[[14]] let them work themselves out in us. Like a spectator we must let them modify our “intellectual retina”; we must let reality reflect itself in us. By this he does not mean to assert that the truth about that reality is a matter of pure indifference to us-far from it. Precisely because he is so conscious of the importance of true knowledge, he is anxious that we should approach the study of reality without previous prejudices. “We have no right,” he remarks, “to have a desire when reason speaks; we must listen and nothing more.”[[15]]
[14] In his Feuilles detachées, pp. 401-443.
[15] Feuilles détachées, p. 402.