ERNEST RENAN.
"Blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please."
ERNEST RENAN is dead. Another source of light; another force of civilization; another charming personality; another brave soul, graceful in thought, generous in deed; a sculptor in speech, a colorist in words—clothing all in the poetry born of a delightful union of heart and brain—has passed to the realm of rest.
Reared under the influences of Catholicism, educated for the priesthood, yet by reason of his natural genius, he began to think. Forces that utterly subjugate and enslave the mind of mediocrity sometimes rouse to thought and action the superior soul.
Renan began to think—a dangerous thing for a Catholic to do. Thought leads to doubt, doubt to investigation, investigation to truth—the enemy of all superstition.
He lifted the Catholic extinguisher from the light and flame of reason. He found that his mental vision was improved. He read the Scriptures for himself, examined them as he did other books not claiming to be inspired. He found the same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same miraculous impossibilities in the book attributed to God that he found in those known to have been written by men.
Into the path of reason, or rather into the highway, Renan was led by Henriette, his sister, to whom he pays a tribute that has the perfume of a perfect flower.
"I was," writes Renan, "brought up by women and priests, and therein lies the whole explanation of my good qualities and of my defects." In most that he wrote is the tenderness of woman, only now and then a little touch of the priest showing itself, mostly in a reluctance to spoil the ivy by tearing down some prison built by superstition.
In spite of the heartless "scheme" of things he still found it in his heart to say, "When God shall be complete, He will be just," at the same time saying that "nothing proves to us that there exists in the world a central consciousness—a soul of the universe—and nothing proves the contrary." So, whatever was the verdict of his brain, his heart asked for immortality. He wanted his dream, and he was willing that others should have theirs. Such is the wish and will of all great souls.
He knew the church thoroughly and anticipated what would finally be written about him by churchmen: "Having some experience of ecclesiastical writers I can sketch out in advance the way my biography will be written in Spanish in some Catholic review, of Santa Fé, in the year 2,000. Heavens! how black I shall be! I shall be so all the more, because the church when she feels that she is lost will end with malice. She will bite like a mad dog."