^{Note 1 in page 927} The Cahiers de jeunesse were composed in 1845–46, the Nouveaux cahiers de jeunesse in 1846; never intended for publication, they were published posthumously in 1906 and 1907, to open up new perspectives on Renan's character and his work as a whole. They are unfortunately still much too little known.

The edition of Renan's works used wherever possible is the Œuvres complètes de Ernest Renan, édition définitive établie par Henriette Psichari (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947-), of which 4 vols, have appeared. Where this edition has been used, a Roman numeral following the title of the particular work refers to the volume in which it is found. Works not yet published in the Œuvres complètes have been consulted in the following editions: Cahiers de jeunesse (C.-Lévy, 1906); Nouveaux cahiers de jeunesse (C.-Lévy, 1907); Etudes d'histoire religieuse, 7th ed. (Michel Lévy, 1864). Abbreviations used for frequently mentioned titles are:

AS:

L'avenir de la science

CJ:

Cahiers de jeunesse

EHR:

Etudes d'histoire religieuse

LP:

Liberté de penser

NCJ:

Nouveaux cahiers de jeunesse

QC:

Questions contemporaines

SEJ:

Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse

^{Note 2 in page 927} Liberté de penser or Revue philosophique et littéraire (its last 3 vols., 6–8, carry the bolder subtitle Revue démocratique) lasted from 1848 until 1851 when government opposition forced it to close down. Its editors were two professors of philosophy, the well-known Jules Simon (whose course in “L'histoire du stoïcisme romain” Renan had followed at the Sor-bonne) and Amédée Jacques; the latter died a political exile in Buenos Aires while the former later returned to political life. The review treated subjects as varied as electoral reform, Christianity, and Cartesianism in the 17th century. Michelet, Quinet, Eugène Sue, and others contributed.

^{Note 3 in page 928} The term is quoted by Henriette Renan in a letter of 5 Nov. 1848 to her brother: Nouvelles lettres intimes (C.-Lévy, 1923), p. 266. Renan claimed to have known by heart (probably meaning very well) De Maistre's Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (SEJ, ii, 812). For a sketch of the influence on Renan of De Maistre's political ideas (largely his critique of abstract constitutions founded on a priori principles), see Jean Pommier, La jeunesse cléricale d'Ernest Renan (1933), Appendix D, pp. 660–661. An interesting rapprochement between Renan and Veuillot, at a much later date, has been made by Michel Mohrt, “Renan et Veuillot,” Les intellectuels devant la défaite, 1870 (Corrêa, 1942).

^{Note 4 in page 928} The device suggested in the preface of the Histoire du peuple d'Israël (C.-Lévy, 1887), i, xv, n. 1.

^{Note 5 in page 929} EER, pp. ii–iii. His aim in revising, he says, is to find a compromise between respect for the “caractère primitif” of these articles and respect for the literary standards of his public. “Ces observations s'appliquent surtout à l'Essai sur les historiens critiques de Jésus et à quelques autres pages [probably the essay on Feuerbach] composées dans une manière différente de celle que j'ai depuis adoptée. Je ne puis dire qu'aujourd‘hui j‘écrirais ces pages telles qu'elles sont; cependant je les signe de nouveau sans aucun scrupule, parce qu'elles n'offrent rien qui ne me semble conforme à la vérité.” Cf. p. xi, note.

^{Note 6 in page 929} “Deux des articles reproduits en ce volume appartiennent aux premiers essais que j'imprimai dans la Liberté de penser, et que je ne renie pas, bien que j'aie adopté depuis une autre manière d'écrire” (QC, i, 19–20). I have not included in my article any discussion of several comptes rendus Renan contributed to the Liberté de penser but considered unworthy to republish; I shall omit as well “De l'origine du langage” (LP, Sept. and Dec. 1848), which has more significance for the study of Renan as a philologist than for the development of his literary art.

^{Note 7 in page 929} Sept. 1849–July 1850, with Charles Daremberg, to catalogue Syrian and Arabic MSS in Italian libraries; the material of this research largely went into his doctoral thesis, Averroès et Vaverroïsme, first published in 1852.

^{Note 8 in page 930} I am indebted to Lewis F. Mott's general work, Ernest Renan (. Y., 1921), esp. pp. 74–84, which open up the way to further study of this particular subject.

^{Note 9 in page 930} Cf. René Dumesnil, L'époque réaliste et naturaliste (Paris: Tallandier, 1945), Chaps, x and xiii.

^{Note 10 in page 930} Minister of Public Instruction under Louis-Napoléon, Dec. 1848–Oct. 1849. The famous education law, the Loi Falloux, was promulgated on 15 March 1850. De Falloux was actually in the “liberal” wing (led by Montalembert) of Catholics, and his law was supposed to give freedom of education; in effect it made clerical control of education “as complete as could be expected outside the Papal States”—Roger Soltau, French Political Thought of the Nineteenth Century (1931), pp. 170–171.

^{Note 11 in page 931} His rather timid and conservative approach is well revealed in his letters of this period to Henriette : Nouvelles lettres intintes, letter of 9 May 1848, p. 176, “Sans m'occuper directement de questions pratiques, je ne fais pas difficulté de me mêler un peu de l'actuel, en ne sortant jamais, bien entendu, des principes”; cf. pp. 222, 272.

^{Note 12 in page 931} Quoted by Renan, Nouvelles lettres intimes, pp. 214, 283. Cf. Henri Peyre, “Renan et Lamartine” in Essays in Honor of Albert Feuillerat (Yale Univ. Press, 1943), pp. 211–230. Lamartine, like Renan, was an actionnaire of the Liberté de penser.

^{Note 13 in page 931} Jean Pommier, Renan d'après des documents inédits (1923), p. 65.

^{Note 14 in page 931} SEJ, n, 811, 828–829. Renan's former teacher, Msgr. Dupanloup, of St. Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, was held in similar distrust for his neo-catholic tendencies.

^{Note 15 in page 932} The last-named (1765–1841) was a famous preacher who inaugurated in French churches the conferences or sermons on contemporary subjects; his politics out-Bossuet Bossuet.

^{Note 16 in page 932} Cf. J. A. Ryan and F. J. Boland, Catholic Principles of Politics (1943). Curiously enough, in the Questions contemporaines (1868), in his revised version of this essay, Renan inserted, above a note containing a violent denunciation of popular sovereignty by Frays-sinous, a note mentioning (without development) the liberal tendencies to be found in Scholasticism (QC, I, 286–287). In his “Philosophie de l'histoire contemporaine,” written in 1859 (QC, i, 46–47), he quotes St. Thomas Aquinas to the effect that when a king breaks his pact with his people, he becomes a tyrant and his people have the right to revolt (analogy drawn with Charles X in 1830).

^{Note 17 in page 934} The main argument of the essay, as summarized in LP, i, 513, and QC, i, 286, comes little short of falling into the following syllogism:

Major premise: the beliefs essential to liberalism are, (1) popular sovereignty and right of revolt (2) universal suffrage (3) tolerance (4) freedom of thought, speech, and press;

Minor premise: the Church officially repudiates each of these beliefs;

Conclusion: ergo, the Church can never give rise to liberalism.

^{Note 18 in page 934} Not scholastic philosophy at its purest source in the 13th century, but the “scolastique cartésienne” which Renan has described as part of his training in the seminary at Issy. “Je dois la clarté de mon esprit, en particulier une certaine habileté dans l'art de diviser (art capital, une des conditions de l'art d'écrire), aux exercices de la scolastique et surtout à la géométrie, qui est l'application par excellence de la méthode syllogistique” (SEJ, ii, 843). The distance from this method of expression to the subtle and relativistic Dialogues and Drames philosophiques is nevertheless exceedingly great.

^{Note 19 in page 935} LP, i, 510, 522, 530. Renan's political writing is especially well spiced with such aphorisms: “La plus grande gloire des gouvernements est dans ce qu'ils laissent faire,” “La royauté ne sort pas d'un hôtel de ville,” “La France est le pays du monde le plus orthodoxe, car c'est le pays du monde le moins religieux” (QC, i, 45, 50, 228); “On ne se taille pas un justaucorps dans le manteau de Louis XIV,” “Ce qui fait entrer dans la Wal-halla est ce qui exclut du royaume de Dieu” (Réforme intellectuelle et morale, i, 378, 447); and many such.

^{Note 20 in page 936} Original text, 15 July 1849, LP, iv, 126–147; rev. text, “Réflexions sur l'état des esprits en 1849,” QC, i, 209–232. The disorderliness of the article may largely be explained by the fact that it consists of fragments of the Avenir de la science (esp. Chap, xxi) loosely connected.

^{Note 21 in page 937} Renan's first acquaintance with the work of Chateaubriand dates from the age of thirteen when, at Tréguier school, he carried off as his prix de mémoire the Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (Jean Pommier, Travaux de jeunesse d'Ernest Renan [1931], p. 262); the influence of the Génie du christianisme (with severe restrictions) is particularly observable in the Etudes d'histoire religieuse.

^{Note 22 in page 938} L. F. Mott, Renan, p. 83. Mott was the first, I believe, to point out the striking contrast in the two versions of “Les historiens critiques de Jésus,” p. 78.

^{Note 23 in page 938} Renan first sketched this conception in an unfinished essay, “Essai psychologique sur Jésus-Christ,” written in May 1845, before his break with Saint-Sulpice.

^{Note 24 in page 938} There is a much more somber and forceful version of this in the Introduction to the essay on “M. de Lamennais,” Essais de morale et de critique (1859).

^{Note 25 in page 940} EBR, pp. 205–206, e.g., on the foibles of orthodox exegetes.

^{Note 26 in page 940} Cf. Henriette Psichari, “Les brouillons de Renan,” Ch. iv in her Renan d'après lui-même (1937), particularly the pages on Renan's painstaking revision of the Vie de Jésus, pp. 113–115; and Jean Pommier, “Comment fut composée la Prière sur l'Acropole,” Revue de Paris (15 Sept. 1923).

^{Note 27 in page 941} H. Psichari, Renan d'après lui-même, p. 119. Buloz' principle was “harceler les auteurs et, après avoir obtenu leur prose, les harceler de critiques.”

^{Note 28 in page 941} One of Renan's two doctoral theses, the other being the Latin De philosophia peri-petetica apud Syros. Both were defended on 11 Aug. 1852. Rev. and enl. eds. of the Aver-roès appeared in 1861 and in 1866.

^{Note 29 in page 941} The frequently cited passage on p. 134 inviting us to study, in great men, “leur vie d'outre-tombe, leur influence sur le monde, leurs diverses fortunes, le tour qu'ils ont donné aux esprits, le fanatisme enthousiaste ou hostile qu'ils ont inspiré, le mouvement qu'aux diverses époques leurs écrits ont donné à la pensée.”

^{Note 30 in page 942} Or almost pure. That is, he is more interested in what happened to the ideas of Aver-roes than in judging them philosophically. It is perfectly clear, however, that Renan's sympathies lie with the “rational mysticism” of Averroes, interpreted with great personal fervor, as against Scholasticism.

^{Note 31 in page 942} Averroès et l'averrdîsme, iii, 249. Cf. AS, iii, 848, the passage criticizing Auguste Comte for lacking the literary sensitivity needed for full understanding of “l'esprit humain”: “Les lois étant ici d'une nature très délicate, et ne se présentant point de face comme dans les sciences physiques, la faculté essentielle est celle du critique littéraire, la délicatesse du tour (c'est le tour d'ordinaire qui exprime le plus), la ténuité des aperçus, le contraire en un mot de l'esprit géométrique.”

^{Note 32 in page 943} Henriette agreed with the tendance of the essays Ernest had composed before their reunion, “Mais la forme lui paraissait abrupte et négligée; elle y trouvait des traits excessifs, des tons durs, une manière trop peu respectueuse de traiter la langue. Elle me convainquit qu'on peut tout dire dans le style simple et correct des bons auteurs, et que les expressions nouvelles, les images violentes viennent toujours ou d'une prétention déplacée, ou de l'ignorance de nos richesses réelles. Aussi de ma réunion avec elle date un changement profond dans ma manière d'écrire”—Ma sœur Henriette (1895), pp. 35–36.

^{Note 33 in page 943} H. Girard et H. Moncel, Bibliographie des œuvres de Ernest Renan (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1923), p. 29.

^{Note 34 in page 943} For the “sentiment d'ironie” which his sister found offensive, see Ma sœur Henriette, p. 37.

^{Note 35 in page 544} For similar testimony, cf. Pref. to AS and above all the superb essay “M. Augustin Thierry” in Essais de morale el de critique. This last (ii, 93) reveals that Renan assisted the blind historian in his research and therefore speaks from intimate knowledge of his method. Thierry was fifty-five when Renan first met him in 1852.

^{Note 36 in page 544} Dix ans d'études historiques (1817–27), Pref., p. 17, in Œuvres, ii (Garnier, 1866).

^{Note 37 in page 544} Ibid., p. 22. Cf. AS, Pref., iii, 718: the work has “un mérite, celui de montrer, dans son naturel, atteint d'une forte encéphalite, un jeune homme .... Je tenais trop à ne rien perdre. Par peur de n'être pas compris, j'appuyais trop fort,” etc.

^{Note 38 in page 945} AS, iii, 904–905, meditation on mortality inspired by the view of a Breton cemetery by the sea; De l'origine du langage, pp. 231–232, the prose-hymn to India as the source of civilization. In awakening Renan to the delights of literature and art, the lectures on Celtic poetry of the devoutly Catholic Frédéric Ozanam (Fauriel's successor in the Chair of Foreign Literatures at the Sorbonne) had played considerable part (CJ, pp. 235–236, 284).

^{Note 39 in page 945} Correspondance . Renan et M. Berthelot, 1847–1892, 3° éd. (1898), letter to Berthelot from Rome, 17 Feb. 1850, p. 98. In an earlier letter (9 Nov. 1849, pp. 41–50) we see that Renan is still contemptuous of priests and prelates, but that a profound change has taken place in his perspective: he no longer-views Catholicism (more or less in the manner of 18th-century anti-clericals) “comme imposée et par conséquent odieuse” (p. 48). Cf. for this same period Renan's fragmentary novel in letter form, Patrice, where his nostalgia for the orthodox piety of the Italian peuple expresses itself unchecked—Fragments intimes et romanesques (1914).

^{Note 40 in page 946} AS, iii, 950–951 : “Or le livre le plus important du siècle devrait avoir pour titre Histoire critique des origines du christianisme. Œuvre admirable que j'envie à celui qui la réalisera, et qui sera celle de mon âge mûr, si la mort et tant de fatalités extérieures qui font souvent dévier si fortement les existences ne viennent m'en empêcher!”; an outline of the projected work follows.

^{Note 41 in page 948} Renan, p. 444, references to Taine, Brandes, and the biographer Mary Robinson (Darmesteter) for the fact that Renan in conversation showed “no nuance, but animation, vigor, abundance.”

^{Note 42 in page 949} André Gide, Journal 1889–1939 (NRF, 1939), p. 659, entry of 20 Oct. 1918 (“flaccidité” of the Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse); p. 959, entry of 3 Dec. 1929 (“style flasque” of L'abbesse de Jouarre: “Et Renan passe encore pour un maître de la langue française!”); p. 1134, entry of 27 June 1932 (“mollesse,” “incertitude,” “flaccidité” of Drames philosophiques, “grâce détendue, retombée,” unfortunate influence on Maurice Barrés). Jean-Paul Sartre, in a passing remark of his Situations II (NRF, 1948), p. 163, goes further and finds that Renan's “ ‘beau style’ offre tous les exemples souhaitables de bassesse et de laideur”; but since he remarks in the same breath that Taine “ne fut qu'un cuistre,” we may consider his reaction somewhat extreme. Much more just in their appreciation of the range and vigor of Renan as a prose artist are Albert Thibaudet, who distinguishes “trois styles de Renan” (Hist, de la lilt.française de 1789 à nos jours, 1938, p. 358) and Maurice Weiler, who describes no less than five (La pensée de Renan, 1945, Ch. vi)