"the final vale!"
he spoke, and lay silent. the dim figures in the crowded room seemed to slip away from him, his mind ceased to grasp at earthly realities, a thick darkness enveloping it and them; but the frail, wasted body still clung insatiably to life, and answered the phrases of the litany with long quavering sobs. at last it, too, resigned its hold on life. he seemed to see again, for one brief moment, the kneeling cardinals; and then to join some great current of being which swept him away beyond the consciousness of time and space. gradually another consciousness dawned on him. upon the golden brown clouds, which seemed to limit his vision, there was projected suddenly a huge grotesque figure; the shadow of a being more or less similar to man.
242"is it a devil come to torment me?" he wondered incredulously.
as the shadow advanced it became smaller; he noticed that it seemed to have talons.
"it is a devil."
but even as he spoke the shadow melted about him, and out of the golden mist came a strange-looking man, with a large, ungainly head, gray hair in rather long straight wisps, and lively intelligent eyes of a clear blue. the figure was absurd, gnome-like, with a pear-shaped stomach. the finger-nails were very long. the stranger bowed, smiling, as he approached, and spoke in a pleasant voice.
"monsieur, je suis charmé de vous voir. etes-vous, par hazard, de notre petite planète terre?"
"i am gioacchino pecci," he answered.
a livelier interest was apparent on the other's face; the smile became ironical.
"it is curious," he said after a pause. "it is curious that we should have reached the same paradise. on earth, your holiness, i was ernest renan."
"but is this paradise?" said leo uneasily. "je n'ai jamais cru----"
"it is the paradise of the incredulous," answered renan. "there are many paradises: 243that state of being which on earth was called hell is the paradise of those given over to animal passions. the paradise of the ascetics is an eternal shrove tuesday, with the eternal prospect of an eternal ash wednesday; the case of tantalus reversed and made pleasurable. all good buddhists have attained nirvana. the righteous mahometan is distracted by the charms of innumerable houris. we epicureans enjoy that moment which is eternity; and every man is justified in his own eyes."
"it is charming," said leo.
"it is more," said renan; "it is rational. how puerile is the mortal conception of paradise! man has imagined a place where virtue is rewarded and vice punished. he believes in it with a passionate conviction, because he is not quite sure. he forgets that virtue must be disinterested, or it ceases to be virtue. if man is capable of a free and unhampered choice between vice and virtue, if the distinction between them be clear and precise, and the reward or punishment entailed by the choice definite and finally revealed, mankind, then, is obviously divided into two parts: the astute and the infatuate. one feels immediately that both the reward and 244the punishment are excessive; or else that vice and virtue have ceased to exist. however, in mortal things there is always an element of doubt, and perhaps the chief glory of man is born from it. our choice is not entirely free, the distinction is not absolutely clear, the reward is purely hypothetical."
"ah, m. renan," said leo, "why are you here? you were always a believer at heart; one might almost say a scholastic. you invented a system of doubt, as others might a system of faith; even your doubts were affirmations. science with you was only a synonym for god, and round it you constructed an hierarchy of saints and martyrs, a church suffering, militant, triumphant. lucian----"
"he is here," said renan.
"lucian," continued leo, "imagined the soul of plato inhabiting a paradise constructed after the model of his own republic. i imagine you projected into that strange future which you announced in your dialogues philosophiques."
"doubt must be systematic," answered renan; "but there is no need for system in religion. the essence of a creed is in its assertions, not in its arguments. its arguments 245are nearly always a series of after-thoughts, of apologies; its reason is always à priori; the very fact that an argument should be considered necessary is blasphemous and heretical. you exaggerate my scholasticism; but there was always in me the nature of a priest, and i could not put away from me my education, as i could put off my ecclesiastical dress. i imported the unction of a priest into the region of philosophic doubt, and by that means invented a substitute for faith. science, in limiting the field of its researches, has increased the mystery which lies beyond. i became, as it were, the priest of an unknown god; and the first article of my creed was, that perhaps he did not exist at all. 'sois béni pour ton mystère,' i cried in my magnificat; 'béni pour t'être caché, béni pour avoir reservé la pleine liberté de nos c?urs.' the dialogues philosophiques were written at a time when the whole thought of france was depressed and reactionary. they were a play of intelligence upon contemporary ideas. progress does not tend to establish a scientific aristocracy at the head of its affairs; science is progressive because it has saturated the commercial classes with its ideals; it has increased production, and 246economised in by-products. this alliance between democracy and the scientific spirit is the unique characteristic of our age. i think, myself, that society is tending to adopt the chinese model. kingship, the state, the present conventions of society, may continue to exist in atrophied and rudimentary forms; but i imagine the whole earth in a few thousand years regulated by examinations and trade-unions, with an effete mandarinate surviving amid the débris of the ancient order, like the solitary column of phocas in the roman forum, or the teeth in an embryonic whale."
"in this paradise," said leo with an elusive smile, "you have, doubtless, infinite leisure for the discussion of these academic questions."
"naturally," answered renan; "and we have a little academy modelled on the académie fran?aise. i hope, monsieur, to have the honour of welcoming you among us, and of replying to your discours de réception; it is an amiable duty which my colleagues have delegated to me. sometimes; it is what remains of my mortal vanity, monsieur; i imagine that i have some talent in these things."
leo had intended to be ironical; but his 247own vanity was now flattered. one ambition is always left to those who occupy a throne; it is to be considered equal with the great.
"your response, monsieur, will be my apotheosis," he replied. "but, tell me, are you become a socialist? your prophecy of the reformation of the earth on the chinese model seems to point that way."
renan smiled.
"no," he said; "the chinese are not a socialistic nation. they have not the notion of the state which is peculiar to socialism. but they are a nation governed by trades-unions and examining boards; and through the same institutions we may arrive at the same stagnation. our progress at present seems to follow that direction, because the aim of our materialistic civilisation is to make everything cheap, food, education, state-offices; and its final effect will be to make men cheap, then we shall have large, flat, arid masses of humanity, to whom few luxuries will be possible, and the forms of our civilisation will become stereotyped. as it was with babylon, assyria, and egypt, as it is with china, so it will be with us. evolution is the progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity; but the process is not indefinite.
248"after a race or a nation has produced a great number of diverse personalities, it becomes decadent and tends to produce a single type: the process of evolution is arrested, and the race may either lie dormant for centuries if like the chinese it has been prolific and exists in sufficient numbers; or, if sparse and scattered like the ph?nicians, they may be completely annihilated by their more vigorous neighbours. socialism is neither a remedy nor a disease, but it may be a symptom. no society has been free from socialistic groups. jerusalem had its ebionim; there was the eclectic philosophy of rome under nero, the flavians, and the antonines; primitive christianity was communistic, and neo-christianity under joachim of flora and st francis was an imitation of it. the jacobins had communistic notions. the poor, the humble, the oppressed have always been liable to the dreams of millenarism; and the difference between the maccabean aspiration, which was, according to daniel, to establish the kingdom of god upon earth, and the aspiration of robespierre, who wished 'to found upon earth the empire of wisdom, of justice, and of virtue,' is merely the difference of time and place. a beautiful, but intangible 249vision; a divine inspiration! like all divine inspirations, alas! it is by its nature impracticable. imagine a sudden uprising of the proletariate, a vast social movement, an european revolution. slowly, after its momentary chaos, a new cohesion would take effect. the abstract virtues, from which the movement had had its derivation, would become personified in our most popular legislators; the new constitution would include, beside the disadvantages of an untried mechanism, many errors latent in the old patterns which it would necessarily follow; and we should discover, after a series of futile and extravagant adventures, that the laws which govern society are essentially natural laws, the slow growth of tacit acceptance, and not merely the dusty records of a popular legislating assembly. mankind does not learn the lesson easily. one revolution engenders another, and eventually the habit becomes ingrained. the history of mine own country, from 1789 through the nineteenth century, a history of revolution, of the conflict between ideals and realities, is a signal and a reminder to the nations."
"you treat christianity and jacobinism as cognate ideas," said leo, after a pause. "there is surely this distinction between 250them, that one was almost entirely religious, and the other almost entirely political."
"ah," said renan, with a deprecating smile, "all religions are political, just as all politics are religious. christianity with its notion of mankind as a brotherhood, and the papacy with its notions of a spiritual empire, a suzerainty, over all peoples, have destroyed the ancient conception of the unity of church and state. the religion of the greeks was embodied in their laws; and the politics of the jews, in their religion. the ideal conception of religion as something quite distinct from the state has proved unworkable, if not disastrous. all the churches have had to smite their mystics with the thunders of excommunication, to extinguish the inward light, to restrain the free play of thought. even the most primitive form of christianity, the messianic notion, was purely political. if we are to talk on social questions we cannot separate religion from politics. the distinction between them is artificial; they are merely the opposite poles of a single idea."
"ah, well!" said leo, shrugging his shoulders; "the progress of humanity is a chim?ra if it ends merely in stagnation. 251these bleak, arid masses of mankind living without pleasures in their chinese frugality, what future have they before them?"
"an awakening," said renan prophetically; "the kings of uruk reigning over a decadent civilisation, sardanapalus foreseeing the stagnation of his people did not dream of a future which they had helped to create. the process of evolution acts in tides; there is a continuous ebb and flow; the seed lies hidden in the ground until the wizardry of spring calls it forth, and rain and sunlight nourishing it into new life, it ripens for the harvest. babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. in the ruined palaces of nineveh the beasts of the desert bring forth their young, and the green lizards creep out from the crevices to sun themselves upon a fragment of some boastful inscription; but the music which echoed in its painted halls, the dancing and the choirs, the great processions of its kings, its wisdom and folly, its vain desires and failures, its tears and laughter, these have their being still, they move mysteriously in us, a breath would quicken them into life again, we can rebuild them in moments that seem to have all the profundity of time."
"poet!" said leo, with a smile creasing 252about his lean jaws. "the world does not become socialist, it becomes chinese; our civilisation tends to a variety of forms, becomes uniform, and then again becomes diverse in endless recurrence. continue, monsieur, but let us keep within the bounds of our own age. socialism is a definite political force; and even if it do not triumph completely it must create certain new conditions. i, myself, have condemned socialism in one of my encyclicals. i have denied the sacred right of insurrection. human institutions, which we may think have survived their usefulness, are in reality only waiting for their transformation, their character is moulded from outside. we may sometimes fail to understand their mission, or to grasp the reasons which impel them to follow certain paths, because these reasons are pale reflections of some unappreciated causes. the world seems to progress, within the limits of natural laws, by a series of unforeseen developments. the future is latent in us; but the force which impels it is hidden."
"yes," answered renan; "some internal conscience directs all progress, and is the force which impels humanity on its way. this conscience has a secret action long before it finds a voice. its influence at first is something 253subterranean and obscure; its bias is necessarily against the official creeds, but it moves against them slowly, informing them with the new spirit. i like to find this conscience acting through the poorer and humbler classes of the people, the folk who are of the soil, whose faith is something native and spontaneous, whose life and happiness depends upon the sun and rain. it is significant that all the gods were originally agricultural gods, that the history of every nation begins in eden. to the artisan, the dweller in towns, whose whole life consists in turning out from a machine certain articles of a stereotyped pattern, the universe is simply a piece of mechanism; he is himself merely a machine, or part of a machine, performing a certain number of invariable motions to produce a definite and invariable result. he lacks inspiration, he has no vivid knowledge of the great element of chance which moves, like one of those primitive elemental gods, behind all human affairs, at times compassionate and friendly to man, at times bursting out into a sudden fury of wanton destruction. he demands a fixed wage, fixed hours of work, fixed prices for the commodities which he consumes, the certainty of a pension in his old 254age. in a world of fluctuations and vicissitudes he demands absolute security. he is confident that he is going to do great things, that he has already worked wonders. with the aid of science and art, which he starves, he is going to make the earth pleasant and beautiful. he is quite confident that in a few generations he will be born in an incubator, and die, without pain, of sheer satiety. for him a fantastic assembly of politicians, removable at his own will, represents providence and the divine wisdom. is he less absurd than the savages who employ rain-makers and witch doctors? i do not think so. clearly he is not a person from whom we can expect any but the most crude and mechanical readings of life; his vague, restless, childish discontent, that hunger for barren and tawdry pleasures which is characteristic of half-educated minds, that lack of intercourse with the great elemental forces of nature, can issue in nothing but his own mental, moral, and physical damnation.
"for any new readings of life, for any renaissance of art and religion, we must look to the simple folk, who are still close to the breasts of earth: the folk who of old imagined apollo as a herd in the service of admetus; 255who found demeter sitting by the well, and comforted her; who, after the vintage had been gathered in, took down the grotesque masks, which they had hung upon the vines to scare the birds and foxes from the grapes, and acted in them, singing the hymns of dionysos to the music of pipes and flutes. poetry, religion, love, the three things which quicken life to new effort, are never far from the soil. the great conventional middle-classes, even those heretics from philistia, the followers of comte and marx, the mediocre intelligences whose political principles are communist, and whose religious principles are positivist, these have little influence on the future. socialism differs from all previous utopian dreams simply because it lacks their vital energy; it is material and mechanical where the older ideas were spiritual and natural; it is lacking in a sense of morality, in a sense of beauty, in a sense of truth. you will not find the conscience of humanity in any of these creeds."
"it seems," said leo, "that we do not know where we are going."
"you have said that human institutions are only waiting for their transformation," renan replied. "an institution represents a need. it has been formed by the spontaneous action of the community; but the moment it 256has been thus constituted it becomes fixed, and ceases to represent the living, developing forces which deposited it. christianity at first was perfectly fluid; the teaching of paul was unsystematic, local, momentary; but christianity became a religion, not of inspiration but of authority, it crystallised into an hierarchy and perished. in the same way the idyll of st francis and his companions crystallised into an order, and perished. they exist among us as monuments, these institutions; but the same forces which crystallised them are now dissolving them; the moment they cut themselves off from the stream of life they perished. i do not think that the future will differ essentially from the past. socialism is simply the cry of the poor against the rich. dives is well-clad and fares sumptuously every day; no other crime is alleged against him, but these are sufficient to ensure his damnation. perhaps the maker of the parable saw some peculiar virtue in poverty and suffering, which filled the heart with a spiritual grace, and uplifted it with moral fortitude. perhaps he saw the wealth of dives as poverty, as a lack of spiritual experience.
"socialism, however, does not share this 257view; on the contrary, it asserts that wealth is the sole condition of spiritual grace and moral fortitude, and it is therefore bent on sharing with dives the good things of this world. consequently socialism has against it the two most deeply-rooted of human instincts, the instinct of acquisition and the family instinct; because it denies the right of possession and the right of bequest. how deeply-rooted the notion of property is we can see exemplified in france, where the abolition of the right of primogeniture has not had the effect which was expected of it, even the peasants in certain departments having held out against it. but if the power of bequest were entirely abolished, would people marry? the object for a legalised relation is gone, and the production of our kind becomes subject to the hazard of personal choice. it is possible that the state would have to intervene and make maternity an honourable profession under its own control, and that plato's ideal of the state as a foster-mother would be realised. this notion has, i confess, a singular attraction for me. the substitution of a stock derived from careful selection of parents for our present inferior stock; the careful breeding of an aristocratic 258caste, appeals to the imagination, as it shows the state actually realising what has always been its ideal.
"i could wish, monsieur, that the socialists would form themselves into monastic communities, practising the virtues of obedience and, if not poverty, the community of goods. yes; they should found a little abbey of theleme, and take their whole rule from rabelais. they would not practise celibacy, but eugenics; and the education of their children would be the same as that devised for gargantua by ponocrates. so they would increase and multiply, and the whole earth would be filled with the glory of their names. i fear that, unfortunately, the first verse of what was written above the gate of theleme would debar many from entering. but grant that this utopia is possible; it is surely no less possible than the monastic ideal! and granted that a great aristocratic caste would arise, a dedicated folk, surrounded by the decadent populations of helots and hetairai, and that they would be able to gather into their own hands the supreme control of things? what would be the result? they would crystallise into an hierarchy, and perish. they would rule as 259the priests ruled egypt, and as the priests ruled medi?val europe. they would resuscitate the double tyranny of the church and state in one body. the whole progress of the last four hundred years has been toward individual liberty in thought and word. that ideal would be lost."
"i do not see the necessity of such ideals," said leo. "i object to socialism because it would mean the absolute tyranny of the state, the despotism of a narrow and intolerant bureaucracy, tempered, as at present in russia, by a more or less indiscriminate system of assassination. i have not the same objection to the tyranny of one man. a philosopher on the throne, monsieur, your charming marcus aurelius for instance, may rule with wisdom and moderation; but an oligarchy of philosophers, like the thirty at athens: hell is naked before them and destruction hath no covering! such experiments, as you say, infect the people with a lust for revolution. history, the only guide for political prophets, shows us that sudden disturbance of the social order breeds a whole series, whether such a disturbance occur among the ancient greeks, or the romans, or the french. the diverse natures of the peoples, the different 260conditions of the age in which they lived, and of their political methods do not alter the central fact. humanity in the lump is a beast more terrible than any in revelations."
"ah, no!" cried renan, with a sudden vivacity. "there is the chief glory of the human race. they will sacrifice themselves for an impossible ideal. none of us can contemplate that great tragedy of the french revolution without feeling cleansed by it. the enthusiasm of the people has a kind of terrible grandeur. in such moments of divine delirium all men assume heroic proportions. we may pity it for its fanaticism; we may pity it for being so easily duped; but it is impossible to deny its magnificent devotion to an ideal."
leo was unmoved.
"you consider it a great moral movement, monsieur?"
"moral because all petty egoisms were obliterated," answered renan. "men seemed for a moment to become the incarnations of ideas. oh, on both sides. charlotte corday, danton, madame roland, robespierre, desmoulins, larochejacquelin; each individuality seems to have had its definite mission, each 261seems to have been equally necessary, equally an instrument of justice."
"you have said, monsieur," continued leo, after a pause, "that the socialists would revive in one form the twin tyrannies of church and state, and destroy the ideal of individual liberty. you have also said that the ancient conception of church and state was a unity. would the kind of socialism which you sketch resemble the greek state?"
"no ancient state, not even athens, extended to its citizens the liberty which we enjoy," answered renan. "the state intervened in the private affairs of the citizens; and athens is notorious for having pursued the philosophers with accusations of impiety. the noble conservative families and the priesthood combined to stifle the new liberal thought. the state, however, was democratic; the people ruled, decided by their votes the policy of the state, and served on juries, or as judges. socialism condemns democracy: it aspires to govern not by the will of the people, but according to its own interpretation of what it calls scientific principles; and it seems that in its application of these principles, it would be more bigoted and intolerant than the democratic state in greece ever was."
262"nothing then is permanent, which crystallises into an hierarchy, or is limited by an institution," said leo. "it seems to me that your gospel is purely destructive. the whole progress of modern science is marked by the ruins of ancient altars; you have freed mankind from all moral obligations in denying that he is a responsible agent, and in showing that he is merely a creature of inherited instincts; you have shown him that his life is no more than a ripple on the water, a sudden stir of wind in the leaves, a momentary light in the darkness; you have denied the god that his heart fashioned as a solace to his grief, a lamp to guide him; you have taught him to seek for the perishable glories of the earth. how will you make him a moral being again?"
renan smiled.
"our civilisation is not very deep, monsieur," he said. "there is always a large inert mass of humanity untouched by the movement of thought. from them we may expect a new religion, a new morality. we have denied and disproved, as you say, so many things, that at last we shall come to the sole reality. we have rendered man's personality vague and mysterious, until it seems scarcely to exist except as a point of 263development; we must seek deeper for his reality. and in any case, monsieur, you overrate the value of reason. in my charming walk through life i had sufficient experience to learn that man is not entirely a creature of reason. there are few people without a conscience. the fault of this age is not so much that it is scientific, as that it is mechanical and removed from the contemplation of nature."
"i have sometimes thought," said leo, "that the principal hope for religion lies in the fact that the lower classes do not think."
"it is true," said renan; "religion is some hidden consciousness working toward unknown ends. mankind is not entirely reasonable; it has a conscience. we can no more say that this conscience is an artificial product of society, than we can say that reason is an artificial product also. the curiosity which is so amusing a feature of the intelligence of cats and monkeys is an earlier stage of the scientific curiosity; and, on the other hand, animals have shown gratitude to their masters, and thus the rudiments of virtue. man, in recognising his conscience, has developed the abstract virtues of justice, of pity, of unselfishness; it does not affect the main question that 264his choice between virtue and vice should not be entirely free, nor that the distinction between them should not be always clear. we do not reproach science because it has not yet shown us what course our sun and its train of planets are taking in their journey toward a star in hercules, nor because it has been unable, by its study of the rapidity and direction of other solar systems, to give to them an approximate fixity in connection with ourselves, to draw what would really be a map of the heavens.
"oh, monsieur, man is a naturally moral being, just as he is a naturally curious and scientific being. to him both curiosity and morality are natural needs, and because they are needs they are truths. it is impossible to consider a world which does not act according to a law of virtue, just as it is impossible to consider a world which does not act in accordance with the law of gravitation, or, better still, as an example, a species which has not developed in accordance with the law of evolution; and just as the scientist finds behind all the fleeting appearances and phenomena of the world a basis in matter, so, behind all the phenomena and fleeting appearances of virtue we find a basis in god, 265and just as an individual is governed by his conscience in regulating his actions, so humanity as a whole regulates its actions by an appeal to some abstract idea of right. such dramatic crises as the revolution, and the establishment of the roman empire, seem equally the result of a certain slow consciousness working toward perfection; or take the growth of christianity, which began obscurely and with a literally subterranean movement, is it not an instance of this blind working toward the light. one cannot outrage the collective conscience of mankind with impunity. a sudden outburst of popular resentment like the revolution, which had been incubating for at least a century, cannot be considered as a mere caprice; can, indeed, only be considered as a revelation of justice. such outbursts have a purely negative effect upon human progress; progress is the development of a new spirit, not the destruction of an old constitution."
"you offer no constructive policy, beyond the creation of a new spirit. socialism, at least, pretends to one."
"socialism is a reactionary force," answered renan; "and all reactions are bound to be more constructive than a progressive force. 266their natural tendency, as i have already said, is to crystallise in a definite form. the spirit of progress is, on the contrary, an intangible if all-pervading thing. it develops spontaneously in a thousand ways, and as it pushes towards the unknown it is impossible for us to predict with any certainty what forms it may assume. being purely experience, and not a creed, it is liable to be extensively modified or even completely changed by some unforeseen development in any of its parts; a discovery in any branch of science may react upon all, as the progress of pal?ontology reacted upon history. that is the reason progress seems always to be a purely destructive force. it is only after it has escaped, through imperceptible degrees, into a more or less clearly defined new phase, that we can gauge its value as a constructive force in the last."
"i see with you, monsieur, the value of democracy and individual liberty," said leo. "oh, i am reasonable. the character of a pope is to be found less in the official acts of his reign, than in the temper which he fosters in the church. the nature of his office compels him to claim the privileges and exemptions which his predecessors claimed. he resigns nothing; but he allows some of his claims 267to remain in abeyance, refusing to deprive his successors of a power, which, either for reasons of expediency, or through personal dislike, he declines to exercise himself. i came to the chair of peter under disadvantageous circumstances. the papal states had been lost, and in exchange the doctrine of a vague empire over spiritual things had been proclaimed. infallibility was no new thing; but the enunciation of it as an article of faith crystallised a power which would have been of more value, if it had been left indeterminate. i won back much that pius had lost. i made no use of the instruments which he had forged; i discouraged, rather than condemned, the liberal movements within the church; my policy was one of insinuation, and, by skilfully leaving certain positions undefended, i gained that they should not be assailed. alas, monsieur! you smile at this panegyric of myself; but i have left no one behind who would consider it an honourable office to praise me. the encyclical on biblical studies, and the biblical commission, were perhaps my two mistakes. the glorification of scholasticism was perhaps a mistake; but i rather think it diverted the attention of my flock. however these things may appear in 268the eyes of the world, my reign was wise, temperate, and resulted in a great increase of power. i recognised democracy and republican principles. i attempted to win the people. i was defeated by the extremists on mine own side."
"an epitaph, monsieur, not only on yourself, but on your office."
"perhaps," answered leo. "we do not know. the dead know so little of what is taking place on earth."
"on the contrary," said renan, "voyagers from the earth are constantly arriving, and we are kept well advised."
"i can imagine a moderately successful issue to my policy if my successor should be a man of tact. even if institutions be only the monuments of an idea, men must build them; and, in spite of your argument, i think a period of authority, at least of a more correct balance between authority and liberty, is setting in. i have still hoped for the papacy. comtism, some one said, was catholicism with christianity left out. the qualifying clause is perhaps unnecessary. comtism, socialism, internationalism, are all 'catholic' ideas. to the church the name of a nation is merely a geographical expression, it knows no frontiers, 269no distinctions of race or language, it has no preference for any form of government, being superior to all. the latin language is for it, a universal tongue, which no sane person could consider inferior to volapuk or esperanto. the church, properly constituted, might draw into itself a great deal of this floating idealism. we might approximate our ideals. you would say, monsieur, that we were all equally reactionary."
"all synthetic ideas are," said renan. "anarchism is in its essence more truly progressive than socialism, because it is for the individual. socialism implies either that all men are made after the same pattern, that in certain circumstances they will act in a certain manner, or that external influences, education, and environment, will turn out a uniform model. it is an error. if education were all-important, the church would not have lost ground consistently in catholic europe, where the jesuits have had practically the whole of education in their hands for two centuries. if such a machine as the society has failed, though it was backed by the state, and spoke with a quasi-spiritual authority, one cannot imagine a state department succeeding. liberty is the condition 270of development, and education develops, it does not create."
"it is important, however, to control the means of development," answered leo. "of course our education would be modern."
"monsieur, you spoke of an encyclical on biblical studies."
renan's voice was seductive; leo made a gesture of impatience.
"it was a mistake," he said quickly. "at certain moments the heads of any organisation are liable to be driven into a false position by their extreme supporters. my policy was to let things take their course; to assimilate what we could of the new spirit, and let the rest die without noise. my condemnation of americanism was unobtrusive, and i did not condemn the french liberal priests who were busy with biblical exegesis, because i saw that attacks on dogma do not interest the mass of people; nine catholics out of ten do not know what they believe in: and if your methods of criticism, monsieur renan, had not been advertised by so many fanatics, you would have been read almost entirely for the sake of your style. there is a little man in france now, a little man with the smile and features of voltaire, whose criticism 271has rendered the work of all those tedious germans, and your own, quite obsolete. our good ultramontanes wished to persecute him into popularity, and to advertise him by excommunication. they told me he was a heretic. of course he was. all the fathers of the church were heretics. st paul was a heretic. so was st augustine. so was st francis. so were lamennais, lacordaire, and newman. but it is a pity that the world should know it. st paul's heterodoxy laid the foundations of the church. st augustine's heterodoxy, that the sacred writings were not to be taken literally, built it up. st francis's heterodoxy staved off the reformation for three centuries. lamennais and lacordaire in france, newman in england, infused new life into our veins. let us point to the names of our sons and not to their works."
a subtle enjoyment illuminated renan's face.
"monsieur, you were always an enigma to me."
"it is simple," said leo; "the impregnable rock upon which we build is simply the impregnable ignorance of the majority. do you think that science can alter or influence 272the emotions of the plain man? it does not touch him. he prefers to accept blindly a creed which he does not understand in order that he may devote himself to the business and pleasures of life. he has no time to pause, to question, to criticise, to select. he aims at euthanasia. his doubts, such as he has, are almost entirely subconscious; and for the sake of his own peace of mind he will attempt to stifle them if they lift their heads. the number of men who can look on life, the whole of life, with a tranquil mind is extremely small; and even these have their moments of failure, weakness, and spiritual lassitude, moments in which life seems a hideous nightmare, in which the individual, grown morbidly conscious of his own being, sees it as no more than an infinitesimal point in the great waste of time and space, the great darkness of eternity, wherein all the worlds at present existing are no more than a shower of sparks.
"man, that creature of incredible vanity and innumerable petty egoisms, refuses to consider for very long the melancholy spectacle of a world hastening merely towards its death, and carrying with it his whole store of spiritual experience, of poems and philosophies, theologics 273and sciences, which his forefathers have created, and his descendants shall renew. therefore, when i considered the future of religion as an indispensable condition of life, and when i imagined further a kind of alliance between the proletariate and mine own church, i based my calculations principally upon the feet that the great majority of men do not think; indeed, that they refuse to think.
"creeds may pass away, but the individuality of man changes, if at all, only by imperceptible degrees. ages of faith and ages of scepticism recur, and give place to each other, with almost the same regularity as the ebb and flow of a tide. the age of pericles was sceptical, the age of c?sar was sceptical, the ages of leo x. and louis xv. were sceptical; but from age to age the peasant has sate by the fire after his day's work, dreaming the same dreams, and hearing nothing of the world's doubt. he is much the same kind of pagan as he always was. he has seized upon, in a way we cannot understand, the primitive, elementary conditions, which subsist in all religions. you were right, monsieur, in tracing religion to him. he is its source. perhaps he has never accepted christianity; but christianity has accepted him. laborious, 274innocent, stupid, scarcely more human than the cattle, who are literally his foster-brothers, he looks out upon his little world with patient eyes, wondering; and he brings us the fruits of the earth and the bread of life."
"i have said with voltaire," murmured renan, "that if a god did not exist we should have to invent one."
once again a deep, ironic smile creased about leo's jaws.
"you were perhaps right, monsieur," he said; "but we should prefer not to tax your ingenuity. the gods invented by science are always afar off; or they sleep, perchance; or they are concerned with their own affairs; in any case they do not hear us when we call to them. i consider our church capable of a larger growth if it will only remain silent on the question of dogma, which should be left like seed to grow and quicken in the earth. time will obtain for any dogma a certain measure of tacit acceptance, because truth to the majority is merely something which has been said over and over again. besides the psychological basis of my calculations, the fact that the majority do not think, there is the political basis. this has entered into a new phase. in the middle ages the 275church was allied with the state against the people. its dogmas were enforced by the secular arm. innocent iii. was a kind of suzerain over the princes of europe. but even here, already, the church knew upon occasion to ally herself with the people, and threaten a king through his own subjects, by releasing a nation from its allegiance, and troubling its internal peace by an interdict.
"since my predecessor, the church has definitely adopted this policy; but with a more subtile and insinuating method. infallibility relates not only to matters of dogma, but to matters of state, quoad mores as well as quoad fidem. you will remember, monsieur, that antonelli addressed a despatch to the nuncio at paris, in which he says: 'the church has never intended, nor now intends, to exercise any direct and absolute power over the political rights of the state. having received from god the lofty mission of guiding men, whether individually or as congregated in society, to a supernatural end, she has by that very fact the authority and the duty to judge concerning the morality and justice of all acts, internal and external, in relation to their conformity with the natural and divine law. and as no action, whether it be 276ordained by a supreme power, or be freely elicited by an individual, can be exempt from this character of morality and justice, it so happens that the judgment of the church, though falling directly on the moral of the acts, indirectly reaches over everything with which that morality is conjoined. but this is not the same thing as to interfere directly in political affairs.' that direct interference we must avoid."
renan seemed to hesitate before he spoke.
"it may be," he answered, "as you say, that mankind does not progress, but merely revolves. sometimes i have thought so. but nothing is repeated in precisely the same way. neither an individual, nor a society, is what it imagines itself to be, in its action upon the world. the church, as it is considered by its adherents, is something totally different from the church as it seems to its directors. every individual, and every age, examines the gospels in a different light and from a different standpoint, just as they examine the movement of the planets, the structure of the earth, the conception of kingship, of the state, even of that most immediate object the body. the life of st francis seems to spring quite naturally out of the medi?val world, with its 277crude cosmogony, its notion of the universe as a huge mechanical toy in the hands of god. to such people the story of joshua commanding the sun was not childish; miracles quite as wonderful were part of their daily lives; and the world for them acted not according to fixed immutable laws, but by the direct interposition of a providence susceptible to the prayers of man. to us it is different. we cannot imagine a st francis appearing in the modern world. the church, your holiness, cannot control the new movement, which will either transform or destroy it; but in what will you suffer it to be transformed?
"the evil of infallibility is that it cannot retract, or confess to error. the pope has been endowed with this fatal gift of infallibility, a personal charisma, and through it he has become an incarnation of the divine wisdom, even as the dalai lama becomes an incarnation of the buddha. to the historian, the heretical pope honorius, condemned equally by councils, and by his successors, is sufficient to disprove your claims. but the church can triumph over facts of history. what it cannot triumph over is the spirit of the age. you have a large body of adherents, who describe themselves as catholic without knowing what 278the term implies. you have a smaller, body, whose principal business in life seems to lie in reconciling, by innumerable sophistries and subterfuges, your dogmas with the modern world. the smallest body of all is made up of those of your adherents, who accept you as the sole fount of truth. but in each of these three sections there is not a solitary individual who accepts your teaching without colouring it with his own ideas. each will explain a dogma from the point of view of his own prejudices, and only accepts it with a kind of mental reservation. of course it always has been so. your peril lies in the rapid exchange of ideas which characterises modern life, the ease of communication, and the lack of any effective machinery for preventing their diffusion. the moment any crisis arises you cease to act as a solid body; and the action of your leaders has far less influence upon public opinion than the action of your laity excusing, or justifying, or explaining, the multitudinous diversities which exist among you. if this lay action be not public, it is the more insidious. i have noticed that when any important pronouncement is published from the chair of peter, your lay apologists make no sign. there is an ominous silence. 279all are disenchanted. all are suspect. they seem to turn away, silent and troubled, from what they imagined to be the ultimate authority, and seek for their justification at the tribunal of their private conscience."
"oh!" interrupted leo brusquely, "i for one do not regret that these gentlemen should be made uncomfortable. a lay theologian has no adequate reason for existing. it is altogether undesirable that laymen, mere amateurs, should concern themselves with these things."
"eh bien!" said renan. "it is entirely owing to the laity that a certain type of converts accrues to your ranks. liberal catholicism, though you and i know what a vain, chimerical, and ridiculous thing it is, is, as it were, the first step. take newman's theory of 'development' as an example. newman is the prophet dearest to the heart of laymen; because, in a sense, his works are popular. the anglican may read him as a classic, and, while enchanted with the magic of that exquisite prose, lays himself open to the attacks of a peculiarly subtile and insidious mind. a certain temper is created in him. he becomes receptive of catholic ideas, and one watches him progressing more or less 280unconsciously toward rome, blind to his master's casuistry by reason of the ineffable charm. he is like one implected with a morbid craving for some narcotic drug, gradually increasing the dose as its effect lessens. liberal catholics are the lures for such. your holiness had good reason for saying that the church had been founded by successive heresies. the first step to a conversion is always a misunderstanding."
"it is perfectly true," said leo; "but liberal catholicism is finished. only newman's hat protects him from censure. the doctrine of development ceased to have any value after the definition of infallibility. it was valuable as leading up to the definition, but afterwards it became an excuse for the introduction of novelties. its sole value now is as a proselytising medium. but, monsieur, why do we continue? the church is dissolving; even christianity itself seems to be dissolving, to take on a fluid, personal form. that singular body, the society of friends, alone seems to be untouched by the solvent of criticism. it has nothing upon which the solvent may act, no dogmas, no sacraments, no depository of tradition, no hierarchical organisation. it recognises only the inward 281spirit, that informing and subtile essence which alone seems capable of interpreting the righteousness of god, a religion of silence, and of sudden illumination, a religion of patient hope, of resignation, of a tacit understanding."
"ah," said renan, smiling, "a religion without forms, without enthusiasms, is scarcely one to satisfy all men. it is fascinating to consider the future of christianity. after catholicism no other form will satisfy the latins, and if criticism destroys protestantism with its infallible bible, as it is destroying catholicism with its infallible pope, these sophisticated nations will scarcely replace one object of worship by another. you have said that a religion needs an uncritical people, a people who do not think; so for any further development we must turn toward a less complete civilisation, to a virgin soil. perhaps we find this in russia. i can imagine that dreamy and unsophisticated people, who have kept unpolluted through the ages the temperament of wonder, reforming and developing the greek church. when their revolution comes, whether it be gradual and humane, or a violent upheaval of disastrous passion, the church will be metamorphosed; the 282stock only will remain, and new boughs will be grafted upon it. i can imagine a great growth because the field has lain fallow for so long, and the modern spirit will scarcely touch it, not only because the new christianity will be more flexible in itself, but also because the people will have inherited our results without having endured our conflicts."
the clouds in front of them suddenly trembled and parted; the figure of a man appeared.
"mocenni!" exclaimed leo.
he rose and went toward the newcomer.
"who is pope?" he enquired.
and the cardinal mocenni answered him in ill-humour.
"sarto."
for a moment leo stood, as if doubtful, without speaking.
"sarto," he said at last incredulously. "sarto!"
"well, monsieur," said renan, "shall we not continue our discussion on the future of the church?"
but leo had taken mocenni's arm, and the pair walked slowly away.
283"sarto! sarto!" renan heard leo say again, as the clouds gathered about them; and renan smiled.
"it is clear," he said, "that sarto is not leo."
