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THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



tionately his old Purana. Towards the end of his life he had the 

 courage (or the weakness) to publish it in full without any 

 change. Such a book is tremendously interesting; not so much as 

 an achievement, however, as a promise. It could but be pleasant 

 for the old man when he reread these lucubrations of his youth 

 to realize not only that he had fully kept his promise, but also 

 that the world had moved — in the main — along the lines he had 

 foreseen. 



Berthelot/s influence upon the development of Renan's thought 

 can not be overestimated. They remained to the last a unique pair 

 of friends. Theirs was a sort of sacred union, excluding any fa- 

 miliarity or indulgence, which must have seemed inhuman to those 

 who were not actuated by the same earnest conception of life, 

 the same absolute devotion to a great duty, the same inveterate 

 habit of considering all things from the point of view of eternity. 

 They were two young heroes walking along different paths to a 

 single aim; their quests, however distinct to all appearances, were 

 essentially the same. They wanted to increase the light and to 

 dissipate the clouds of darkness — and their enemy was also the 

 same dragon with a hundred heads, unreason, credulity, supersti- 

 tion, intolerance. . . . 



The voyage to Italy which Renan made in 1849-50 is very im- 

 portant because it was his artistic initiation. It brought suddenly 

 to the surface of his soul the love of beauty which had been stifled 

 by his immoderate studies and was almost buried under a tre- 

 mendous load of knowledge. It mellowed his thought and made 

 him realize that he too was an artist. His first published work — 

 his Averroes — which appeared a couple of years later shows the 

 progress that he had made in every respect. It is the fruit of a ma- 

 ture mind which has found out that the duty of a writer is less 

 to exhibit the sum of his knowledge than to deliver his message, 

 the work of one who has learned the art of composing his thoughts 

 and pruning his style, who has taken the trouble to recast his ideas 

 until their form be as simple and elegant as possible. In fact, this 



