ERNEST RENAN 113 



had devoted so many years of intense study. He realized keenly 

 that there was an immense field of knowledge to which the 

 methods of positive science could not yet be applied — and maybe 

 could never be; but that was no reason to give up its exploration 

 as hopeless. The duty in every case remained the same: to find as 

 much of the truth as possible. If but little truth could be attained 

 with certainty, it was nevertheless one's duty to find that little. 

 The science of the human mind is essentially historical, for all that 

 we do, all that we know, all that we are is the result of ageless 

 labor and immemorial experience. The best way to understand the 

 development of our mind and to fathom its nature and possibilities 

 is to study the history of mankind — to study it with the same 

 scrupulous accuracy with which the naturalist seeks to unravel 

 the succession of geologic or biologic changes. Renan understood 

 all this very clearly and his philosophy was completed by a vague 

 concept of evolution as a universal law of life. 



The idea of evolution was of course in the air, and the tumult 

 and disruptions of 1848 had done much to replace in the popular 

 mind the general notions of tradition and immobility by that of 

 ceaseless change. Dynamical or historical explanations were every- 

 where substituted for the merely static — for the dogmatic de- 

 scriptions of an immobile reality. It is interesting to note that 

 Spencer and Darwin were thinking on this very subject at the 

 same time as Renan — it must be admitted with far greater depth — 

 but his contribution is nevertheless of great importance, for it 

 came from the other pole of research. 



Renan' s scientific attitude is best illustrated by his love of con- 

 crete facts and his distrust of premature generalizations. Thus 

 he would say, "Reason alone cannot create truth . . . The at- 

 tempt to construct a theory of things by the play of empty for- 

 mulas is as vain a pretense as that of the weaver who would 

 produce linen without putting any thread in his shuttle/' and 

 again, "It is philology or erudition which will provide the thinker 

 with that forest of things (silva rerum ac sententiarum, as Cicero 

 puts it), without which philosophy will never be more than a 



