114 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



Penelope's weaving always to be recommenced/' This was partly 

 a revulsion against the theological arguments of his youth, partly 

 a natural impulse intensified by Berthelot/s example. 



I speak of natural impulse advisedly, for it is obvious that 

 Renan was a born scientist. The fundamental qualities of a true 

 scientist were genuine parts of his substance; the love of truth, of 

 accuracy, and even more the disinterestedness and the courage 

 without which this love is easily stifled at the very time when it 

 is most needed. 



This leads us to examine his religion, a subject it is far easier 

 to discuss now than in his own time, when some fanatics went so 

 far as to consider him as a sort of Antichrist. The core of his 

 religion, which was intense, was this very love of truth. One might 

 be tempted to ask, is it possible that religion be based on some- 

 thing else? But it is wiser to ask no such question; for it would 

 oblige us to deny the religion of a large number of people who 

 consider themselves, in perfect good faith, as deeply religious, 

 though they have no idea of truth, no means of recognizing it, 

 no love of it, no use for it. Their religion is irrational, but we 

 cannot say that it is not genuine. 



Aside from this love of truth which remained the absorbing 

 passion of his life, Renan had retained from his early education a 

 double imprint; the conviction of the necessity of a moral aristoc- 

 racy, and the feeling that such aristocracy was essentially one of 

 service, enjoying no privilege but to be what it was and expecting 

 no other, not even the privilege of wide recognition. According to 

 him, the truly inferior men are the great mass of the self-centered, 

 snobbish and stupid people, who have no other motives than the 

 improvement of their position, the furthering of their own petty 

 interests. On the contrary, the true mark of the aristocracy — in 

 which he had placed all his hope of moral progress — is its dis- 

 interestedness, its eagerness to devote itself to the community 

 without the thought of any reward. He insisted repeatedly in 

 every one of his writings on the essential importance of such dis- 



