1882—1884 349 



made him regard as almost imperceptible the number of men 

 capable of understanding his philosophical elevation. Pasteur 

 had bared his soul; Renan took pleasure in throwing light on 

 the intellectual antithesis of certaz::i minds, and on their point*' 

 of contact. 



''Allow me, Sir, to recall to you your fine discovery of right 

 and left tartaric acids. . . . There are some minds which 

 it is as impossible to bring together as it is impossible, accord- 

 ing to your own comparison, to fit two gloves one into the 

 other. And yet both gloves are equally necessary ; they com- 

 plete each other. One's two hands cannot be superposed, they 

 may be joined. In the vast bosom of nature, the most diverse 

 efforts, added to each other, combine with each other, and 

 result in a most majestic unity." 



Renan handled the French language, **this old and admir- 

 able language, poor but to those who do not know it," with a 

 dexterity, a choice of delicate shades, of tasteful harmonies 

 which have never been surpassed. Able as he was to define 

 every human feeling, he went on from the above comparison, 

 painting divergent intellectual capabilities, to the following 

 imprecation against death: ''Death, according to a thought 

 admired by M. Littre, is but a function, the last and quietest 

 of all. To me it seems odious, hateful, insane, when it lays 

 its cold blind hand on virtue and on genius. A voice is ia 

 us, which only great and good souls can hear, and that voice 

 cries unceasingly 'Truth and Good are the ends of thy life; 

 sacrifice all to that goal'; and when, following the call of that 

 siren within us, claiming to bear the promises of life, we 

 reach the place where the reward should await us, the deceit- 

 ful consoler fails us. Philosophy, which had promised us the 

 secret of death, makes a lame apology, and the ideal which 

 had brought us to the limits of the air we breathe disappears 

 from view at the supreme hour when we look for it. Nature *s 

 object has been attained; a powerful effort has been realized, 

 and then, wdth characteristic carelessness, the enchantress 

 abandons us and leaves us to the hooting birds of the night." 



Renan, save in one little sentence in his answer to Pasteur—' 

 *'The divine work accomplishes itself by the intimate tendency 

 to what is Good and what is True in the universe" — did not 

 go further into the statement of his doctrines. Perhaps he 

 "thought them too austere for his audience; he was wont to 

 ischew critical And relig^o."'? ^onsidex'ations when in a world 



