834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



era, in which, the scientific conception of the universe shall take 

 the place of the metaphysical and theological. Natural science, 

 and especially the historical and philological sciences, are to be 

 not only the liberators of the human mind, but also the guides of 

 human life. Politics, ethics, education — all are to be regenerated 

 by science. Science is to establish the reign of justice among men, 

 and to become the source and final form of religion. 



It was by the advice of Augustin Thierry and M. de Sacy that 

 Kenan suppressed this volume, in the fear that its hard and dog- 

 matic tone might repel the reader, and that its ideas would prove 

 too new and too daring to be accepted all at once. Besides, Au- 

 gustin Thierry was uneasy at seeing his young friend ready to 

 give away at a stroke his whole intellectual capital. He per- 

 suaded him to dispense it in detail in the Revue des Deux Mondes 

 and the Journal des Debats. And thus it was that Renan became 

 the first of our essayists, giving currency to his most audacious 

 conceptions, and to all the discoveries of comparative philology 

 and rationalistic exegesis, under the light, easy, and accessible 

 form of literary and philosophic criticism. They were repub- 

 lished in the volumes entitled Moral and Critical Essays, Studies 

 in Religious History, and New Studies in Religious History. His 

 literary fame grew fast, while his learned works obtained for him, 

 in 1856, at the age of thirty-three, the membership of the Acade- 

 mie des Inscriptions. 



From the year 1851 onward he was attached to the Bibliotheque 

 Nationale ; and this modest post, together with the growing in- 

 come derived from his works, had enabled him to marry. This 

 marriage had very nearly been the occasion of another dramatic 

 episode in his private life. He had lived, since 1850, with his 

 sister Henrietta; their fellowship of thought and feeling had 

 grown with their fellowship in life and work ; and Henrietta — 

 who supposed that in abandoning the Church for science her 

 brother had but exchanged one priesthood for another — had never 

 dreamed that anything could separate them. When he told her 

 of his intended marriage, she betrayed such acute distress that he 

 determined to renounce the project which caused her so much un- 

 happiness ; and it was Henrietta herself who flew to Mile. Scheffer 

 and entreated her not to give up her brother, and Henrietta who 

 hurried on the marriage, the mere idea of which had been too 

 much for her self-control. The marriage did not, after all, in- 

 volve her separation from her brother. She attached herself pas- 

 sionately to his children ; and when he and his wife made a jour- 

 ney to Phoenicia on an archaeological mission she accompanied 

 them, and stayed with her brother when Madame Renan was 

 obliged to return home. These few months of dual life were her 

 last happiness. They were both attacked by fever at Beyrout. 



