RENAN 



645 



was mainly turned to the study of Hebrew, and to 

 this study, of his own accord, he added that of 

 German. As the result of these combined studies 

 (for Kenan is careful to state that his question- 

 ings first came to him from historical and philo- 

 logical, and not from metaphysical considerations) 

 the traditional construction of Christianity had 

 lcome impossible for him. Quitting St Sulpice 

 in 1845, he finally abandoned all thoughts of the 

 church as a profession. At this crisis of spiritual 

 struggle ana general anxiety regarding his future, 

 his sister Henrietta, to whom Kenan has paid 

 the highest tribute of brotherly affection, proved 

 hi* invaluable friend and consoler. By her assist- 

 ance and counsel he was placed in a position in 

 which he could follow out that purpose which had 

 l>"en gradually shaping itself in his mind a life 

 of study untrammelled by creeds or formularies. 



Thenceforward Kenan's life was the uneventful 

 one of the scholar. In 1*48 he became agrege de 

 )iliilosophie, and thus attained a distinct academic 

 status. In 1850 he was appointed to a post in the 

 department of manuscripts in the Bibliotheque 

 Nationale in Paris. By the publication of succes- 

 sive mhnolres his name became known in connec- 

 tion with Oriental studies, and in 1860 he was made 

 one of a commission sent by the government of 

 Louis Napoleon to study the remains of Phoenician 

 civilisation. In 1861 he was chosen by the pro- 

 fessors of the College de France to fill the vacant 

 chair of Hebrew in that institution. As his views 

 on traditional Christianity, however, were now 

 notorious, the emperor, inspired by the clerical 

 party, refused to ratify his appointment ; and it 

 was not till after the fall of the imperial govern- 

 ment ( November 1870) that he was actually estab- 

 lished in possession of the chair. Travels in Italy, 

 in Scandinavia, and the East, all in connection 

 with special departments of research, were only a 

 component part of a career exclusively that of a stu- 

 dent and writer of books. In 1878 he was chosen 

 member of the French Academy. Renan married 

 a niece of the famous painter Ary Scheffer. 



Of the long series of Kenan's works, which 

 by their combined learning and literary power 

 made him the first man of letters in Europe, we 

 can here note only those which call for special 

 mention in a summary account of his career. His 

 work as an author began with a paper Sur les 

 Lanyues Srmitiifues (1847), afterwards developed 

 into his Histoire Generate de Lantiues Semitiques 

 ( 1854). Checked and supplemented as it has been 

 by siilequent scholars, this treatise is still regarded 

 by specialists as having made an epoch in the 

 history of Oriental studies. In his Averroes et 

 VAi-erroittme ( 1852) he gave one proof among many 

 others of his familiarity with the life and thought 

 of the middle ages. In addition to these and other 

 works dealing at length with special themes he 

 wrote frequent essays, afterwards collected in his 

 f'titdex d ' Ilinifiire, Religieitse (1856) and Essaix <l<: 

 Morale et de Critique (1859), which arrested wide 

 attention by their grace of style and originality 

 of suggestion. His European reputation, however, 

 dates only from the publication of the Vie de Jesus 

 ( 1863), which one of his most discerning critics has 

 described as 'one of the events of the century.' 

 With the Vie de Jesus also began what its author 

 regarded as the special work of his life, the Histoire 

 des Oriyines du Christianisme. In Kenan's concep- 

 tion the history of Christianity, in the tnie sense of 

 the term, is possible only from the close of the 2d 

 century after Christ. Previous to that period 

 materials do not exist for an adequate narrative 

 based on data that justify a dogmatic construction 

 of the development of Christianity. The tracing 

 of the Christian origins, therefore, mast be a work 

 essentially tentative, and one that, justifying con- 



jecture, calls for the finest critical faculty in him 

 who attempts it. It was with this conception of 

 his task that Kenan wrote the ten volumes, the 

 labour of nearly thirty years, in which lie em- 

 bodied his construction of the evolution of the 

 Christian religion and theology. Among works 

 of its kind it stands alone in literary value, though 

 many of its large generalisations have not com- 

 mended themselves to severer scholars. Of all the 

 volumes that have appeared none excited the extra- 

 ordinary interest of the first. In the Vie de Jesus 

 the combined weakness and strength of Kenan's 

 method were exaggerated to caricature on a subject 

 of supreme and universal interest, and one, more- 

 over, which even from the boldest critics had 

 hitherto exacted the tacit admission of its special 

 place in the heart of humanity. Few readers, even 

 in France, received it without large reserves on 

 the score of good taste and right feeling, while in 

 Britain its preciosity of sentiment and effeminate 

 exquisiteness of manner jarred even on those who 

 were at one with the writer in his general point of 

 view. Of the volumes that followed the Vie de 

 Jesus, that on St Paul and that entitled Marc- 

 Aurele et In Fin du Monde Antique are specially 

 noteworthy, the one as assigning to the apostle a 

 much inferior place in the history of the Christian 

 church to that which Protestants at least have 

 assigned him, the other for its brilliant delineation 

 of t he last stages in the life of paganism. In com- 

 pletion of the task he had set before him, Renan 

 undertook what, as he has himself told us, should 

 have been the natural beginning of his work, the 

 history of the people of Israel. Three volumes of 

 this history appeared between 1887 and 1891, and a 

 fourth completing the work in 1893. 



Besides this main product of his genius and 

 industry, Renan from time to time published other 

 volumes, in which he expounded his views on the 

 current questions of the day, as well as on the pro- 

 founder questions of human life and destiny. In 

 his Questions C'ontemporaines and his La Ittfnriitr 

 luff //' ,-tuelle et Morale he expressed his opinions on 

 the tendencies of modern France, and indicated in 

 what lies her hope for the future. As it was his 

 deepest conviction that all dogmatism is out of 

 place in the discussion of absolute questions, he 

 chose the form of dialogue as the most fitting ve- 

 hicle of his philosophical speculations. The Dia- 

 logues Philosojihiques and the Drames Philoso- 

 phiquen are attempts in this kind to express the 

 niiinj sided aspects in which life presents itself to 

 different minds. 



In 1883 Renan published Souvenirs </' Enfance, 

 in which he traced in his most delicate vein of 

 humour and sentiment the early influences from 

 persons and things amid which his childhood and 

 youth were formed. As a supplement to this 

 volume he also published L'A venir de Science ( 1890 ), 

 conceived and written in 1848, and expressing the 

 views he then entertained regarding the tendencies 

 of modern thought. Taken with its preface, 

 written in 1890, this book throws a vivid light at 

 once on the history of its author's opinions and on 

 that double nature he inherited from his Celtic and 

 Gascon ancestry. In his earlier work sentiment is 

 often strained beyond the limit of virile feeling, 

 while his later productions often reveal the Gascon 

 by their unseasonable persiflage and epicurean 

 suggestion. 



Whatever may be the judgment of time on the 

 intrinsic value of Renan's contribution to the 

 sum of knowledge, he can never lose his place 

 among the few great names in the history of letters. 

 His only predecessor in universality of contem- 

 porary fame, in combined erudition and special 

 endowment, is Erasmus, to whom, moreover, both 

 in traits of talent and by the times of dissolution 



