The theological struggle defined itself more particularly in my case
upon the ground of the so-called revealed texts. Catholic teaching,
with full confidence as to the issue, accepted battle upon this ground
as upon others with the most complete good faith. The Hebrew tongue
was in this case the main instrument, for one of the two Christian
Bibles is in Hebrew, while even as regards the New Testament there can
be no proper exegesis without Hebrew.
The study of Hebrew was not compulsory in the seminary, and it was
not followed by many of the students. In 1843-44, M. Garnier still
lectured in his room upon the more difficult texts to two or three
students. M. Le Hir had for several years taken the lectures on
grammar. I joined the course at once, and the well-defined philology
of M. Le Hir was full of charm for me. He was very kind to me, and
being a Breton like myself, there was much similarity of disposition
between us. At the expiration of a few weeks I was almost his only
pupil. His way of expounding the Hebrew grammar, with comparison of
other Semitic idioms, was most excellent. I possessed at this period a
marvellous power of assimilation. I absorbed everything which he told
me. His books were at my disposal and he had a very extensive library.
Upon the days when we walked to Issy he went with me to the heights
of La Solitude, and there he taught me Syriac. We talked together over
the Syriac New Testament of Guthier. M. Le Hir determined my career. I
was by instinct a philologist, and I found in him the man best fitted
to develop this aptitude. Whatever claim to the title of savant I may
possess I owe to M. Le Hir. I often think, even, that whatever I have
not learnt from him has been imperfectly acquired. Thus he did not
know much of Arabic, and this is why I have always been a poor Arabic
scholar.
A circumstance due to the kindness of my teachers confirmed me in my
calling of a philologist and, unknown to them, unclosed for me a
door which I had not dared open for myself. In 1844, M. Gamier was
compelled by old age to give up his lectures on Hebrew. M. Le Hir
succeeded him, and knowing how thoroughly I had assimilated his
doctrine he determined to let me take the grammar course. This
pleasant information was conveyed to me by M. Carbon with his usual
good nature, and he added that the Company would give me three hundred
francs by way of salary. The sum seemed to me such an enormous one
that I told M. Carbon I could not accept it. He insisted, however, on
my taking a hundred and fifty francs for the purchase of books.
A much higher favour was that by which I was allowed to attend M.
Etienne Quatremère's lectures at the Collège de France twice a
week. M. Quatremère did not bestow much preparatory labour upon his
lectures; in the matter of Biblical exegesis he had voluntarily kept
apart from the scientific movement. He much more nearly resembled M.
Garnier than M. Le Hir. Just another such a Jansenist as Silvestre de
Sacy, he shared the demi-rationalism of Hug and Jahn--minimising the
proportion of the supernatural as far as possible, especially in the
cases of what he called "miracles difficult to carry out," such as the
miracle of Joshua, but still retaining the principle, at all events
in respect to the miracles of the New Testament. This superficial
eclecticism did not much take my fancy. M. Le Hir was much nearer
the truth in not attempting to attenuate the matter recounted, and in
closely studying, after the manner of Ewald, the recital itself. As a
comparative grammarian, M. Quatremère was also very inferior to M. Le
Hir. But his erudition in regard to orientalism was enormous. A new
world opened before me, and I saw that what apparently could only be
of interest to priests might be of interest to laymen as well. The
idea often occurred to me from that time that I should one day teach
from the same table, in the small classroom to which I have as a
matter of fact succeeded in forcing my way.
This obligation to classify and systematize my ideas in view of
lessons to be given to fellow-pupils of the same age as myself decided
my vocation. My scheme of teaching was from that moment determined
upon; and whatever I have since accomplished in the way of philology
has its origin in the humble lecture which through the kindness of
my masters was intrusted to me. The necessity for extending as far as
possible my studies in exegesis and Semitic philology compelled me to
learn German. I had no elementary knowledge of it, for at St. Nicholas
my education had been wholly Latin and French. I do not complain of
this. A man need only have a literary knowledge of two languages,
Latin and his own; but he should understand all those which may be
useful to him for business or instruction. An obliging fellow pupil
from Alsace, M. Kl----, whose name I often see mentioned as rendering
services to his compatriots in Paris, kindly helped me at the outset.
Literature was to my mind such a secondary matter, amidst the ardent
investigation which absorbed me, that I did not at first pay much
attention to it. Nevertheless, I felt a new genius, very different
from that of the seventeenth century. I admired it all the more
because I did not see any limit to it. The spirit peculiar to Germany
at the close of the last century, and in the first half of the present
one, had a very striking effect upon me; I felt as if entering a place
of worship. This was just what I was in search of, the conciliation
of a truly religious spirit with the spirit of criticism. There were
times when I was sorry that I was not a Protestant, so that I might
be a philosopher without ceasing to be a Christian. Then, again, I
recognised the fact that the Catholics alone are consistent. A single
error proves that a Church is not infallible; one weak part proves
that a book is not a revealed one. Outside rigid orthodoxy, there was
nothing, so far as I could see, except free thought after the manner
of the French school of the eighteenth century. My familiarity with
the German studies placed me in a very false position; for upon the
one hand it proved to me the impossibility of an exegesis which did
not make any concessions, while upon the other hand I quite saw that
the masters of St. Sulpice were quite right in refusing to make these
concessions, inasmuch as a single confession of error ruins the
whole edifice of absolute truth, and reduces it to the level of human
authorities in which each person makes his selections according to his
individual fancy.
For in a divine book everything must be true, and as two
contradictories cannot both be true, it must not contain any
contradiction. But the careful study of the Bible which I had
undertaken, while revealing to me many historical and esthetic
treasures, proved to me also that it was not more exempt than any
other ancient book from contradictions, inadvertencies, and errors.
It contains fables, legends, and other traces of purely human
composition. It is no longer possible for any one to assert that the
second part of the book of Isaiah was written by Isaiah. The book of
Daniel, which, according to all orthodox tenets, relates to the period
of the captivity, is an apocryphal work composed in the year 169
or 170 B.C. The book of Judith is an historical impossibility. The
attribution of the Pentateuch to Moses does not bear investigation,
and to deny that several parts of Genesis are mystical in their
meaning is equivalent to admitting as actual realities descriptions
such as that of the Garden of Eden, the apple, and Noah's Ark. He
is not a true Catholic who departs in the smallest iota from the
traditional theses. What becomes of the miracle which Bossuet so
admired: "Cyrus referred to two hundred years before his birth"? What
becomes of the seventy weeks of years, the basis of the calculations
of universal history, if that part of Isaiah in which Cyrus is
referred to was composed during the lifetime of that warrior, and if
the pseudo-Daniel is a contemporary of Antiochus Epiphanes?
Orthodoxy calls upon us to believe that the biblical books are the
work of those to whom their titles assign them. The mildest Catholic
doctrine as to inspiration will not allow one to admit that there is
any marked error in the sacred text, or any contradiction in matters
which do not relate either to faith or morality. Well, let us allow
that out of the thousand disputes between critique and orthodox
apologetics as to the details of the so-called sacred text there are
some in which by accident and contrary to appearances the latter
are in the right. It is impossible that it can be right in all the
thousand cases and it has only to be wrong once for all the theory
as to its inspiration to be reduced to nothing. This theory of
inspiration, implying a supernatural fact, becomes impossible to
uphold in the presence of the decided ideas of our modern common
sense. An inspired book is a miracle. It should present itself to
us under conditions totally different from any other book. It may be
said: "You are not so exacting in respect to Herodotus and the poems
of Homer." This is quite true, but then Herodotus and the Homeric
poems do not profess to be inspired books.
With regard to contradictions, for instance, no one whose mind is
free from theological preoccupations can do other than admit the
irreconcilable divergences between the synoptists and the author
of the Fourth Gospel, and between the synoptists Compared with one
another. For us rationalists this is not of much importance; but the
orthodox reasoner, compelled to be of opinion that his book is right
in every particular, finds himself involved in endless subtleties.
Silvestre de Sacy was very much perplexed by the quotations from the
Old Testament which are met with in the New. He found it so difficult,
with his predilection for accuracy in quotations, to reconcile them
that he eventually admitted as a principle that the two Testaments are
both infallible of themselves, but that the New Testament is not so
when it quotes the Old. Only those who have no sort of experience in
the ways of religion will feel any surprise that men of such great
powers of application should have clung to such untenable positions.
In these shipwrecks of a faith upon which you have centred your life,
you cling to the most unlikely means of salvage rather than allow all
you cherish to go to the bottom.
Men of the world who believe that people are brought to a decision in
the choice of their opinions by reasons of sympathy or antipathy will
no doubt be surprised at the train of reasoning which alienated me
from the Christian faith, to which I had so many motives, both of
interest and inclination, for remaining attached. Those who have not
the scientific spirit can scarcely understand that one's opinions are
formed outside of one by a sort of impersonal concretion of which one
is, so to speak, the spectator. In thus letting my course be shaped by
the force of events, I believed myself to be conforming to the rules
of the seventeenth century school, especially to those of Malebranche,
whose first principle is that reason should be contemplated, that man
has no part in its procreation, and that his sole duty is to stand
before the truth, free from all personal bias, ready to let himself be
led whither the balance of demonstration wills it. So far from having
at the outset certain results in view, these illustrious thinkers
urged in the interests of the truth the obliteration of anything like
a wish, a tendency, or a personal attachment. The great reproach of
the preachers of the seventeenth century against the libertines was
that they had embraced their desires and had adopted irreligious
opinions because they wished them to be true.
In this great struggle between my reason and my beliefs I was careful
to avoid a single reasoning from abstract philosophy. The method of
natural and physical sciences which at Issy had imposed itself upon me
as an absolute law led me to distrust all system. I was never stopped
by any objection with regard to the dogmas of the Trinity and the
Incarnation regarded in themselves. These dogmas, occurring in the
metaphysical ether did not shock any opposite opinion in me. Nothing
that was open to criticism in the policy and tendency of the Church,
either in the past or the present, made the slightest impression upon
me. If I could have believed that theology and the Bible were true,
none of the doctrines which were afterwards embodied in the _Syllabus_
and which were thereupon more or less promulgated, would have given me
any trouble. My reasons were entirely of a philological and critical
order; not in the least of a metaphysical, political, or moral kind.
These orders of ideas seemed scarcely tangible or capable of being
applied in any sense. But the question as to whether there are
contradictions between the Fourth Gospel and the synoptics is
one which there can be no difficulty in grasping. I can see these
contradictions with such absolute clearness that I would stake my
life, and, consequently, my eternal salvation, upon their reality
without a moment's hesitation. In a question of this kind there can
be none of those subterfuges which involve all moral and political
opinions in so much doubt. I do not admire either Philip II. or Pius
V., but if I had no material reasons for disbelieving the Catholic
creed, the atrocities of the former and the faggots of the latter
would not be obstacles to my faith.
Many eminent minds have on various occasions hinted to me that I
should never have broken away from Catholicism if I had not formed so
narrow a view of it; or if, to put it in another way, my teachers
had not given me this narrow view of it. Some people hold St.
Sulpice partially responsible for my incredulity, and reproach that
establishment upon the one hand with having inspired me with too
complete a trust in a scholasticism which implied an exaggerated
rationalism, and, upon the other, with having required me to admit as
necessary to salvation the _suimmum_ of orthodoxy, thus inordinately
increasing the amount of sustenance to be swallowed, while they
narrowed in undue proportions the orifice through which it was
to pass. This is very unfair. The directors of St. Sulpice, in
representing Christianity in this light, and by being so open as to
the measure of belief required, were simply acting like honest men.
They were not the persons who would have added the gratifying _est de
fide_ after a number of untenable propositions. One of the worst
kinds of intellectual dishonesty is to play upon words, to represent
Christianity as imposing scarcely any sacrifice upon reason, and in
this way to inveigle people into it without letting them know to what
they have committed themselves. This is where Catholic laymen, who dub
themselves liberals, are under such a delusion. Ignorant of theology
and exegesis, they treat accession to Christianity as if it were a
mere adhesion to a coterie. They pick and choose, admitting one dogma
and rejecting another, and then they are very indignant if any one
tells them that they are not true Catholics. No one who has studied
theology can be guilty of such inconsistency, as in his eyes
everything rests upon the infallible authority of the Scripture and
the Church; he has no choice to make. To abandon a single dogma or
reject a single tenet in the teaching of the Church, is equivalent to
the negation of the Church and of Revelation. In a church founded
upon divine authority, it is as much an act of heresy to deny a single
point as to deny the whole. If a single stone is pulled out of the
building, the whole edifice must come to the ground.
Nor is there any good to be gained by saying that the Church will
perhaps some day make concessions which will avert the necessity of
ruptures, such as that which I felt forced upon me, and that it will
then be seen that I have renounced the kingdom of God for a trumpery
cause. I am perfectly well aware how far the Church can go in the way
of concession, and I know what are the points upon which it is useless
to ask her for any. The Catholic Church will never abandon a jot or
tittle of her scholastic and orthodox system; she can no more do so
than the Comte de Chambord can cease to be legitimist. I have no doubt
that there will be schisms, more, perhaps, than ever before, but
the true Catholic will be inflexible in the declaration: "If I
must abandon my past, I shall abandon the whole; for I believe in
everything upon the principle of infallibility, and this principle
is as much affected by one small concession as by ten thousand large
ones." For the Catholic Church to admit that Daniel was an apocryphal
person of the time of the Maccabaei, would be to admit that she
had made a mistake; if she was mistaken in that, she may have been
mistaken in others, and she is no longer divinely inspired.
I do not, therefore, in any way regret having been brought into
contact, for my religious education, with sincere teachers, who would
have scrupulously avoided letting me labour under any illusion as to
what a Catholic is required to admit. The Catholicism which was taught
me is not the insipid compromise, suitable only for laymen, which has
led to so many misunderstandings in the present day. My Catholicism
was that of Scripture, of the councils, and of the theologians.
This Catholicism I loved, and I still respect it; having found it
inadmissible, I separated myself from it. This is a straightforward
course, but what is not straightforward is to pretend ignorance of
the engagement contracted, and to become the apologist of things
concerning which one is ignorant. I have never lent myself to
a falsehood of this description, and I have looked upon it as
disrespectful to the faith to practise deceit with it. It is no fault
of mine if my masters taught me logic, and by their uncompromising
arguments made my mind as trenchant as a blade of steel. I took
what was taught me--scholasticism, syllogistic rules, theology, and
Hebrew--in earnest; I was an apt student; I am not to be numbered with
the lost for that.
THE ST. SULPICE SEMINARY.