THE ARISTOCRATIC VISION OF M. RENAN

From the ‘Study of M. Renan’

The sentiments I have tried to analyze are evidently of a rare order, and presuppose an exceptional culture.  Delicate flowers will not grow in the winds and fitful sunshine of the public road.  Their perfumed corollas expand only in the mellowed air of hot-houses.  Science is a kind of hot-house which guards superior minds from the brutalities of real life.  The author of ‘Dialogues philosophiques’ is an exceptional person.  He is a superior man, to me a term very strong in its simplicity; one might say almost that he is the superior man.  Moreover, a certain air of imperceptible irony and transcendental disdain shows that he is conscious of this superiority.  Disregard of vulgar opinion is very evident in his pages.  The reserved elegance of a style which never emphasizes any special intention; the subtle arguments which never take the imperative tone; a strength of feelings, none of which are exaggerated for the sake of sympathy,—­all would reveal his aristocratic ideal, even if he had not often declared that there is one domain for the initiated and another for the simple.  His political work on ‘Reforme intellectuelle et morale’ contains the strongest argument of the last hundred years against the very principle of democracy, natural equality.  His two symbolic dramas—­’Caliban’ and ’Eau de Jouvence’—­may be summed up in this reflection of the prior of Chartreux, seated in his stall while the organ plays alone, and the crowd presses around the crowned Caliban:  “A11 civilization is the work of aristocrats.”  This truth the demagogue Caliban himself recognizes, since as soon as possessed of the palace and power of Prospero, he assumes aristocratic ways; and M. Renan, always desirous of correcting by a smile even his dearest affirmations, carefully adds that the monster of the island became a very fair prince.  Prospero proclaims that material work is the slave of spiritual work.  Everything must aid him who prays,—­that is, who thinks.  Democratic minds, which do not admit individual subordination to a general achievement, consider this a monstrous doctrine.

Finally, the ‘Dialogues philosophiques,’ in the part entitled ‘Dreams,’ contain a complete plan for the subjection of the greatest number by a chosen few....  Is it bold to consider his feeling for his native soil the germ of his aristocratic ideal?

Other determining circumstances unite with it, all of which may be summed up in the term “superior man,” which seems simple enough, but which may be decomposed into a series of complex characters.  The superior man differs from the man of genius, who may be unintelligent enough, and from the man of talent, who is often a mere specialist, in an ability to form general ideas about everything.  If this power of generalizing is not combined with equal creative power, the superior man remains a critic.  But