Macmillan

"
and
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 57
tion in the north: the Christian ideal blossomed forth in
France as much as ever the palesun of the north would
allow it. How strangelypiousfor our taste are stillthese
later French sceptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood in
their origin!How Catholic,
Comte's Sociologyseem to us, with the Roman logicof its
how un-German does Auguste
instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd cicerone
of Port-RoyalȘainte-Beuve,in spiteof all his hostility to
Jesuits!And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessibleto u^
Northerners does the languageof such a Renan appear, in
whom every instant the merest touch of religiousthrill
throws his refinedvoluptuousand comfortablycouchingsoul
off itsbalance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences
what wickedness and haughtinessis immediately
aroused by way of answer m our probably lessbeautiful but
harder soulsțhat is to say, in our more German souls!"
"Disons done hardiment que la religion est un produitde
Vhomtne normal, que I'homme est le plusdans le vrai quand
ilest le plusreligieux et le plusassure d'une destineeinfinie.
C'est quand il est bon qu'ilveut que la virtu correspondea
. . .
un order iternal, c'estquand ilcontempleles choses
d'une manihe desintiresseequ'iltrouve la mort revoltanteet
bsurde. Comment ne pas supposer que c'estdans ces moents-la,
que I'homme voit le mieux?"
.
. .
These
sentences
e so extremelyantipodal to my ears and habits of thought,
at in my firstimpulseof rage on findingthem, I wrote
"n the margin,"la niaiseriereligieuse par excellence! "
imtil
"
in my later rage I even took a fancyto them,these sentences
Bnth their truth absolutelyinverted! It is so nice and
Huch a distinctionto have one's own antipodes!
I