RENAN, ERNEST (1823-1892), French philosopher and Orientalist, was born on Feb. 27, 1823, at Treguier. His father's people were of the fisher-clan of Renans or Ronans. He was only five years old when his father died, and his sister Henriette, twelve years older than Ernest, a girl of remarkable character, was henceforth morally the head of the household. Ernest was educated in the ecclesiastical college at Treguier. In the summer of 1838 he carried off all the prizes at the college. Through his sister, who was teaching in Paris, Dupanloup heard of him, and sent for him at once, and placed him in the new ecclesiastical college of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet. He then proceeded to study for the priesthood at the Seminary of Issy, then at St. Sulpice, and finally he found his way to Stavistas, a lay college of the Oratorians. He soon found himself torn between his desire to lead the life of a Catholic priest and his intellectual inability to accept in its entirety the ordinary presentation of Catholic doctrine, or to submit to ecclesiastical authority. Even at Stavistas he found himself too much under the domination of the Church, and, after a few weeks there, he reluctantly broke the last tie which bound him to the religious life, and entered M. Crouzet's school for boys as an usher. There he made the acquaintance, in 1846, of the chemist Marcellin Berthelot, then a boy of eighteen. To the day of Renan's death their friendship continued. Renan was occupied as usher only in the evenings. In the daytime he continued his researches in Semitic philology. In 1847 he obtained the Prix Volney for his "General History of Semitic Languages." The revolution of 1848 confronted him with the problems of Democracy. The result was an immense volume, The Future of Science, which remained in manuscript until 189o. L'Avenir de la science is an attempt to conciliate the privileges of a necessary elite with the diffusion of the greatest good of the greatest num ber. In 1849 the French government sent him to Italy on a scientific mission. In Italy the artist in him awoke and triumphed over the savant and the reformer. On his return to Paris Renan lived with his sister Henriette. A small post at the National Library, together with his sister's savings, furnished him with the means of livelihood. In the evenings he wrote for the Revue des deux mondes and the Debats the exquisite essays which ap peared in 1857 and 1859 under the titles Etudes d'histoire reli gieuse and Essais de morale et de critique. In 1852 his book on Averroes had brought him not only his doctor's degree, but his first reputation as a thinker. In his two volumes of essays Renan
shows himself a Liberal, but no longer a Democrat. Nothing, according to his philosophy, is less important than prosperity. The greatest good of the greatest number is a theory as dangerous as it is illusory. Man is not born to be prosperous, but to realize, in a little vanguard of chosen spirits, an ideal superior to the ideal of yesterday. Only the few can attain a complete development. Yet there is a solidarity between the chosen few and the masses which produce them; each has a duty to the other. The acceptance of this duty is the only foundation for a moral and just society. The aristocratic idea has seldom been better stated.
Renan now began to frequent more than one Parisian salon, and especially the studio of Ary Scheffer, whose niece and adopted daughter, Cornelie, he proposed to marry in 1856. Henriette con sented not only to the marriage, but to make her home with the young couple, whose housekeeping depended on the sum that she could contribute. The history has been told by Renan in the memorial essay, Ma Soeur Henriette. In 1859 appeared his trans lation of the Book of Job with an introductory essay, followed in 1859 by the Song of Songs.
Renan was now a candidate for the chair of Hebrew and Chaldaic languages at the College de France. The Catholic party, upheld by the empress, would not appoint an unfrocked seminarist, a notorious heretic, to a chair of Biblical exegesis. Yet the emperor wished to conciliate Ernest Renan. He offered to send him on an archaeological mission to Phoenicia. Leaving his wife at home with their baby son, Renan left France, accompanied by his sister, in the summer of 1860. Madame Renan joined them in January 1861, returning to France in July. The mission proved fruitful in Phoenician inscriptions which Renan published in his Mission de Phenicie. They form the base of his Corpus Inscrip tionum Semiticarum. At Amshit, near Byblos, Henriette Renan died of intermittent fever on Sept. 24, 1861. Her brother, himself at death's door, was carried unconscious on board a ship waiting in harbour and bound for France. On Jan. 11, 1862, the Minister of Public Instruction ratified Renan's election to the chair of Hebrew. But his opening lecture, in which, amid the applause of the students, Renan declared Jesus Christ "an incomparable Man," alarmed the Catholic party. Renan's lectures were pro nounced a disturbance of the public peace, and he was suspended. He refused the librarian's post he was offered in exchange, and thenceforth lived by his pen.