INTRODUCTION

Ernest Renan was borh in 1823, at Tréguier, in Brittany. His parentage was humble and unintellectual. *'Je suis/* he says, ^^Vabovtissant de longues fies obscures de paysans et de marins. Je jouis de leurs économies de pensées J* In truth, the life of Renan was exclusively that of the thinker.

As a thinker Renan was pleased to picture himself as a dual and a contradictory being, a combination of the mystic Breton and the very terrestrial Gascon. In this he was quite right. This dualism appears in his life, in his thought, and even in his style.

Bom and bred in the least French and the least modem of the provinces, the most religions and the most poetic, imbued from the cradle with its legendary lore, its mysticism and its ecclesiasticism, reared by women and priests in the mediseval atmosphère of an episcopal see, ail the early influences in his life drew him in the direction of the church, and developed in his nature that romantisme moral which is one of his most striking characteristics.

"Je suis né . . . chez les Cinmiériens bons et vertueux qui habitent au bord d'une mer sombre,