L'ESPRIT NOUVEAU.* NOTWITHSTANDING those high qualities as an historian of

which M. Quinet has given proof in several of his works, and especially in his noble history, La Revolution, reviewed some years ago in these pages, it is in the character of a poet in prose that he chiefly prefers to address his countrymen; and among those prose-poets, of whom France in the nineteenth century has produced not a few, he may perhaps be reckoned the most eminent. His new work, L'Esprit Nouveau, is substantially a prose poem, inter- spersed with many pages of brilliant political pamphleteering. For M. Quinet, it must be recollected, though his voice is seldom 'heard in the Tribune of the Assembly, is one of the most re- spected members of the Republican party ; acknowledged by his most determined political opponents to be a man of un- sullied name, high purpose, and simple life, who has always known how to make sacrifices to principle, never how to make principle a footstool for ambition ; one of those men whose austere inde- pendence of character is sure to evoke a loud acclaim of eulogy when they are dead, although it may have made a kind of silence round them whilst they were alive.

As one who has always thought for himself, M. Quinet will always interest those who do the like, whilst the charm of his style—the stately freedom of perfect ease with which his phrase ever unfolds itself, though perhaps with somewhat too frequent repetitions of the same thought in other words—carries the reader through the highest regions of speculation without weari- ness or discomfort. Nevertheless, his last book is a disappointing one. What is the "New Spirit"? It is more by inference than from any express statement that one concludes that for M.

* Edgar Quince E Esprit Noureau. Fads: E. Denta.- 1875.

Quinet it consists mainly in what may be termed the harmony of Man with Nature.

Disgusted, he tells us, with the spiritualist philosophers of the Restoration epoch—who, after having preached the contempt of matter and self-sacrifice, as soon as the Revolution of 1830 opened a career to their ambition, threw aside all their stoical idealism—he felt that their theories must have been false, and endeavoured to discover whether the spirit might not be recon- ciled with the sensible world, with natural history, and with social and political science. To restore the " serenity " of the old Grecian age appears to him a worthy task :—

" Tho earth and the skies are- now what they were then The universe has grown larger for you, beneath your eyes. Why should you make yourselves smaller ? Unknown suns have speared, bursting out of the vault. Would you have preferred that the torches had gone out? The feast of the heavens lasts yet, more beautiful than during the Olympiads. Do not withdraw before the time, exhausted, weary, as if the feast were over."

The key-note of the work, it will be seen, is a kind of stately paganism,—a paganism, it must be said at once, the reverse of self-indulgent. There is, for instance, a noble chapter entitled, "Theory of Falsehood," one or two passages from which will show what is here meant :—

" The universe does not lie. Study the physiognomy of all beings (for each has its own),—you will see that they say what they ought to say. From generation to generation, the expression of their inward

feelings has engraved itself on their features in involuntary signs After having compared the physiognomy, the instinctive gestures of men and animals, Darwin has described the external signs of the principal passions Among these situations of the spirit, I seek falsehood in vain It is that the animal does not lie ; he cannot have transmitted to man the characteristic signs of falsehood.

One being only lies upon the earth,—man. He only succeeds in composing for himself a mask, a language, a face, which makes him appear the very contrary of what he is."

A still nobler chapter is that on "The Art of Remaking Character," in which, from the variation of species, the ameliora- tion of races, the very transformations of individuals, in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, he argues for the power of man to mould anew his own nature. Yet there are not many who, at M. Quinet's age, could say with him :—

"What I have been is not the rule for what I may be, for every day I acquire powers which I did not possess. I feel my being growing. I will not rest idly on what I have done. I will labour to develope that Infinite which is in me. as it is in all nature. . . . . . Whilst the insect lives, it goes on completing its being. It remains an insect, and it draws from itself a new variety of characteristics. It gives itself feet, wings, which it had not. It weaves its web, and draws out from itself a long thread without end. I, in the rivalry of beings, will not remain below the insect."

Passages like the above cut at the root, the one of that men- daciousness which is, alas ! one of the besetting sins of Francz ; the other, of that fatalism which has of late years been creeping over those cla-ses and parties even within her which had hitherto been the loudest in the praise of progress and human perfectibility. Not less noble are those passages in which the writer declares that adultery is "despair," that "the greatest calamity, the greatest insanity for a human creature is to love one who belongs to another," or again claims for society the right of punishment. It is only by comparison with the utter immorality of the teachings of a Cousin or a Sainte-Beuve in their later days —an immorality all the more revolting when compared with those of their youth—that one can appreciate the value for France of such strong and manly ethics as these.

And yet the tendency of the whole work is to eliminate a per- sonal God, as a kind of superfluous factor in an equation. He is not denied in terms ; He is simply nowhere, or rather, if the comparison be not too irreverent, He is, like a crop dug in green, buried in His universe to fertilise it. Love, for M. Quinet, is the principle of universal life,—a " cosmogonic force," "mixed with every creature." Justice "is born of Love." 'rrutk is "the hidden force which moves the worlds and the spheres."

In short, M. Quinet's universe is filled with an unnamed God. Those who may set him down for an atheist must admit that he is a profoundly religious one. '

This is an attitude of mind which Christian thinkers will do well to ponder. There is, perhaps, not one of M. Quinet's positive conclusions which is inconsistent with a Christian's faith ; most of them may seem to such a one to point directly to the objects of that faitb,—his wonder is that they should stop short of reaching on to them and grasping them. It is well to recognise in oneself, and in every human being, the broken rays of a love, a justice, a faith which are everywhere in the universe ; well to see that when man dies for truth and justice, nothing can conquer him. But can there be light everywhere, and no source of light? Because the

-world is bright, is there no sun ? Because love rules all things, is there no all-loving Father ? Because nothing can conquer the an who dies for truth and justice, must there be none who, dying

for all truth, all justice, shall conquer all things ?

But if the faith of Christ's Gospel can alone give body to M. Quinet's philosophy, it may in turn derive strength from it. We are tco apt to look on Nature only as created, not as sustained by God,—as detached from Him, not as rooted in Him. The whole

puzzle of the miraculous arises really from this,—that we have lost the habit of viewing the universe as a continuous manifestation of a continuous Will of Righteousness and Love. If there be such a Will, the true order can only be its expression, and not any mere invariable sequency of routine. In an earthly household, whilst the daily justice and love of the parent find their exercise, -under ordinary circumstances, in the perfect regularity with which the economy of domestic life proceeds from day to day, every want being foreseen and provided for, every taste

known and suited, every function adapted to its proper object, till the whole thing seems to move of itself, and the ever- vigilant will that really sustains all passes out of sight in the noiseless smoothness of its workings ; yet, should some emergency arise, that same justice, that same love may be called upon to show themselves forth by the sudden reversal of all regularity, the swift application of existing forces to new ends, or the prompt introduction of new forces altogether. And if, then, some member of the household grumble because the daily routine is broken through, or if another, on the contrary, for the first time recognise and bless a will that works for good, it is that neither has hitherto really seen through the daily routine, or recognised in it the mere instrument of a higher force, which may work out its ends alike with it and without it, but which is, in fact, as self-consistent and orderly when it works outside of all routine as in closest connection with it, and is yet as free and as strong during the long stretches of a routine the most un- deviating, as in those moments when it tears all routine asunder.

So is it surely with the divine economy. The beautiful sequency of Nature, which is the most abiding witness of the divine justice and love, cannot chain them down to itself. But if that sequency be ever interrupted, the interruption itself is in nowise higher than the sequency which it breaks ; the worth of each only lies in its being the manifestation, entirely appropriate according to the needs to be met, of that true order which is higher than both. To deny the possibility of what is termed "the supernatural," because no instance of it may have been witnessed in a few of those hours or days in the world's life which we call centuries or millenniums, is as if some young servant in a well-regulated household were to deny the possibility of a change in the dinner-hour, because it had been punctually kept to during the few weeks or months of her service. To see God only in the supernatural is as short-sighted as would be a child who should only recognise a parent's hand in the food prepared for him when he comes home late out of hours, and not in the daily household meal. The natural and the supernatural, viewed from their true focus, not only do not contradict, but complete each other.

It is characteristic of books full of high thought like M. Quinet's that they lead the mind beyond them. But it must not be supposed that the work under review is only or even chiefly ethical or metaphysical. In treating of "social physio- logy," of "the new spirit in political science," "the new spirit in history," ', the new spirit in literary criticism," "the new spirit in philosophy," M. Quinet handles a number of interesting questions. His chapters on Homer, in which he valiantly maintains unity of authorship, not only for the lliad itself, but for the Iliad and Odyssey together, should commend themselves to the heart of Mr. Gladstone. His views as to the geological and palseontological elements in Greek mythology, his identification of Heraeles with quaternary man, first conqueror over beasts, historic or prehistoric, deserve examination, and have in them probably a share of truth. Elsewhere we have the sharpest political satire. What can be truer than this ?—

"In the name of toleration, we must have, they say, three monarchies and a republic in the State. That is the good republic, good especially on the condition of being stifled Three monarchies and a re- public pretending each to be the State, is it not the dissolution of the human intellect ? . . . . What have I done, to be condemned to hear and to repeat such silliness? The true guarantee of duration for a government, they say again, is to be precarious, not to settle into men's minds, to be written on sand, to have no more value than a shadow. A certain pledge of perpetuity : To have no morrow. And this is called wisdom. Yes, the wisdom of minds which belong no more to themselves."

The "Prayer of the Pharisee" of contemporary France again, who

thanks God for having taught him from childhood upwards to refer everything to himself, to himself alone, and to have nothing in common with that dangerous man who would have God extend His benefits to all His creatures, and even to the " nouvelles couches sociales," blossoms almost into humour, a quality which is not characteristic of the author.