When a man of Voltaire's school has to explode a saint or a great religious hero, he says that such a person is a common human fool, or a common human fraud. But when a man like Anatole France has to explode a saint, he explains a saint as somebody belonging to his particular fussy6 little literary set. Voltaire read human nature into Joan of Arc, though it was only the brutal7 part of human nature. At least it was not specially8 Voltaire's nature. But M. France read M. France's nature into Joan of Arc—all the cold kindness, all the homeless sentimental9 sin of the modern literary man. There is one book that it recalled to me with startling vividness, though I have not seen the matter mentioned anywhere; Renan's "Vie de Jésus." It has just the same general intention: that if you do not attack Christianity, you can at least patronise it. My own instinct, apart from my opinions, would be quite the other way. If I disbelieved in Christianity, I should be the loudest blasphemer in Hyde Park. Nothing ought to be too big for a brave man to attack; but there are some things too big for a man to patronise.
And I must say that the historical method seems to me excessively unreasonable10. I have no knowledge of history, but I have as much knowledge of reason as Anatole France. And, if anything is irrational11, it seems to me that the Renan-France way of dealing12 with miraculous13 stories is irrational. The Renan-France method is simply this: you explain supernatural stories that have some foundation simply by inventing natural stories that have no foundation. Suppose that you are confronted with the statement that Jack14 climbed up the beanstalk into the sky. It is perfectly15 philosophical16 to reply that you do not think that he did. It is (in my opinion) even more philosophical to reply that he may very probably have done so. But the Renan-France method is to write like this: "When we consider Jack's curious and even perilous17 heredity, which no doubt was derived18 from a female greengrocer and a profligate19 priest, we can easily understand how the ideas of heaven and a beanstalk came to be combined in his mind. Moreover, there is little doubt that he must have met some wandering conjurer from India, who told him about the tricks of the mango plant, and how t is sent up to the sky. We can imagine these two friends, the old man and the young, wandering in the woods together at evening, looking at the red and level clouds, as on that night when the old man pointed20 to a small beanstalk, and told his too imaginative companion that this also might be made to scale the heavens. And then, when we remember the quite exceptional psychology21 of Jack, when we remember how there was in him a union of the prosaic22, the love of plain vegetables, with an almost irrelevant23 eagerness for the unattainable, for invisibility and the void, we shall no longer wonder that it was to him especially that was sent this sweet, though merely symbolic24, dream of the tree uniting earth and heaven." That is the way that Renan and France write, only they do it better. But, really, a rationalist like myself becomes a little impatient and feels inclined to say, "But, hang it all, what do you know about the heredity of Jack or the psychology of Jack? You know nothing about Jack at all, except that some people say that he climbed up a beanstalk. Nobody would ever have thought of mentioning him if he hadn't. You must interpret him in terms of the beanstalk religion; you cannot merely interpret religion in terms of him. We have the materials of this story, and we can believe them or not. But we have not got the materials to make another story."
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the manner of M. Anatole France in dealing with Joan of Arc. Because her miracle is incredible to his somewhat old-fashioned materialism25, he does not therefore dismiss it and her to fairyland with Jack and the Beanstalk. He tries to invent a real story, for which he can find no real evidence. He produces a scientific explanation which is quite destitute26 of any scientific proof. It is as if I (being entirely27 ignorant of botany and chemistry) said that the beanstalk grew to the sky because nitrogen and argon got into the subsidiary ducts of the corolla. To take the most obvious example, the principal character in M. France's story is a person who never existed at all. All Joan's wisdom and energy, it seems, came from a certain priest, of whom there is not the tiniest trace in all the multitudinous records of her life. The only foundation I can find for this fancy is the highly undemocratic idea that a peasant girl could not possibly have any ideas of her own. It is very hard for a freethinker to remain democratic. The writer seems altogether to forget what is meant by the moral atmosphere of a community. To say that Joan must have learnt her vision of a virgin28 overthrowing29 evil from a priest, is like saying that some modern girl in London, pitying the poor, must have learnt it from a Labour Member. She would learn it where the Labour Member learnt it—in the whole state of our society.
But that is the modern method: the method of the reverent30 sceptic. When you find a life entirely incredible and incomprehensible from the outside, you pretend that you understand the inside. As Renan, the rationalist, could not make any sense out of Christ's most public acts, he proceeded to make an ingenious system out of His private thoughts. As Anatole France, on his own intellectual principle, cannot believe in what Joan of Arc did, he professes31 to be her dearest friend, and to know exactly what she meant. I cannot feel it to be a very rational manner of writing history; and sooner or later we shall have to find some more solid way of dealing with those spiritual phenomena32 with which all history is as closely spotted33 and spangled as the sky is with stars.
Joan of Arc is a wild and wonderful thing enough, but she is much saner34 than most of her critics and biographers. We shall not recover the common sense of Joan until we have recovered her mysticism. Our wars fail, because they begin with something sensible and obvious—such as getting to Pretoria by Christmas. But her war succeeded—because it began with something wild and perfect—the saints delivering France. She put her idealism in the right place, and her realism also in the right place: we moderns get both displaced. She put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her practicality into her practice. In modern Imperial wars, the case is reversed. Our dreams, our aims are always, we insist, quite practical. It is our practice that is dreamy.
It is not for us to explain this flaming figure in terms of our tired and querulous culture. Rather we must try to explain ourselves by the blaze of such fixed35 stars. Those who called her a witch hot from hell were much more sensible than those who depict36 her as a silly sentimental maiden37 prompted by her parish priest. If I have to choose between the two schools of her scattered38 enemies, I could take my place with those subtle clerks who thought her divine mission devilish, rather than with those rustic39 aunts and uncles who thought it impossible.
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1
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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6
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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9
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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11
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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14
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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15
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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18
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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19
profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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24
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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28
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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29
overthrowing
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| v.打倒，推翻( overthrow的现在分词 )；使终止 | |
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30
reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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31
professes
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| 声称( profess的第三人称单数 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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34
saner
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| adj.心智健全的( sane的比较级 )；神志正常的；明智的；稳健的 | |
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35
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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depict
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| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
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37
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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39
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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