PREFACE

TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION.

THE twelve earlier editions of this work differ from one another only in trifling changes. The present edition, on the contrary, has been revised and corrected with the greatest care. During the four years since the book appeared, I have laboured incessantly to improve it. The numerous criticisms to which it has given rise have rendered the task in certain respects an easy one. I have read all those which contain anything important. I believe I can conscientiously affirm that not once have the outrage and the calumny which have been imported into them hindered me from deriving profit from the just observations which those criticisms might contain. I have weighed everything, tested everything. If in certain cases people should wonder why I have not answered fully the censures which have been made with such extreme assurance, and as if the errors alleged had been proved, it is not that I did not know of these censures, but that it was impossible for me to accept them. In such cases I have generally added in a note the texts or the considerations which have kept me from changing my opinion, or else by some slight change of expression I have endeavoured to show wherein lay the error of my critics. These notes, though very brief and doing little more than point out the original sources, are still enough to show the intelligent reader the reasonings that have guided me in the composition of my text.

To answer in detail all the charges that have been brought against me, it would have been necessary for me to triple or quadruple this volume. I should have had to repeat things

which have already been well said, even in French. I must have gone into religious controversy,—a thing that I absolutely forbid myself to do. I should have had to speak of myself, a thing I never do. I write in order to put my ideas before those who seek the truth. As for those persons who in the interest of their belief must have it that I am an ignoramus, a lying spirit, or a man of bad faith, I make no attempt to modify their opinion. If that opinion is necessary for the peace of mind of certain pious people, I should feel a genuine scruple at disabusing them.

The controversy, moreover, if I had entered upon it, must have led me very often to points quite outside historical criticism. The objections made against me have come from two opposing parties. One set has been addressed to me by freethinkers, who do not believe in the supernatural,1 nor, consequently, in the inspiration of the sacred books; or else by theologians of the liberal Protestant school, who have come to take such broad doctrinal views that the rationalist can readily arrive at an understanding with them. These adversaries and I find ourselves on common ground; we start with the same principles; we can discuss according to the rules followed in all questions of history, philology, and archæology. As to the refutations of my book (and these are much the most numerous) which have been made by orthodox theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, who believe in the supernatural and in the sacred character of the books of the Old and New Testaments, they all involve a fundamental misapprehension. If the miracle has any reality, this book is but a tissue of errors. If the Gospels are inspired books, and true consequently to the letter, from beginning to end, I have been wholly in the wrong in not contenting myself with piecing together the broken fragments of the four texts, as the Harmonists do, sure of constructing thus an ensemble at once most redundant

1 By this word I always mean the special supernatural act, miracle, or the divine intervention for a particular end; not the general supernatural force, the hidden Soul of the Universe, the ideal, source, and final cause of all movements in the system of things.

and most contradictory. If, on the contrary, miracle is a thing inadmissible, then I am right in regarding the books which contain miraculous tales as history mixed with fiction, as legends full of inaccuracies, errors, and systematic shifts. If the Gospels are like other books, I am right in treating them in the same manner as the student of Greek, Arabian, or Hindoo lore treats the legendary documents which he studies. Criticism knows no infallible texts; its first principle is to admit the possibility of error in the text which it examines. Far from being accused of scepticism, I ought to be classed with the moderate critics, since, instead of rejecting in the lump documents damaged by so much alloy, I try to get something historical out of them by cautious modifications of the story.

And let no one assert that to put the question in such a manner implies that we take for granted beforehand what is to be proved in detail, — namely, that the miracles related by the Gospels had no reality; that the Gospels are not books written by help of the Divinity. Those two negations do not with us result from our method of criticism; they are anterior to it. They are the outcome of an experience which has never been belied. Miracles are things which never happen. Only credulous people think they see them: you cannot cite a single one which has taken place in presence of witnesses competent to give a clear account of it. No special intervention of the Divinity, whether in the composition of a book, or in any event whatever, has been proved. In the very fact that one admits the supernatural, he is so far outside the province of science; he accepts an explanation which is non-scientific, an explanation which is set aside by the astronomer, the physicist, the chemist, the geologist, the physiologist, one which the historian also must set aside. We reject the supernatural for the same reason that we reject the existence of centaurs and hippogriffs; and this reason is, that nobody has ever seen them. It is not because it has been proved to me beforehand that the evangelists do not merit absolute credence, that I reject the miracles which they relate. It is because they tell of miracles

that I say, "The Gospels are legends; they may contain history, but certainly all that they set forth is not historical."

It is hence impossible that the orthodox believer and the rationalist, who denies the supernatural, can help each other much in such discussions. In the eyes of theologians, the Gospels and the contents of the Bible in general are books like no others,-books more historic than the best of histories, inasmuch as they contain no error. To the rationalist, on the contrary, the Gospels are texts to which his very business is to apply the ordinary rules of criticism. We are in this respect like Arabic scholars in presence of the Koran and the hadith; like Hindoo students in presence of the Vedas and the Buddhist books. Do our Arabic scholars regard the Koran. as infallible? Do we accuse them of falsifying history when they relate the origins of Islamism differently from the Mussulman theologians? Do our Orientalists hold the legendary life of Buddha [Lalitavistara] to be an authentic biography?

How can we come to an understanding when we set out from opposite principles? All rules of criticism assume that a document subjected to examination has but a relative value; that it may be in error, and corrected by some better document. A classical scholar, persuaded that all books bequeathed to us from the past are the work of men, does not hesitate to challenge the texts when they contradict one another; when they set forth absurd statements, or those formally disproved by documents of greater authority. The orthodox believer, on the contrary, sure in advance that his sacred books do not contain an error or a contradiction, is party to the most violent tactics, to expedients the most desperate, to get out of difficulties. Orthodox exegesis is, in this way, a tissue of subtilties. A single forced interpretation may be true; but a thousand such subtilties at once cannot be true. If there were in Tacitus or Polybius errors so pronounced as those committed by Luke regarding Quirinius and Theudas, we should say that Tacitus and Polybius were wrong. Reasonings which we would not allow if the question were one of Greek or Latin literature-hypotheses which a Boissonade, or even a Rollin,

would never think of—are held to be plausible when one sets himself to defend a sacred writer.

Hence it is the orthodox apologist that is guilty of bad logic when he reproaches the rationalist with falsifying history, because he does not accept word for word the documents which orthodoxy holds to be sacred. Because a fact is written down, it does not follow that it is true. The miracles of Mahomet are down in writing, as well as those of Jesus; and certainly the Arabian biographies of Mahomet-that of Ibn-Hashim, for example have a much more historical character than the Gospels. Do we on this account admit the miracles of Mahomet? We follow Ibn-Hashim, with more or less confidence, when we have no reasons to differ from him. But when he relates to us things perfectly incredible, we make no difficulty about abandoning him. Certainly, if we had four lives of Buddha, partly fabulous, and as irreconcilable with one another as the four Gospels, and if a scholar essayed to relieve the four Buddhist narratives of their contradictions, we should not accuse that scholar of charging the texts with falsehood. It might be well should he attempt to reconcile discordant passages, or seek a compromise, a sort of neutral tale, a narrative to contain nothing impossible, in which opposing testimony should be balanced and treated with as little violence as possible. If, after that, the Buddhists believed in a lie, in the falsification of history, we should have a right to say to them: "The question here is not one of history; and if we must at times discard your texts, it is the fault of those texts which contain things impossible of belief, and which, moreover, contradict one another."

At the bottom of all discussion on such matters is the question of the supernatural. If miracle and the inspiration of certain books are actual facts, our method is false and wrong. If miracle and the inspiration of such books are beliefs without reality, our method is the right one. Now, the question of the supernatural is settled for us with absolute certainty by this simple reason, that there is no room for belief in a thing of which the world can offer no experimental test. We