Proofs from life gay pagan Anatole does not demand. He has the hesitations of profound erudition. Possessing the gift of paradox, he rejoices in his philosophic indifferentism. Notwithstanding his famous phrase, “the mania of certitude,” Renan was ever pursued by the idea of an Absolute. He cried for proof. To Bertholet he wrote: “I am eager for mathematics.” To him numbers promised rigid reality. Not so, however, to M. France, who could have asked with Ibsen whether two added to two do not make five on the planet Jupiter! To Montaigne’s “What know I?” he opposes the injunction of Rabelais: “Do what thou wilt!” Of Plato he might have asked, “What is Truth?” and if Plato in turn would have posed the same question, Anatole could reply by handing him a copy of Jardin d’Epicure, that perfect breviary of Anatolian scepticism. In Socrates perhaps he would discover a congenial companion; yet he might mischievously allude to Montaigne “concerning cats,” or quote Aristotle as to the form of hats. And then we spy him adorning the Wheel of Ixion with garlands. A wilful child of belles-lettres and philosophy, M. France always may be expected to utter the starting, lucent phrase. He believes in the belief of God. By the gods of all times and climes he swears. His the cosmic soul. A man who infuses into his tales something of the Mimes of Herondas, La Bruyère’s Characters, and the Lucian Dialogues, with faint flavors of Racine and La Fontaine superadded, may be pardoned his polychromatic faiths. This chromatism in creeds, a trust in all or none, is rather diverting. But the classic world of thought shows several exemplars for M. France, from the followers of Aristippus to the Sophists. Nevertheless, there is a specific note of individuality, a roulade altogether Anatolian in the Parisian. No one but this accomplished sceptic could have devised The Opinions of Jerome Coignard, and his scheme for a Bureau of Vanity (Villiers de l’Isle Adam invented a machine for manufacturing glory). “Man is an animal with a musket,” declares Anatole. Here is a morsel for hypocrites: “Even virtue may be unduly praised. Since it is overcoming which constitutes merit, we must recognize that it is concupiscence which makes saints.” This sounds like William Blake done into choice French; Blake who has said that “the fool cannot enter the kingdom of heaven be he ever so pious”; that Blake who believed that the road to wisdom lies through the valley of excess.