Renan, although he broke off his career in the Church and his connection with organised religion, retained, nevertheless, much of the priestly character all his life, and he himself confesses this: “I have learned several things, but I have changed in nowise as to the general system of intellectual and moral life. My habitation has become more spacious, but it still stands on the same ground. I look upon my estrangement from orthodoxy as only a change of opinion concerning an important historical question, a change which does not prevent me from dwelling on the same foundations as before.” He indeed found it impossible to reconcile the Catholic faith with free and honest thought. His break with the Church made him an enemy of all superstition, and his writings raised against him the hatred of the Catholic clergy, who regarded him as a deserter. In the customary terms of heated theological debate he was styled an atheist. This was grossly unfair or meaningless. Which word we use here depends upon our definition of theism. As a matter of fact, Renan was one of the most deeply religious minds of his time. His early religious sentiments remained, in essence if not in form, with him throughout his life. These were always associated with the tender memories he had of his mother and beloved sister and his virtuous teachers, the priests in the little town of Brittany, whence he came. Much of the Breton mysticism clung to his soul, and much of his philosophy is a restated, rationalised form of his early beliefs.