It is invariably respectful to Joan, and even
respectful to her religion. And being myself a furious admirer of Joan
the Maid, I have reflectively compared the two methods, and I come to
the conclusion that I prefer Voltaire's.
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 fussy
little literary set. Voltaire read human nature into Joan of Arc, though
it was only the brutal part of human nature. At least it was not
specially Voltaire's nature. But M. France read M. France's nature into
Joan of Arc--all the cold kindness, all the homeless sentimental 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 Jesus." 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.
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