RENAN Ernest (1823-1892)

Lot 184
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500 - 700 EUR
RENAN Ernest (1823-1892)
AUTHORIZED MANUSCRIPT, [The Experimental Method in Religion, 1879]; 9 pages in-4, with erasures and corrections. Working manuscript of this important study on the history of religion. This text, with numerous erasures and corrections, appeared untitled as an introduction to Part II "Christianity" of Volume III Religion of the English publication The Hundred Greatest Men. Portraits of the one hundred greatest men of history (London, 1879); it was collected, under the title La Méthode expérimentale en religion, at the head of the Nouvelles Études d'histoire religieuse (Calmann Lévy, 1884)]. All the great religions of the world began in Asia. Until recently the sects have shown their vivacity (Babism), and it would be possible to see in them "great religious cyclones, species of Islam, substituting a new Koran for that of Mohammed": "A man who would know Arabic well enough to write in beautiful style a book which would claim to represent the religion of Adam, could see it adopted from the neighboring peoples of Syria. It would be very easy to make these tribes, whose state has not changed for 1200 years, accept that Mohammed was a great man for having found the religion of Abraham, which is excellent for Abraham's descendants, but that Adam's religion is far superior, since it applies to all of Adam's posterity, that is to say, to all of humanity. A firework shot on Mount Safet and supported by a few millions would easily pass for the appearance of the Messiah" . And to tell an anecdote about the Persian who almost founded a religion with the motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity... He juxtaposes the ability of the Asians to create religions with the torpor of the Europeans, talks about the so-called pagan religions, Indo-European mythology, Celtic Druidism and Christianity which, so pure in its origins, absorbed the superstitions of the Celtic and Italian races and became "true paganism"... He compares the saints of the Norman and Br
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