own will turn aside. It was instinct which guided him into a
sequestered path, which ran equably by the side of the road of alternate
exaltation and catastrophe which other men of equal genius must travel.
Therefore he has seen men as it were in profile against the sky, but
never face to face. Their runnings, their stumblings and their
gesticulations are a tumultuous portion of the landscape rather than
symbols of an intimate and personal possibility. They lend a baroque
enchantment to the scene.

So it is that in all the characters of Anatole France's work which are
not closely modelled upon his own idiosyncrasy there is something of the
marionette. They are not the less charming for that; nor do they lack a
certain logic, but it is not the logic of personality. They are embodied
comments upon life, but they do not live. And there is for Anatole
France, while he creates them, and for us, while we read about them, no
reason why they should live. For living, in the accepted sense, is an
activity impossible without indulging many illusions; and fervently to
sympathise with characters engaged in the activity demands that their
author should participate in the illusions. He, too, must be surprised
at the disaster which he himself has proved inevitable. It is not enough
that he should pity them; he must share in their effort, and be
discomfited at their discomfiture.

Such exercises of the soul are impossible to a real acquiescence, which
cannot even permit itself the inspiration of the final illusion that the
wreck of human hopes, being ordained, is beautiful. The man who
acquiesces is condemned to stand apart and contemplate a puppet-show
with which he can never really sympathise.

'De toutes les definitions de l'homme la plus mauvaise me parait
celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable. Je ne me vante pas
excessivement en me donnant pour doue de plus de raison que la
plupart de ceux de mes semblables que j'ai vus de pres ou dont j'ai
connu l'histoire. La raison habite rarement les ames communes, et
bien plus rarement encore les grands esprits.... J'appelle
raisonnable celui qui accorde sa raison particuliere avec la raison
universelle, de maniere a n'etre jamais trop surpris de ce qui
arrive et a s'y accommoder tant bien que mal; j'appelle raisonnable
celui qui, observant le desordre de la nature et la folie humaine,
ne s'obstine point a y voir de l'ordre et de la sagesse; j'ap