We know, moreover, that these social myths in no way prevent a man profiting by the observations which he makes in the course of his life, and form no obstacle to the pursuit of his normal occupations.[1]
The truth of this may be shown by numerous examples.
The first Christians expected the return of Christ and the total ruin of the pagan world, with the inauguration of the kingdom of the saints, at the end of the first generation. The catastrophe did not come to pass, but Christian thought profited so greatly from the apocalyptic myth that certain contemporary scholars maintain that the whole preaching of Christ referred solely to this one point.[2]The hopes which Luther and Calvin had formed of the religious exaltation of Europe were by no means realised; these fathers of the Reformation very soon seemed men of a past era; for present-day Protestants they belong rather to the Middle Ages than to modern times, and the problems which troubled them most occupy very little place in contemporary Protestantism. Must we for that reason deny the immense result which came from their dreams of Christian renovation? It must be admitted that the real developments of the Revolution did not in any way resemble the enchanting pictures which created the enthusiasm of its first adepts; but without those pictures would the Revolution have been victorious? Many Utopias were mixed up with the Revolutionary myth,[3] because it had been formed by a society passionately fond of imaginative literature, full of confidence in the "science,"[4] and very little acquainted with the
- ↑ It has often been remarked that English or American sectarians whose religious exaltation was fed by the apocalyptic myths were often none the less very practical men.
- ↑ At the present time, this doctrine occupies an important place in German exegesis; it was introduced into France by the Abbé Loisy.
- ↑ Cf. the Letter to Daniel Halévy, IV.
- ↑ In French petite science. This expression is used to indicate the popular science with which the majority is much more familiar than it
