Islam Rediscovered
24. A Case of Discovery*
~ 415 ~
When I was passing through this phase of my
spiritual life, I had to go, in the first place, to Paris
and then a year later on to St. Petersburg. In Paris I
soon became quite familiar with the French
language which I had already begun to study in
Leipzig. French opened altogether, a new world to
me. It gave me, so to say, a new soul. I began to
study and take delight in the works of Moliere and
Racine, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, Renan and Taine.
And quite particularly Voltaire, who appeared and
still appears to me the greatest literary genius that
the world has ever produced. But the works of
Voltaire, though they immensely tickled and
amused me, served only to make me a more
confirmed sceptic than ever. The forty volumes of
his
Oeuvres completes
which range over almost all
subjects of human thought and feeling had,
however, the effect of laughing me, for good, out of
my German gaucherie and Buddhistic pessimism.
The influence of Renan, though sceptical, was far
more ethical and artistic
.
His “La Vie de Jesus” (Life
of Jesus) is one of the best books I have ever read,
deeply impressing me with its poetical style and
moral earnestness. Renan led me to take an interest
in Semitic religions and in Semitic languages. The
