It might be concluded that Anatole France is an atheist, but that is not correct; he has said too definitely that though man may not be immortal, he is eternal. He merely does not know whence we came nor whither we go, nor I think does he care much; he is merely a member of the band, Voltaire, Renan, Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, Haeckel (doubtful that one), who were not willing to believe without understanding, and yet agreed that there might be something in which to believe if one could understand it. Briefly, he is an agnostic. He refuses to make the slightly self-conscious effort which certain literary men, in England and in France, successfully make to accept the spiritual origin of miracles and such like matters. What is, is, and what may be, may be: that is enough. But his theology is so intermingled with his human interests that at bottom he is a pagan; he loves beauty so well that he discovers it even in faith, and it is evident that he would have found much pleasure in the rites of the ancient Greeks. In his celebrated novel, _Thais_, he hails pagan beauty as he holds up for our contemptuous sympathy the sorrow of Paphnutius, the monk of Arsinoe. The monk set forth to redeem Thais, the courtesan; for her beauty and her soul he abandoned his cell and his hair shirt. She was unhappy and superstitious, and she feared the life to come; at his behest she turned to the Christian God. But Paphnutius burned himself with the torch he had lit; Thais assailed him in dream, and though he strove to fight his passion by solitude, by fasting, by becoming a stylite, he failed. In dream he dishonoured his soul, and at last, surrendering, he rushed to Thais, but found her dying and become a saint; doubt, fear and despair had compassed his downfall, and it was too late to love: he could be naught save a vampire.
The story is one of violent pageantry, of Alexandria crimson, purple and gold, of Alexandria dancing on the rosy wharves where great ships with brown sails unloaded silks and spices, Alexandria offering up to the old gods, Hermes of the secret smile and Aphrodite of the cup-like breasts, not the smoking holocausts of Jehovah, but honey and garlands of flowers.... And on the other side, quite near the sceptical, cynical, gay, intellectual Greeks, who for a pastime and as in a Chelsea drawing-room discussed man and God, the horrid state of the Christian anchorites, self-starved, self-flogged, verminous, sour, contemptuous of the beauty of the body, of learning. There is a bitter irony in the efforts of Paphnutius, the stylite, for as he sits upon his column as far as he can from man and as near as possible to God, his reputation as a saint waxes; round him there grows a town, Stylopolis, an ancestor of Lourdes; first of all come shrines and convents, then traders, then a government, then banks, theatres ... the rich, the sons of the rich ... courtesans. He does not hate Paphnutius nor love him, for the monk was unfortunate, not guilty; gladly would he have torn out his heart and burnt it as an offering to God the Christ. His was a white, burning soul, but he had beyond a soul a body needing lightness, satisfaction. His flesh was weak, and it is pitiful rather than rejoicing that Anatole France sorrows for his error, when the monk sees Lucifer as “the serpent with golden wings which twisted round the tree of knowledge its azure coils formed of light and love,” when he sees Jehovah, the brutish tyrant, the power of ignorance and superstition, the power of darkness, Jehovah, understanding nothing, a mere dream. It is a terrible day for Paphnutius when he understands that “the Serpent began to speak to Adam and Eve and to teach them the highest truths, those which do not demonstrate themselves.”