Française in September 1956. It was written in 1943 in reply to a letter from Ponge to Camus, and is reprinted in Pléiade II, pp. 1662–6. —P.T.
Portrait of a Chosen Man1
Le Portrait de M. Pouget was published before the war, in installments, in a review of relatively limited influence. At the time, it enjoyed an undoubted but unobtrusive Success. It has just appeared in book form,2 and it still seems to have been relatively little discussed in the unoccupied zone. This is because, in spite of appearances, the world has not changed since the war. It is still very noisy. And if a measured voice undertakes to speak to us of an austere and pure example, the probability is that no one will listen.
What we mean when we say that a book has “found an audience” is that it has gone beyond the large or small circle of readers it could count upon even before publication. Naturally, I have no doubts that Le Portrait de M. Pouget was read enthusiastically in Catholic circles. But it would be a good thing if very different readers had the opportunity to meditate on this fine book, and what I would like to do here is describe its appeal to a mind alien to Catholicism.
It is an extremely difficult enterprise to put intelligence and modesty on stage, or to sketch the portrait and write the novel of a spiritual adventure. Le Portrait de M. Pouget belongs to a genre difficult to define, even more tricky to categorize. It is inspired not by friendship, as was Montaigne’s essay on La Boétie, but rather by veneration, as Alain was inspired when he tried to revive Jules Lagneau.
There is always something moving in the homage one man pays to another. But who can boast that he has defined the intriguing feelings that link certain minds to others with ties of respect and admiration? Such ties are sometimes more solid than those of blood. The man who has not had this experience is indeed poor, while he who has been granted it and has given himself wholly to it is happy indeed. In any case, this is the kind of experience Monsieur Guitton has described for us.
Who was M. Pouget? An old Lazarist priest, three-quarters blind, who meditated on Tradition, and received a few students in the little cell where his life was drawing to its close. His life can be summed up in a few words: peasant, seminarian, teacher, invalid, with forty years of studious retreat in his order’s Mother House.
So it is lacking in the kind of dramatic events that nourish brilliant biographies. The only earthly happenings are those contained in an endless reflection on Tradition and Biblical texts. Writing the biography of M. Pouget thus involved composing a small manual of exegesis and apologetics, tracing a spiritual portrait from his works, his method, and his ideas.
These ideas were not clear-cut. M. Pouget put them forward with considerable precaution. And M. Glutton has shown all the necessary moderation and respect in describing them. Consequently, to summarize would be to distort them. The reader can remedy this difficulty by making allowances for it. If Pouget had read the rest of this article, he and M. Guitton would have been justified in exclaiming: “It’s much more complicated than that.”
Father Pouget’s whole effort seems to have been devoted to finding a middle way between blind faith and a faith that knows its reasons. He did not wish to maintain ideas that are indefensible, to justify ambitions that the Bible never had. Father Pouget made concessions. He considered everything in the Bible inspired, but did not see everything as necessarily sacred. A choice had to be made.
From the point of view of rigid orthodoxy, such an attitude was dangerous. As a matter of fact, this proved to be the case, for it appears that Father Pouget suffered from official disapproval. He made his peace by striving after serenity and putting forward a postulate: “The Church is not infallible because of the proofs that she advances, but because of the divine authority with which she teaches.” This said, his problem was to cut his losses, to establish an irreproachable minimum in the Biblical texts, and to show that this minimum was enough to prove the truths of faith.
Father Pouget pointed out, for example, that we require the Gospels to possess a degree of historical accuracy that no one would have thought of requiring from the historians of classical antiquity or the Middle Ages. Allowance must nevertheless be made for the mentality peculiar to each historical period, and for the rapid variations in moral climate from one century to another.
And we have to make a clear distinction in the Bible between what is attributable to divine inspiration and what results from the mentality peculiar to a historical period. Thus,for a long time, the Bible indiscriminately cast both sinners and the righteous into the same hell. Ecclesiastes, for example, clearly states that “the dead know not anything neither have they any more a reward” (Ecc. IX, 5). This is because the idea of moral rewards was foreign to primitive Jewish thought.
Consequently, it is impossible to defend these texts, or torture them by allegory until they show evidence of divine inspiration. To those who might evidence surprise at God’s carelessness in thus allowing his ideas to be distorted, Father Pouget would have replied that it was more probably a case of a deliberate plan. God has proportioned his revelations to the ability of men to understand them. The light of God is too bright for human eyes and revelation must be progressive.
“God is a teacher,” M. Pouget would say. We had to wait until the twentieth century to believe that it was possible to philosophize without knowing how to spell. Such an idea would have scandalized Father Pouget. Divine pedagogy, like all reasonable pedagogies, proceeds on the contrary by stages. It does not lay down the law, it teaches. It temporizes with the human mind and gives it time to breathe. Thus God has made himself a realist and a politician.
Father Pouget also liked to talk of another divine attribute, that of condescension (which we must, I suppose, take in its exact meaning of “coming down to the level of …”). God’s motto would thus be, according to our author: “Neither too soon, nor too late, nor too much at a time.” The result is that God had made his teaching coincide with history. History is the series of manoeuvers organized by God to make the light of truth penetrate the blind hearts of men. We must consequently look upon revelation as something that develops in a stubborn effort to free itself from successive layers of worldly prejudice.
There must be no tampering with historical truth. And Monsieur Guitton had considerable justification for replying to critics that: “What is remarkable is not that Judeo-Christianity should be clothed in particular mental attitudes, but that it should transcend them.” Let us finally note that the Church supports this effort in her own work of defining the faith, which as Father Pouget points out is almost always negative. The Church gives every liberty to her theologians. She rejects only those theories which threaten the existence of the faith in their time. Revelation teaches what is, the Church rejects what is not.
The task of the Church is thus to watch over the march of truth, preventing men from causing it either to hasten or to stray. Heretics, in short, are men who want to go faster than God. There is no salvation for impatience. These principles of the basic minimum, of respect for the mentality peculiar to a particular period, and of progressive revelation form the basis of M. Pouget’s method. This method does not, it is true, go to the root of the problem.
That root is the problem of being, and Pouget seems to have been suspicious of metaphysics. In any case, the intellectual esteem inspired by his enterprise makes it the commentator’s duty not to go beyond the author’s chosen context. Within this context, however, Pouget’s method is exposed to one great objection. It runs the risk, in fact, of using this respect for the mentality peculiar to a historical period as an easy way out for problems raised by exegesis.
Everything that contradicts faith is attributed to the mentality of the time, and discussion
is thus avoided. On this point M. Guitton offers a reply that is only half satisfying: “The method is as good as the mind using it.” True. But that involves the risk of abolishing the very problem of methodology, for there would no longer be good and bad methods but good and bad minds. With a few nuances, I would not find this a completely impossible point of view. But for a person who accepts Tradition, on the other hand, it is rather surprising.
One feels much more comfortable in pointing out what seems invaluable in Pouget’s meditations: they leave the problem of faith intact. Let me make myself clear. It is scarcely necessary to say that, for Father Pouget himself, the problem did not arise. But every exegesis assumes its disbelievers. Like Pascal’s Pensées, Pouget’s thought has an implicit aim: it is apologetic. But his method does not try to convince people immediately. That is the task of grace. Pouget’s critique was negative and preparatory.
It aimed at showing
