Auguste Sabatier
Published: 2015-06-15
Total Pages: 450
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Excerpt from Religions of Authority, and the Religion of the Spirit It is with a sense of obeying the will of him who is no more that we publish this work. The task is at once very grateful, because it seems to us like giving a sort of survivorship to his thought, and very sorrowful, from the bitterness of our consciousness that he is no longer here to perfect his own work, and to present it himself to the public in the concise and literary form which he would have given to it. On December 2, 1900, my husband joyfully called me to him, saying, " I have put the last period to my book." And while I was congratulating him, he added: " Now I shall let it rest during our journey to Egypt and Palestine. It will take me three months to revise it on our return, but I shall not modify its form, for I have said that which I desire to say. If accident befalls me during the journey remember this my book must come out whatever happens. There it lies," he cont.nued, turning to his desk; " you will give it to Menegoz and Rob-erty, who will both willingly revise it; but it must appear! " He re- ated the words with emphasis, separating each syllable to show that this was his well-considered determination. Although he had long been out of health, he had no idea that his disease would progress so rapidly, ana when I spoke to him of rest he would say: "I have work planr . out for two hundred years," or else, "I hope to die in my pr Jissorial chair." This hope was almost fulfilled, for on the 5th of February my husband gave a lecture, and returned home, literally staggering, to take to his bed. It was an immense disappointment to him to give up the journey to Palestine, for which, on the very evening before, he had been making preparations. He had long dreamed of the journey as the crown of all his toil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.