The Revolt of the Angels
What if angels abandoned their posts after reading Darwin and Schopenhauer? Anatole France's 1914 masterpiece opens with a guardian angel named Arcade who stumbles upon human philosophy and decides the Almighty is no longer worthy of worship. His rebellion spreads through heaven's ranks as more angels defect, their ranks swelling with doubters and dreamers. Meanwhile, the d'Esparvieu family continues its earthly dramas below - an indifferent lawyer, a devoutly pious brother, a librarian baffled by mysteriously rearranged books. France weaves celestial insurrection with domestic comedy, using angelic revolt to skewer the violence and hypocrisy he saw consuming the world on the eve of the Great War. The satire is devastating: he dismantles theological certainty with a smile, reveals the absurdity beneath martial glory, and shows how easily ideology becomes tyranny. Yet there's genuine yearning in the angels' quest for autonomy, genuine wit in France's observations about power, faith, and human folly. This is philosophy wearing comedy's mask - a book that entertains while it provokes, and that remains startlingly resonant a century later.
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“For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.””
— Anatole France
“I sought out the laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself and not by the caprice of Iahveh; that the world is itself its own creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth I despised Iahveh for his imposture, and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt.””
— Anatole France
“As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever enabling us to discover what they are.””
— Anatole France
“No, let us not conquer the heavens. It is enough to have the power to do so. War engenders war, and victory defeat. God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot!””
— Anatole France
“Have we not seen many times indeed human beings who, poor and naked, prostrate themselves before all the phantoms of fear, and rather than follow the teaching of well-disposed demons, obey the commandments of cruel demiurges?””
— Anatole France
“You cry, "give us war!" You are visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The thinkers do not look for power and strength from any of the dreams that constitute military art: tactics, strategies, fortifications, artillery and all that rubbish. They do no believe in war, which is a fantasy; they believe in chemistry, which is a science. They know the way to put victory into an algebraic formula.””
— Anatole France
“Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others’ throats, now that one and the same civilisation enfolds and unites them all!””
— Anatole France
“They did not understand that war, which trained courage and founded the cities of barbarous and ignorant men, brings to victor himself but ruin and misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade.””
— Anatole France
“think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge.””
— Anatole France
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France, Anatole. The Revolt of the Angels. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-revolt-of-the-angels-bb66e3ae-9c0e-4797-9f5b-74e6e4ae0926.France, A. (n.d.). The Revolt of the Angels. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-revolt-of-the-angels-bb66e3ae-9c0e-4797-9f5b-74e6e4ae0926France, Anatole. The Revolt of the Angels. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-revolt-of-the-angels-bb66e3ae-9c0e-4797-9f5b-74e6e4ae0926.
