The purpose of Rabelais’ book cannot be summed up in a sentence.  It may be described as the presentment of a point of view:  but what point of view?  There lies the crux of the question, and numberless critics have wrangled over the solution of it.  The truth is, that the only complete description of the point of view is to be found—­in the book itself; it is too wide and variegated for any other habitation.  Yet, if it would be vain to attempt an accurate and exhaustive account of Rabelais’ philosophy, the main outlines of that philosophy are nevertheless visible enough.  Alike in the giant-hero, Pantagruel, in his father, Gargantua, and in his follower and boon-companion, Panurge, one can discern the spirit of the Renaissance—­expansive, humorous, powerful, and, above all else, alive.  Rabelais’ book is the incarnation of the great reaction of his epoch against the superstitious gloom and the narrow asceticism of the Middle Ages.  He proclaims, in his rich re-echoing voice, a new conception of the world; he denies that it is the vale of sorrows envisioned by the teachers of the past; he declares that it is abounding in glorious energy, abounding in splendid hope, and, by its very nature, good.  With a generous hatred of stupidity, he flies full tilt at the pedantic education of the monasteries, and asserts the highest ideals of science and humanity.  With an equal loathing of asceticism, he satirizes the monks themselves, and sketches out, in his description of the Abbey of Theleme, a glowing vision of the Utopian convent.  His thought was bold; but he lived in a time when the mildest speculation was fraught with danger; and he says what he has to say in the shifting and ambiguous forms of jest and allegory.  Yet it was by no means simply for the sake of concealment that he made his work into the singular mixture that it is, of rambling narrative, disconnected incident, capricious disquisition, and coarse humour.  That, no doubt, was the very manner in which his mind worked; and the essential element of his spirit resides precisely in this haphazard and various looseness.  His exceeding coarseness is itself an expression of one of the most fundamental qualities of his mind—­its jovial acceptance of the physical facts of life.  Another side of the same characteristic appears in his glorification of eating and drinking:  such things were part of the natural constitution of man, therefore let man enjoy them to the full.  Who knows?  Perhaps the Riddle of the Universe would be solved by the oracle of la dive Bouteille.

Rabelais’ book is a history of giants, and it is itself gigantic; it is as broad as Gargantua himself.  It seems to belong to the morning of the world—­a time of mirth, and a time of expectation; when the earth was teeming with a miraculous richness, and the gods walked among men.