La Bruyère und Vauvenargues: selections from the Characters [and] Reflexions and maxims

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La Bruyere und Vauvenargues:

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SELECTIONS FROM THE CHARACTERS,

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS OF

LA BRUYERE AND OF VAUVENARGUES

LA BRUYERE AND
VAUVENARGUES

Selections from the Characters

Reflexions and Maxims

Translated with Introductory

Notes and Memoirs by

ELIZABETH

LEE

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & CO

1903

Bdtler & Tanner,

The Selwood Printing Wohks,

Frome, and London.

4 (f^^zz

1

CONTENTS

LA BRUYERE

Characters

The Absent-minded Man
The Rich Man
The Poor Man
The Enthusiastic Collector
The Man of Letters i >

The Drawing-room Pedant "^V4^ W\K
The Man of Universal Knowledge
The Man who will be Comfortable
Newsmongers: Pessimist and Optimist
The Man of Caprice
The Title "Great Man"
The Parvenu

The Bourgeois : Then and Now
.The Money-grubber
The Affected Talker
The Perfect Woman
The Coquette
. jr-n The Fashionable Dandy "" j

^ The Egoist ^ lyu^ tJlX, .^>^

/0~^ The Man of Convention H/ ^^^ '^-^.
The Residuary Legatee
Fools

The Great Cond6
Fontenelle
La Fontaine
A Good King

5

CONTENTS

Jiefiexions

The People
Pictures of Nature

The Town's Ignorance of the Country-
Realism and the Stage
Time
Brief Reflexions on Men and Things

VAUVENARGUES

Characters

Clazomenes, or Unfortunate Virtue

Pherecides, or Ambition Deceived

Cyrus, or the Unquiet Mind

Titus, or Energy

Phocas, or False Eccentricity

Theophilus, or the Profound Mind

Varus, or Liberality

Acestes, or Young Love

The Man of the World

The Proficient in the Art of Dealing with Mankind

Dialogue

Brutus and a Roman Youth

Reflexions and Maxims

INTRODUCTION

" There are two kinds of wisdom : in the one, every age in
which science flourishes, surpasses, or ought to surpass, its
predecessors ; of the other there is nearly an equal amount in
all ages. The first is the wisdom which depends on long
chains of reasoning, a comprehensive survey of the whole of
a great subject at once, or complicated and subtle processes of
metaphysical analysis; this is properly Philosophy. The
other is that acquired by experience of life, or a good use of
the opportunities possessed by all who have mingled much
with the world, or who have a large share of human nature
in their own breasts. This unsystematic wisdom, drawn by
acute minds in all periods of history from their personal
experience, is properly termed the wisdom of ages ; and every
lettered age has left a portion upon record." — J. S. MILL.

T is the unsystematic wisdom, as con-
tained in "Characters" and "Maxims,"
that we offer in this volume of selections
from La Bruyere and Vauvenargues.
Philosophy, properly systematic, is, to the most
of men, a sealed book, which they have neither
the leisure nor the inclination to open. But
as the years pass by and bring with them
their varied experiences of mind, heart and
action, men form for themselves, in many cases
almost insensibly, a kind of rough philosophy of
life that becomes their guide. Thus the unsys-

7

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction tematic philosophy which has found literary ex-
pression appeals to and interests all those who,
without being students of systems of philosophy,
have observed men and manners and given heed
to all sorts of human experience. Let that fact
then serve as an apologia for presenting these
samples of two of the greatest unsystematic
philosophers the world has known,

II

" We know nothing, or almost nothing, of the life of La
Bruy^re. ... If there is not a single line of his unique book,
which since the first moment of publication did not come
into the full light and remain there, there is, on the other
hand, scarcely a single well-authenticated detail known about
the author. All the light of the age fell upon each page of
the book, but the countenance of the man who held it open in
his hands is hidden."— SAINTE-BEUVE.

" I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than
as one of the species." — ADDISON.

Any attempt, however modest in aim, to write
a biography of La Bruyere bristles with difficul-
ties. His latest editor, M. Servois i owns that
La Bruyere, the man, is the most unknown of
all the great writers of his epoch. His life, it
seems, was hidden even from his contemporaries,
and the information that they have to give us is
vague and scanty. We are thus compelled to
construct the man's personality from his work,

' Cf. CEuvres de La Bruyfere par M. G. Servois. 3 vols.
Paris 1885.

8

LA BRUYERE

aiding ourselves by such facts as we know to be Introduction
most authentic.

Jean de la Bruyere was born at Paris in
August, 1645, of a good middle-class family.
His father, Louis de la Bruyere, was Comp-
troller-General in the Financial Department of
the H6tel de Ville. Little is known of Jean's
childhood and education. He graduated in law
at the University of Orleans, and for eight years
practised, or attempted to practise at the Bar in
Paris. In 1673 he abandoned law for finance,
his father purchasing him a post in the Treasury
at Caen. After going through certain formalities
there he continued to reside in Paris, leading a
life in which he had the free use of his time,
the free choice of work and recreation, a life
in which he was the sole arbiter of what he
did or did not do. Notwithstanding, he held
his post in the Treasury until 1686. Two
years earlier he had been appointed one of
the masters entrusted with the education of
the young Duke of Bourbon, grandson of the
Great Conde. Although in accepting the tu-
torial office he gave up his liberty, he gained
so vastly in knowledge of men, that his entry
into the house of Conde may be fitly described
as the decisive event of his life. The task of
teaching the sixteen -year- old duke was no easy
one ; he had been spoiled and flattered from

9

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction babyhood, and was not the pleasantest of pupils.
La Bruyere had to instruct him in history, geo-
graphy, the institutions of France, even in mytho-
logy and heraldry, and, despite manifold difficul-
ties, he performed his duties most conscientiously.
It is told how, on one occasion, Bossuet being
present when a lesson on Descartes's "Princi-
pia" was going forward, pronounced himself
well satisfied with the teacher. It seems strange
that La Bruyere should have sacrificed his liberty
for such an office. Perhaps he did so con-
sciously in order to gain the wider experience of
men necessary to his work ; or the obtaining of
that experience by a lucky chance, as it were,
may have helped to fix the character his work
was to take, and have insured it something it
must otherwise have lacked. We who are his
heirs can only rejoice that the experience should
have been his, and we fully concur with Sainte-
Beuve when he writes : " What would he have
been without the unexpected opening of that
window on to the great world, without the
corner seat which he occupied in a grand tier
box at the great spectacle of the human life and
high comedy of his time ? He would have been
like a hunter who lacks game, big game, and is com-
pelled to content himself with a poor hare whom
he encountered on the plain. La Bruyere, with
only the middle class, or only the literary class,

10

LA BRUYERE

for the range of his observation, would have Introduction

reaped a harvest there ; but with nothing else to

observe, he would certainly have lost much, and

we should have lost it with him." When the

young duke's education was finished, La Bruyere

remained in the service of his father, probably

as librarian or secretary.

The earliest mention of La Bruyere's great
work occurs in a letter from Boileau to Racine,
May 19, 1687 : — " Maximilian (i.e., La Bruyere)
came to see me at Auteuil, and read me some of
his ' Theophrastus.' " The next year, 1688,
there appeared at Paris " Les Caracteres de
Theophraste Traduits du Grec avec les Carac-
teres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle." The book
was published by Estienne Michallet, chief
printer to the King. A pleasant little story, that
one would like to think true, was told at Berlin
by Maupertuis, and incorporated by Formey,
Secretary to the Berlin Academy, in one of his
speeches. It is to the effect that La Bruyere
was in the habit of going every day to Michallet's
to look at the new publications, and of playing
with Michallet's little girl, for whom he conceived
a great affection. One day he drew a manuscript
from his pocket and said to Michallet : " Will
you print this (i.e., the ' Caracteres ') ? I don't
know if it will pay you, but in case of success let
the profit be my little friend's dowry." Michallet

II

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction took the risk, and before long the book was worth
two or three thousand francs. It is known that
Michallet's daughter made a very good marri-
age. The book which brought its author such
sudden fame was a slim duodecimo of some 360
pages. It went through five editions in less than
two years ; each successive edition was revised
and considerably augmented by the author. This
is in accordance with the practice of all char-
acter writers from Overbury and Earle onwards.
In his preface to the edition of 1689, La
Bruyere wrote: "The orator and the author
cannot overcome the delight they have in being
applauded." We are not then surprised to find
La Bruyere applying, in 1691, for admission to
the French Academy. That application was
not successful, and it was 1693 before he obtained
the much coveted distinction, when he succeeded
to the chair of the Abbe de la Chambre. In the
speech made by him at his reception he praised
those academicians, who, like Bossuet, La Fon-
taine, Racine, Boileau, and F6nelon, had great
reputations ; those of lesser distinction who were
his friends, he likewise praised ; but his enemies,
no matter what their standing or attainments,
he ignored. And, to add to his sins, he
depreciated Corneille at the expense of Racine.
That kind of thing was unpleasing to the illus-
trious forty and contrary to all their most
12

LA BRUYERE

cherished traditions. They tried, therefore, to Introduction

prevent the publication of La Bruyere's discourse.

It appeared, however, separately, in 1693, and

was incorporated next year in the eighth edition

of the " Caracteres," with a preface, being a reply

to his detractors.

La Bruyere never married, and there is no
certain evidence that he was ever any woman's
lover. But it is difficult to believe that the two
chapters in his book, entitled respectively " Of
the Heart" and "Of Women," are not, in a
large measure, the outcome of personal ex-
perience. Such a remark as " the sound of the
voice of one we love is the sweetest melody in
the world," such an exquisite portrait as that of
Arthenice,! point to something beyond mere
imagination. However that may be, there is
little doubt that immunity from an absorbing
passion for the other sex left him more time for
friendships with his own. When we remember
that among his friends were such men as Boss-
uet, Fenelon, Racine, Boileau, besides others
less known to fame, it is more than surprising
that references to him in the memoirs of the
time should be so scanty and unimportant. We
gather in a general sort of way that beneath the
calm exterior, beneath the contemplative and
inactive life, there lay a passionate nature, sen-
1 Cf. p. g6.
13

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction sible of wounds to his self-love, and capable of
generous indignation. Saint-Simon writes of
him as a very agreeable man, pleasant company,
simple, with nothing of the pedant about him,
and entirely disinterested. La Bruyere died
suddenly in May, 1696, at Conde's house in Ver-
sailles, of an attack of apoplexy, while occupied,
so it is said, on a new work, " Dialogues on
Quietism." He was buried at Versailles in the
Church of St. Julien.i

III

■■ If it is true that Theophrastus, so to speak, created La
Bruyere, it must be confessed that therein lies his greatest
fame and his greatest work." — (One of La Bruyfere's critics.)

" If these characters do not find favour, I shall wonder;
if they do, I shall wonder no less." — (The concluding words
of La Bruy^re's book.)

La Bruyere was occupied with the composition
of the " Characters," from about 1670 until their
publication in 1688, and thence until 1694 with
tbeir development and revision. So that if we
except the time devoted to teaching the Duke of
Bourbon, and that devoted to the posthumous
" Dialogues on Quietism," thought by some
to be apocryphal, it is correct to say that the
" Characters " formed the unique work of La
Bruyfere's life.

The first edition of the "Caracteres" (1688)

' Pulled down in 1797.
14

LA BRUYERE

bore the title "The Characters of Theophrastus, Introduction
translated from the Greek with characters or
manners of the Age." Two other editions were
called for the same year, and they each contained
420 articles. Other editions which La Bruyere
revised, and to which he greatly added, appeared
in 1689, 1690, 1691, 1692, and 1694, the last con-
taining 1,120 articles. The ninth edition was the
last printed in La Bruyere's life-time, and is
usually considered the best text. It was pub-
lished a few days after his death in 1696. With the
translation of Theophrastus we are not here con-
cerned. Suffice it to say that it was approved by
La Bruyere's learned contemporaries. Lack of
faithfulness to his original, a circumstance great-
ly blamed by modern scholars, was no bar to the
success of a translation in the seventeenth cen-
tury, when a considerable amount of license was
regarded as a translator's right. Those who
are interested in La Bruyere's views on that
subject can read the " Discourse on Theophras-
tus " he prefixed to his translation.

La Bruyere took the title and idea of his
'« Characters or the Manners of the Age " from
Theophrastus, but with La Bruyere, the word
character ^ became a synonym for portrait, and

* Littr6 defines caractire as that which distinguishes one
person from another morally. The best " character " writers
may perhaps be said to have aimed at a happy mean between
individual and generic portraits.

15

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction his aim was to describe the manners of his age in
a collection of portraits. With such portraits,
however, he mingled a great many reflexions
or remarks. He sets forth this object and in-
tention of his book in the motto prefixed to it,
and in the preface. The motto — " Our purpose
is to warn, not to bite ; to be useful, not to
wound ; to do good to manners, not hurt to
men " — is taken from the letter of Erasmus to
Martin Dorpius, in which he replies to the latter' s
criticism of his " Praise of Folly." In the pre-
face he writes : — " The subject of the following
sheets being borrowed of the public, it is but
justice to make restitution to it of the whole
work, such as it is, throughout which the utmost
regard has been paid to truth. The world may
view its picture drawn from life, and if conscious
of any of the defects which I have delineated,
let it correct them." He then requests his readers
to keep the title of the book in view, " and to
bear in mind that I describe the characters or the
manners of the age ; for though I frequently take
them from the Court of France and men of my
own nation, yet they cannot be confined to any
one court or country without greatly contracting
and impairing the compass and utility of my
book, and destroying the design of the work,
>^ which is to paint mankind in general. . . .
To conclude, what I have written is not designed
i6

LA BRUYERE

for maxims ; they are like laws in morality ; and Introduction
I have neither genius nor authority for a legis-
lator. I know that I should have sinned against
the law of maxims, which requires short and
concise phrases, like unto oracles. Some of my
remarks are of this kind, others are more diffuse.
I think of things differently, and express them in
a turn of phrase equally different — by a sentence,
an argument, a metaphor, a simile, or some
other figure, by a story at length or a single
passage, by a description or a picture, whence
proceeds the length or shortness of my reflexions.
They who write maxims set up for infallibility ;
I, on the contrary, allow anybody to say my
remarks are not always just, provided he will
make better ones himself."

The book contains sixteen chapters with the
following titles: "Of works of genius — Of per-
sonal merit — Of women — Of the heart — Of society
and conversation — Of the goods of fortune — Of
the city— Of the court — Of the great — Of the sove-
reign — Of the state — Of man— Of judgments — Of
fashion, — Of custom — Of the pulpit— Of free-
thinkers." In these chapters portraits, observa-
tion of manners, and general maxims follow each
other without connection. La Bruyere never had
the intention of writing a regular work ; what he
desired was a large supple frame in which he
could include things that a more rigorous plan

17 B

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction would have excluded. He well knew wherein
lay the novelty of his book. In the prefatory
discourse concerning Theophrastus he charac-
terizes the work of Pascal and La Rochefoucauld
thus : "The first makes metaphysics subservient
to religion, explains the nature of the soul, its
passions and vices, discusses the most prevalent
motives to virtue, and endeavours to make man
Christian. The other is the production of a
mind thoroughly acquainted with society who
has arrived at the conclusion that self-love in
man is the source of all his errors, who attacks
it unceasingly wherever he finds it; and with
him this one thought is so happily diversified in
a thousand ways by the choice of words and the
variety of expression that it always has the
charm of novelty." La Bruyere desired to do
neither of those things. His work was less
sublime than the first, less delicate than the
second ; it was his aim to make men reasonable,
the means to that end being to examine and
describe them. To define well, to paint well,
were, according to La Bruyere, the whole duty
of a writer. His "characters" are certainly
real and picturesque, and possess the quality of
something "seen." Notwithstanding the lack
of regularity, when we have read one of his
chapters we feel that we have been looking at
a complete picture, we have a profound impres-
i8

LA BRUYfiRE

sion that everything on the subject treated has Introduction
been said.^

We shall leave aside the question of the
" keys " to the different characters ; it is treated
fully by M. Servois, and those who are interested
may study it in his volumes. We prefer to
regard the matter from La Bruyere's own stand-
point. He said : " It is true that I have painted
from life, but it was not always my purpose to
paint this man or that woman. ... I have
taken one feature from one, and another from
another, and have formed from these different
features probable portraits." There is little
doubt that in nearly every case La Bruyere had
real persons in his mind, and in describing
some of them, Fontenelle (Cydias) and Conde
(^milius)^ he was surely guided by his personal
feeling towards them ; but while describing his '
contemporaries. La Bruyere painted mankind,
as far as he had the means of observing it, in
general, and in that, and not in isolated portraits
of this or that individual, lies the value of his
work as a moralist.

And what splendid opportunities La Bruyere
had for observing all classes of society. Be-
longing to an old bourgeois family, himself a
barrister and a treasurer of France, nephew of

1 Cf. the chapter " Of the Court."
' Cf. pp. 104 and 106.

19

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction a financier and of a secretary to a king, almost
everybody who at that time formed the town, so
to speak — tradesmen, men of independent means,
lawyers, magistrates, manipulators of the public
funds — came under his view.

As a guest in Condi's house at Chantilly or
Versailles, he associated with all those of the
court, the army, the church, and the magistracy,
reckoned as the most illustrious men of France.
Men of letters he knew likewise, and is often
justly indignant at the low opinion held of them
by the great in his day. An author was mostly
regarded as something a little above the jester
or buffoon, something to provide distraction and
amusement for his betters. It was a period
when the pope would ask the king for the loan of
his poet, much as we might ask a friend to lend
us his horse or his dog. We do not know if
La Bruyere knew much of the country gentle-
men or of the yeomen of the period, but he
laughs at the cockneys who think all begins and
ends at the gate of their town ; he shows
acquaintance with agricultural subjects, and
signs of an appreciation of the beauties of ex-
ternal nature. In addition to his great oppor-
tunities for observing mankind, he had nothing
to distract his attention, no absorbing avocation,
no large fortune to administer, no family to bring
up, no imperious passions to yield to or with-

20

LA BRUYERE

stand. Except during the two years in which Introduction
he was teaching the Duke of Bourbon, La
Bruyere enjoyed the leisure of the sage. Obser-
vation was the great business, the sole occupation
of his life. When his friends accused him of
doing nothing, of wasting his time, he replied,
"I am opening my eyes and looking, opening my
ears and listening." He was of those contem-
plative spirits whom the rush and hurry of
modern life seem to have killed, men who live
without ambition, unenvious of their fellows, yet
interested in all that concerns their kind.

Some critics refuse La Bruyere a place
among the originals. He said nothing new, they
argue. If an author is to be judged solely by
the new things he says, we should be compelled
to eliminate most writers from the ranks of the
immortals. To thoughtful persons the great
moral truths when expressed in words inevi-
tably present something of the obvious. But,
like our own poet, Alexander Pope, La Bruyere
possessed, in a supreme degree, the art of rivet-
ting attention, and if he says nothing that is
new, when once he has said the things that are
old, we never forget them. He has said them,
so to speak, for all time. It must also be re-
membered that La Bruyere made no attempt to
trace human feeling to its source, or to discover
its cause ; it is rather the outward physiognomy

21

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction of the passions that held attraction for him.
Yet in some few points it seems to us that L,a
Bruyere can claim originality. As a thinker, he
was in many ways in advance of his time, and
was by no means inaccessible to new ideas.
He was not, it is true, agitated or dominated by
them to the extent of being inspired with revolu-
tionary passions or Utopian dreams. But he
was irritated by the vanity, and the insolence,
and the cruelty of the nobles, and did not hesi-
tate to express his irritation, and he was pained
by the misery and poverty and downtroddenness
of the people, and gave them freely of his sym-
pathy. In that way he touches hands with
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Beaumarchais, the
precursors of the Revolution. He was almost
the first among French writers to describe the
people, the toilers of the earth i who labour
without reaping the fruit of their toil. Yet his
reason always held sway, and his recognition of
the vices of the nobility never prevented him
from seeing the faults of the people. We find,
too, in La Bruyere, as we shall find presently in
Vauvenargues, a feeling for nature and natural
scenery that was rare in seventeenth century and
early eighteenth century writers. His description
of the little town which seems to him as it
painted on the slope of a hill,^ of the park of

» Cf. p. III. 2 Cf. p. 112.

22

LA BRUVeRE

Chantilly,! and the comparison of the king Introduction
and the shepherd,^ are interesting examples.
He had, too, a love of places that is entirely
modern. He writes — " There are some places
which we admire, others which we love, and
where we could wish to pass our days," a sen-
tence which contains the germ of what after-
wards blossomed into fruit ih the work of Rous-
seau, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Lamartine.

We have already pointed out that La Bru-
yere's chapters follow no regular plan. Some-
times he gives us short dialogues, sometimes
rhetorical apostrophes to a fictitious auditor,
sometimes a fairly well developed narrative
which is almost an apologue or a short story ;
he well understood the art of telling an anec-
dote to illustrate a character. With these are
mingled brief sentences or longer maxims. We
have chosen some of all sorts for this volume,
and have been guided in our choice by what
seems most permanent and most likely to interest
the general reader. The student of the history of
the age of Louis XIV would, of course, approach
La Bruyere's work from another point of view.
But he should bear in mind that the historical
portraits, like those of Louis XIV, the great
Conde,William of Orange, are among the weakest
which La Bruyere has drawn. The portraits ot
» Cf. p. 112. 2 cf. p. no.

23

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction the secondary personages of the time, like those
of Fontenelle, La Fontaine, or Lauzun, are, on
the other hand, of great excellence. The general
characters, like those of the ambitious man, the
hypocrite, the egoist, the wit, or the miser, are
fair of their kind, but as he always seems to have
before his eyes some original, his type is of an
age rather than for all time, and so, perhaps,
misses that stamp of universality which all great
and enduring work of the kind should bear. Un-
doubtedly, La Bruyere's greatest genius lay in
the representation of narrow detail. Wide im-
pressions were not possible to a man of his
temperament, and as we read him we come to
the conclusion that his best work as a character
writer is to be sought in his many admirable
portraits of the more or less harmless and trifling
eccentricities of men. His portraits of the
dilettante collector with a mania for books which
he never reads, or for medals or prints, or for
tulips or plums, of the absent-minded man, the
newsmonger, the man who thinks he knows
everything, and similar personages, have pro-
bably never been surpassed in any literature.

It is not easy to describe or classify La Bru-
yere's literary style. His French critics, and
they ought to know, find his style too laboured,
an example of a too earnest seeking after the
right word. " Among all the different expres-
24

LA BRUVeRE

sions," he wrote, " which can render a single Introduction
one of our thoughts, there is only one which is
the right one. Everything which is not it is
feeble, and does not content an intelligent man
who desires to make himself understood." He
dutifully followed the rules accepted by all the
great French prose writers of the seventeenth
century, but, in so doing, did not disdain to traverse
roads from which they had turned aside, and
which it was still possible to traverse again, or
to throw open roads to be traversed for the
first time. His vocabulary was very rich, richer
even than that of La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet,
or Madame de S6vigne. He used a number of
technical words borrowed from the law, from
the military arts, from agriculture, even from
heraldry, the merchant's office, or the artisan's
workshop. The best characteristics of his style
are to be found in its variety, in its conciseness,
in his original way of illustrating an abstract idea
by some physical detail which at once material-
izes it, as when he writes : " Thirty years are
required to think of one's fortune ; it is not made
at fifty ; a man commences building in his old
age and dies when it is time for the painters and
glaziers to begin their work." In this feature of
his style La Bruyere was curiously modern, not
to say curiously English, for some modem Eng-
lish philosophers use the method largely and with

25

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction admirable effect. But let us not forget that both
they and La Bruyere are following no less a pre-
cedent than that of Dante. It may justly be said
that La Bruyere brought light and colour into
French prose. In many ways he belongs to both
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for
while the strongest bonds attach him to the
former, he foreshadows the methods of Voltaire
and of Montesquieu, especially in the Lettres Per-
sanes. Lesage, Regnard, and Destouches owe
him something. Among English writers it is
Addison who perhaps owes him most. Both led
quiet, contemplative lives, and were spectators
of mankind, not themselves men of action ; both
were silent and retiring, wanting probably in that
outward grace of manner that so readily confers
an indiscriminate popularity.

Despite the fact that between 1605 and 1700
fifty- six books of Characters were published in
England, it would not seem that English char-
acter writers owe anything to La Bruyere.
Casaubon's Latin version of Theophrastus pub-
lished in 1592 gave the impulse to such writing
here. The first book of English characters,
The Fratemitye of Vacabondes, by John Awdeley,
appeared in, or possibly before, 1565, and was
followed by Thomas Harman's Caveat for Coin-
men Cursetors, Vulgarely Called Vagabones, in
1567. Then came Joseph Hall's Characterisms of
26

LA BRUY6RE

Vertues and Vices, 1608 ; Sir Thomas Overbury's Introduction
Wife now a Widow, Whereunto are added Many
Witty Characters, 1614 ; Nicholas Breton's Charac-
ters upon Essays Moral and Divine, 1615 ; and The
Good and the Bad, 1616. The most notable book
of the kind in English literature, John Earle's
Microcosmographie, or a Peece of the World Dis-
covered in Essay es and Characters, was published
in 1628. Earle dealt with all types. His portraits
are drawn with animation and sympathy; but
his method differs considerably from that of La
Bruyere. The two manners may be best com-
pared in the portrait of the Poor Man as drawn
by each. Earle describes the treatment which
the poor man receives from his fellows, La Bru-
yere describes the manner in which the poor man
himself behaves. The historians. Clarendon and
Burnet, may both be styled writers of Characters,
for the value of their works lies chiefly in their
admirable portraits of the historical personages
of the times with which they deal. Character
writing in our literature forms a kind of link be-
tween the comedy of manners and the novel.
It was handed on fresh to the novelists by peri-
odical essayists such as Steele and Addison, who
simply revelled in character writing.

Our character writers can scarcely be placed
beside such authors as La Bruyere and Vauven-
argues, who use the form as much for conveying

27

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction their philosophy of life, and their estimation of
mankind, as for describing the men of their time
or of all time.

La Bruyere took his mission as a moralist very
seriously. Pascal made metaphysics serve reli-
gion, and strove to make men Christians ; La
Rochefoucauld's observation of men led him to
attribute the cause of all their weaknesses to
self-love, and so he attacked mankind, and actually
slandered it wherever he came in contact with it ;
Vauvenargues restored to humanity its virtues,
and was tolerant towards its sins and vices ;
while La Bruyere's system, so far as he had
one, differed from all these. Less sublime than
Pascal, less subtle than La Rochefoucauld, he
aimed at making man reasonable, and his means
to that end was to examine and describe him at
various ages, under various conditions, taking
note of his vices, weaknesses, and eccentricities.

IV

" Courage is the light of adversity."— VAUVENARGUES.

" Vauvenargues was one of the most admirable of men ; and
certainly of all the great sages the most unfortunate. When-
ever his fortune hangs in the balance, he is attacked and
prostrated by cruel disease; and notwithstanding the efforts
of his genius, his bravery, his moral beauty, day after day he
is wantonly betrayed, or falls victim to gratuitous injustice ;
and at the age of thirty-two he dies, at the very moment
when recognition is at last awaiting his work." — MAETER-
LINCK.

28

VAUVENARGUES

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Introduction
was born at Aix, in Provence, 6 August, 1715,
of an ancient and honourable but poor family.
His father, Joseph de Clapiers, Seigneur de
Vauvenargues, was created marquis by royal
letters patent in 1722, partly in recognition of the
devotion which he had shown two years pre-
viously, when alone among the magistrates of
the city he remained at his post in Aix during
the terrible plague of 1720. Of Vauvenargues' s
early youth and education we know little beyond
the fact that his studies were interrupted by the
weak health that pursued him as long as he lived.
About the age of sixteen he came across Plu-
tarch's Lives, and, as with so many boys, the
book thoroughly impressed his imagination.
Years afterwards he wrote in a letter to a
friend : — " I wept for joy when I read Plutarch's
Lives; there was no evening that I did not converse
with Alcibiades, Agesilaus and others. I went
down into the Roman forum to discuss with the
Gracchi, to defend Cato from the stones thrown
at him. Do you remember how Caesar, wishing
to pass a law too greatly in favour of the people,
that same Cato, desiring to keep him from pro-
posing it, put his hand on his mouth to prevent
him speaking ? Such methods, so contrary to
ours, made a great impression on me. At the
same period a Seneca fell into my hands, by

29

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction what chance I know not; then the letters ot
Brutus to Cicero when he was in Greece after
the death of Caesar. Those letters are so full of
dignity, elevation of soul, passion and courage
that it was impossible to read them and preserve
my coolness. I mingled the three books and
was so moved by them that I only contained
what they put into me." He must have read
his classics in translations, for he does not seem
to have known either Latin or Greek.

At that period the only professions considered
worthy the attention of a young man of good
family were the church and the army. From
his earliest boyhood Vauvenargues had a passion
for military glory, and at the age of eighteen he
entered the army as sub-lieutenant in an infantry
corps. In 1733 he accompanied Marshal Villars
into Lombardy. He returned to France in 1736
to a monotonous garrison life, to much idleness,
and some dissipation. Now and again he would
isolate himself from his companions for the pur-
poses of study and reflexion. His comrades
evidently liked him and recognized his superior
parts, for, young as he was, they were in the
habit of styling him pere.

The first, perhaps, to discover Vauvenargues's

originality was the Marquis de Mirabeau, father

of the famous Mirabeau of the Revolution. The

young men were about the same age, and their

30

VAUVENARGUES

correspondence, which extends from July, 1737, Introduction
to August, 1740, serves as a history of Vauven-
argues's intellectual development. Mirabeau
urged Vauvenargues to go to Paris and to take
up the profession of letters. As yet, however,
the profession of arms seemed to him the most
noble and desirable, and he held no high opinion
of men of letters. The following passages from
the correspondence will best illustrate his attitude
of mind at this period : — " You will easily under-
stand that it is not from choice that I spend my
youth among persons who do not touch my heart,
whom I have no desire to please, who drive me
from society by the little taste and interest I find
in intercourse with them. You would like me,
compelled to live in solitude, to attempt to fill it
with literature, to cultivate my reason, being un-
able to follow my heart, and to steep myself in
writing for lack of conversation, so as to keep
myself in the world by that road at least, and to
communicate my soul. That is a good thought,
nothing could be better said ; but I know myself,
I know how to do myself justice, and to prove
that I do not boast, I will not hide from you
that I have neither the health, the genius, nor
the taste necessary for writing, that the public
does not want to know what I think, and that if
I told them, it would be without either effect or
profit .... there is neither proportion nor

31

LA BRUY^RE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction propriety between my strength and my desires,
between my reason and my heart, between my
heart and my circumstances. . . . But although
I am not happy, I stand by my inclinations and
cannot renounce them, I make it a point of
honour to protect their weakness. I only consult
my heart. I do not wish it to be the slave of the
philosophers' maxims nor of my circumstances.
I do not make vain efforts to compel them to
conform with my fortune, I wish rather to form
my fortune on them. Doubtless that will not fulfil
my desires ; everything that would please me is a
thousand leagues away, but I will not put myself
under compulsion, I would rather yield my life !
It is only on those conditions that I preserve it,
and I suffer less from the griefs that my passions
bring me than I do from the trouble of continually
crossing them. I am not ignorant of the advan-
tages of pleasant intercourse ; I have always
greatly desired it, and I do not hide in solitude.
But I set less store by men of letters than you
do. I only judge by their works ; for I confess
I have no acquaintance among authors, but I say
frankly that, with the exception of a few great
geniuses and a few original men whose names I
respect, the others do not impress me. I begin
to see that the greater part of them only know
what others have thought, that they do not feel,
that they have no soul, that their criticism only re-
32

VAUVENARGUES

fleets the taste of the age or of those in authority ; Introduction
for they do not penetrate into the heart of things.
They have no principles of their own, or if they
have, so much the worse ; they oppose conven-
tional prejudices with false, useless, or tiresome
knowledge, and a mind dulled with toil, and
therefore I imagine that it is not their genius
that made them turn to knowledge, but their in-
capacity for affairs, the rebuffs which they have
encountered in the world, jealousy, ambition,
education, chance. So that to live with such
men you need a great stock of knowledge that
satisfies neither heart nor mind, and which fills
up the greater part of one's youth." As a
matter of fact Vauvenargues never became a
man of letters in the professional sense of the
term. With him a life of action was ever supe-
rior to a life of thought, and he only entered on
the second when the first became impossible.

Another of Vauvenargues' s correspondents
was Fauris de Saint- Vincens, a scholar and an
antiquary, three years his junior. The letters
written by him are deeply interesting, and touch
on all subjects likely to be discussed between
young men of a thoughtful turn of mind. They
extend from 1739 to 1747, and give a fairly full
history of Vauvenargues' s active and spiritual
life. They contain, perhaps, his most intimate
utterances on religion, faith, and friendship. A

33 C

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction few passages will suffice to prove their interest
and value. Saint-Vincens had been dangerously
ill, and Vauvenargues writes thus to him con-
cerning the uses of religion and faith at such a
time : —

Aug. 8, 1739.
" I am not surprised at the security with which
you regarded the approach of death ; yet it is very
sad to die in the flower of one's youth ! but religion,
as you say, provides great resources ; it is for-
tunate at such a moment to possess perfect faith.
By the side of Eternity, life seems but a moment,
and human happiness but a dream ; and to speak
frankly, it is not only against death that the
forces of Faith are to be arrayed ; there are no
misfortunes that it does not mitigate, no tears
that it does not dry, no losses that it does not
make good ; it affords consolation for con-
tempt, poverty, misfortune, lack of health — the
hardest of all the afflictions that can try men —
and there is none so humiliated, so forsaken who,
in his despair and distress does not find in it
support, hope, courage; but this same Faith,
which is the consolation of the wretched, is the
torture of the happy ; it poisons their pleasures,
troubles their present joy, causes them to regret
the past and fear the future ; indeed, it tyrannizes
over their passions, and aims at depriving them
of the two sources whence nature causes our
34

VAUVENARGUES

good and evil fortune to flow, self-love and Introduction
pleasure, that is to say the pleasures of the
senses and all the joys of the heart."

Oct. 10, 1739.

" No more poignant picture could be traced than
that you draw of a dying man who lived amid
pleasures, persuaded of their innocence by the
liberty, duration or sweetness of their usage,
and who is suddenly recalled to the prejudices
of his education, and brought back to Faith by
the sentiment of his end, by the terror of the
future, by the danger of scepticism, by the tears
which are shed over him, and last by the im-
pressions of all who surround him. With most
men of the world it is the heart which doubts ;
when the heart is converted all is done, it carries
them along ; the mind follows the heart's im-
pulses by custom and by reason. I have nevet
been against ; but there are unbelievers whose
error lies deeper ; their too curious intellect has
spoiled their emotions."

Vauvenargues never wholly gave up religion.
His attitude towards it is perhaps best indicated
in the expressions that he had never been against
it, and that he thought it possible to be a Christian
" without being a Capuchin."

Another time he has something to say on
friendship : —

35

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction Nov. 3, 1740-

"Truly, my dear Saint- Vincens, nothing is
perfect without friendship, nothing is whole,
nothing sensible.

" I pity those who neglect it, and who seek
their happiness only in themselves. There are
moments of strength, moments Of elevation,
passion and enthusiasm in which the soul may
suffice for itself and disdain all help, intoxicated
with its own greatness. . . . The fire of
pride, of glory, consumes itself very soon if it
derives no nourishment from without. It falls,
it perishes, it is extinguished, and then, man
suffers pain. . . . Men make one society : the
entire Universe is only one whole. In the
whole of Nature there is only one soul, one
body. He who cuts himself off from that body
causes the life in him to perish. He withers,
he is consumed in a terrible languor, he is
worthy of compassion."

These letters, too, give us a poignant picture
of the manner in which Vauvenargues was,
throughout his life, hampered by poverty. We
learn the expedients to which he was reduced,
the borrowings and the makeshifts, the debts he
was forced to contract in order to keep up his
position in the army. In a passage that has a
sort of ironical humour, he tells Saint- Vincens
36

VAUVEN ARGUES

that a man of whom he seeks to borrow money Introduction
has daughters, and that if he will lend him the
desired sum, it occurs to him he might promise
to marry one of them in two years' time, with a
reasonable dowry !

Vauvenargues took part in the war of the
Austrian Succession, and in 1742 was in
the terrible retreat from Prague to Egra,
compared by Voltaire to the retreat of the Ten
Thousand. The cold was intense and the army
suffered horrible tortures. Vauvenargues, con-
stitutionally weak, never properly recovered from
the privations endured on the march. His
friend, Paul Hippolyte Emmanuel de Seytres,
the young man for whom he wrote the " Con-
seils a un jeune homme," died at the age of
eighteen, during the siege of Prague. In his
memory Vauvenargues wrote an " Eloge Fun6-
bre." Its eloquence was evidently inspired by
F6nelon, and although it will not rank high
among compositions of the kind, or among
Vauvenargues's works, we are told that he set
more store by it than by any other of his pro-
ductions, and that he was continually retouching
it. The most interesting passages are those that
reveal De Seytres's personality, the most illu-
minating of which is, perhaps, the brief sentence,
" he was insensible to the pleasure of talking
about himself, the bond of feeble friendships."

37

LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction At length the state of Vauvenargues's health
rendered it necessary for him to renounce the
military life. He had traversed great perils and
had won no glory, but still eager for a life of
action, he turned his thoughts to diplomacy.
He sent letters asking for employment to the
King and to Amelot, the minister for foreign
affairs, but even a second application brought
no result. About this time, Vauvenargues wrote
to Voltaire touching a question of criticism con-
cerning the genius of Comeille and Racine.
The great man, fully alive to his young corre-
spondent's ability and originality, replied, and
sent Vauvenargues a copy of his works. Thus
began a friendship ended only by death. Vol-
taire obtained from Amelot the promise of a
post for Vauvenargues in the diplomatic service.
But unluckily he was attacked by small-pox ot
the most malignant type ; the little health he still
possessed was completely ruined ; the disease
left him almost blind, it was impossible that he
should avail himself of the minister's offer.

Everything now pointed to the literary life,
and accordingly, in 1745, acting under the advice
of Voltaire and Mirabeau, Vauvenargues went
to Paris. The difficulty of the step was enhanced
by his poverty ; he was forced to live in modest
lodgings and to lead a very retired life.

Notwithstanding his dislike for the professional
38

VAUVENARGUES

man of letters, Vauvenargues had, in his leisure Introduction
moments, found time to record his thoughts in
writing, and in February, 1746, published anony-
mously a duodecimo volume of less than 400
pages, containing an " Introduction to the know-
ledge of the human mind ; Reflexions on various
subjects ; Advice to a young man ; Critical re-
flexions on various poets ; Fragments on the
orators and on La Bruyere ; Meditation on faith ;
Paradoxes mingled with reflexions and maxims."
A few days after its publication Voltaire wrote
to the author giving it the very highest praise.
He characterized it as one of the best books
" we have had in our language." It had, how-
ever, no success with the public, yet acting
always under Voltaire's advice, Vauvenargues
issued a second edition in 1747. He corrected
in it faults of style that had been pointed out to
him, suppressed over two hundred of the maxims
as too obscure, too common-place, or useless,
changed the order of the maxims he retained,
developed some, added others.^ Meanwhile he
was dying in slow agony and dire poverty, yet
heroic to the end, Voltaire could say of him " I

1 This second edition, the title of which was altered to
Riflexions et Maximes, contained 330 maxims. The number
was subsequently made up from the author's MSS. to 945.
Those that appear in the present translation are mainly-
drawn from the 1747 issue, the last to appear during the
author's lifetime.

39

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVE^ARGUES

Introduction saw him the most unfortunate and the most
serene of men." His whole life may be read
in his "characters" — Clazomenes and Phere-
cides. " When fortune seemed to tire of per-
secuting him, when a too tardy hope began to
alleviate his misery, death confronted him."

Vauvenargues died 28 May, 1747. He had not
completed his thirty-second year. For half a
century the work he left behind him remained
unnoticed. In 1797, a new edition in two
volumes appeared, quickly followed by another
in 1806. Since, there have been many others,
the best critical edition being that edited in two
volumes by Gilbert ^ in 1857.

" The essence of aphorism is the compression of a mass
of thought into a single saying ... it is good sense brought
to a point."— JOHN MORLEY.

Philosophy, like art and poetry, must have its source in
the clear comprehension of the universe. . . . Men's ac-
tions depend in equal measure on both head and heart. . . .
Philosophy is not an algebra sum. Vauvenargues is quite
right when he says " Great thoughts come from the heart." —
SCHOPENHAUER.

Rare indeed are the cases in which a man
escapes the influences of his time. Vauven-

' Jean Desir6 Louis Gilbert (1819-1870), whose ^hge on
Vauvenargues prefixed to this edition won him the prix
d'iloqamce at the French Academy in 1857.
40

VAUVENARGUES

argues was strangely little touched by them. Introduction
The scepticism of the first half of the eighteenth
century, its contempt for the past, its frivolous
society, a society without dignity or conviction,
produced on him little or no effect. We look in
vain in Vauvenargues's writings for the keen
cynicism and delicate satire of La Rochefoucauld,
or for the more brutal methods of Chamfort or
Rivarol. Vauvenargueshad no desire to display
the vices of men, his aim was to show of what
their virtues made them capable. Were it not
for an occasional reference to some custom es-
sentially belonging to the France of his time,
there would be little to mark internally the
period to which his work belongs.

The maxims form the most interesting part
of Vauvenargues's writings, but it is not wise to
ignore or underrate other portions of them,
especially the Characters. His method of
painting character diff'ers considerably from that
of L-a Bruyere. Vauvenargues has himself
described it. He disapproved of the unwritten
law that forced writers who drew " characters "
to limit themselves to the manners of their time
or their country ; a little more liberty was ad-
visable, and authors should be permitted to leave
their age on condition that they never left nature.
He did not seek to describe men of the world,
nor the absurdities of the great. He preferred

41

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction to render, so far as he could, rather what fitted
all men than what was only applicable to a few,
and was more touched by the picture of a single
virtue than by the numberless little defects so
pleasing to superficial minds. Vauvenargues's
characters are full of himself. As we said above,
Clazomenes and Pherecides sum up his life.
The characters that follow take us through dif-
ferent phases of it. There are portraits of mili-
tary men, and of active, firm, ambitious charac-
ters having insight into human character and so
able to lead men. These would seem to point
to his experiences in the army, and to his at-
tempts to enter diplomacy. By contrast he
draws a few characters of vain, weak, inconse-
quential persons, and, lastly, portraits of insipid
or frivolous authors represent his literaryperiod.
The enthusiastic student of Vauvenargues will
of course read all that he has written, but those
who, without so much study, wish to gain a clear
idea of his philosophy and teaching may confine
themselves to the maxims after they have once
become acquainted with the personality of the
man through his correspondence and the Charac-
ters. As writers of maxims and aphorisms the
French stand easily first ; no one disputes their
supremacy. No other of the world's great litera-
tures can point to the long line of authors, among
whom we may name at random Pascal, La
42

VAUVENARGUES

Bruyere, La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Rivarol, Introduction
De Bonald, Joubert, who have excelled in that
form of composition. The reason is not far to
seek. The marvellous clarity and terseness of
the French language, the ready wit of the French-
man, and his capacity for handling words with
lightness and dexterity, for expressing much in
small compass, are just the qualifications that
make for perfection in maxim writing. It is the
Frenchman who has made conversation a fine
art, and who has studied anxiously and lovingly
the art of expressing in words delicate shades of
thought and feeling. The French excel in the
conte or short tale for similar reasons. Even
Goethe with all his genius, and wisdom, and
knowledge of men cannot be said to have written
maxims that are successful as maxims.

Regarded solely from the standpoint of literary
style Vauvenargues's maxims often fall short of
perfection. He was not a man of letters by pro-
fession, and understood the art of writing, as
an art, scarcely at all. His criticism of other
authors is all but valueless. He judged them
entirely by their effect on himself, and forgot
that the first duty of a critic is to have prefer-
ences and no exclusions. He considered that
Moliere chose sujets trap bas, and praised Boileau
with enthusiasm. Some of his criticisms, how-
ever, contain certain general views that are

43

LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction universally true. For example, he infers from
the number of worthless books that cannot possi-
bly live, issued from the presses of his day, that
the taste of the majority is not correct. The
mass of bad books is caused by the fact that
writers do not follow the maxim — " Before you
can write you must have thought ; before you
can excite emotion in others you must have felt
it yourself ; before you can convince you must
know with certainty. Every effort made to seem
what you are not, only serves to prove more
clearly what you are." He declared that " all
fiction that does not paint nature is insipid," and
that what people so eagerly seek in novels is
<« the image of a living and passionate truth."

As Vauvenargues was no man of letters by
profession, so was he no philosopher by pro-
fession, observing at leisure and making that, and
that alone, the business of his life. He was a
man who had suffered and had thought, and his
sufferings and reflexions led him to certain con-
ceptions of life and conduct which he embodied
in his maxims. His main article of faith was
that man should be guided by his passions equally
with his reason ; that only by such means could
right action be possible ; only by such means
could a harmonious existence be assured. He
even thought that our passions, wisely developed
and followed, might be more likely to lead us on
44

VAUVENARGUES

the right road than if we listened to reason alone. Introduction

Regarding the passions as the principle of all

moral activity, as the very life of the soul, he

writes to Mirabeau — " We are generally masters

of our actions, but scarcely ever of our passions.

It is foolish to struggle against them when there

is nothing vicious in them, and even unjust to

complain of them. For life without passions

resembles death, and I compare a man without

passions to a book of logic ; he is only of use to

those who read him. He has no life in him, he

does not feel, he enjoys nothing, not even his

thoughts." Although it is true that suppression

of real, sincere feeling may prove as harmful to

character as a too great readiness to yield to it,

the doctrine would scarcely be a safe one for

weak men. What Vauvenargues really meant

was that a man's character should be developed

on every side. He believed in the importance of

character, much as thoughtful men who have the

welfare and progress of the human race at heart

are beginning to believe in it now.

Vauvenargues saw clearly the faults and vices
of men, but was full of that large toleration for
weakness that is ever the hall-mark of a superior
mind. He believed in human goodness, that in
all men lies something of good which should be
cherished and developed. This point of view
made him sympathize with ordinary mortals,

45

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction their hopes and fears, their weakness and their
strength, and we contend that if only Vauven-
argues's Maxims were better known, more
widely spread abroad, there is no philosophy
that would more appeal to the average human
being than that which they contain. A long
line of moralists before him had written of the
duties of men. He was no mere preaching
moralist; it was his chief aim to spread clear-
ness and light over the difficulty of attaining to
virtue, of resisting temptation to sin. The first
impulse of the human heart when brought face
to face with weakness is to pity, it is the second
impulse that moves us to condemn ; second
thoughts are not always best. Yet Vauven-
argues's tenderness of heart has no resem-
blance to the sentimentalism of the Richardsonian
period, or to the philanthropy of our own. The
professional philosopher in all ages, and rightly,
is more interested in the destiny of the human race
than in that of the individual ; Vauvenargues,
without altogether losing sight of the species, is
more interested in the lot of the individual.
Some find Vauvenargues' s classic prototype in
Voltaire; we are inclined to regard him as a
disciple to a great extent of Pascal and Fenelon.
However that may be, Rousseau is undoubtedly
his intellectual successor. Like La Bruyere,
Vauvenargues seems to have loved and observed
46

VAUVENARGUES

external nature ; a number of beautiful similes Introduction
from nature are to be found in the maxims. He
compares an old man's advice to winter sunshine,
and the sudden end of a long and prosperous
career to the dissipation of summer heat by one
stormy day, and further shows his feeling for
nature in such sentences as " The tempests of
youth are mingled with days of brilliant sun-
shine " ; "The days of early spring have less
beauty than the budding virtue of a youth";
" The light of dawn is not so sweet as the first
glimpses of glory." Delille was nine years
old when Vauvenargues died, and the Nouvelle
Hdloise, in which Rousseau was the first to draw
his countrymen's attention to the beauty and
influence of natural scenery, did not appear until
the end of 1760.

While La Bruyere paints a picture of humanity
and draws from it no conclusions ; while Pascal
suffers from, and is irritated by humanity,
although he continues to esteem it, and his
maxims are often perverted by his systematic
views on religion ; while La Rochefoucauld's
maxims, true as they are of all selfish persons,
and of all persons in proportion as they are
selfish, succeed in slandering mankind; Vau-
venargues's maxims act like a strengthening
tonic. He restores to humanity its virtues, puts
the spur where others put the curb, preaches

47

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction liberality even to extravagance, boldness even to
rashness, advocates all that makes life strong and
beautiful. His own life was certainly a restless
striving for glory, but not for glory that should
aggrandize himself, but for the glory born of
valiant service to his country. Maybe that his
sympathy with the imperfections of humanity,
his serenity under a cruel destiny, his earnest
desire to discover the good in men, give him a
more enduring place in the "choir invisible"
than the more active kind of glory he so ardently
sought.

VI

■'No music is more agreeable than variations of well-
known airs."— JOUBERT.

This little introduction would, perhaps, be
more incomplete than it is, if we did not briefly
mention the French maxim writers who lived
after Vauvenargues.

Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) is sometimes
called " La Rochefoucauld-Chamfort," because
his conclusions about men and morals resemble,
if we can imagine such a person, those of a
more philosophic La Rochefoucauld, living, not
in the seventeenth, but in the eighteenth century.
Chamfort' s maxims are always incisive and
48

RIVAROL

witty ; sometimes they are cruel, pessimistic, or Introduction
even of a distorted truth. It seems strange that
the same man who wrote, " The most wasted
of all days is that on which we have not laughed,"
could also write, "There are few vices that pre-
vent a man having many friends, in the degree
that too great qualities may prevent many friend-
ships," or " Life is a disease for which sleep
consoles us every sixteen hours ; it is a palliative ;
death is the remedy. ' ' Chamfort lost his illusions
too soon, yet his cynicism, which has a flavour
of that of Swift, was absolutely sincere, for few
have had keener insight into the weaknesses of
men. But his philosophy of life is unsatisfying,
and we read his maxims for the sake of their
brilliance rather than for that of their truth.

Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801) combated the
sophisms and the revolutionary excesses of the
Revolution. He emigrated in 1792 and died at
Berlin. It was he who said " Printing is the
artillery of thought." It was his desire that
men should be guided by reason, and for that
purpose adorned his maxims of reason with an
inimitable wit and brilliance of style. With
Vauvenargues he believed in the power of the
heart. " The heart," he writes, " is the infinite
in man, the mind has its bounds. We do not
love God with all our mind, we love Him with
all our heart. I have noticed that the people

49 D

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Introduction who lack heart, and the nunaber is larger than
one thinks, have an excessive self-love, and a
certain poverty of mind — for the heart rectifies
everything in man — and that such persons are
jealous and ungrateful, and that it is only neces-
sary to do them a favour to make enemies of
them."

The Vicomte de Bonald (1753-1840), a devoted
royalist, published works in support of his party,
among them a few maxims which uphold his
views of society and government. He said many
true and witty things. As examples, let us take
the two following sentences : " Follies com-
mitted by the sensible, extravagances uttered by
the clever, crimes committed by the good — that
is what makes revolutions:" "a man of genius
only needs a wife of sense : more than one
genius in a house is too much."

But, in our opinion, since Vauvenargues, there
has only been one maxim writer in France who
ranks beside his seventeenth century brethren,
and that one is Joseph Joubert (1754-1824). He
wrote in fragments for himself alone, and had,
perhaps, no intention of composing a book of
maxims at all. For he published nothing in his
life-time. Fourteen years after his death a
small volume was issued by Chateaubriand
containing " Thoughts " that at once assured
Joubert a high place among French moralists and
50

JOUBERT

maxim writers. As a moralist his chief desire Introduction
was, perhaps, to induce men to desist from lov-
ing the future at the expense of the past, and
thus his teaching was a protest against the nega-
tive philosophy of the Revolution period. Of his
forerunners he most resembles Vauvenargues.
He lived too much in himself, too little in outside
things, to be compared with La Bruyere, he
was not a despairing soul like Pascal ; but he
possessed the same generosity and natural
elevation of thought, the same enthusiasm for
all that is beautiful and good, the same delicacy
of feeling, the same combination of charm and
austerity that distinguish Vauvenargues. He
has even been called the Christian Vauvenargues.
We must not press the comparison too closely.
Joubert had wider horizons and a surer judgment
as a critic. He is, it would seem, the last of
the maxim writers, the last composer, so far, of
variations on the well-known themes of religion,
conduct, love and literature.

51

LA BRUYERE

53

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN

CHARACTERS

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN
|ENALCAS comes downstairs, opens the

door to go out and shuts it again ; he per-
ceives that his night-cap is still on, and
examining himself a little more carefully,
discovers that only one side of his face is shaved,
that his sword is on his right side, that his stock-
ings are hanging about his heels, and his shirt
out of his breeches. If he walks abroad he
feels something strike him roughly on the face
or stomach ; he cannot imagine what it is, until
opening his eyes and looking up he sees in front
of him the shaft of a cart, or a long plank of
wood, carried on a workman's shoulder. He
has been seen to knock up against a blind man,
when their limbs become entangled and each
falls backward. Sometimes he has run right up
against a prince, and has scarcely had time to
squeeze himself against the wall in order to
make room for his highness to pass. He seeks,
55

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Absent- rummages, mislays, gets angry, and calls his
Minded Man servants one after the other : they lose every-
thing, put nothing in its place ; he asks for his
gloves which he has on his hands, like the
woman who asked for her mask when she had
it on her face. He enters the drawing-room,
passes under a chandelier, to which his periwig
hitches and is left hanging ; the courtiers stare
and laugh. Menalcas also stares, and laughs
louder than the rest, and searches through the
assembly for the poor mortified creature who
has lost his wig. In his walks about town he
thinks that he has lost his way, puts himself
into a fret, and asks of the passers-by where he
is : they tell him the name of his own street, he
at once enters his own house but hastily runs
out again, fancying himself mistaken. He comes
out of the law-courts, and finding a coach at the
bottom of the steps takes it for his own and gets
in, the coachman whips up the horses and thinks
he is driving his master home. Menalcas leaps
out, crosses the court -yard, goes upstairs, walks
through the ante-room and the other apartments,
everything is familiar, nothing new to him, he
sits down and rests, as he would at home. The
master of the house arrives, Menalcas rises to
receive him, treats him with great ceremony, begs
him to sit down, and pays him all the attention
due to a guest ; he talks, muses, and talks again ;
56

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN

the master of the house is bored and greatly The Absent-
astonished. Menalcas is not less so, but does Minded Man
not say what he thinks, that the other is some
impertinent, idle person who will at length
withdraw ; he hopes so, and possesses his soul
in patience, but it may be night-time before he
is undeceived.

Another time he visits a lady and, imagining
that she is visiting him, he sits down in her arm-
chair and has no idea of giving it up ; he finds
that the lady is paying him a somewhat long
visit and every moment expects her to get up
and go, but as that does not happen and he is
growing hungry, and it is nearly night, he asks
her to sup with him ; she laughs, and so loudly,
that he comes to his senses.

He gets married in the morning, forgets all
about it in the evening, and goes home at night
as if nothing had happened. A few years later
he loses his wife, she dies in his arms, he goes
to the funeral, and the next day, when his
servants announce dinner, he asks if his wife is
ready and if she has been told.

It is also he who, entering a church, takes the
blind beggar at the door for a pillar and his dish
for the holy water vase, dips his hand in, when
suddenly he hears the pillar speak and ask for
alms ; he walks down the nave, thinks he sees a
praying desk and throws himself heavily on his

57

LA BRUYgRE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Absent- knees ; the machine bends, pushes him, strives
Mmded Man ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Menalcas is astonished to find
himself kneeling on the legs of a little man,
resting on his back, his two arms passed over
his shoulders, and his joined hands holding his
nose and shutting his mouth ; he retires in con-
fusion and kneels elsewhere. He takes a prayer-
book from his pocket, as he thinks, but it is his
slipper, that he had inadvertently pocketed before
going out. He is scarcely out of the church
when a footman runs after him and asks,
with a laugh, if he has not got Monseigneur's
slipper. Menalcas shows him his and says
" these are all the slippers I have about me ; "
nevertheless, on searching, he finds the slipper

of the Bishop of , whom he had just been

visiting because he was kept at home by illness,
and before leaving him had picked up the slipper
as though it had been one of his gloves which
had fallen on the ground. He once lost at cards
all the money he had in his purse, went into his
study, opened a cupboard, took out a money-box,
withdrew the coins he wanted, and, as he
thought, locked it up again in the cupboard. To
his surprise he heard a barking in the cupboard
he had just closed, and, astonished at such a
prodigy, he opened it again, and burst out laugh-
ing to see his dog, whom he had locked up for
his money-box.

58

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN

He plays at backgammon and asks for some- The Absent-
thing to drink ; it is his turn to play, and having Winded Man
the dice box in one hand and the glass in the
other, being very thirsty, he gulps down the dice,
and almost the box as well, throwing the liquor
on the board and half drowning his antagonist.

Once when boating he asked the time, and
some one handed him a watch ; he had hardly
taken hold of it, when, forgetting all about the
time and the watch, he threw it into the river as
if it were something that was in his way.

He writes a long letter, sands the paper several
times, and always throws the sand into the ink-
pot, but that is not all, he writes another letter,
and having sealed them both makes a mistake
in the addresses ; one of them is to a duke, who,
on opening the letter, reads the following: "Mr.
Oliver, do not fail to send me by return a load of
hay." His farmer receives the other letter,
opens it and reads : " My Lord, I have received
with the utmost submission the commands your
Grace has been pleased to give me." He writes
another at night, and after sealing it puts out the
candle : he is surprised to find himself in the
dark, and is at a loss to conceive how it happened.

Coming down the stairs at the Louvre he
meets a man going up. " Oh," says Menalcas^
"you are the very person I was looking for,"
takes him by the hand, makes him come down

59

LA BRUY^RE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Absent- with him, crosses several court-yards, walks from
Mmded Man room to room backwards and forwards, then
looking more closely at the man he has been
dragging about with him for the last quarter of
an hour, wonders who ever it can be, has no-
thing to say to him, lets him go, and turns
another way.

He often asks a question and is already out of
sight before you have time to reply, or he asks
you how your father is, and when you say that
he is very ill, Menalcas shouts back that he is
very glad. He happens to meet you another
time, he is charmed to see you, he has just come
from your house where he had been to tell you
some important news, he looks at your hand :
" What a fine ruby you have. IsitaBalasruby? "
Then he leaves you, goes on his way, and that
is the important business about which he was so
anxious to speak to you.

He begins a story and forgets to finish it,
bursts out laughing to himself at something that
strikes his mind, and replies to his own thought,
he hums a tune, whistles, upsets his chair, utters
a plaintive cry, yawns, thinking himself to be
alone. "When he is at table he insensibly
crumbles a heap of bread upon his plate, it is
true that his neighbours want it, as well as their
knives and forks, which he imagines to be all
for his use.

60

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN

Chancing to find himself in the company of a The Absent-
young widow, he speaks to her of her deceased Minded Man
husband, and asks the cause of his death ; the
lady, whose grief was naturally revived by this
discourse, wept and sobbed, and told him all
the details of her husband's illness, from the
beginning of the fever to the supreme agony.
" Madam," asks Menalcas, who had apparently
listened to her with the greatest attention, " had
you never another but him ? "

One morning, he bids the dinner be hastened,
rises before dessert, and takes leave of the
company, yet you are sure to find him that
day in every place in the city except where he
had the appointment which caused him to
neglect his dinner, and to go afoot in case he
should have to wait for the carriage. You may
hear him shout, scold, put himself into a rage
with one of his servants. He is astounded he
does not come. " Where can he be ? " he says,
" what is he doing, where is he to be found ? It
he does not come immediately, I shall discharge
him at once." The servant arrives. Menalcas
asks him in a fury where he has been. The man
replies that he has just returned from the errand
on which his master sent him, and gives a faith-
ful account of his commission.

You will often take him for what he is not ;
for a fool, because he listens little, and speaks

6i

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Absent- less ; for an idiot, because he talks to himself
Minaed Man ^j^^j jg subject to involuntary grimaces and move-
ments of the head ; for haughty and discour-
teous, because when you salute him he takes no
notice of you ; for a man without consideration
for others, because he speaks of bankruptcy in
a family that lies under that ban ; of executions
and scaffolds before a man whose father was
beheaded ; of mean extraction, before wealthy
farmers of the revenue who try to pass for
noblemen. In short, he seems as if he were
not present, and did not hear what was being
talked about. He thinks and talks at the same time,
but what he says is rarely what he is thinking
of, consequently there is seldom any coherence
in his talk ; he says no when he ought to say yes,
and yes, supposing that he is saying no. When he
answers you his eyes may be fixed on yours,
but it does not follow that he sees you. He is
not looking at you, nor at any one, nor at any-
thing in the world. All that you can drag from
him in his most communicative moments are
such words as " Yes indeed ; it is true; good ; all
the better ; I think so ; certainly; oh, heaven! "
and other equally appropriate monosyllables.
Then he is never with those with whom he
seems to be : he addresses his footman as Sir, and
his friend as Jeames ; a prince of the blood as
His Reverence, and a Jesuit as Your Highness.
62

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN

When he is at mass, if the priest sneezes, he cries The Absent-
out loud " God bless you." He chances to Minded Man
be in the company of a judge, a man of grave
disposition, venerable by his age, character and
dignity, who asks him about a certain event, and
demands if the circumstances were so, " Yes,
miss," replies Menalcas.

Once when he was returning from the country
his footmen plotted to rob him, and succeeded
in their plan. They jumped off the carriage,
held the torch under his nose, demanded his
purse, which he delivered to them. Having
reached home he told his adventure to his
friends, and when they questioned him as to
details, said, " Ask my servants ; they were
there."

63

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE RICH MAN

^ITON has a fresh complexion, a full face,
a steady, determined eye, is broad
P fi shouldered and broad chested, and has
a firm, deliberate gait. He speaks con-
fidently, and makes his interlocutor repeat what
he says, and is only indifferently pleased with
whatever is said. He pulls out a big handkerchief
and blows his nose with much noise. He spits
all about and sneezes very loudly. He dozes
in the day-time, he sleeps soundly at night, he
snores in company. He takes up more room
than any one else at table and on the public
promenade. In walking with his equals he
takes the middle place. When he stops, they
stop ; he walks on, they walk on ; all are ruled by
him. He interrupts, and takes up those whose
turn it is to speak, but he is never interrupted,
he is listened to as long as he likes to speak ; all
are of his opinion, all believe the news he tells.
If he sits down, he lolls in an armchair, crosses
his legs, wrinkles his brows, pulls his hat over
his eyes that he may see nobody, then pushing
64

THE RICH MAN

it back shows a haughty and supercilious ex- The Rich

pression of countenance. He is merry, for ever "Ian

laughing, impatient, arrogant, choleric, irreligious,

politic, mysterious about the events of the time.

He believes that he has talent and wit. He is

rich.

65

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE POOR MAN

ilJ^HEDON has hollow eyes, a red com-
plexion, a dried up body, and a thin face.
He sleeps little and very lightly. He
is moody, a dreamer, and possessing
intelligence, appears stupid. He neglects to say
what he knows, or to speak of events with which
he is acquainted. If sometimes he does speak,
he comes lamely off ; he thinks that he must be
boring those to whom he is talking. He speaks
concisely, but coldly. He does not rivet the
attention of his hearers, nor does he amuse
them. He applauds, he smiles at what others
say to him, he is of their opinion. He is eager
to perform little services for them, he is a
flatterer, ever anxious to please. He is mysteri-
ous about his own affairs, and sometimes a liar ;
he is superstitious, full of scruples and very
timid. He steps softly and lightly, he seems
afraid to tread the ground. He walks with
eyes cast down, not daring to raise them to
the passers-by. He is never among those who
meet in order to converse. He places himself

66

THE POOR MAN

behind him who is speaking, listens to what is The Poor
said as if by stealth and withdraws if any one "^^'^

looks at him. He neither occupies nor retains
any place. He goes about with his shoulders
shrugged, his hat pulled down over his eyes that
he may not be recognized. He wraps himself
in his cloak ; there is no street or gallery so
thronged and crowded but he finds a way through
it without jostling, and steals along unperceived.
If he is asked to sit down, he seats himself on
the edge of the chair ; in conversation he speaks
softly and indistinctly. He is, nevertheless,
candid with his friends on public affairs, is
irritated with the times, regards neither minis-
ters nor government favourably. He only
opens his mouth to reply, he coughs, blows his
nose under his hat, spits almost upon himself,
waits until he is alone to sneeze, or if that is
impossible, contrives that no one shall hear him.
He costs nobody a compliment nor a greeting.
He is poor.

67

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR

^^^OLLECTING is not a taste for what is
I ^^^ good and beautiful, but for what is rare
fti^l^g and unique, for things that other men
do not possess. Neither is it a desire
for what is perfect, but for what is most run
after, what is the fashion. It is not an amuse*
ment, but a passion, and often so violent a one
that it yields to love and ambition only in the
pettiness of its object. Neither is it a passion
for everything that is scarce and in vogue, but
only for some particular object that is rare and
at the same time the fashion.

The amateur of flowers has a garden in the
suburbs of the town ; he goes there at dawn
and leaves at sunset. He seems as if planted
there and to have taken root amid his tulips.
Standing before the Hermit he opens his eyes
wide, rubs his hands, stoops down, looks at it
more closely ; he has never seen it look so beau-
tiful before ; he is in an ecstasy of joy. He quits
that for the Oriental, thence to the Widow, pro-
ceeds to the Cloth of Gold, and then on to the
68

THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR

Agatha. At last he returns to the Hermit, where The

he stays, and, tired with his perambulations, sits Enthusiastic
J J r . . ,. . , . Collector

down ana forgets his dinner in contemplating

and admiring its lights and shades, its expanse
piece by piece. But God and Nature are not
what he admires in all that ; he goes no further
than the bulb of his tulip, which he would not
part with for a thousand crowns, though he
would give it away for nothing if tulips should
grow out of fashion and carnations should be-
come the flower in vogue. This reasonable
creature, who has a soul, and professes a reli-
gion, returns home tired and famished, but in-
finitely pleased with his day ; he has seen tulips !
Talk to another amateur of the rich crops, of
the plentiful harvest, of the good vintage ! You
discover that he is only interested in fruit, and
does not understand a word you say. Speak to
him of figs or melons, tell him the pear-trees
this year are bowed down with the weight of
their fruit, that peaches are abundant ; nothing
of that is in his way, he cares only for plums.
But if you proceed to discuss plums in general
you get no reply, he is only fond of a certain
species of them, and sneers at the mention of
any others. He leads you to the tree, with much
ado gathers the exquisite plum, divides it, taking
one half himself and giving you the other. ' ' What
pulp," he says ; "just taste it. Isn't it divine ?

69

Collector

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The You'll find nothing to match it in the whole

^"*!il^A'ff!^'^ world." And at this his nostrils are inflated ; he
can scarcely hide his joy and vanity under a
semblance of modesty. Oh, what a really divine
personage ! A man never enough to be praised
and admired ; a man to be celebrated through all
the ages ! Let me examine his mien and shape
while he lives, that I may impress on my mind
the features and expression of a man who alone
among mortals possesses such a plum !

A satirist relates how there are men who,
either through restlessness or curiosity, make
long voyages, yet keep no journal and write
no accounts of their travels ; who go to see,
and see nothing or forget what they have seen ;
who desire only to get acquainted with new
turrets and steeples, and to cross rivers that are
not named the Seine or the Loire ; who leave
their country in order to return to it again ; who
like to be away in order that they may one day
have returned from a long distance. Having
spoken so far, he adds that books are more in-
structive than travel, and having given me to
understand that he possesses a library, I express
a wish to see it. I pay him a visit, and he re-
ceives me in a house where, on the staircase
itself, I am ready to faint at the scent of the
Russian leather in which his books are bound.
To revive me he shouts at me that they are all

70

Collector

THE ENTHUSIASTIC COLLECTOR

gilt edged and beautifully tooled in gold, that the The

editions are most rare, enumerates the titles of Enthusiastic
the best of them, and tells me that in some por-
tions of the library, the volumes are so cunningly
simulated as to deceive the eye, to be taken for
real books resting on the shelves. He adds that
he never reads or sets foot in his library, that
he is there now only to do me pleasure. I thank
him for his kindness, and wish no more than he
does ever again to see the tan-pit that he calls
his library.

71

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE MAN OF LETTERS

GO to your door, Clitophon ; my need
of your interest gets me early out of
my bed and my room. Would to
heaven I had no occasion to solicit or
be troublesome to you ! Your servants tell me
that you are engaged, and that it will be quite
an hour before you can see me. I return within
the time, and am told that you are gone out.
What is it, Clitophon, that you have to do of
such importance in your most retired study, that
you cannot afford me a moment ? You file papers,
collate a register, you sign documents. I only
had one thing to ask you, and you but one
word to answer, yes or no. If you would be
esteemed, do good offices to your dependants ;
you will gain more credit by that conduct than
by making yourself inaccessible. O, you person of
importance, oppressed with business, when you
stand in need of my assistance, come to the
solitude of my apartment ! The philosopher is
accessible. I shall not put you off till another
day. You will find me turning over the books
72

THE MAN OF LETTERS

of Plato, which treat of the spirituality of the The Man
soul, and of its differentia from the body ; or pen °' Letters
in hand calculating the distances of Saturn and
Jupiter. I admire the works of God, and en-
deavour, by knowing the truth, to regulate my
intelligence and to become a better man. Pray
enter, all my doors are open to you, my ante-
room is not made for you to tire yourself in with
waiting ; come straight in and find me without
troubling to send in your name. You bring me
something more precious than gold and silver if
it is an opportunity for me to oblige you. Tell
me, what can I do for you ? Must I leave my
books, my studies, my writing, the line I have
just begun ? It is a happy interruption for me
if I can be of use to you. The manipulator of
money, the man of business is a bear that is not
to be tamed. You can scarcely ever see him at
home. What do I say ? You do not see him at
all, for at first it is you cannot see him yet — soon
you see him no more. While on the other hand,
the man of letters is as accessible as the common
roadway. He is seen by every one, at all times,
and in all conditions: at table, in bed, naked,
dressed, well or ill. He cannot play the person
of importance, nor does he wish to do so.

73

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE DRAWING-ROOM PEDANT

ERMAGORAS does not know who is
king of Hungary, and is astonished not
to hear mention of the king of Bohemia.
Do not speak to him of the wars of
Flanders or Holland, or at least you must ex-
cuse him from answering the questions you ask
concerning them. He does not know when they
began or ended, those battles and sieges are all
new to him. But he is learned in the wars of
the giants, and can relate their progress and all
the details of the campaign ; nothing has escaped
him. With equal fluency he discourses of the
terrible downfall of the Babylonian and Assyrian
Empires, he is learned in the Egyptians and their
dynasties. He has never seen Versailles, and
never will see it, but he has almost seen the
tower of Babel and counted its stories ; he knows
how many architects were employed, and what
were their names. If he knows Henry IV to
be the son of Henry III, it is as much as I can
affirm. Ask him about the houses of France,
Austria, and Bavaria. " What trifles ! " he ex-

74

THE DRAWING-ROOM PEDANT

claims, and rolls off from memory a list of the The Draw-
kings of Media and Babylon ; and the names of ing-Room
Apronal, Herigebal, Noesnemordach, Mardo- ^®^^"*
kempad are as familiar to him as those of Valois
and Bourbon are to us. He asks if the Emperor
is married, but needs no one to tell him that
Ninus had two wives. He hears that the king
enjoys excellent health, and he remembers that
Thetmosis, a king of Egypt, was a valetudinarian
and that he inherited that condition from his
grandfather, Alipharmutosis. "What is there that
he does not know? What in the whole of
antiquity is hidden from him ? He will tell you
that Semiramis, or, as some will have it, Seri-
maris, talked so much like her son Ninyas that
they were not to be distinguished by their speech ;
but he dares not decide whether the mother had
a manly voice like her son, or the son an effem-
inate voice like his mother. He informs you
that Nimbrot was left-handed and Sesostris am-
bidexter ; that it is an error to imagine that one
of the Artaxerxes was called Longimanus be-
cause his arms reached down to his knees, and
not because one of his arms was longer than the
other : he adds that although some grave authors
state that it was his right arm, he has certain
proof that it was the left.

75

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE MAN OF UNIVERSAL
KNOWLEDGE

|RRIAS has read and seen everything, at
least he would have it thought so. He
gives himself out to be a man of univer-
sal knowledge and would rather lie than
be silent or appear ignorant of anything. At din-
ner conversation turned on a great man at a north-
ern court. Arrias broke in and would not permit
those who were talking to say what they knew,
but discoursed concerning that far-off land as if
he were a native of it. He described the man-
ners of its court, its women, its laws and customs ;
he told stories of what happened there, and
thinking them extremely entertaining, was the
first to laugh uproariously at them. Some one
presumes to contradict him, and clearly demon-
strates that what he says is not true. Arrias is
not disconcerted ; on the contrary he takes arms
against his antagonist : "I aver nothing but
what I know to be true. I had it from Sethon,
76

THE MAN OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE

the French ambassador to that court, who re- The Man of

turned to Paris a few days ago, and is my Universal

Knowledge
familiar friend. I questioned him closely and he

concealed nothing from me." He continued his

story with even more confidence than he had

begun it, when one of the guests informed him

that he had been speaking to Sethon himself,

lately arrived from his embassy.

77

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE MAN WHO WILL BE
COMFORTABLE

ERMIPPUS is the slave of what he calls
his little comforts ; to them he sacrifices

I received customs, usages, fashions, nay
even decorum. He seeks them in every-
thing, discards a less for a greater, neglects none
that are practicable, makes a study of them, and
not a day passes that he does not make some
new discovery of the kind. Dinner and supper
he leaves to others, he scarcely admits the
existence of the terms, he eats when he is
hungry, and then only of the dishes he likes
best. He must see his bed made, but what hand
is skilful or well trained enough to make it so
that he may sleep as he desires to sleep. He
seldom goes abroad, but loves to keep his room,
where, in the garb of a sick man, he is neither
idle nor busy, but incessantly employed in doing
nothing. Others are slavishly dependent on
smiths and joiners, according to their needs ; as
for him if filing is in question, he has a file ; if
sawing, a saw ; and pincers if something has to

78

THE MAN WHO WILL BE COMFORTABLE

be pulled out. In fact there is no tool imaginable The Man

that he does not possess, and those infinitely who will be

. ^^ , , , , comfortable

better and more to his liking than any used by

professional workmen ; he has, too, new ones
and unknown ones that have no name, inventions
of his own, of which he has almost forgotten
the use. No one can be compared to him for
doing with despatch and without labour any use-
less piece of work. He had to take ten steps
to go from his bed to his wardrobe, he has now
so arranged his room that he has only to take
nine ; how many steps saved in the course of a
life-time ! It is usual to turn the key, thrust or
pull, before you open a door. What a fatigue !
He knows how to save himself such an unneces-
sary exertion, but the method is a mystery he
keeps to himself. He is in truth a great master
of springs and mechanism, such at least as the
world could do very well without. He brings
light to his apartments otherwise than through
the window, he has found the secret of going up
and down the house otherwise than by the stair-
case, and is studying how to get in and out more
conveniently than by the door.

79

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

NEWSMONGERS, PESSIMISTS AND
OPTIMISTS

HOSE who sit peacefully by their own
firesides, and live in the midst of their
families and in a town where nothing is
to be feared for the safety of their lives
or property, are the men who generally breathe
fire and sword, talk continually of war, pillage,
conflagrations and massacres, are out of patience
that the armies which are carrying on the cam-
paign do not meet, or if once in sight of each
other, that they do not give battle, or if they en-
gage, that the combat was not more bloody, and
that scarcely ten thousand men were killed.
Sometimes they go so far as to forget their
dearest interests, their repose and safety, out of
their love for change, their desire for novelty, or
for things out of the ordinary. Some would
even like to see the enemy at the gates of the
city, barricades thrown up, and chains stretched
for the mere pleasure of hearing or telling the
news.

Demophilus, on my right, laments and cries :
So

NEWSMONGERS

" All is lost, all is up with the country, at least
it is on the brink of ruin. How can we resist so
strong and general a coalition ? By what means
may we, I dare not say conquer, but even make
head against such numerous and powerful
enemies ? The whole of history does not afford
an example. A hero, an Achilles would succumb.
We have committed gross errors. I know what I
am talking about, I have been a soldier myself,
and reading has likewise taught me much. ' ' Then
he speaks with admiration of Olivier le Daim
and Jacques Coeur : "Those were men," he says,
"those were ministers." He retails his news,
which is sure to be the most disadvantageous
and melancholy that can be forged. Now a
party of our men have fallen into an ambuscade
and been cut to pieces, now some troops shut up
in a castle have surrendered at discretion and
been put to the sword ; and if you tell him that
the report is false or needs confirmation he does
not listen to you, he adds that a general has been
killed ; and although you assure him that he is
only slightly wounded, he deplores his death,
pities his widow and children, and bemoans his
own loss ; he has lost a good friend and a kind
patron. He tells you that the German cavalry
are invincible, and turns pale if you but mention
the Imperial Cuirassiers. " If we attack that
place," he continues, "we shall be obliged to

8i F

News-
mongers,
Pessimists

and
Optimists

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

News-
mongers,
Pessimists

and
Optimists

raise the siege, and if we, lose it the enemy will
be at our frontiers," whence Demophilus hastens
them into the heart of the kingdom He already
hears the alarm sounded from the belfries, he is
in fear for his property and his lands. Whither
shall he remove his money, his furniture, his
family ? Where shall he take refuge ? In
Switzerland or Venice ?

But, on my left, Basilides raises an army of
three hundred thousand men in a minute ; he will
not abate you a single brigade. He has a list of
the squadrons, battalions, generals and officers,
not omitting the artillery and baggage. He as-
signs these forces their various parts. Some he
sends into Germany, others into Flanders, re-
serves a certain number for the Alps, a lesser
for the Pyrenees, and transports the rest beyond
sea. He knows the marches of these forces, he
can tell what they will do and what they will
not do, you would think he had the king's ear
or was in the minister's confidence. If the
enemy lost a battle with nine to ten thousand
killed, he declares it to be thirty thousand,
neither more nor less, for his numbers are al-
ways fixed and certain, as with a well-informed
man. If he hears in the morning that we have
lost a paltry village, he not only sends an excuse
to the friends he had invited to dinner, but
he fasts, and if he sups, it is without appetite.
82

NEWSMONGERS

If we besiege a place, naturally strong, regularly
fortified, and well stored with ammunition and
food, besides a good garrison commanded by a
brave general, he tells you that the town has
its weak, ill-fortified spots, that they want pow-
der, and that the governor wants experience,
and that it must capitulate after eight days' open
trenches. At another time he runs in all out oi
breath, and as soon as he has recovered a little,
exclaims, "Here's news! they are beaten, totally
routed ; the general, the superior officers, at
least a great part of them, are killed ; all have
perished. There's slaughter ! ' It must be con-
fessed that we enjoy great good fortune." Then
he sits down and breathes once again after this
extraordinary news, which, however, lacks one de-
tail, namely, that there never was any such battle.
He assures us further that a certain prince with-
draws from the league and abandons his con-
federates, and that another is ready to take the
same step, he firmly believes with the populace
that a third is dead, and names the place of his
burial, and even when the whole town is unde-
ceived, persists in laying wagers on it. He
has indubitable information that Tekeli is making
great progress against the Emperor; that the
Grand Signior is making formidable preparations,
does not desire a peace, and that his Vizier will
once more sit down before Vienna. He claps

83

News-
mongers,
Pessimists

and
Optimists

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

News-
mongers,
Pessimists

and
Optimists

his hands and is in ecstasy over this event, in
which he firmly believes. He talks of nothing
but laurels, triumphs, and trophies. He says in
common talk, " Our august hero, our mighty
potentate, our invincible monarch." Make him,
if you can, say simply, "the king has a great
many enemies, they are powerful, united, ex-
asperated ; he has overcome them and I hope
will always overcome them." That style, too
bold and decisive for Hemophilus, is neither
pompous nor exaggerated enough for Basilides.
He has very different phrases in his head ; he
is composing inscriptions for the triumphal arches
and pyramids which will adorn the metropolis at
the conqueror's entry, and as soon as he hears
that the armies are in sight of each other, or
that a town is invested, he orders his robes to
be aired against the Te Deum.

84

THE MAN OF CAPRICE

THE MAN OF CAPRICE

■ HE capricious man is not one man but
several ; he multiplies himself as often
as he changes his tastes and his man-
ners. He is not this minute what he
was the last, and will not be the next what he
is now ; he succeeds himself. Do not ask him
of what party he is, but what are his parties ?
Nor of what humour, but how many sorts of
humour he has ? Are you not mistaken ? Is
it Euthychrates whom you met ? How cold he
is to day ! Yesterday he sought you out and
caressed you; his friends were quite jealous.
Does he remember you ? Tell him your name.

85

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE LITTLE " GREAT MAN "

iv^AMPHILUS does not converse with the
people he meets in the rooms of the
palace, or in the courtyards, but by
his gravity and the raising of his voice,
he seems to receive them, grant them audience,
and dismiss them. He has a parcel of terms,
at once civil and haughty, and an imperious
courtesy which he uses without discernment,
and a false dignity which lowers him and is
vastly embarrassing to those who are his friends
and who do not desire to despise him.

A Pamphilus is full of himself ; he never loses
sight of himself, of his greatness, his alliances,
his offices, his dignity ; so to speak he collects
them all together, and wraps himself in them
in order to demonstrate his great worth.
He mentions : " My order, my blue ribbon," and
displays or hides it, both from ostentation. In
short, Pamphilus would be great and believes
that he is so ; but he is nothing of the kind, only
a mere imitation of a great man. If ever he
smiles on an inferior, on a wit, he chooses his
86

THE LITTLE "GREAT MAN"

time so well that he is never caught in such The Little

familiarity. If, unfortunately, he was surprised "Great

ivian **
m any condescension to a person who is not

rich or powerful, or the friend of a minister, or
his ally, or his servant, he would blush up to his
ears. He is inexorably severe to him who has
not yet made his fortune. He meets you one
day in the gallery and avoids you ; the next day
coming upon you in a less public place, or, if
equally public, in company of persons of impor-
tance, he goes up to you with confidence, and
says: " Yesterday you would not look at me,"
and then he leaves you hastily to accost a lord
or some great official. If he finds such persons
talking with you, he interrupts and carries them
off. You meet him another time, he will not
stop ; you must run after him and talk so loud
that the passers-by wonder and stare. Thus the
Pamphiluses always seem to be on a stage,
actors of comedy, a kind of men nourished in
falsehood, and who hate nothing so much as to
be natural.

We can never say enough of the Pamphiluses ;
they are servile and timorous before princes and
ministers ; proud and overbearing to those who
possess nothing but virtue ; dumb and confused
before the learned ; talkative, bold, and positive
with the ignorant. They talk of war to a law-
yer, politics to a financier, history to women,

87

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Little poetry to men of science, and mathematics to
M ^^"* poets. They do not trouble themselves with
maxims, and less with principles. They live at
random, pushed and driven by the wind of favour,
and the allurements of wealth. They have no
opinions of their own, they borrow them as
they want them, and he to whom they apply for
them is neither wise, learned, nor virtuous, but
a man of fashion.

88

THE PARVENU

THE PARVENU

HEAR much talk of the Sannions ; " the
same name, the same arms ; the older
branch, the younger branch, the young-
est branch of the youngest house ; the
armorial bearings of the first are without quarter-
ings, the second with a label, and the third with
a bordure indented. Their colour and metal are
the same as those of the Bourbons, and like them
they bear two and one. It is true they are not
Fleurs de Lis, but the Sannions are satisfied, and
perhaps believe in their hearts their bearings as
noble ; at least they are not inferior to those of
persons of the first quality. Their arms are to
be seen on their windows, their castle gates, their
justiciary pillars, where many a man is hanged
who only deserved banishment. They strike the
eye everywhere ; on their furniture, on their
locks ; their carriages are covered with them,
and their liveries are as resplendent as their
coats of arms. But I should like to say to the
Sannions : " Your folly is premature, you should
wait at least until your race has existed for a

89

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Parvenu century. Those who have met and spoken with
your grandfather are old and cannot Uve long.
Who then would be able to say ' He kept a shop
and sold very dear?'"

The Sannions and the Crispins like still better
to be thought extravagant and able to spend
money. They bore you with a long story of a
fete or banquet they gave, they confide to you
their losses at play, and they complain loudly of
that which they had not thought to lose. They
speak in a mysterious jargon of certain women of
their acquaintance, they have a hundred amusing
stories to tell each other, " they have just made
some curious discoveries," and pass with each
other for men of great intrigue. One of them
going to bed late in the country, and who loves
to sleep long, rises early, dons his gaiters and a
shooting coat, belt, and powder flask, and takes
his gun, and is a sportsman if only he could
shoot ! He returns at night, wet and weary,
without having hit anything. But he goes shoot-
ing again on the morrow, and so spends every
day in missing thrushes and partridges.

go

THE BOURGEOIS

THE BOURGEOIS THEN AND NOW

]HE Roman Emperors never triumphed so
nicely, commodiously and surely over
wind, rain, dust, and sun as the citizens
of Paris when they drive about the town.
What a distance from this custom to the rule of
their ancestors ! They did not understand how
to deprive themselves of necessities in order to
have luxuries, nor did they prefer show to sub-
stance. Their houses were not lighted with wax
candles, and they warmed themselves at a small
fire. Wax lights were for altars and palaces. They
did not rise from a bad dinner to get into a coach,
but, convinced that men had legs given them
to walk with, they used them. In dry weather
they kept themselves clean, and in wet they did
not mind soiling their shoes, as little troubled to
cross a street or square as a sportsman trudging
over a ploughed field or a soldier into the damp
trenches. They had not then invented harness-
ing two men to a Sedan chair ; their magistrates
themselves walked to the courts with as good a
grace as Augustus to the Capitol. In those days

91

now

LA bruye're and VAUVENARGUES

The pewter shone on their tables and sideboards,

Bourgeois brass and iron on their chimney pieces, while
silver and gold lay safe in their coffers. Women
were then waited on by women, who were like-
wise employed in the service of the kitchen. The
fine names of tutors and governesses were not
unknown to our fathers ; they knew to whose care
were entrusted the children of kings and princes.
But they shared the service of their domestics
towards their children, and were content to
superintend their immediate education them-
selves. Everything they did was suitable to
their circumstances, their expenditure was pro-
portioned to their income, their liveries, equip-
ages, furniture, table, town and country houses
were all in proportion to their revenue and
circumstances. Less desirous of spending or
increasing their patrimony than of keeping it,
they left it entire to their heirs and passed from
a quiet life to a peaceful death. They did not
complain that the times were hard, that poverty
abounded, that money was scarce. They had
less than we have, and yet they had enough ;
and were richer by their economy and modera-
tion than by their revenues and lands. In those
days they believed in the maxim that what is
splendour, sumptuousness, magnificence in people
of rank is profusion, foolishness, and ostentation
in private men.

92

THE MONEY GRUBBER

THE MONEY GRUBBER

■ HERE are some sordid souls, grovelling
in filth and ordure, to whom interest
and gain are what glory and virtue are
to fine minds. They are sensible of
but one pleasure, to acquire, or at least never to
lose. They are covetous and greedy to a farth-
ing, busied sorely about their debtors, ever
anxious about a debasing of the coinage, plunged
and almost buried in contracts, title deeds, and
mortgages. Such people are neither relations,
friends, citizens. Christians, nor even men : they
have money.

93

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE AFFECTED TALKER

|HAT do you say? What? I don't
understand. Would you mind begin-
ning again? I comprehend you still
less. I can partly guess your meaning
— ^you want to tell me, Acis, that it is cold.
Why don't you say it is cold ? You want to in-
form me that it is raining or snowing. Well then,
say it rains, it snows. You find me looking well,
and wish to congratulate me on that circum-
stance. Then say ' You look well.' ' Oh !' you
reply, but that is so plain and clear, any one
might have said it. What does that matter,
Acis ? Is it so great a harm to be intelligible,
and to speak like the rest of the world ? There
is one thing, Acis, which you and your com-
panions want, although you haven't an idea of it,
one thing you lack, and that is wit. That is not
all, there is another thing of which you have too
much, and that is the opinion that you have more
of it than other men ; that is the source of all
your bombastic, barbarous, and grotesque phrases
which mean nothing. Next time you address

THE AFFECTED TALKER

anybody I shall pluck you by the sleeve and The

whisper : Don't pretend that you have wit, have ^^y^
none, that is your part. Cultivate, if you can,
simple language such as those employ in whom
you find no wit ; maybe then, people will think
you have some yourself."

95

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE PERFECT WOMAN

^E said that wit in that beautiful lady^ was
a diamond set to best advantage, and
continuing to speak of her added : "A
flavour of reason and charm combined
strikes all who talk to her. She possesses qualities
which would make a perfect friend, and also those
which would lead you beyond the bounds of friend-
ship. Too young and beautiful not to please, but
too modest to seek to do so, she esteems men only
for their merit, and thinks of them only as friends.
Full of vivacity, and capable of deep feeling, she
surprises and interests, and although she per-

1 This lady was Catherine Turgot, daughter of the Saint-
Clair Turgot, doyen de conseil. She married in 1686 at the age
of thirteen, Gilles d'Aligre de Boislandry. For seven years
M. and Mme. de Boislandry lived happily together. Then
M. de Boislandry took exception to his wife's conduct
and they separated. In 1694 the poet Chaulieu became
Catherine's lover, and it was he who revealed the identity of
La Bruyfere's Arthenice. Chaulieu addresses her in his poems
as Iris. Having become a widow she married as her second
husband M. de Chevilly in 1712, and nothing further is known
of her except that she died in 1737. La Bruyfere probably
describes her as she was in the early days of her first
marriage.

96

THE PERFECT WOMAN

fectly understands the delicate and fine shades The Perfect
of conversation, makes sometimes sallies so Woman
happy that, among other pleasures they afford,
they always dispense with a reply. She talks with
you like one who is unlearned, who doubts and
seeks to be enlightened ; she listens to you like
one who knows a great deal, who fully compre-
hends the value of what you are saying, with
whom nothing of what you say will be lost. Far
from seeking to show her wit by contradicting
you, and from imitating Elvira, who would
rather be thought smart than sensible and
discreet, she adopts your ideas, believes them
to be her own, even extends and embellishes
them ; thus you are delighted to have thought so
well, and to have spoken so much better than
you had imagined. She despises vanity whether
she speaks or writes, she neglects figures of
speech where reason is in question, she under-
stands that the truest eloquence is simplicity.
If it be a matter of doing some one a service, of
making your interests concur, leaving fine words
and phrases to Elvira, who uses them on all
occasions, Arthenice employs only sincerity,
ardour, earnestness, and persuasion. She finds
her chief pleasure in reading, and in conversing
with persons of worth and reputation, and this
not so much to be known to them, as to know
them. She may be praised in advance for all

97 G

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Perfect the wisdom which will one day be hers, and for
Woman gu the merit which the future holds for her ; for
possessing, with an unexceptional conduct, better
intentions, and sure principles useful to those who,
like her, are exposed to flattering attentions, and
being of a retiring nature without being brusque,
and even a little inclined to avoid society, she only
wants opportunity, or, so to speak, a stage in
order to display all her virtues."

98

THE COQUETTE

THE COQUETTE

^RGIRA pulls off her glove to show her
beautiful hand, and never forgets to
let her little shoe be seen that supposes
a small foot. She laughs equally at
things funny and serious, in order to show her
fine set of teeth. If she shows her ears, it is
because they are well formed. If she does not
dance, it is because she is dissatisfied with her
figure, which is indeed not of the slimmest. She
understands all her points with the exception of
one, that she is perpetually talking and lacks in-
telligence.

99

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE FASHIONABLE DANDY

JjT church Iphis sees a new-fashioned
shoe. He looks at his own and blushes
for it, he cannot think himself dressed.
He went to mass only to be seen, and
now he hides himself, kept at home by the foot
for the rest of the day. He has a soft hand and
preserves it by using a scented paste. He takes
care to laugh often in order to show his teeth,
and is, indeed, perpetually smiling. He surveys
his legs, looks at himself in the glass, and nobody
could be more pleased with another than he is
with himself. He has acquired a soft clear
voice, and fortunately talks with fluency. He
has a movement of the head, and a kind of
expression in the eyes, both of which he does
not neglect to use to the best advantage.
His gait is slow, and his attitudes prettily
studied. Occasionally he puts on a little rouge,
but not habitually. It is true that he wears
breeches and a hat, and that he has neither
ear-rings nor necklace, therefore I have not put
him in my chapter " of women."

100

THE EGOIST

THE EGOIST

jNATHON lives for nobody but himself,
and for him the rest of the world are
Bj^ P as if they were not. Not content
with the best seat at table, he must
take up the room of two others ; he forgets that
dinner is for the rest of the company as well as
for him. He lays hold of every dish, and must
taste of them all before he can decide of which
to eat. He makes himself at home wherever he
may be, and whether at church or at the play
behaves as if he were in his own room. When
he drives, he must always sit backwards ; sitting
forwards, he says, makes him feel faint. When
he travels in company he goes before the rest
into the inns, and picks out for himself the best
room and the best bed and appropriates everything
to his own use. His own servants, as well as
those of others, hasten to serve him. He worries
every one, puts himself out for none, pities none,
recognizes no troubles but his own, no sufferings
but his own, laments nobody's death, and to
prevent his own would willingly consent to the
extinction of mankind.

lOI

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE MAN OF CONVENTION

JARCISSUS rises in the morning to go
H to bed at night, has a fixed hour for
i his toilette like a woman, and attends
mass regularly every day. He is
good company, and may be counted on for a
third or fifth at ombre or reversi. He sits for
four hours together at Aricia's, where every
evening he ventures his five or six pistoles.
He never misses reading the newspapers, and
is acquainted with the works of Cyrano de
Bergerac and others, and some collections of
poems. He accompanies ladies in the public
promenades, and is religiously punctual in his
visits^ He will do the same to-morrow as he
has done to-day, and as he did yesterday, and
he will die after having lived so.

102

THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE

THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE

ITIUS hears a will read with tearful eyes
and swollen lids, and is overcome with
grief at the loss of a friend by whose
death he will inherit a fortune: one
clause bestows on him the succession of a
post, another house property, a third gives him
a fine country estate, and a fourth makes him
master of a richly-furnished house situated in
the best part of Paris; his grief increases, the
tears run down his cheeks. How can he refrain
from weeping ? He has now an office, a town
house, and a country house, both well furnished,
he will be able to keep his carriage and a well-
provided table. " Was there ever a more honest,
a better man than my poor friend ?" But here is
a codicil that must be read ; it makes Maevius
residuary legatee, and sends Titius back to his
garret without sinecure, horses, lands, or money.
He dries his tears ; it is now the turn of Maevius
to weep.

103

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

, FOOLS

l^r^^ FOOL is an automaton, a machine with
[w'SilJl springs which turn him about always in
li^^Mi,^ one manner, and preserve his equili-
brium. He is ever the same, and never
changes. If you have seen him once you have
seen him at every moment and period of his life.
He is at best but ^s the lowing ox or the whist-
ling blackbird. He is fixed and obstinate, I may
say, by nature. What appears least in him is
his soul ; that has neither activity nor energy ; it
reposes.

104

THE GREAT CONDE

THE GREAT CONDE

(iEmilius)

EMILIUS was born what the greatest
men do not become but by force of rules,
study, and practice. He had no more
to do in his early years than to give
himself up to the bent of his natural talents and of
his genius. He performed actions before he had
gained knowledge, or rather he had knowledge
without ever having learnt. Shall I say that his
boyish games were so many victories ? It would
make a life of brilliant success and great exploits
only to have performed the actions of his youth.
All the opportunities that have since offered for
conquest he has embraced, and those which did
not exist his virtue and his good fortune created,
admirable alike for the things he did and for those
which he could have done. He was looked on as
a man incapable of yielding to an enemy, or of
giving way under numbers of obstacles. He was
regarded as a soul of a superior order, full oi
resource and intelligence, and who saw more
105

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

The' Great than others, like him who at the head of legions
Conde ^gg fQj. them a presage of victory, and who was
in his single person worth several legions. He
was great in prosperity, greater even in adversity ;
the raising of a siege or a retreat have gained
him more honour than his successes, such things
come only second to battles won and towns
taken. He was filled equally with glory and
modesty. He has been heard to say '< I fled,"
with the same grace that he said "We beat
them." He is devoted to the State, to his family
and its head, true to God and man, as much
an admirer of merit as if he had been himself less
well acquainted with it, a man sincere, simple,
magnanimous, in whom none of the virtues were
wanting but the inferior ones.

io6

FONTENELLE

FONTENELLE

(Cydias)

JSCANIUS is a statuary, Region a founder,
Aeschines a fuller, and Cydias a wit.
He has a sign, a workshop, commis-
sions, and apprentices who work under
him. It will be a month before you can have the
stanzas he promised you, unless he breaks his
word to Dosithea, who has ordered an elegy from
him. He has also an idyll on the stocks for
Grantor which is occupying him closely, and for
which he expects generous remuneration. Prose,
poetry, -what do you desire ? He is equally suc-
cessful in both. Do you want letters of condo-
lence, or about an absence, he will undertake
them, or there are plenty ready-made if you will
step into his shop and choose. He has a friend
whose sole function on earth is to speak of him
continually in society, and then to introduce him
into houses as a man of rare gifts and exquisite
conversation. And then like a singer or a lute-
player in the presence of persons to whom he
107

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Fontenelle has been talked of, Cydias, after coughing and
smoothing his ruffles, stretching forth his hand
and spreading his fingers, gravely utters his
volatilized ideas and his sophisticated arguments.
Differing from those who, agreeing in principle,
and recognizing reason and truth, interrupt each
other only to prove how their sentiments agree,
he only opens his mouth to contradict. "It
seems to me," he says condescendingly, " that it
is just the reverse of what you say," or " I must
differ from you," or " I was formerly under the
same infatuation, but . . . there are three
things," he adds, "to consider," and he never
fails to bring forward a fourth. He is a rapid
talker, whose first aim at coming into an assem-
bly is to get among the women, that he may
amaze them by exhibiting his wondrous talents.
For whether he speaks or writes he must not be
suspected of aiming at the presentment of truth
or falsehood, reason or absurdity; he equally
avoids agreeing with or holding a similar opinion
to the rest. Thus he often waits until all the
company have spoken their thoughts on some
casual subject, not seldom introduced by himself,
and then holds forth dogmatically, and as he
imagines decisively and unanswerably, on entirely
new themes. Cydias is the equal of Lucian and
Seneca, ranks himself above Plato, Virgil, and
Theocritus, and his flatterers confirm him every
io8

FONTENELLE

day in that opinion. United in taste and interest Fontenelle
with the detractors of Homer, he waits calmly
until men shall be undeceived and shall prefer
modern poets to him. In that case he ranks him-
self at the head of the latter, and he knows to
whom to adjudge the second place. In short he
is a cross between a pedant and a pricieux, made
to be admired by middle-class folk and provincials,
a man in whom, nevertheless, nothing great is to
be seen except the opinion he holds of himself.

log

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

LA FONTAINE

^fi5gji*ERE is a man who appears coarse,
! ^^ ll heavy, stupid ; he is unable to speak of
^^^ or describe what he may just have seen,
but when he begins to write he is the
model of story-tellers. He makes everything
speak that does not speak, animals, trees, stones ;
his works are full of lightness, elegance, good
humour, and delicacy.

He is more uniform than Marot, and more a
poet than Voiture. He has the playfulness, the
happy turn of phrase, the simplicity of both. He
instructs while he jests, and persuades men to
virtue by the organs of beasts. He confers
sublimity on the meanest subject. Unique in
his way of writing, always original whether he
invents or translates, he surpasses his models,
and is himself a model difficult 'to imitate.

J 10

A GOOD KING

A GOOD KING

HEN, towards sunset on a fine day, you
see a large flock dispersed over a hillside,
quietly grazing the wild thyme, or nibb-
ling in a meadow the short tender grass
that has escaped the reaper's scythe, the shepherd,
careful and diligent, stands upright among his
sheep ; he does not let them from his sight, he
follows them, leads them, changes their pasture.
If they go astray, he gathers them together
again. If a hungry wolf approaches, he lets
loose his dog, and so puts him to flight. He
cherishes and protects them. At dawn he is
already in the field, which he does not quit till
sunset. What anxiety ! What vigilance ! What
slavery ! Which condition appears the most
free and desirable, that of the shepherd or the
sheep ? Is the flock made for the shepherd, or
the shepherd for the flock ? Here we have a real
image of a king and his people, if he is a good
king.

Ill

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE PEOPLE

CERTAIN wild animals, male and female,
are to be seen spread over the land. They
are dark-skinned, tanned by the sun,
chained as it were to the earth which
they dig and plough with invincible steadiness.
They have something like an articulate voice,
and when they stand erect, reveal a human face,
and are, in fact, men. At night they retire into
their burrows, where they live on black bread,
water and roots. They spare other men the
trouble of sowing, toiling and reaping for their
sustenance, and thus deserve at least not to want
the bread for which they themselves have
toiled.

112

PICTURES OF NATURE

PICTURES OF NATURE

I.

AM approaching a small town and am
already on an eminence whence I can see
it. It is situated on the hill- side, a river
washes its walls and then winds through
beautiful meadows, while a thick forest protects
it from the cold north winds. The atmosphere
is so clear that I can count its towers and
steeples ; it looks as if painted on the slope of the
hill. I am enchanted and exclaim : << How
delightful it would be to live in so delicious a
spot, under so serene a sky ! " I enter the town,
and have not spent two nights there when I be-
come like its inhabitants, and want to get out
of it.

II.

Observe, Lucilius, that spot of earth so much
more beautiful and pleasing than the land con-
tiguous to it. Here are spaces of ground amid
which are dispersed pools and fountains ; there,
endless espalier walks which shelter you from
113 H

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Pictures of the north wind. On one side is a thick wood
Nature which affords you shade from the sun, and on
another an enchanting view. Lower is a rivulet
which once flowed in its hidden course between
willows and poplars, and is now become a
banked up canal. Spacious, cool avenues are
lost in the distance, and announce to you the
whereabouts of the house, which is surrounded
byjwater.

114

TOWN'S IGNORANCE OF THE COUNTRY

THE TOWN'S IGNORANCE OF THE
COUNTRY

jN the town people are brought up in total
ignorance of, and a blamable indiffer-
ence regarding, things of the country.
They can scarcely distinguish between
flax and hemp, wheat and rye, and either of those
from barley, they only care for eating, drinking and
dressing. It is useless to speak to inhabitants of
a town of pastures, copses, aftermath and second
crops, such terms are Greek to them. If you
talk to some of them of weights, tariffs and the
rate of interest ; to others of appeals, petitions,
decrees and injunctions, they will eagerly listen.
They know the world and what in it is least
beautiful, and least pleasing. They know nothing
about nature, her origins, her progress, her gifts
and bounties. Their ignorance is often voluntary,
and founded upon the conceit they have of their
own vocations and talents. There is not a petti-
fogger of them all who, sitting in his gloomy and
smoky study, his mind full of dark chicanery,
does not set himself higher than the labourer,
"5

the Country

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Town's who praises God, tills the earth, sows in due
*?.1°r>^,^«.«?. season and gathers in rich harvests, and if at
any time he hears talk of the first inhabitants of
the earth, or of the patriarchs, with their rural
and well-ordered lives, he is astonished that any
one could have lived at a time when there were
neither attorneys, nor counsellors, nor judges,
nor solicitors ; neither does he understand how
men could have done without the bar and
lawyers' clerks and coffee-houses.

ii6

REALISM AND THE STAGE

REALISM AND THE STAGE

T is not sufficient that the morals of the
stage shall not be bad, they should be
decent and instructive. Some things are
so low, so mean, so insipid and so insigni-
ficant in themselves that it is not permitted to the
poet to pay attention to them, nor possible for
the spectators to be amused by them. The
peasant or the drunkard may furnish some
scenes for the farce-writer, but they scarcely
enter into true comedy ; how then can they furnish
the basis or the principal action of comedy ?
" Such characters," you say, " are natural."
By that rule, the audience would be pleased with
a lackey whistling, or a drunkard snoring.
Could anything be more natural ? It is the way
of an effeminate fellow to get up late, spend part
of the day at his toilet, look at himself in the
glass, perfume himself, put on patches, receive
notes and answer them. Bring that part on to
the stage. The longer you make it last, one act,
two acts, the more natural and true to its original
it will be, but also the more insipid and dull.

"7

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

TIME

IVERY hour in itself is for each one of
us unique ; once past, it has gone for
ever, and not millions of ages will
bring it back. Days, months, and
years are fled away, and irrecoverably lost in
the abysm of time. Time itself shall be de-
stroyed ; it is but a point in the immense space of
eternity, and it will be effaced. There are
several light and frivolous circumstances of time
which are unstable and pass away ; such I call
fashions, greatness, favour, wealth, power,
authority, independence, pleasure, gaiety, super-
fluity. What will become of those fashions
when time itself shall have disappeared ? Only
virtue, so little the fashion, stretches beyond
time.

ii8

A MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY

A MEMBER OF A MUTUAL ADMIRATION
SOCIETY

^T^^RSENES contemplates mankind from
l^^\ffl the summit of self-conceit, and at the
Jyl^tBii distance from which he beholds them,
seems frightened at their littleness.
Praised and extolled to the skies by a knot of
persons who form a mutual admiration society,
he thinks with the little merit he has to possess
all that it is possible to have, all that he will never
possess. Filled with sublime ideas, he scarcely
finds time to pronounce a few oracles. Elevated
by his character above human judgment he
leaves to vulgar souls the merit of a regular,
orderly life, and is only responsible for his in-
consistencies to the circle of friends who wor-
ship him ; they alone judge correctly, think cor-
rectly, they alone write or ought to write. There
is, indeed, no work of genius, however well re-
ceived by the world, and universally liked by men
of sense, which he approves, or which he would
even condescend to read. He is incapable of
being corrected by this portrait, which he will
not read.

119

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

BRIEF REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND
THINGS

IVERYTHING has been said, and we
are come too late by the seven thousand
years that men have lived and thought.
The finest and best things about
morality have already been appropriated, and
nothing is left for us but to glean after the an-
cients, and the cleverest of the modems.

We must only seek to think and speak cor-
rectly without desiring to lead others to our
tastes and feelings ; that would be too large an
undertaking.

It is not so easy to make a name by an ex-
cellent work, as to make an indifferent work
valued through the name already acquired.

There are some things that will not bear
mediocrity ; poetry, music, painting, oratory.

It is a sorry commendation that is made of a
heap of epithets ; deeds and the manner of
relating them speak a man's praise.

120

REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND THINGS

The pleasure of criticism deprives us of that Brief Reflex-
of being profoundly touched by the finest things. "'"^ °^

■-' It is a happiness to be nobly descended ; it is Things
not a lesser happiness to have so much merit
that nobody enquires whether you are so or not.

A beautiful face is the most beautiful of all
sights, and the sweetest music is the sound of
the voice of her whom we love.

Women are all extremes : they are either
better or worse than men.

Women exceed the generality of men in love,
but men are their superiors in friendship.

Most women judge of a man's merit and looks
by the impression that they make on him, and
very rarely allow either to a man who is
indifferent to them.

The woman who has her eyes constantly fixed
on the same person, or who is always turning
them from him, makes us conclude one and
the same thing of her.

It costs a woman little to tell what she does
not feel, it costs a man still less to express what
he does feel.

There are few wives so perfect as not to give
their husbands cause to repent of marriage at

121

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Brief Reflex- least once a day, or to envy him who is un-
ions on married.
Men and

Things The passionless woman is she who has not

yet seen the man she is to love.

Pure friendship is something that cannot be
tasted by the mediocre.

Love and friendship exclude each other.

However fastidious we may be in love, we
forgive more faults in love than in friendship.

To be but in the company of those we love,
satisfies us. It does not signify whether we
speak to them or not, whether we think of them
or of indifferent things : to be near them is all.

That love can die is proof of man's limitations,
and that the heart has its bounds.

It is a weakness to love; it is sometimes
another weakness to be cured of it.

To be deprived of the person we love is happi-
ness compared to living with one we hate.

The things we most desire never happen, or
if they happen, it is neither at the time nor under
the circumstances when they would have given
most pleasure.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear
of dying before we have laughed.

122

REFLEXIONS ON MEN AND THINGS

There are some places we admire, and others Brief Reflex-

we love and where we should like to live. '°"^ °"

Men and

In the course of our lives there are some for- Things

bidden pleasures and engagements so dear and

tender that it is but natural at least to desire

that they were allowed. Nothing can be more

charming than they are except it be the pleasure

of renouncing them by the strength of virtue.

You cannot go far in friendship if you are not
willing to forgive each other little failings.

A king lacks nothing but the pleasures of
private life : he can only be consoled for so great
a loss by the charms of friendship and by the
fidelity of his friends.

There are some strange fathers who seem,
during the whole course of their lives, to be pre-
paring reasons why their children should be
easily consoled at their deaths.

The man who says he was not bom happy
may at least become so through the happiness of
his friends or relations. But envy robs him of
that last resource.

Take away passion, interest, injustice; what
a calm there would be in the greatest cities!
The necessaries of life do not occasion a third of
the embarrassment.

123

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Brief Reflex- If life be miserable, to live is painful ; if happy,

ions on jQ jjg jg terrible. Both come to the same thing.
Men and

Things There are but three events which happen to

mankind, birth, life and death. Of their birth

they know nothing, they suffer when they die,

and neglect to live.

Children have neither past nor future, but what
never happens with us, they enjoy the present.

All our misfortunes proceed from our inability
to be alone ; hence gaming, dissipation, wine,
women, ignorance, slander, envy, neglect of God
and ourselves.

Instead of being frightened or ashamed at the
name of philosopher, everybody ought to have
a strong tincture of philosophy. It becomes
every one ; its practice is useful to people of all
ages, sexes and conditions ; it comforts us under
the happiness of others, under unworthy pre-
ferences, disappointments, the decay of our
strength and beauty ; it arms us against poverty,
old age, disease and death; against fools and
buffoons ; it enables us to live without a wife, or
to endure her with whom we live.

All confidence is dangerous if it is not absolute.
In most circumstances it is needful either to tell
all or to conceal all.

124

VAUVENARGUES

CLAZOMENES

CHARACTERS

CLAZOMENES, OR UNFORTUNATE
VIRTUE

!|LAZOMENES has experienced all the
miseries of humanity. Disease took pos-
session of him from his childhood, and
deprived him in youth of all the pleasures
of a young man. He had too his secret griefs, for
despite his poverty, he possessed pride and ambi-
tion. He saw himself in his misfortunes despised
by those whom he loved. The insult undermined
his courage, and he was wounded by those on
whom he could not be revenged. His talents, his
unceasing industry, his application to good works,
could not soften his hard lot. His wisdom could
not keep him from committing irreparable faults.
He suffered the ills he did not deserve, and those
induced by his imprudence. When fortune
seemed to tire of persecuting him, when a too
tardy hope began to alleviate his misery,
death confronted him, surprising him at a
period when his affairs were in the greatest dis-
127

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Clazomenes, order. He had the bitter pain of not leaving
.. , °5 behind him property enough to pay his debts ; he

could not save his virtue from that blot. If a

Virtue

reason for so cruel a destiny is sought, I think it
would be difficult to find one. Is there any use
in asking why very skilful gamblers are ruined at
play while other men make their fortunes at it ?
Or why we see years without spring or autumn
in which the fruits of the year wither in their
blossoms? However, we must not think that
Clazomenes would have wished to exchange his
misery for the prosperity of weak men. Fortune
can make sport of the wisdom of brave men, but
it is not in her power to break their courage.

128

PHERECIDES

PHERECIDES, OR AMBITION
DECEIVED

jHERECIDES sacrificed a mediocre for-
tune to hopes that were scarcely wise.
He entered on several careers at the
same time, and not understanding how
to curb his desires he trusted too implicitly to his
ambition and his courage. He persists that cir-
cumstances and the world were against him.
He thought a man could control his own destiny,
and that it depended neither on his position nor
on the waywardness of human affairs. He over-
taxed his strength, he relied unsuccessfully on
his own resources, he could not overcome
adversity. He saw his equals leave the ranks
and by various chances pass him in the race.
Some owed their advance to gambling, others to
rich inheritances, others again to the favour of the
great, or to quite frivolous talents, but talents
loved of the world ; others again succeeded by
dancing well, by the possession of pleasing fea-
tures, beautiful hair or fine teeth. Pherecides com-
mitted an irreparable fault, he wished to hasten
129 I

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Pherecides, his destiny. He neglected the means that

. °r. would have led to fortune slowly and gradu-

Ambition „ , . , , , ^ , .

Deceived y' "^* perhaps surely. Instead of applying

himself with unceasing industry to one object,
he aimed too high and cultivated no special
talent. The great advantages he sought made
him despise the small ones within his reach and
he obtained neither. The haughty disposition
that he vainly tried to conceal, deprived him of
the assistance of men in office, so that the
elevation of his soul, his mind and his merit
were harmful to his advancement and his aims.
Had he expected less of his resources, he would
have better proportioned his hopes and his
actions to his circumstances ; mature and
moderate minds do not force their future, they
proportion their enterprises to their circum-
stances, they await their fortune from events,
and sometimes win it without trouble. But it is
one of the illusions of youth to believe that every-
thing can be done by our own strength and
intelligence, and to desire to rise by our own
industry, or by paths that merit alone cannot
open to men without fortune. Pherecides was
reduced to regret the very advantages he had
despised. The people he wished to excel found
themselves naturally above him, and no one
pitied his misfortunes or deigned to discover
their cause.

130

CYRUS

CYRUS, OR THE UNQUIET MIND.

^YRUS hid, under a simple and calm
exterior, an eager, unquiet mind. Out-
wardly he had the insensibility and
indifference which so often cover a
wounded soul, greatly taken up with itself.
More unquiet in repose than in action, his stir-
ring, ambitious mind keeps him busy without
relaxation, and when he has no business he tires
and spends himself in reflection. Too free and
too bold in his ideas to set bounds to his passions,
readier to love strong vices than feeble virtues,
he follows all his feelings with independence,
and like a man who believes himself master of
his fate and is only responsible to himself for
his conduct, he subordinates all rules to his
instinct. He lacks those insignificant talents
which raise mediocre men in inferior circum-
stances, men who have not to contend with such
serious passions. He is above the reputation
gained by frivolous attractions, and the fortune
which shuts a man up in the precincts of a town
or small province, the ordinary outcome of a
131

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Cyrus, or somewhat narrow wisdom. He is eloquent,
"^^^Jr "'^"^^^ simple, vehement, profound, discerning, and im-
penetrable even to his friends. Endowed with
insight into men, exhibiting without envy the merit
of others, and relying on his own, he is insinuating
and bold, equally suited to persuade by force of
reason or by the charms of seduction. He is fer-
tile and powerful in resources for making facts
and minds bend to his purposes ; he is sincere by
character, but makes an artifice of the truth, and
is more dangerous when he speaks the truth than
deceivers are by their subterfuges and falsehoods.
He is one of those men whom other men mis-
understand, whom the mediocrity of their fortune
disguises and degrades, and whom only prosperity
could develop and put in their right place.

132

TITUS

TITUS, OR ENERGY

■ ITUS rises without assistance, and with-
out a fire during the winter. When the
servants come into his room they find on
his table a pile of letters that he has writ-
ten by candle-light ready for the post. He begins
several pieces of work at once and finishes them
with incredible speed ; his impatient genius does
not permit him to polish them. Whatever he
undertakes, it is impossible for him to linger over
it ; if he put any matter aside, he would feel un-
easy until he was able to take it up again.
Although occupied with affairs of so serious a
nature, he is to be met in society, just like
any idle man. He does not confine himself
to one sort of society, but cultivates several sorts
at the same time, and maintains relations with
numerous persons, both within and without the
kingdom. He has travelled, he has written, he
has been at Court and at the wars ; he excels in
several callings, and knows both men and books.
He has enjoyed all sorts of pleasures but has not
on that account neglected his business. He
133

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Titus, employs the time spent in society in forming
or Energy intrigues, and cultivating his friends. He does
not understand how people can talk for the sake
of talking, or act only in order to be doing some-
thing, and it is evident that his mind suffers when
necessity or politeness uselessly put a curb on it.
If he seeks pleasure, he does not take less trouble
about that than about more serious matters, and
the employment thus given to his mind is more
important to him than the particular pleasure he
pursues. In sickness, or in health he preserves
the same energy. He prosecutes a law suit on
a day on which he has taken physic ; another
time, he composes verses with a fever on him,
and when his friends beg him to take care of
himself, " Eh! " he says, " how can I just now ?
Just look at the business with which I am over-
whelmed," although, to be exact, he has no
business that is not purely voluntary. Prostrated
by a dangerous illness, he had himself dressed
so that he might put his papers in order. He
remembered how Vespasian desired to die
standing.

134

PHOCAS

PHOCAS, OR FALSE ECCENTRICITY

JLL that is false displeases and wounds
us in whatever shape it presents it-
self. Since men , compliant by preference
and intention, embrace without selection
the ideas of everybody, who would believe that
others exist who pride themselves in not thinking
like any one else thinks, and in not borrowing
their opinions from any one? Never speak of
eloquence to Phocas, or, if you wish to please him,
do not mention Cicero, for he will immediately
eulogize Abdallah, Abutaleb and Mahomet, and
assure you that nothing equals the sublimity of
the Arabs. If some old comedy, the author of
which is long since forgotten, is revived on the
stage, it is that piece which he admires and prefers
before all ; he finds the plot ingenious, and the
poetry and the situations inimitable. If war is
the topic, you must not speak to him of Turenne
or the great Conde ; he places far above them
135

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Phocas, or certain ancient generals about whom only their

False names and one or two disputed battles are

Eccentricity , t i- ^ • -r

known. In fact, on every occasion, if you

mention two great men, be sure that he will always
choose the least famous for his hero. In all re-
spects one of the most mediocre of men, he stupidly
thinks to make himself original by means of
affectation and he aims at nothing more. He
avoids agreeing with anybody, and disdains to
speak to the point, provided he speaks differently
from the rest. He studies in puerile fashion to
be incoherent in his talk like a man who only
thinks and speaks by sudden inspirations and
flashes. Tell him seriously a serious thing, he
will reply by a jest ; speak to him of frivolous
things, he will begin a serious discourse. He
disdains to contradict, but he continually inter-
rupts, and often, instead of answering you, turns
away his eyes like a man in profound thought ;
he has an absent-minded far-away air, and a dis-
dainful expression of countenance. His part is to
appear dominated by his imagination, and to pay
no heed to the intelligence of others. He wishes
to make you understand that nothing you can say
has any interest for him because he is too far
above your ideas. His conversation, his manners,
his love, even his silence, warn you that you can
say nothing that is new to a man who thinks and
feels as he does. He is a feeble-minded man who,
136

PHOCAS

disbelieving that merit can advance him, thinks to Phocas, or

impress humanity by his affectations, and to be „ J^a^o^

, , ... , . . . . . Eccentricity

taken for an original merely by throwing aside

reason.

137

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

THEOPHILUS, OR THE PROFOUND MIND

' HEOPHILUS was imbued from his youth
with the great and praiseworthy curi-
osity of knowing mankind and the vari-
ous characters of nations ; but, in
pursuing that object, he did not neglect the men
with whom he had to pass the greatest part of
his hfe, for he did not resemble those who under-
take long journeys in order to see, so they say,
other manners, and who have never examined
those of their own country. Urged by this
powerful instinct, and perhaps also by some
more secret ambition, he spent his best
days in study and travel, and his life, always
laborious, was always unquiet. Endowed by
nature with extraordinary, profound, and clear
penetration, he never speaks without a purpose,
and his is no mind to cause weariness ; his keen
and active intelligence early caused him to apply
himself to great affairs and solid eloquence ; his
words are simple, but bold and forcible ; he some-
times speaks with a freedom that cannot do him
any hurt, but which turns aside a defiant spirit in
138

THEOPHILUS

others. Nature placed in his heart the desire of Theophilus,
insinuating himself and descending into the hearts °*" *® ^5°"
of men who inspire and teach the hidden seduc-
tions of eloquence; yet he seems a man who
does not seek to penetrate others, but who
follows the vivacity of his humour. When he
wishes to make a reserved man speak he contra-
dicts him violently in order to rouse him, and
insensibly engages him in talk in which he is
obliged to reveal himself ; even if he use dissimu-
lation, his dissimulation and his silence have a
meaning for Theophilus, who knows the things his
interlocutor hides, and profits almost equally by
candour and dissimulation, by indiscretion and
silence, so difficult is it to escape him. He mani-
pulates and plays a mind, turns over its pages just
as we glance through a book we have in our hands,
and which we open at a passage that pleases us ;
and this he does with such an air of innocence,
with so little preparation, and so rapidly that those
whom he has surprised by his words flatter them-
selves that they read his most secret thoughts. As
he never wastes time in unnecessary talking, nor
makes false steps, nor useless preparations, he is
able to shorten the most contentious matters, the
most difficult negotiations, and his flexible genius
lends itself to every kind of character without
abandoning his own. He is the affectionate
friend, the father, the adviser and confidant of
139

Theophilus,
or the Pro-
found Mind

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

those who surround him. We find in him a man
simple, without ostentation, familiar, popular.
When we have been talking to him for an hour
we think we know him, but his talent is to lay
bare the characters of others and to conceal his
own. Theophilus is a proof that skilfulness is not
solely an art, as false men imagine it to be ; a vivid
imagination, great sense, an eloquent soul, easily
subjugate the most guarded and defiant minds,
and a superior intelligence conceals thoughts
much more surely than do falsehood and dis-
simulation, always useless as trickery against
prudence.

140

VARUS

VARUS, OR LIBERALITY

jjARUS hates useless luxury and purpose-
less profusion. He dresses simply,
goes afoot, likes order in his affairs, and
retires at times into the country so as
to spend less. But he is kind to those who are
unfortunate, liberal and lavish where the interests
of his fortune are concerned, grateful for the
slightest service, and considerate towards all who
suffer. If he has to give money to a man who
makes no ceremony about receiving it, who is
besides poor and of low rank, Varus's only fear
is of giving it him in a manner that might
make him feel his position. He embraces him,
shakes hands with him, in a way apologizes for his
kind deed. He says that between friends every-
thing is in common, and such kindly conduct
raises the soul of the poor man so that he in his
turn apologizes for the poverty that compels him
to ask assistance. Varus replies : " My friend,
mankind has only attached shame to receiving in
order to avenge themselves for the shame they
have in giving ; but, believe me, more generosity
is required for accepting a friend's help than for
141

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Varus, or giving it him." Varus has everything that money
Liberahty ^^^^ procure, and deserves to be sought out ; for
at need on important occasions he borrows, and
he never hesitates to put himself out in order to
satisfy himself, if need be, or to satisfy his friends.
As he was not born rich he is reduced to owe
largely, but he is never unpunctual in his pay-
ments. He pays at the date fixed, and all purses
are open to him because his probity is known and
his orderly conduct makes him seem quite at ease
when he is most involved. In that way he has
sufficient for his gifts and his own kind heart.
But if any one, hearing his generosity talked of,
attempts to make a dupe of him, after the manner
of rascals who always think themselves cleverer
than honest men. Varus, who can penetrate the
most secret thoughts, and who knows mankind
well, easily sees through the rascal's purpose,
and takes delight in playing with him. Instead
of giving him time to state his demand, he is first,
and says : " Well, my friend, you are out very
early to- day. Have you some important business
on hand ? Are you by any chance seeking an
honest money lender ? You'll have a vast deal
of trouble to find him, I assure you. I know
people who have been wanting a hundred pistoles
for the last three weeks, and can't find them,
even with good interest." The rascal, ashamed
and confused at being found out — for the best
142

VARUS

way to unmask a man who is prepared is to be Varus, or
beforehand with him— replies that in truth he has Liberality
lost large sums at cards the last few days, but,
fortunately, he has been able to pay off his debts.
Glad to have baffled him. Varus pretends to be-
lieve him, and treats him with the utmost civility.
They are already risen and near the door when
the borrower, beginning to regret his feeling of
shame, and who is besides somewhat reassured
by Varus's manner, says : " I regret that I did
pay So-and-so for I haven't a crown left ; if you
could possibly lend me four pistoles, I will return
them to-morrow morning. " What !" exclaims
Varus, " can a man like you possibly be in want
of four pistoles ? How have you let yourself
come to that pass ? What's the use of possessing
such intelligence ? What do you do with it ?
How doyou employ it ?" " I don't exactly know,
but you would be doing me a great favour if you
would lend me those four pistoles." '< Oh ! as to
that, my dear fellow, it's quite impossible, for it
was of rnyself I was speaking just now. I have
been seeking money for the last month, and it is
a consolation to find that a man like you is in
equally low water." Then he accompanies him
to the door, overwhelms him with those protesta-
tions that rascals are so fond of employing and
are always so surprised to find in the mouths of
honest folk.

143

LA BRUYERE AND VA UVENARGUES

ACESTES, OR YOUNG LOVE

YOUNG man who is in love for the first
time in his life is no more a libertine,
nor dissipated, nor ambitious ; all his
passions are suspended, one alone fills
his heart. If, perchance, he finds himself at a
concert where the music is passionate, the sym-
phony alone moves him without any accompani-
ment of words ; tears are seen to flow from his
eyes, and he is compelled to leave the assembly
in which he is not at ease and shut himself up
at home ; he turns aside from those he meets,
he wishes to hide his tears. Sitting at his table,
he begins a letter, and tears it up, he strides up
and down his room, mutters incoherent words ;
he is no longer himself, no one recognizes him.
Acestes idolizes a woman by whom he believes
himself loved in return. He sees her in his
sleep, speaks to her, listens to her, and thinks
she listens to him. He dreams that he is
travelling alone with her through a wood, over
rocks and burning sand; they reach a land of
savages ; the people crowd round them and
144

ACESTES

enquire with curiosity about their fortunes. Acestes, or
Another time he dreams that he is in a battle, Young Love
and that, covered with wounds and glory, he is
about to die in his mistress's arms ; for a young
man's imagination easily produces all the
chimeras that our romancers only compose after
many wakeful nights. Acestes is timid with his
mistress ; although the bloom of youth is still on
his countenance he is uneasy when he is with
her. He forgets when he sees her what he had
prepared to say to her ; but sometimes he speaks
to her without preparation, with that fire and
impetuosity which the most poignant and
eloquent of the passions inspire ; he has a
torrent of words at once strong and tender ; he
draws tears from this woman who loves another ;
then he throws himself at her feet and demands
pardon for offences he has not committed. At
length his charm and sincerity prevail over the
vows of a rival less affectionate than he, and love,
time, caprice, reward so pure a passion. He re-
turns home preoccupied and saddened ; love brings
goodness into an innocent and sensitive heart ;
suspicion, envy, interest, hatred, have no place
in a loving happy heart. Acestes' s joy, transport,
silence and distraction cannot be described. All
who depend on him share in his happiness ; his
servants whom he ordered to await him at home
are not there ; Acestes by nature quick tempered
145 K

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Acestes, or and impatient, is not angry, and when, apologizing
Young Love foj. ^j^eir late arrival, they come, he tells them
that they did vu-ell to amuse themselves, and that
he would be sorry to spoil any one's pleasure.
Then if some poor wretch approaches him,
Acestes gives him his purse, for pity accom-
panies love, and says to him " I am only too happy
to be able to alleviate your woes ; if all men would
help each other, there would be none unfortunate ;
but the frightful and inexorable hardness of rich
men causes them to retain everything for
themselves, and thus it is avarice alone
which causes all the miseries of the earth."
Acestes only prides himself on being good ; he
forgives his enemies, he goes to see a man who
wished to injure him. "Happy," says he, "are
those who have passions that render them less
hard-hearted, less arrogant, less fastidious, less
conventional ! Oh ! if men could always be affec-
tionate, generous, modest!" While he is busied
with these reflections, some young men of his
acquaintance laugh at the passion by which he
is consumed, and above all at his fine ideas about
love. He replies : " Thank God, I have not
learnt to despise the love which pleases me, in
order to diminish my pleasures. I esteem human
things because I am a man, and do not pride
myself on finding in my imagination the things I
find more easily in nature. Interest, vanity,
146

ACESTES

ambition, may possibly some day dry up my Acestes, or
heart and cause the natural feeling in it to perish, Young Love
but at least I need not go to meet that mis-
fortune. Do you then think yourselves more
clever to be undeceived so early about the so-
called illusions of youth ? You have grown old,
my friends, before your time and without having
enjoyed nature ; you are already disgusted with
its pleasures. I pity you, for it is an error to
seek otherwhere than in feeling what neither
intellect nor custom, neither art nor science, can
supply."

147

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

MAN of the world is not he who best
knows other men, who has the most
foresight or skill in affairs, who is best
informed either through experience or
study. He is neither a good economist nor a
man of learning, nor a politician, nor an intelli-
gent officer, nor a hard-working magistrate ; he
is a man who is ignorant of nothing, yet who
knows nothing, who, plying his own calling,
whatever it may be, very ill, thinks himself
capable of carrying on that of others very well.
He is possessed of much useless wit; he can say
flattering things that do not flatter, and sensible
things that do not instruct ; he can convince no
one although he speaks well. For he is endowed
with the sort of eloquence which creates trifles
or brings them into prominence, and only
succeeds in crushing great subjects. He is as
acute regarding the absurdity and outward
seeming of men as he is blind to their depth of
mind. He is rich in words and in all outward
things, and, unable to take the lead by good
148

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

sense, is compelled to make an appearance by The Man of
eccentricity ; and dreading to be tiresome by *"® World
reason, is tiresome by his inconsequence and
digressions. He is cheerful without being gay,
and vivacious without being passionate. He has
need of constant change of place and aims, and
cannot make up for his lack of depth by the
variety of his amusements. If several persons
of that character meet together, and some game
cannot be arranged, such men, although they teem
with wit, have not enough of it to keep up a half-
hour's conversation, even with the ladies, or to pre-
vent their being greatly bored with each other. All
the facts, all the news, all the jests, all the re-
flexions are exhausted in a moment. He who is
not occupied in playing cards is obliged to look
on at the game so as not to find himself by the
fire-side with another man to whom he has
nothing to say, All those amiable persons who
have banished reason from their talk clearly
demonstrate how little it is to be dispensed
with. False things may supply conversation
that pricks the mind's surface, but only true
things penetrate the heart, create interest, and
are never exhausted.

149

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

THE PROFICIENT IN THE ART OF
DEALING WITH MANKIND

E who knows men and understands how
to deal with them has no need of the
vulgar artifices of flattery in order to
win hearts. He is candid, ingenious,
and friendly ; he does not display a vain pomp
of expression, nor does he adorn his conversation
with figures of speech that would only serve to
show ofT his own intelligence without interesting
other people. Wherever he may chance to
meet him, at table, on a journey, at the play,
in a minister's waiting room, or at the prince's
palace, if he finds himself in the company of a
man likely to listen to him, he joins him, gains
influence over him, persuades him by appealing
to the serious and sensitive side of his mind,
forces him to open his heart, excites and awakes
in him passions and interests that were dormant
or that he did not recognize, foresees or guesses his
thoughts, and winds himself in a moment into
his entire confidence. Thus he can win those
whom he does not know, as he can preserve the
150

SAVOIR VIVRE

regard of those he has already won. He enters The Pro-

so deeply into the character of his interlocutor, "cient in the
L , , . . . , . ' Art of Deal-

what he says to him is so nicely proportioned ^^„ •with

to his thoughts and feelings, that where others Mankind
would comprehend nothing, or take no pleasure,
he understands all. Thus he prefers a tite-d.-tete ;
but if circumstances compel him to speak before
several persons of varying manners or opinions,
or if he has to decide between two men who do
not agree, since he knows the different sides of
human affairs, since he can exhaust the for and
against of every subject, and set all in the best
light and reconcile opposite views, he quickly
seizes the hidden point by which diverse opinions
may be reconciled, and his conclusion is of such
a nature that none of those who submitted them-
selves to his counsel can object to it. He does
not know how to shine at a supper party or in
a scrappy, interrupted conversation, where each
speaker follows the vivacity of his imagination
or humour without reflexion, but the art of
pleasing and dominating in serious conversation,
gentle acquiescence, and the charms of attractive
intercourse, are the amiable gifts which nature
has accorded him. He is the most eloquent
man in the world when it is a question of
softening a haughty mind, or of rousing a
weak one, of consoling an unhappy man, or
of inspiring a timid and reserved one with
151

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Pro- courage and confidence. He knows how to
ncient in the soften, conquer, convince, rouse, according to
ine with need ; he has the sort of mind which serves to
Mankind rule men's hearts, and which is suited for any-
thing of which the end is noble, useful, great.

152

BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH

DIALOGUE
BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH

The Young Man :

ILLUSTRIOUS shade, deign to show me

affection. You were my model so long

as I lived ; like you I was ambitious,

I tried to imitate your other virtues.

Fortune was against me, I have foiled its hatred,

I have escaped its severity by killing myself.

Brutus :
You made that decision very young, my
friend. Had you no resources left in the world ?

The Young Man:

I thought none remained to me except chance,
and I could not wait.

Brutus :
What right had you to expect anything of for-
tune ? Did you come of a noble house ?

The Young Man:
My birth was lowly ; I desired to ennoble my-
self by virtue and fame.
153

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Dialogue Brutus :

What means did you take to raise yourself ?
for surely you had not merely a vague desire to
make your fortune without striving for a special
object.

Tke Young Man :

I hoped to advance by my intelligence and
courage ; I felt that I possessed a lofty mind.

Brutus :
And so you cultivated some talent ? For you
knew that no man gets on by magnanimity unless
he is in a position to develop it in great affairs ?

The Young Man :
I knew the human heart a little ; I understood
the spirit of finesse and skilful management ; I
hoped to make myself master of the minds of
other men ; by that means a man can attain any-
thing.

Brutus :

Yes, if you are already some way advanced in
your career, and acquainted with the great.
But what had you done towards obtaining your
end and making yourself known ? Had you dis-
tinguished yourself in the wars ?

The Young Man :
I conducted myself with coolness in all dangers,
154

BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH

and I did my duty. But I had little taste for the Dialogue
details of my occupation. I thought I should
have done better in high affairs, but I neglected
to make a reputation in lower ones.

Brutus :

And you believe that this talent of yours for
high affairs would be guessed if you showed it
in lower ones ?

The Young Man :

That is exactly what I did imagine, illustrious
shade, for I had no experience of life, and no
one had instructed me in the ways of the world.
I had not been brought up for fortune.

Brutus :
Had you cultivated the art of eloquence ?

The Young Man :

I cultivated it as far as the occupation of war
permitted. I loved literature and poetry, but all
that was useless under the rule of Tiberius, who
only cared for politics, and, in his old age,
despised the arts. At Rome eloquence no
longer led to honours ; it was a talent quite
useless for making a man's fortune, and there
was scant opportunity for practising it.
155

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Dialogue Brutus :

You should have devoted yourself to the things
that would render you agreeable to your master,
and useful to your country under the conditions
in which it then was.

The Young Man ;
I recognized the truth of what you say, but I
discovered it too late, and I killed myself to punish
myself for my faults.

Brutus :
Your faults are not unpardonable, my friend.
You did not take the right road to fortune : but
you might have succeeded by other means, since
thousands have got on without merit and with-
out calculable industry. You are too hard on
yourself : like the generality of men you judge of
your conduct by its success.

The Young Man :
It is a sweet consolation, oh great shade ! that
you should make excuses for me. I never dared
to open my heart to any one so long as I lived.
You are the first to whom I have confessed my
ambition, and who has pardoned my ill fortune.

Brutus :
Alas ! if I had known you in the world I
should have tried to console you in your mis-
156

BRUTUS AND A ROMAN YOUTH

fortunes. I see that you lack neither virtue, nor Dialogue
intelligence, nor courage. In more favourable
times you would have made your fortune, for you
have a Roman heart.

The Young Man :
If that is so, my dear Brutus, I do not regret
my misfortune. Fortune is partial and unjust ;
it is not a great evil to miss it when we feel cer-
tain that we deserved it. And when it is attained
unworthily and by an unjust title, it matters
little, for then it only serves to make greater
faults, and to increase vices.

157

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

HEGESIPPUS

EGESIPPUS passes rapidly from violent
feeling to its opposite, and his passions
are exhausted by their own vivacity.
Feeble and strong, encouraged by the
least success and thrown into consternation by
the least misfortune, excessive joy soon throws
him into sadness, hope into despair ; and hate once
satisfied awakes in him the extreme of pity. He
is subject to repent without proportion things
which he desired and executed without modera-
tion. Quick to grow excited, he cannot exist in
indifference. When he lacks anything his ardent
imagination occupies him secretly with the
objects his heart demands, and all his schemes
are as extreme as his feelings. He esteems little
what he does not desire or admire, and what he
does not regard with passion he considers to be
without interest. He passes swiftly from one
idea to another, and he exhausts in a moment
the feeling that sways him, but no one enters
with more truth into the personage whom his
passions make him deceive, and he is almost sin-
158

HEGESIPPUS

cere in his tricks because he feels, in spite of him- Hegesippus
self, all that he desires to feign. He is the least
suited for affairs that demand sequence and
patience ; he becomes attached to people and dis-
gusted with them most promptly, urges a single
interest very vivaciously, but is entirely incapable
of conducting several at a time. He either en-
tirely neglects little things or worries himself
absurdly over them ; he has the greatest confi-
dence in himself and his schemes, but his imagina-
tion far outstrips his powers of execution. He is
destined by nature to commit great faults because
he imagines too vividly and undertakes too
rashly what he has conceived with transport.
He possesses, however, real and lofty courage,
which makes him take up from reflexion affairs
of which he despairs by feeling. Sometimes he is
rebuffed by the slightest obstacles, but does not
generally succumb to the greatest. Intrepid in
despair, he counteracts the changefulness of his
humour by resolution and prudence ; he even de-
rives virtues from his weakness, and repairs the
inequalities of his heart by the wisdom of his mind.
Equable minds are often mediocre, and we must
learn to esteem those men who by sudden fits
succeed in raising themselves to all the virtues
although they cannot long remain there. Their
heart goes out towards generosity, courage,
pity, and immediately yields to opposite im-

159

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Hegesippus pulses. Such virtues are not false for being
sudden, they sometimes go farther towards
heroism than moderation and wisdom, which,
more subject to common laws, have neither the
vigour nor the boldness that is the sign of
independence.

i6o

THE INCONSTANT MAN

THE INCONSTANT MAN

1UCH a man seems really to possess more
than one character. A powerful imagi-
nation makes his soul take the shape of
all the objects that affect it; he sud-
denly astonishes the world by acts of generosity
and courage which were never expected of him,
the image of virtue inflames, elevates, softens,
masters his heart, he receives the impressions of
the greatest examples and surpasses them. But
when his imagination has grown cold his courage
droops, his generosity sinks, and the vices
opposed to those virtues take possession of his
mind and soul, and after reigning there supreme
for a short space yield to other objects. The
actions of men of that character have no rele-
vance one with another, they do not resemble
each other any more than their thoughts, which
vary ceaselessly ; they possess, in some sort, in-
spiration. He who trusts in their words and
their friendship lacks prudence ; they are not
deceitful, but they are inconstant. We cannot
say that they have a great or a strong or a weak
i6i L

LA BRUtERE AND VAUVENARGUES

The Incon- or a light nature ; it is a swift and imperious
stant wan imagination reigning supreme over their whole
being which subjugates their genius and which
prescribes for them in turn the great deeds and
the faults, the heights and the littlenesses, the
enthusiasms and disgusts, in short, all the differ-
ent lines of conduct which we wrongly ascribe to
hypocrisy or folly.

i6a

LYCAS

LYCAS, OR THE FIRM MAN

O a self-reliant, bold, and imperious nature
Lycas unites a spirit of reflexion and
profundity which moderates the coim-
sels of his passions, which leads him by
impenetrable motives, and causes him to advance
to his ends by a variety of roads. He is one of
those long-sighted men who consider events from
afar, who always finish any design they have
begun, who, in order to attain their end, know
how to yield or to resist at the right moment,
who are capable, I will not say of dissembling a
misfortune or an offence, but of raising themselves
above it instead of allowing themselves to be de-
pressed by it. They are deep natures, independ-
ent by their firmness in suffering all, in daring
all ; who, whether they resist their inclinations
through foresight or whether from pride and a
secret consciousness of their resources, they defy
what is called prudence, always in good as in
evil cheat the most acute conjectures, so greatly
does their habit of being master of themselves
lead them to display what of their character or
their ruling passions they desire to let others see.

163

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

T is easier to say new things than to
reconcile those which have already
been said.

Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.

Obscurity is the kingdom of error.

Where an author often errs is in believing that
he can express things exactly as he sees or feels
them.

We should be more tolerant of the ideas con-
tained in a piece of writing if we conceived them
in the same way as their author.

We rarely fathom another's thoughts ; conse-
quently if it happens that later a similar reflexion
occurs to us, so many sides does it present which
had escaped us that we are easily persuaded it is
new.

To praise moderately is always a sign of
mediocrity.

164

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

Rapid fortunes of any kind are the least solid, Reflexions
because they are rarely the result of merit. The *"^ Maxims
perfect but laborious outcome of prudence is
always of tardy growth.

Prosperity makes few friends.

Sometimes a lengthened period of prosperity
melts away in a moment ; just as the heat of
summer flies before a day of tempest.

Courage has more resources against misfor-
tune than has reason.

Reason and independence are incompatible
with weakness.

War is less burdensome than servitude.

Servitude degrades men even to making them
love it.

Before attacking an abuse we must And out if
its foundations can be destroyed.

We have no right to render miserable those
whom we cannot render good.

No one can be just who is not humane.
165

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions Some authors regard morality in the same
and Maxims ygj^t ^g ^g regard modern architecture. Con-
venience is the first thing to be looked for.

No one likes to be pitied for his faults.

The tempests of youth are mingled with days
of brilliant sunshine.

Women and young people do not distinguish
their esteem from their inclinations.

Habit is everything — even in love.

Few passions are constant, but many are
sincere.

It is proof of a narrow mind when things
worthy of esteem are distinguished from things
worthy of love. Great minds naturally love
whatever is worthy of their esteem.

When we feel that we lack the wherewithal to
secure a certain man's esteem, we come very
near hating him.

Pleasures teach princes to recognize their
genus-

The man who can render his wealth useful,
practises a great and noble economy^
i66

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

Fools do not understand men of intelligence. Reflexions

and Maxims
A man can hardly be said to have made a for-
tune if he does not know how to enjoy it.

To attain fortune, you must act warily. You
must be supple and amusing. You must be
concerned in plots and yet offend no one ; you
must make yourself agreeable to women, and to
men in power, take your share of business and
pleasure, hide your secret, and know how to
bore yourself a whole night at table and play
three games of quadrille without leaving your
chair. Even after all that you can be certain of
nothing. How much annoyance and anxiety
might be spared if glory was only to be attained
by merit.

The man who rises before eight o'clock in the
morning to hear a case in court, or to see an
exhibition of pictures at the Louvre, or to attend
the rehearsal of a new play, and who prides
himself on being a judge of every sort of work
done by other people, is a man who often lacks
nothing but intelligence and taste.

We are less offended by the contempt of fools
than by the moderate esteem of men of intelli-
gence.

You sometimes offend a man by bestowing on
167

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions him praise which marks out the limit of his
and Maxims deserving; few men are modest enough to endure

being appreciated.

It is difficult to esteem a man as he desires to
be esteemed.

Reason and extravagance, virtue and vice,
have their favoured ones. Contentment is not a
sign of merit.

Should calmness of mind be regarded as a
proof of virtue ? Good health ensures it.

The moderation of great men only sets a limit
to their vices. The moderation of weak men is
mediocrity.

There are none so sour as those who are sweet
to order.

What is arrogance in the weak is elevation in
the strong ; just as the strength of the sick is
frenzy and that of the whole is vigour.

One does not gain much by mere clever-
ness.

Consciousness of our strength increases it.

It is not true that poverty calls forth virtue in
men more than wealth does.
i68

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

You must maintain strength of body in order Reflexions
to preserve strength of mind. ^^^ Maxims

Those who think they have no need of others
become unreasonable.

Every man thinks himself worthy of the
highest office ; but nature, who has not made
him capable of holding it, likewise makes him
able to live contentedly in the lowest.

Men despise great projects when they do not
feel themselves capable of great successes.

Great men undertake great things because the
things are great ; fools undertake them because
they deem them easy.

It is sometimes easier to form a party than to
attain by degrees the head of a party already
formed.

Those who do not know how to gain by inter-
course with others are not generally very
accessible.

Extreme distrust is not less harmful than its
opposite ; the greater part of men are useless to
him who will not risk being deceived.

Everything is to hoped, everything to be feared,
from time and from mankind.
i6g

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions The bad are always greatly surprised to find
and Maxims cleverness in the good.

Too much and too little reserve about our
affairs testify equally to a weak mind.

The maxims of men reveal their hearts.

Few maxims are true in every respect.

We find in ourselves what others hide from
us ; and we recognize in others what we hide
from ourselves.

Men say few solid things when they try to say
extraordinary things.

The best authors say too much.

A man who neither dines nor sups at home
thinks himself vastly occupied. And another
who spends the morning at his toilette, and in
giving audience to his embroiderer, laughs at the
idleness of a newsmonger who takes a walk
every day before dinner.

Few men would be happy if others had
the determining of their occupations and
pleasures.

If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness
170

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

than does reflexion, it gives more strength to Reflexions
execute it. and Maxims

If passion commits more faults than judgment
does, those who govern commit more faults by
reason than do private men.

Great thoughts come from the heart.^

Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of
its motives.*

No one is more liable to make mistakes than
he who acts only on reflexion.

Conscience, the organ of the feeling which
dominates us and of the opinions which rule us,
is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak
and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

Strength or weakness at the hour of death
depends on the nature of the last illness.

Disease extinguishes courage in some men,
fear, and even love of life, in others.

It is unjust to exact of a soul crushed and
vanquished by some irremediable evil, that it

' " Trfes beau," said Voltaire of tliis maxim, "Vauvenargues
se peignait lui-m€me."
» Voltaire.—" C'est grand."

171

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions shall preserve the same strength it had at other
and Maxims times. Are we surprised if a sick man cannot
walk, or keep awake, or stand upright ? Would
it not be more strange if he was the same man
as when he was well ? If we have a headache,
or have slept badly, we are excused for feeling
incapable of work, and yet no one suspects us of
being always lazy. Shall we deny a dying man
the privilege we grant a man with a headache ?
And dare we assert that the man who lacks
courage in his last agony never possessed that
virtue when he was well.

To accomplish great things we must live as
though we had never to die.

The thought of death deceives us ; for it causes
us to neglect to live.

I sometimes say to myself: " Life is too short
to be worth troubling about." Yet if a bore
calls on me, prevents me from going out or from
dressing myself, I lose patience and cannot
endure to be bored for half an hour.

The falsest of all philosophies is that which,
under the pretext of delivering men from the
embarrassment of their passions, counsels
idleness, and the abandonment and neglect of
themselves.

172

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

If all our foresight cannot render our lives Reflexions
happy, how much less our indifference. ^^^ Maxims

No one says in the morning : A day is soon
past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary,
in the evening we consider what we shall do
next day. We should be very sorry to spend
even one day at the mercy of time and of bores.
We should not dare leave the disposal of a few
hours to chance, and we are right. For who
can be certain of spending an hour without being
bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short
period according to his pleasure. Yet what we
cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes
feel assured of for life, and say : — " If death is
the end of everything, why give ourselves so
much trouble ? We are extremely foolish to
make such a pother about the future : that is to
say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our
destinies to chance, and to provide for the
interval which lies between us and death.

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement
each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and
puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself
of a portion of the aid granted us for the regula-
tion of our conduct.

We owe perhaps to the passions the greatest
advantages of the intellect
173

LA BRUY6RE AND VAUVENARGUES

, Reflexions In the childhood of nations, as in that of indivi-
and Maxims duals, feeling precedes reflexion, and is their
first teacher.

Young people suffer less from their faults than
from the prudence of the old.

The counsels of the old, like the winter sun,
shine, but give no heat.

The common excuse of those who bring mis-
fortune on others, is that they desire their good.

It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of
deference to our advice what they have no desire
to do for themselves.

Whoever is more severe than the laws is a
tyrant.

To punish unnecessarily is to entrench on
God's clemency.

Mercy is of greater value than justice.

We censure the unfortunate for the slightest
faults, and pity them little for the greatest mis-
fortunes.

We reserve our indulgence for the perfect.

No man is weak from choice.
174

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

The most odious form of ingratitude, yet the Reflexions
most common and the most ancient, is that of ^^°^ Maxims
children towards their fathers.

Generosity is affected by the misfortunes of
others as if it were itself responsible for them.

We are not greatly pleased that our friends
should respect our good qualities if they venture
to perceive our faults.

We do not condole with a man for being a
fool, and perhaps rightly ; but it is very delight-
ful to imagine that it is his fault.

We can love with all our hearts those in
whom we recognize great faults. It would be
impertinent to believe that perfection alone has
the right to please us; sometimes our weak-
nesses attach us to each other as much as our
virtues.

If our friends do us a service, we think they
owe it to us by their title of friend. We never
think that they do not owe us their friendship.

More fortunes are made by energy than by
prudence.

Nature does not seem to have made man for
independence.

Dependence is born of society.
175

LA BRUYfeRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions In order to protect himself from force, man
and Maxims ^J^g obliged to submit to justice. Justice or
force : he was compelled to choose between the
two masters, so little are we made to be inde-
pendent.

With kings, nations, and private individuals,
the strongest assume to themselves rights over
the weakest, and the same rule is followed by
animals, by matter, by the elements, so that
everything is performed in the universe by
violence. And that order which we blame with
some appearance of justice is the most universal,
most absolute, most unchangeable, and most
ancient law of nature.

The weak wish to be dependent in order to be
protected : those who fear men love the laws.

He who knows how to suffer everything can
dare everything.

There are insults which we have to condone
if we would not compromise our honour.

It is good to be firm by temperament and
pliant by reflexion.

The weak sometimes wish to be thought
wicked, but the wicked wish to be thought
virtuous.

176

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

The law of the mind is not different from that Reflexions
of the body, which can only be supported by ^^^ Maxims
continual nourishment.

The fruits of work form the sweetest of plea-
sures.

It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not
of right proportion : the perfection of a clock is
not to go fast, but to be accurate.

Those who laugh at serious tastes have a
serious affection for trifles.

We judge works of genius as we would me-
chanical productions. When we buy a ring we
say, that one is too big, the other is too small,
until we find one that fits our finger. But none
are left at the jeweller's, for what is too small for
one exactly fits another.

The fool who has a good memory is full of
thoughts and facts. But he does not know how
to draw conclusions, and everything depends on
that.

I do not approve the maxim which desires a
man to know a little of everything. Superficial
knowledge, knowledge without principles, is
almost always useless and sometimes harmful
knowledge.

177 M

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions It is true that the greater number of men are
and Maxims scarcely capable of profound knowledge, but it
is equally true that the superficial knowledge
they seek only serves to satisfy their vanity. It
is hurtful to those who possess true genius ; for
it necessarily draws them away from their main
object, wastes their industry over details and
subjects foreign to their needs and natural
talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter
themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind.
In all ages there have been men of very moderate
intelligence who knew much, and on the con-
trary, men of the highest intelligence who knew
very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence,
nor knowledge a proof of genius.

There is perhaps as much truth among men
as error, as many good qualities as bad, as much
pleasure as pain ; but we desire to control human
nature, to try to raise ourselves above our species,
and to enrich ourselves with the consideration
of which we try to despoil it. We are so pre-
sumptuous that we think we can separate our
personal interest from that of humanity, and
slander mankind without compromising our-
selves. That absurd vanity has filled the books
of philosophers with invectives against nature.
Man is now in disgrace with all who think, and
the prize is to him who loads him with the most
178

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

vices ; but maybe he is on the point of improve- Reflexions
ment, and of compelling all his virtues to be ^^^ Maxims
restored to him. For nothing is stable, and
philosophy has its fashions like dress, music, or
architecture.

As soon as an opinion becomes common it is
sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to
uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn
grows old, and they require to distinguish them-
selves by other things. Thus if they attain their
goal in some art or science, we must expect
them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh
fame, and this is partly the reason why the most
splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely
emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.

Great men in teaching weak men to reflect
have set theni on the road of error.

The comtemplative man, lying in a luxuriously
furnished room, abuses the soldier who spends
the winter nights on the banks of a river, and
silently, under arms, watches over the safety of
his country.

A hero does not seek glory in order to carry
hunger and misery into the home of his enemies,
but to endure them for his country : he does not
desire to cause death but to brave it.

179

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions Vice stirs up war : virtue fights. If there was
and Maxims jjq virtue we should have unbroken peace.

It is not true that equality is a law of nature.
Nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign
law is surbordination and dependence.

Necessity moderates more ti^oubles than reason .

Necessity embitters the evils which it cannot
cure.

The favourites of fortune or of fame topple
from their pedestals before our eyes without
diverting us from ambition.

Patience is the art of hoping.

Despair puts the last touch not only to our
misery but also to our weakness.

Neither the gifts n or the blows of fortune equal
those of nature ; in generosity and in rigour
nature is alike supreme.

We are forced to respect the gifts of nature,
which study and fortune cannot give.

The generality of men are so bound within the

sphere of their circumstances that they have not

even the courage to get out of them through their

ideas, and if we see a few whom , in a way, specu-

i8o

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

lation over great things makes incapable of mean Reflexions
ones, we find still more with whom the practice ^"^ Maxims
of small things takes away the feeling for great
ones.

The most absurd and the most rash hopes have
sometimes been the cause of extraordinary
success.

Great resources of mind and heart are needed
to enjoy sincerity when it wounds, or to practise
it without giving offence : few men have depth
enough to hear or to tell the truth.

However we may be reproached for our vanity
we have need sometimes to be assured of our
merits.*

We are rarely consoled for great humiliations ;
we forget them.

The less power a man has in the world, the
more he may commit faults with impunity, or
possess in vain true merit.

Mediocre minds do not feel the extremes of
good and evil.

Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles

1 < And to have our most obvious advantages pointed out to
us.' — Later addition by Vauvenargues.

i8i

LA bruyTere and vauvenargues

Reflexions as the common people do ; but the common
and Maxims people do not busy themselves about such frivo-
lous things as do persons of rank.

We sometimes seek the society of men who
impose on us by their outward appearance, just
as young men lovingly follow a mask, taking it
for the most beautiful woman in the world, and
worry it until they force it to reveal itself, only
to show them a little man with dark complexion
and beard.

It is easy to criticize an author : it is difficult
to appreciate him.

If we only consider a few of the works of the
best authors we are tempted to despise them;
to appreciate them fairly we must read all.

Men are not to be judged by what they do not
know, but by what they know, and by the man-
ner in which they know it.

A liar is a man who does not know how to de-
ceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools:
he who knows how to make skilful use of the
truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone
pride himself on his cleverness.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before
their death was invented by envy and too lightly
z8a

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary. Reflexions
maintain that they ought to be praised in their ^'^^ Maxims
lifetime if they merit it ; but jealousy and ca-
lumny, roused against their virtue or their talent,
labour to degrade them if any one ventures to
bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism
that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise.

We are very wrong to think that some fault or
other can exclude all virtue, or to consider the
alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an
enigma. It is lack of insight that causes us to
reconcile so few things.

Is it against reason or justice to love ourselves ?
And why is self-love always a vice ?

He who seeks glory by the path of virtue has
no idea of asking what is to be his reward.

The greater works of the human mind are
assuredly the least perfect ; the laws which are
the most splendid invention of reason have not
been able to secure peace for a nation without
diminishing its liberty.

The common people and the nobles have
neither the same vices nor the same virtues.

We have neither the strength nor the oppor-
tunity to accomplish all the good and all the evil
which we design.

183

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions Intellectual mediocrity and sloth make more
and Maxims philosophers than reason or reflexion.

Commerce is the school of cozenage.

As it is natural to believe many things without
proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to dis-
believe others.

Faith is the consolation of the wretched and
the terror of the happy.

The shortness of life can neither dissuade us
from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

Who are those that declare that the world has
grown old? I easily believe them. Ambition,
fame, love, in short all the passions of earlier
ages, do not create the same disorder and the
same noise. It is not perhaps that those passions ,
are less keen to-day than they were formerly,
but that they are disavowed and combated. I
say that the world is like an old man who has
preserved the desires of his youth, but who is
ashamed of them, and hides them either because
he is disillusionized of the merit of many things
or because he wishes to appear so.

Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant,
and most virtuous inclinations from weakness and
a fear of being contemned.

We are too inattentive or too much occupied
184

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

with ourselves to understand each other. Who- Reflexions
ever has seen masks at a ball dance amicably to- ^^^ Maxims
gether, and hold hands without knowing each
other, to part the moment after to see each other
no more, nor to regret each other, can form some
idea of society.

As there are many soldiers, and few brave ones,
so there are many versifiers and almost no poets.
Men crowd into honourable careers without other
vocation than their vanity, or at best their love
of fame.

Everything has its reason, and everything
happens as it ought; there is nothing against
feeling nor nature. I agree, but I am not anxious
that people should agree with me.

Children are taught to fear and obey; the
avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches
children economy, arrogance, or submission.
They are also encouraged to be imitators, a
course to which they are already only too much
inclined. No one thinks of making them original,
courageous, independent.

If children had teachers for judgment and elo-
quence just as they have for languages, if their
memory was exercised less than their energy or
their natural genius, if instead of deadening their

185

LA BRUYERE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free
and Maxims scope and impulses of their souls, what might not
result from a fine disposition ? As it is, we for-
get that courage, or love of truth and glory are
the virtues that matter most in youth ; and our one
endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in
order to teach them that dependence and supple-
ness are the first laws of success in life.

It is in our own mind and not in exterior
objects that we perceive most things ; fools know
scarcely anything because they are empty, and
their heart is narrow; but great souls find in
themselves a number of exterior things; they
have no need to read or to travel or to listen or
to work to discover the highest truths ; they have
only to delve into themselves and search, if we
may say so, their own thoughts.

A prince who is only good loves his servants,
his ministers, his family, his favourite, and is not
attached to his State ; it is a great king who loves
his people.

A prince is great and lovable when he has the
virtues of a king, and the weaknesses of a private
man.

Mediocre talent does not prevent great fortune,
but neither procures it nor deserves it.
i86

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

When we are convinced of some great truths, Reflexions
and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear ^^'^ Maxims
to express it, although others have said it before
us. Every thought is new when an author ex-
presses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

Gaming, devoutness, wit, are three great ad-
vantages for women past their youth.

It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of
their strength.

The great do not know the common people,
and have no desire to know them.

Nothing endures except truth.

It is not exactly truth which is most wanting
in men's ideas, but precision and exactitude.
Absolute falseness is seldom met with in their
thoughts, and truth, pure and complete, is still
more rarely to be found in their expressions.

We have not time enough to reflect on all our
actions.

Every condition has its errors and its lights ;
every nation has its morals and its genius,
according to its fortune ; the Greeks, whom we
surpass in fastidiousness, surpassed us in sim-
plicity.

187

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions How few exact thoughts there are, and how
and Maxims j^^j^y g^m rej^ajn foj. well-balanced minds to
develop.

He who needs a motive for lying is not bom a
liar.

Whatever affection we have for our friends or
relations, the happiness of others never suffices
for our own.

Great men are sometimes so even in small
things.

If a man is endowed with a noble and courage-
ous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious,
without meanness, of a profound and deep-seated
intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to
be neglected by the great and men in high office,
who fear, more than other men, those whom
they cannot dominate.

The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men
is to endow them with feeble resources and yet
to make them ambitious.

Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and
when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse
it, all that is to be concluded is that they are
aware of their mediocrity.
i88

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

War is waged at the present time between Reflexions
European nations so humanely, so skilfully, and ^^^ Maxims
with so little profit, that without a paradox it may
be compared to the litigation of private persons
where the expenses diminish the principal, and
where men employ cunning rather than strength.

Men are so born for dependence that even the
laws that govern their weakness do not suffice
them : fortune has not given them masters
enough, fashion miust compensate for this, and
rule them even to the cut of their shoes.

The best things are the most common. You
can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown.
Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who
give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries
and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult
to obtain ; unfortunately they are the only things
that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary
men.

We must not be timid from a fear of com-
mitting faults: the greatest fault of all is to
deprive oneself of experience.

The days of early spring have less beauty
than the budding virtue of a youth.

The light of the dawn is not so sweet as the
first glimpses of fame.

i8g

LA BRUYfiRE AND VAUVENARGUES

Reflexions Courage is the light of adversity,
and Maxims

Wisdom is the tyrant of the weak.

Peace renders nations happier and men
weaker.

We must not be too much afraid of being
deceived.

Nature has endowed mankind with divers
talents. Some are bom to invent, others to
embellish ; but the gilder attracts more atten-
tion than the architect.

Nothing is more severe than justice.

We are not always as unjust to our enemies
as we are to our relations.

In friendship, in marriage, in love, or in any
other sort of intercourse, we desire to gain ; and
as the intercourse between friends, lovers, rela-
tions, brothers, and so forth is of a greater mag-
nitude than any other, it is not surprising to find
in it more ingratitude and injustice.

The things we know best are those we have
not learned.

There does not exist a man sufficiently intelli-
gent never to be tiresome,
igo

REFLEXIONS AND MAXIMS

Whatever taste we may have for high affairs, Reflexions
there is no reading so tiresome and wearying ^^^ Maxims
as that of a treaty between princes.

As nature has not made all men equal by
merit, it seems she cannot make them so by
fortune.

Butier and Tanner The Selwood Printinff Works Frome and London

igi